So hot? my little Sir

For the academic years between 2015-2017, I ended up president of the faculty senate, a job one gets by not knowing how to say “no” and by being just slightly below average in competence. During a monthly meeting of this senate, a policy amendment concerning WHO KNOWS WHAT was up for discussion, and as various colleagues advanced this or that position along with possible implications of alternatives, my mind wandered. I thought,

“Evolution of the human species brought us to this moment, to this use of our time, to our sitting in this meeting. This here meeting is what we humans created. This is the best we’ve come up with. And I, with my big brain and all the other possible options, participate in this folly and even allow myself to get worked up about it . . .”

I drifted back to the meeting and, at the end of Spring semester, resigned both the presidency and my faculty position, no doubt a reckless, impulsive decision (sorta), but better than the slow death march, death by a thousand bureaucratic papercuts, death by tedium.

I think of that moment often:

Every time I deal with a system or institution we humans have created and inflicted upon ourselves even when that system or institution is crushing everyone in its path and has ceased (if it ever did) to serve human flourishing.

Every time I hear “this is just how we do things” or “I’m just doing my job” or “you need to fill out these other ten forms before we can let you fill out the form for the thing you need.”

Every time I’m required to fill out a performance evaluation on myself where three out of the four standardized questions don’t apply to the job I’m doing.

Every time I attend a meeting where Robert’s Rules are used (or attempted) and make up more than a third of what is actually said at the meeting.

Every time I read a policy handbook or take a mandatory human resources training so an institution can get its Risk Management discount or if I happen to work for multiple companies, I might even get to take the same trainings multiple times because surely the “office ergonomics” training at company X is vastly different from the one at institution Z.

I really hate this stuff. Gets me all agitated and surly. I start to feel like the dog in David Lynch’s comic strip, “The Angriest Dog in the World.” Here's one from lynchnet.com that fit the past week:

He approaches the state of rigor mortis!

What to do? What. To. Do. I can’t just quit all jobs, systems, and institutions, now, can I? I’m not interested in fixing them either—I’m no reformist or administrator. Some days I can handle things by noting the absurdity. I can’t believe anything works or gets done and yet it does, and sometimes beautifully and even humanely. Good on us. But, holy moly, other days? I wish I’d just stayed home, not made contact, not even tried, could run for the wilderness.  

In his essay, “Spiritual Laws,” Emerson writes, “The lesson is forcibly taught by these observations that our life might be much easier and simpler than we make it; that the world might be a happier place than it is; that there is no need of struggles, convulsions, and despairs, of the wringing of the hands and the gnashing of the teeth; that we miscreate our own evils. . . . The face of external nature teaches the same lesson. Nature will not have us fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or our learning much better than she likes our frauds and wars. When we come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the Abolition-convention, or the Temperance-meeting, or the Transcendental club into the fields and woods, she says to us, ‘So hot? my little Sir.’”

“So hot? my little Sir.” Oh, how this makes me laugh. It makes me feel foolish for taking any of this other nonsense seriously. In this week where every day delivered a fresh dollop of poo to get me raging and fuming, I, the Angriest Dog in the World, found the funny.