Humanity\'s progress backwards

Humanity's progress backwards Humanity's progress backwards





Humanity's progress backwards

Humanity's progress backwards

Humanity's progress backward
Human race started its life in a simple design that can be thought of as a primitive one. As the human race progressed, the simple design evolved and became more complicated. This aroused the need of a new system; to control people and organizations for the sake of achieving their goal in the modern world; which is efficiency. The purpose of the paper is to examine the scope Weber saw the human progress_ or deterioration_ from.
The paper answers the question of "What happens when Bureaucracy exceeds its limits?". The paper argues that Bureaucracy would lead to dehumanization and, dependently, human deterioration due to its reliance on impersonality and rationality expressed in following specific regulations and the emphasis on qualifications. The paper is divided into two sections. First section examines impersonality and its effect on human relations. Second section discusses the importance of rules and qualifications in a Bureaucratic system and its impact on the human nature.
The main concepts in the paper are Bureaucracy, rationality, dehumanization and the spirit of law. Spirit of law encourages considering both the text of the law and the context of the law is being applied to reach the intention the lawmaker had at the first place. Rationality means taking actions on a base of reasoning. Bureaucracy is a mean of organizing institutions based on rationality to achieve efficiency. Dehumanization happens when people become not bothered with not having the values humans supposed to have; they do not care if they lose it or if they pushed others to lose it.
"Weberian Bureaucracy" is a proposal of how to manage an organization effectively. Although it is presented as a better way of management than the traditional way, it had a lot of limitations. Weber identified features of Bureaucracy and the paper focuses on three of them: rationality, qualifications and impersonality. Bureaucratic organizations pay great attention to rules as the mean of higher positions to control lower positions (Al-Habil, 2011). Following the concept of rationality, control is gained only by knowledge. This leaves no place for sympathy or any other kind of feelings in human relations, turning people gradually into machines. Coser (1977, p. 230-233) talking about Bureaucracy: "… it succeeds in achieving the exclusion of love, hatred, and every purely personal, especially irrational and incalculable, feeling from the execution of official tasks".
"It does not establish a relationship to a person…but rather is devoted to impersonal and functional purposes" (Roth and Wittich, 1978). People base their way of interacting with others upon rankings; not personalities and formal relations are the dominant. Relations become superficial and people get to know each other for the sake of mutual benefits instead of mutual interests. In all fields, a person cannot have an effective role in the modern society if he/ she is not a part of a "large-scale" organization in which they are nothing but means of achieving the organization's goal. Roth and Wittich (1978) explains that entering an office means having an obligation to the organization's goal in exchange for "a secure existence".
Each person is told exactly what to do without leaving any space for persons to express themselves. Accordingly, it is almost impossible for people to keep contact with their individual characteristics (Coser, 1977). Most of the organizations we deal with in our normal life are bureaucratic. Impersonality appears in our everyday life that we stopped noticing it. Wallas in Fraser (2015) compare it to fish that stopped noticing water because it is everywhere. . Whenever going to any of these organizations, and no matter of the emergency you have as a person, you are told to get a number. When it is your turn, you are not the person but the number you have. Fraser (2015) mentions that he was asked to confirm his reservation and he states about the voice which was talking to him: "He doesn't speak to me as one person to another. Instead, I have become "information provided"".
Al-Habil (2011, p.107) argues that Bureaucracy apply equality "in concept and application". However, in human values, justice is more important than equality. Legal laws that were upon rationality are not enough in this case. For justice to be applied, it needs what is known as the spirit of law. In this context, examining the psychology of lawyers would explain the effect of the rationally made laws as they served the law for enough time to affect them. They express that practicing law for long time leads to losing the identity that they do not recognise themselves anymore. "A strange and unfamiliar face appears in the morning mirror. It is the face behind the mask, and its unfamiliarity is a good gauge of how far we have fallen from ourselves." (Sells, 1994). Rationality starts being the dominant voice in lawyers' head and the motive behind all their actions that you no longer realise what they turned in to be. There were lawyers who stopped caring about their families, and even their own selves. Douglas (1974) mentions that while his period of working with H.A. Moore, he witnessed him getting mad at his wife bothering him with calling; although she called only because their house was on fire. He thought she should have called the Fire Department instead of interrupting him.
They also stopped doing their hobbies and they dedicated themselves completely to law. Douglas (1974) expressed that on seeing such men, he internally thought that he did not want to be such a shadow of a man he used to be. "…it had squeezed every other interest out—even listening to the music of Mozart, which he loved" (Douglas, 1974).
In the modern world, achieving anything depends on qualifications. Qualities like commitment or passion would not be valuable. Recruitment and promotions are based on skills, without considering personal relations or features. The social status is determined by the ranking in the office which is dependent on qualifications. Therefore, the person becomes nothing but certificates. Coser (1977) points out to another important fact.
Bureaucracy in organizations makes them in a higher rank than other organizations that use other ways of administration. This goes also on the value of products. Efficiency requires mass production and the usage of machines. On the other hand, hand crafts are losing their value in front of manufactured products. The human skill is more obvious in hand crafts. However, people are not willing to appreciate the dedication anymore.
As a conclusion, Bureaucracy is not the way towards human progress. It is rather a path that takes the human race backwards without us noticing. The rationality of Bureaucracy is one of the reasons why it became irrational. Qualifications are important, but there is other things that matter, just as qualifications, sometimes more. Impersonality is a mean of enforcing equality but not justice. These are the reasons behind Weber's regression of human progress. Bureaucracy is having the effect of dehumanization on modern societies. To reach efficiency, machines became more important that humans. Therefore, humans started willing to be machines and they started acted like them, whether they realise it or not. Human values such as the spirit of law are beginning to vanish gradually. Human relations are not deep anymore. Mutual benefits are the motive behind relationships. This would never be the way humanity would progress in. In order to solve any problem, we need to realise and admit that there is a problem. The significance of the paper is that it is a step towards realising what surrounded us so much that we stopped noticing.











References
Al-Habil, W. I. ( 2011, October 4). Rationality and Irrationality of Max Weber's Bureaucracies. Gaza , Palestine .
Bureaucratic Management Approach of Max Weber. (n.d.). Retrieved from Edunote.info: http://www.edunote.info/2012/11/bureaucratic-management.html
Coser. (1977). Introduction to sociology. Retrieved from School of social sciences: http://www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/undergraduate/introsoc/weber12.html
Sells, B. (1994). The Soul of the Law. United States , Massachusetts.
Tanabe, J. (2015, July 1 ). Bureaucracy. Retrieved from New World Encyclopedia : http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=Bureaucracy&oldid=989129
Fraser, G. (2015). We must break free from the iron cage of this growing, dehumanising bureaucracy. The guardian .
Weber, M. (1978). Economy and society . London : University of California press .