Efficiency

On a whim, I did a quick Google search for, “What is living for?” It didn’t have an answer. (It did, however, provide me a link to Wikipedia and an entry on sustainable living.)

I recall from my dim past a time when the phrase “efficiency expert” was popular and, in most cases, he or she was a comic figure. In popular culture (maybe the 1960’s?) it was not unusual to see a figure, an efficiency expert, enter into a situation to straighten out the chaos with an end result of looking foolish and creating even more chaos.

At its core, it reflected a way of seeing life. Efficiency wasn’t life, unless life was intended to be boring. In those shows I’d see the efficiency expert portrayed as someone who lacked an understanding of what life is for; they couldn’t see the delight of confusion.

It really represented a collision of different views of life. I would see these figures in movies and television shows. At the time, the world (at least the west) was moving into a phase best described as romantic. Flower children, love-ins, and all that. Twenty minute guitar solos.

We’re in a very different world now. Today, we’re overwhelmingly influenced by business and technology – and both adore efficiency. Efficiency is good. (Forty years ago, it was bad.)

It reflects a tension between two worldviews that have been alternating back and forth since the world began, or so it seems. In the arts, it’s often referred to as the Apollonian versus the Dionysian view; the romantic versus the practical. It’s emotion up against intellect; the linear against the lateral.

F.W. Winslow

Thanks to Nick Carr’s The Shallows I’m now familiar with Frederick Taylor Winslow (F.W. Winslow), “… an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is regarded as the father of scientific management and was one of the first management consultants.”

He was not a well-loved fellow among workers. I sense the feeling was mutual, given this comment he made:

‘I can say, without the slightest hesitation,’ Taylor told a congressional committee, ‘that the science of handling pig-iron is so great that the man who is … physically able to handle pig-iron and is sufficiently phlegmatic and stupid to choose this for his occupation is rarely able to comprehend the science of handling pig-iron.’

Carr links Taylor and his philosophy with today’s technology, and in particular Google, and I can’t say I disagree. We all talk about working smarter. In fact, “smart” is one of the current buzzwards. When we say smart, we mean efficient.

(A search for “smart work” on Wikipedia brings up a 1931 comedy by Fatty Arbuckle. Hmm.)

The irony is when we ask, “Just how efficient are we?” Have a look at Chris Brogan’s post, Our Many New Phones. He quite correctly points out that in making ourselves efficient we’ve created more work for ourselves in managing that efficiency.

In other words, efficiency ain’t so efficient.

We are, as we always are, a world out of balance. We explain what we do in terms of what we produce, or what we contribute to what is produced, but rarely ask, “What’s the point of all this production?”

The point is to keep the system going and growing.

The point of that, however, goes to that Apollonian-Dionysian division and how we see the world, as well as our place in it.

How do you see your place?