THE GHOST OF THE MACHINE

For a long time, the industrial model was the model for so much. Everything is process. Efficiency is the holy grail - do more with less in less time and that should, by default, be better. Perfect something and then replicate it. 

The problem is that this doesn't work with people or human institutions. We built our education systems as if we were manufacturing widgets. As if we could take the raw material of a child, put it through the same process and get a consistent result - as if that was even desirable. We offer up programs based on a "to get service please fit yourself into this box" model. Because that's convenient for those who administer the program, not for those it is allegedly designed to serve. To get what they need, we ask people to melt themselves down and pour themselves into a mold. 

We're starting to know better. We're starting to accept that the service needs to mold itself to the user instead. Because that actually gets better results than an assembly line. We're starting to accept that people aren't widgets and that we are better off when we stop trying to turn our kids into widgets. We're starting to accept that trying to process people actually weakens and sometimes breaks them. We're starting to accept that the networks that organically form between people are stronger than anything we can manufacture. We're starting to accept that variability in a population and not conformity is where it gets its strength. When you're building a car, you need consistency in the qualities of its parts. But a society isn't a car, and while some level of consistency is beneficial too much rigidity undermines success.

Of course I'm not saying anything you haven't heard a million times before. And when we think about it, it all makes sense. What is remarkable is that we ever thought the industrial approach to people made sense. And what is more remarkable is our continued reluctance to let it go. Because for a few generations it was what we knew. And it's hard to accept that we had it wrong - that for all those years we shortchanged ourselves. We know there's something better, but we're afraid grasp it. We trust the machine more than we trust ourselves.