Epimethean Men…
Better than the weather channel, I find reality and some small human comfort in reading Tom Matrullo’s reflections on current conditions in Florida. One really don’t need a weatherman, do one? In a September 3rd post, Tom says:
Yesterday, Gubernador Jeb Bush, emulating his brother’s epimethean strategy of “Command First, Plan Never” issued an evacuation order for 2.5 million East Coast residents, many of them elderly. His exact words, as I recall them from Thursday’s press conference, were, “The time for planning is over. It’s time to act.”
Aaron Swartz pointed to similar insensibility in the recent Ginsburg/Swift Boat Lawyers for Disbarment affair:
Ben Ginsburg, the lawyer who recently resigned from the Bush-Cheney campaign after it was revealed he was also working for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, insisted he was not doing any coordination. In fact, his job was to make sure there was no coordination! As he told Reuters, “I was at the nexus of making sure (coordination) didn’t happen.” I guess the Bush administration is so against coordination that they had to coordinate to make sure they didn’t coordinate.
Using two colored markers on a white board, and admittedly somewhat intoxicated by the fumes, I recently added to the lore of the largely submerged quality improvement movement by streamlining the Plan/Do/Check/Act cycle. Conventionally, PDCA is diagrammed like a wheel, revolving and implicitly moving forward, raising the standard of quality as improvements are incorporated in a dynamic process…
By eliminating the resource intensive “plan” and “check” phases we increase efficiency and actually create a system that generates energy. A dynamic resonance is created, a vibrationback and forth at increasing frequency between the DO and ACT quadrants on the model. Rather than rolling forward in the standard boring ISO 9001 approach, this new approach creates kinetic energy within a stationary model, ultimately resulting in a highly charged process that transcends purpose. Human effort is no longer tied to the Sisyphus-ian rolling of the process up the hill of quality improvement. Tremendous production savings result. Ultimately these static processes fairly glow with their own pent up forces, waiting for cathartic release. Here is where the marketing team enters the picture, but I leave that to your imagination.
Today’s obscurantist rant is not meant to detract from the noble observations of Ivan Illich regarding “Epimethean Men.” Quite the contrary… it was inspired by Illich’s observation,
Our society resembles the ultimate machine which I once saw in a New York toy shop. It was a metal casket which, when you touched a switch, snapped open to reveal a mechanical hand. Chromed fingers reached out for the lid, pulled it down, and locked it from the inside. It was a box; you expected to be able to take something out of it; yet all it contained was a mechanism for closing the cover. This contraption is the opposite of Pandora’s “box.”
We’re driving through Canada and honest-to-god we are taking our passports. How’s that for a commentary on North American life in the last days of the Bush Imperium?