Today I spent much of my day recovering from the negligence of my personal life. This included dealing with the reams of mail that have piled up that I haven't attended to during my travels. On of the items I reviewed we my 401K summary reports from the different 401ks that I participate in through different employers. And if you have ever gotten one of these letters, you know that they are a joke. They basically give you a few numbers with very little context, explain that the full report has been filed with the government and that you are entitled under the law to obtain a full copy if you wish. One of my plans wants to charge me $5.00 to obtain this information.
I realized that this whole exercise illustrated what has happened to our society. We are so inundated with obligations, come ons, pitches and requirements that we all act perfunctorily. We basically go through the motions to meet the requirements, but not caring or even understanding what's going on with what we are being asked for. So I get this letter from my employer (or former employer) informing me that under law they need to do this. So here you go. We are going to meet this in the minimum fashion needed to satisfy the requirement. But what do I get from this obligation. Not much, except that I can now get the full report should I want it. So basically this is a wasted piece of mail. I don't even know if anyone in the government will actually read what my plans submit, for all I know they could be submitting a novel.
I do get a few numbers, but lacking any context all I can figure out is that my co-workers aren't saving a lot. But what I don't know is how does my plan compare to others. Are the funds liquid, should I need to roll over. What are any conflicts that my management company may have and how were they evaluated.
What I don't get is a sense that anyone is acting in my best interest, and that I have to ensure that my best interests are being looked after by myself. That is the only right I have. For all the requirements and regulations, no one seems to be actually reading what is being registered, no one is trying to make sense. It is as if the mere fact that a chain of requirements is met, that all will be good. And when things blow up, we create more rules and regulations that are barely met to avoid the next disaster. But they don't.
The philosopher John Searle came up with a thought experiment called the Chinese box, where you imagined you were inside a box and given Chinese through a slot and a series of instructions on how to decode the inputs and how to respond. To the outside world, you appear to understand Chinese. Is that enough? Would you understand Chinese?
Do all these rules lead to understanding? I realize that that is where we are today, so many of our work actions are done perfunctorily and we get things done. But are they REALLY done. And this is what is happening to our products and our companies, they are optimizing to meet the requirements, but the meeting the requirements doesn't satisfy the objectives. We have test scores to measure quality, but what we don't have is students who learn. We have products that are bought, but they are not used.
I had a professor who use to make mistakes during lecture on purpose. He wanted to make sure you were understanding the lecture, not just merely copying it down. Someone would almost always catch the mistake. His goal was not to give the lecture, his goal was to communicate understanding.
How much of what you do day to day misses the point. What are you doing to change this?
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