Name and title, please.
Bureaucracy can be so inefficient. It begins as a legitimate effort to streamline, to provide aid and services, or to centralize. Then it seems to always become a distancing mechanism. People are forced farther away from other people. Relationship is replaced with infrastructure. It makes me sad.
This human-to-system transformation happens on many levels. I experience it to a degree among the small staff structure of my own job. We see it affect the ability of aid to get to the needy like the recent Katrina catastrophe. Now it seems to be a barrier to helping those that are being oppressed in Darfur. I just get weary.
It translates easily to the personal level. We forget that life is about relationships. Every organization, government, or family is held together by human beings that are inconsistent, emotional, reactive and limited by physical and mental capacity. Our society values titles, capital, fame, and strategic association. We have this ridiculous value system that leaves isolated humans stranded in imaginary lives with money or reputation but without self knowledge or esteem.
I don’t want to play the game. I would rather anonymously clean bathrooms for the rest of my life and be in real relationships- be truly understood - than run the world and be known only by a title, position or degree. I can at least have some control over my own relational bureaucracy.
This human-to-system transformation happens on many levels. I experience it to a degree among the small staff structure of my own job. We see it affect the ability of aid to get to the needy like the recent Katrina catastrophe. Now it seems to be a barrier to helping those that are being oppressed in Darfur. I just get weary.
It translates easily to the personal level. We forget that life is about relationships. Every organization, government, or family is held together by human beings that are inconsistent, emotional, reactive and limited by physical and mental capacity. Our society values titles, capital, fame, and strategic association. We have this ridiculous value system that leaves isolated humans stranded in imaginary lives with money or reputation but without self knowledge or esteem.
I don’t want to play the game. I would rather anonymously clean bathrooms for the rest of my life and be in real relationships- be truly understood - than run the world and be known only by a title, position or degree. I can at least have some control over my own relational bureaucracy.
posted by Erin 4:49 PM
5 Comments:
Dear Ms.
Thank you for your consideration of the aformentioned topics. Your topics will be entered into our database and one of our members will respond shortly.
P.S. do not reply to this post. There is no human checking the replies.
Heh heh, well put.
Yes, I feel that way too.
Nobody loves bureacracy. . . poor bureaucracy. And it's so true - it seems to almost always have the effect of creating distance, even dehumanizing clients and service providers alike. And yet we rely on it so much. I work in a school environment, where there are always channels, you know? Sometimes the channels are good ones - if you know the right one, then service flows through, unblocked, just as it should. But just one person can jam up a channel. I hear a lot of people in caregiving fields say all the time "You have to keep a distance, you can't take it home with you." To some degree, it's true. Maybe the existence of a bureaucracy, with all its rules and policies, creates barriers that its members feel they need for protection. If there aren't policies to say, "you do exactly this and no more," then how do you decide on your own when to stop doing in the face of need?
We certainly couldn't function as a society without bureaucracy. It does serve a purpose. I like your question, Nancy. I think it comes down to choosing to face the need as much as is possible without actually disrupting the help. If that care-giver takes every sad case into her soul, she is going to quickly sink into an understandable depression. On the other hand, she may be able to meet the needs of someone else with unexpected resources.
We obviously prioritize our care for others, our relationships. Family and close friends are allowed in our heart first. Ideally, this is how society maintains some balance of care... I think I'm just rambling. I'll continue to process it. I do like having systems like education and health care available, I just get frustrated with endless voice mail boxes.
Post a Comment
<< Home