The procedural arsenal no longer knows any bounds. Administrative process, recruitment process, legal process, medical process, banking process, telephone process (to obtain… type 1, to obtain… type 2), process for yellow and green sorting of garbage, security process going so far as to impose a size for the tube of toothpaste to take on a plane! There is no shortage of absurdities, because everything must be planned, everything regulated, everything insured, everything silenced. Nothing should be left to critical thinking, to chance, to pragmatism, to responsibility. The fear of risk, of hazard, of the contingencies of life paralyzes us and partly explains this procedural hegemony. From the precautionary principle which limits our actions using ethical standards in the event of humanitarian, environmental or health risk, we have insidiously moved to a “precautionary” ideology which tracks down the slightest risk, foresees our slightest actions and directs the most of our conduct to ensure that everything is secured by various paragraphs and appropriate appendices. These imposed circuits have become paralyzing norms before which we kneel helplessly, and we feel that our freedom is systematically hindered by a machinery that is often absurd, insensitive and labyrinthine. So, how can we resist this procedural orgy when it turns into ineptitude? How to regain intelligence of action?
By distinguishing between procedure and law. The procedure is not law, it is not legal or illegal, it does not say right and wrong. It is a controlled series of operations and behaviors that we can always decide not to follow if it does not make sense. Courage and discernment are still needed.
Discernment first, because the procedures are all the more powerful as they advance hidden… They never use violence, which is too visible, too dangerous. They impose themselves insidiously, always under good pretexts, until procedural machinery replaces thought. We see this mechanization of minds in the bureaucrat or the meticulous agent, who are sometimes only satisfied people enjoying their little power, executioners in plain clothes, paperwork workers isolated from the consequences of their decisions, who end up speaking like an administrative form , and whose ready-made, agreed and accepted language screens their thinking. They no longer see the situation, they only see their decision. The banality of evil that Arendt spoke of is this mixture of routine, conformism and blind loyalty to the norm to the point of no longer thinking, of no longer having any reflection on one’s actions. If some are frightened by artificial intelligence rivaling human intelligence, let us rather worry about human intelligence which becomes irremediably artificial as soon as it enters into this inflexible procedural spirit. Where the narrow-minded zealot remains stuck in his ways of doing things, in his mechanisms, in his automatisms to the point of judging them to be the only legitimate ones, let us have the courage to resist.
This courage does not mean systematically questioning procedures and stupidly opposing regulations, under penalty of being severely called to order. It does not mean refusing any procedure either. No organization, no society can function without procedures, that is obvious. The courage to resist means thinking what you are supposed to apply, and only acting if the action makes sense. To do this, the mind must come first, the process second. When the latter becomes the absolute priority to the detriment of the meaning of the situation, this is when our behavior becomes dehumanized, our actions become mechanized, our intelligence becomes automated. Denying the purpose and meaning of a situation for the sole reason of procedural respect destroys thought and guarantees stupidity. Understanding must replace frenetic proceduralization, otherwise our country’s administration will continue to be a dehumanized industry of senseless regulations.
* Julia de Funès is a doctor of philosophy, author in particular of Socrates in the land of processes And (im)personal development.
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