Column 2.5

The most wonderful thing about bureaucracy (and believe me, with a veritable triple certified subdivided yearly updated index of options it's ever so hard to choose) is that it is almost always impossible to pinpoint the individual(s) responsible for whatever grotesque travesty of paperwork related calamity the faulty reclassification of subsection d.45 caused. (If that sentence was difficult for you to comprehend because of its multifaceted adjective related wordstuffs and excessive use of parenthetical subclause, then please consult the Daily Beacon Reference Section by emailing the editor who will send you a broken link which you will complain to through OIT who will reply in two weeks that there is no such entity, but on an oddly related side note, you have terminal pancreatic cancer). Now, don't get me wrong: as a card carrying liberal I wouldn't touch personal responsibility with a stick even if said wooden device was funded from government subsidies pursuant to clause 47 in the “Blunt Object Rehabilitation Act” of 1998 and coated in Ronald Reagan's tears. But one cannot help but admire the beauty of systems wherein an individual's primary concern is avoiding doing or saying anything that might resemble a traceable act, and their secondary concern is figuring out how to advance their salary and prestige while still actually accomplishing what could theoretically pass as the bare minimum if their superior was to take the immense risk of definitively outlining what said minimum is. It's as if one is paid to procrastinate, except “waiting” is replaced with “see our website” and “eventually doing something” is replaced with “death.”

Of course, such a description is applicable to a vast variety of professions, for what rapidly seems to be increasingly evident to me is that “success,” as defined by Complete Meggs Life Experience (Audio Tape Version, Second Edition) measured in terms of annual yearly income minus dependents plus relative influence upon “things that happen,” is not being noticed for anything but an absence of traceable mistakes.

So it's not even an issue of individuals. Yes, I know, the temptation to say that bureaucracy (like campus policing) is nothing more than licensed misanthropy is something no cynic can truly resist. But when it gets right down to it, what can a person do? The reason bureaucracy often seems so brutal is that those who would go out of their way, cut corners, follow spirits instead of letters etc. are the ones who are generally held back. Responsibility is avoided, and for good reason. Why risk your job for a powerless schmuck when you could tote policy and continue your minesweeper blissfully unimpeded?

I guess what I'm trying to say can be summarized in the following manner:

Typical Bureaucracy (here defined as “business as usual”) is a necessary, but not exclusively yet significantly, evil. The individuals who operate said evil are not responsible for the forces involved in creation of said evil, per se, but are not without responsibility in said evil's continued functionality. To thwart said evil, one must, pursuant to unorthodox value systems of ideals over realities, actively work to aid others to the best of their abilities within or without the confines of the parameters of their assignment. Such attempts may or may not produce increased fulfillment and/or higher self regard, but would encourage increased understanding from those outside said evil, allowing higher forgiveness to firing ratios and increasing net benevolence by a sum not less than a hell of a lot. Personal responsibility (risk) may increase, however, comparable levels of self-efficacy and identity formation may also be achieved, thus increasing net utility. Utility gain lessens the necessity of said evil or necessitates reclassification as subevil.

But then, if bureaucrats were ever happy, who would we English Majors use to feel good about ourselves? Hmm... There has to be a clause about this somewhere in the manual... Now where did I leave that index?