The Happy Moron

How do we simple people live in a world full of complex systems? It’s one of the challenges I face personally – everywhere I look, I see complexity, much of it needless. This is a look at just one aspect of complexity in modern life.

The Old Testament is full of brutality and death. If it didn’t have God in it (actually He has quite a cameo ), I might be tempted to agree with Hobbes that life is nasty, brutish and short.

Take, for example, the stonings.

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: 19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; 20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. 21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. Deut 21:18-21 (KJV)

Yikes! Just…Yikes!

Let’s talk about something else, shall we? How about a story about tech support?

I had the glorious experience of phoning a tech support line the other day. It didn’t solve my problem. They bounced me from support to tech support to advanced tech support before saying, “We’ll send someone out.” Hey, at least I got to talk to a person.

I get frustrated (okay, angry) dealing with modern customer service divisions, because I have the overwhelming feeling that they can’t do a darn thing. In a retail store, for instance, the clerk at the counter (I know, I’ve been the clerk) has a manager with a division manager who has a manager at Corporate who might be able to do something if he wasn’t doing more important stuff.

There’s no effective feedback mechanism designed into the system. Many corporate systems quietly and organically evolve into systems without effective customer feedback mechanisms, because such mechanisms are painful and inevitably require change. (If feedback doesn’t lead to change, it’s pointless feedback, and you’re better off ignoring it.)

It’s an approach which is immature, short-sighted and common. It could never happen in a small system (unless Mom-and-Pop are simply jerks) but it gets easily lost in the shuffle of a complex one.

Our man in Corporate is well removed from the pain of an angry customer. He doesn’t want to endure the kerfuffle at the counter of Store 413. He wants to format his reports. He’s like me.

Maybe I shouldn’t throw stones. Or… maybe I should.

My country is full of thieves, crooks, killers, rapists, liars, drunkards and neighbors whose cats defecate in my flower beds. And guess what? I don’t care. When I meet one, I just call the police. There’s a complex system designed just to deal with all of these kinds of people. It buffers me and protects me from the pain of an inconvenient truth. There’s a police officer and a lawyer and a judge and a jailer, all there to keep me safe. Yay complex systems!

And what exactly happens when we citizens believe that we don’t have to care about justice because we have a system to do it for us? What happens when we delegate our burden of responsibility? Do the cops get fed up with “taking out the trash” and learn how to do it aggressively, brutally and with injustice? Do they take out the angst of a thankless job on the accused?

Deuteronomy has something to say about that.

I don’t know whether capital punishment is right or wrong. But I know one thing, the way it was required in the Old Testament was not easy. Justice wasn’t abstracted away behind a complex system – it was a community activity.

Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him…
The accusers: Father and Mother.
…they shall say unto the elders of his city…
The judges: The community elders, judging with the law given by God
… all the men of his city shall stone him…
The executioners: You. Me.

Could I execute someone? What would it take for me to throw a stone at someone’s head with the intent to kill them? It’s not something that I like to think about. But I can say this…

I’d have to be sure that I was doing the right thing. Taking personal responsibility for someone’s execution adds a whole new dimension to ‘falsely accused’. I would demand certainty that the punishment matched the crime and that the accused was guilty. If a man’s blood was to be on my hands, I’d want to know beyond reasonable doubt that he was guilty, and that he deserved it.

Complex systems make accountability a harder task because it becomes oh so easy to pass the buck. Accountability has to be explicitly designed into systems and, once designed in, protected. Otherwise it goes away and human nature takes over. Ugliness is a part of the world we live in, and if a stoning is ugly, well…

so is a complex system which lacks accountability and compassion. I can tell you which of the two kills more often, and with less remorse.

I drafted this before I posted on this story. Being charged with executing God’s judgment means that you have to answer to God for either doing so or not doing so. God is the judge. If it’s a judgment he didn’t ordain, then it’s murder of the innocent and won’t be overlooked.