If an axe falls in the forest…

I’m starting this to start a discussion…about whatever it happens to be, but particularly if it happens to be about the human/technology interface…should we even call it that?

Hmm, off we go…again.

The whole VAR/professionalisation of football (soccer if your’re here) seems to invite consideration of the shift we’re seen gathering momentum over the past thirty-odd years, an integral part of Thatcherist (I refuse to call it ‘Thatcherism’ – she just applied Friedman) and post-Thatcherist capitalism: the instrumentlisation of vocation.

What we’ve seen is the introduction of/enforcing of “codes of conduct” into what were seen as vocational jobs, for example, nursing or teaching; jobs that were originally viewed as being work one went into because of social conscience, a feeling of obligation or duty to others. A desire, in the old cliché, to “give something back”. They weren’t particuarly well-paid, but they were (still are?) jobs which didn’t ivovle the separation of self from occupation. Thus, your job becomes an integral part of who you are, a fundamental expression of oneself – the highest form of self-expression as Marx has it, and an unending source of satisfaction (defined as the opportunity to help others…yeah, that’s it). Of course, this doesn’t ‘fit’ with capitalism: to be ‘satified’ one must consume, but that consumption must be fleeting – a result of false perception – and, therefore, perpetuate the cycle of consumption, initially of material goods, of products, but eventually extending to people, who cease to be people in the full, subjective sense – in that we acknowledge the similarities and differences between ourselves and others – and become simple objects to be used and discarded as necessary. All summed up by Thatcher’s remark to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, “There is no such thing as society, there are only collections of individuals” (I could be slightly out with that quote, but I don’t think so). That final admission of rampant, instrumental individuality, an individuality which has gathered momentum again in the past few years. Hence the rejection of refugees and asylum seekers…”Oh, I’ll donate a few quid – makes me feel better – but don’t come here.” Yeah, all very Hobbes in the Quad…

So, everything is fine until I get bored, or you lose your usefullness to me, at which point I’m afraid it’s time to move on…it’s only ‘natural’, “just the way things are”…

I’ll come back to individuality in a moment, but just to explain the professionalisation thing. Our vocational jobs have gradually been ‘professionalised’: in order to be recognised as a ‘profession’, it appears that a code of conduct is required. As far as I can see, the basis of any code of conduct is mistrust (distrust?). We’ll begin from the point that, if you’re not told to do X (and, furthermore, if a penalty isn’t imposed on you for the non-performance of X) then you will not do it. I can’t trust you to look after me, in some sense or other, in virtue of the fact that we are both human persons. There must be ‘accountability’, usually legal accountability, to ensure that you do your job properly.

Of course, once a code of conduct is introduced, and enforced, human relations are disrupted, fragmented. The code becomes something I assume, like a cloak, when I walk through the door of my place of work – it becomes something other to who I am. My main function is then to ensure that I obey the code, in colloquail language, “to protect my own back”. I will do X because I have to do X, because I get paid to do X…and there’s the shift to instrumentalism. I now do my ‘job’ for money, and that money enables me to live my life, but elsewhere – in the consumerist paradise of capitalist society.

This is a result of the businessification (I love wordpress – it hasn’t underlined that in red as “not a word, you fool”) of society, the idea that business ‘methods’ can be imported into any ‘realm’ of human society in order to make it work “more efficently”. You want the NHS to work ‘properly’? Appoint the guy who used to run Tesco – there’s no real difference between selling groceries and treating people. Hey, we can establish “internal markets”…and thirty or forty years later we can wonder, disingenuously, why the NHS is collapsing.

In teaching we’ve seen precisely the same thing. The demand has been/is for a way of “measuring outputs”. Of course, when you can’t measure what’s important, you make what you can measure important. Subjects X, Y and Z serve the needs of the business community (a digression: at the heart of our society lies an irresolvable contradiction, that of the individual vs community. Capitlaism prioritises the former, yet fetishes the latter…more of that later), but the humanities? What use do they have? Where’s the profitability (the only meaningful term in a business ‘system’)? Hence the talk of “social capital” and “the social entreprenuer” (which, fairly accurately translated, means how good is your ability to talk folks into doing what goes against their own interests)…a simple integration of the humanites into the discourse of business.

We’re constanty implored to ask ourselves “What does business want?”. The answer is simple: a docile workforce that will reproduce what already exists, accept the status quo as “the way of the world”, and contribute to profitability. To that end, we’ve become mired in the bureaucratic and the predictive…a paper trail that culminates in the guarantee that at the end of a module, students will either ‘know’ or “be able to do” X, Y and Z. A bizarre notion borne of the assumption of uniformity. Give us a few years, and the term ‘student’ will be replaced with ‘customer’ – requiring an even more draconian code of conduct. One object produces another. Only the money makes the alienation bearble…that and, of course, the holidays. Define ‘holiday’ in this context…

In all of this, the creative becomes untenable. Creativity, as Eisenstein argues, is born of conflict (he even bolds it!), a refusal to accept the existent, a dissatisfaction with the actual, a desire to change the perception of others – “Don’t see it like that, see it like this”. A shift from the actual to the ideal(istic), from self-interest to empathy. The capitalist system cannot accept, or deal with this; look at the 19th century sleight-of-hand that, by the middle of that century, has marginalised the artist (of whatever medium), forced them to the periphery. We’re a long way from Shelley’s “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

The code of conduct in the vocational turns us into products to be consumed, destroying human connection. “You can expect me to do X for you, but only because I have to.” Oh, and if anything goes ‘wrong’, its the system, not me. There can be no blame because I have fulfilled my responsiblities as the system dictates. If, through some naive, misplaced sense of human duty (Bond? Affection?), I’ve attempted to go beyond what is required of me then I can be held to have transgressed against the code.

All very biblical but not, huh?

Coming soon: Revisions of Racism in Popularist Society…