The importance of the useless in the fight against stupidity

During the holidays I read two very different books: "The natural history of stupidity" by Paul Taboori and "The usefulness of the useless" by Nuccio Ordine. Their differences seem obvious in several senses. The authors are of different nationalities, they lived and wrote their respective works in eras with significant distance, and they have distinct styles and ranges. The common point I find in them is that each writer has turned to history to find the foundations and examples that flesh out the story of his ideas.

One of the extraordinary aspects that books have is the possibility of finding and creating associations and links with other texts, with our own experiences and with the experiences that we observe in others. All this happens through the reflections and emotions that reading awakens in us. All this seems pointless, doesn't it? Perhaps, but who knows, it could be interesting or important. These particular readings allowed me an association I hadn't made before; not with this perspective, at least: human stupidity is closely tied to the uselessness-utility dichotomy. Much of the grandest stupidity produced by humanity has been created by ascribing utility to that which is utterly useless.

One could begin this exploration through so many areas of human action; so much could be written on this subject. However, for the sake of brevity and relevance, I will begin with a short journey through stupidity and its connection to usefulness in the world of work. Taboori, in his compendium, Anything but Stupid, on stupidity, devotes one of the chapters to bureaucracy. Driven by the desire for control and by the reveries and manias of grandeur provoked by hierarchical structures, bureaucrats create rules, procedures and dense layers of stupidity that impede lucidity and the free transit of common sense and fluidity in human relations.

In the 40s, 50s and 60s of the last century it was dreamt that the week would be reduced to fifteen hours of work. Advances in automation, computers and other machines would bring us closer to the ideal that many men and women have sought since they began to think of themselves: to live without the need to work. However, those who idealised our present in this way failed to take into account the scope, creativity and timelessness of human stupidity. Resistance to change or, on the other hand, the blind need to maintain the status quo leads us to take up the space we create and the time we save in an idiotic way. The idea persists that it is by working that we will free ourselves. And the desire for freedom, paradoxically, makes us build ever more sophisticated cells.

On another more distant reading, I remember coming across a perfect, almost anecdotal, example of the stupidity of bureaucracy and the world of work. The story was about a company employee who had detected a problem with his desk. As the rules dictated, he contacted the department responsible for such repairs. The carpenter on duty took a long time to show up to resolve the matter. After a week of daily calls to that department, the employee receives a call from a person recently hired by the company who informs him that the carpenter had received the order and that he was late because of the amount of orders he received regularly. Now, this company has hired a person to manage the carpenter's schedule, who was very busy. Wouldn't it make more sense to hire a second carpenter to handle the volume of orders? Apparently not in the minds of those in charge.

I also remember a situation that happened to me. In one of my first professional experiences, I was given the task of converting a set of texts into a format that would be intelligible to some of the operators of the company's shops I worked for. I remember it not being the most challenging task in the world and being given a week to do it. I asked if there was anything else I could do or any other subject I could be useful in. I was told no. Naively, I decided to complete the task as quickly as I could. By getting rid of it I could spend my time reading, getting to know my colleagues and the organisation better or doing nothing at all. After two days I was at my desk reading an article about the company I worked for. I had finished it. I was approached by the person who had asked me for the job. I won't forget the disappointment and indignation that his face showed me. Although well done, I was not supposed to have finished the task so soon. There was nothing for me to do now and "it was unacceptable for me to be doing nothing in your time". In your time? It was the first time I felt that working for someone else installed the notion that the "ownership of time" (if this concept makes sense) is given away in exchange for a salary. In fact, by finishing early, I created a problem: I had to invent something to occupy myself with. The solution was quickly found, using my own jargon: "do exactly the same thing but try different layouts". So I did, and let myself be stupid.

In the world of idiotic work, efficiency is not rewarded. Apparently more value is placed on things like ownership of other people's time and the power that comes with it. Therefore, a smart worker who has a minimal understanding of saving effort will not do his best. He will do just enough to give the idea that he is doing something useful with time that, after all, is not his own.

The world of work is responsible for one of the most difficult forms of stupidity to detect. That is why it is one of the stupidities we most often encounter. I refer to a phenomenon that I believe all readers of this text will have felt at some time - I hope you don't feel it constantly, it would not be a good sign for you. Being doing something that you think is useful when, in fact, there is no use in it at all. The world of work today is adept at creating conditions to convince us that what we do is useful. In many cases, it is not. It's just something someone invented because they believed we had to have something to do. In turn, that person may also be subjected to the same thing by someone higher up the hierarchy. Stupid, no?

As I mentioned in another article, and as Ordine demonstrates in his manifesto, acquiring freedom and achieving the ability to surrender to the useless can bring us great benefits. One of them is to combat human stupidity, starting with ourselves. However, I believe that we will gain little or nothing if we do not ask ourselves about the usefulness of what we do. To do this, we will probably have to engage in reflections that others will consider completely useless. For that, as Taboori tells us in the last lines of his book, we must have the will to cure ourselves of our own stupidity.

Written for Link to Leaders on 9 September 2018; published 17 September 2018