Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Administrative Bliss.

Perhaps amongst his numerous vocational desires for us, God calls people to be administrators. These people are given special gifts of vision, detail orientation, a listening and discerning ear, and a sense of the people for whom which they pursue their tasks.

Unfortunately for those so called, they’re out of luck. They will rarely (if ever) be allowed to fulfill their calling by the powers-that-be. Administrative positions are often filled by those people who quantitatively lack such good qualities. Throughout my academic career, every great effort of mine has been opposed by at least one of these beady-eyed detail hounds, seemingly bent on opposition for opposition’s sake. I’ve often wondered how any human being can behave in such a manner, and how supposedly intelligent people with numerous degrees to prove their intellectual ability still were capable of human indifference.

The Polish Poet Alexander Wat said that administrators “are a separate species, like in appearance to homo-sapiens, which have infiltrated our higher establishments.” (This is a loose quote, since my copy of the book is currently in another state.) Wat knew a thing or two about this “other species” – he spent years in Soviet Prisoner of War Camps, enduring trial after pointless trial. Reading his descriptions of these patently insane yet clearly by-the-book hearings, I cannot help but be reminded of the mentalities behind the administrative roadblocks I have encountered during my young career.

While we Poles tend to be rather sensitive and intolerant towards overly pedantic thinkers, I think there is a deeper truth to be found here. If you dig under the surface of history for a little while, it doesn’t take long to see that the engine that drove the greatest evils of the 20th Century – the Soviet and Nazi Regimes – was the administrative personality (or, species.) Visit the concentration camps, and you see mass-slaughter executed in neat little rows, completely by the book. Read transcripts of Soviet trials against political “dissidents,” and you see a chilling resemblance to the modern bureaucratic process. Anyone who has enjoyed long-term administrative oversight cannot help but see the chilling parallels. My conclusion? That the greatest horrors of the 20th century would not have been possible without the keen oversight of droves of picky and (as they are today) inhuman administrators.

Bureaucrats and administrators are not “people” who are merely overly right-brained – they are a species entirely devoid of a left brain. They are a specimen which burrows itself deep into a pile of rules and regulations, quoting them with ruthless efficiency while punishing those who would speak out of turn.

You may think me bitter, but I’ve already had my fill of these people, even at my young age. A wise teacher of mine once said that the aforementioned species was a type of “coward, lacking the backbone to make their own judgments, therefore hiding behind regulations whenever possible.”

If you doubt any of this, then just observe summer road construction or the Illinois tollway system. Can you honestly see a single line of sanity running through the mentality which governs such processes?

History has shown us the danger of hiding behind regulations. My attitude can be summed up by the following quote (whose source I have long forgotten.)

”Administrators are to be approached first with patience, and then with a bulldozer.”

Act now, for the sake of mankind.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

New Truth

Truth is eternal. It does not change. Nevertheless, we are only human, and truth comes at us only as quickly as we are able to embrace it. Sometimes, violent change is necessary to make us fully grasp what should otherwise be a straightforward lesson.

In recent weeks, I have been given the gift of learning two essential truths, embracing in that area of my heart that moves beyond the intellect. In other words, I've long understood and believed these things, but this new level of knowledge is a deeper one... in the words of George Weigel, I'm "thinking with my heart, and feeling with my intellect."

First Truth: No matter what you give this world, it isn't good enough. You can give everything you have, and someone will still find fault with you. It's a fallen place. I understand now a little part of the agony of Christ, who gave the world everything it needed, and still found himself nailed up on a tree. He even cured diseases and raised the dead, only to be murdered for it. Aside from my own travails, two of the best people I know in the world are suffering terribly, in a way that would only reinforce the common atheist's stance on suffering disproving a loving God... yet...

Second Truth: Suffering is temporary, and character-forming, and ultimately good. A thousand years of suffering is only a brief uncomfortable moment in the face of an eternity of light. Another angle to this truth can be gleaned from the words of Evelyn Waugh, writing to George Orwell in response to his bleak novel "1984": "the book failed to make my flesh creep as you intended... men who have loved a crucified God never need think of torture as all-powerful." (For more of this good wisdom, read George Weigel's "Letters to a Young Catholic.")

So I move through my own difficulties, and endure sight of those I love suffering, all with a deep sense of hope and renewal. Every cross will bloom into a garden, every tear of sorrow will be transformed into shouts of joy. If this is not true, then life is not worth living. If it is true, then our destinies lie beyond the wildest joys we have ever known.