When I was an adolescent, there were three situations for which my parents insisted I wear smart clothes and brush my hair: when going with them to visit the doctor, the bank manager, or my teachers. For us and for everyone we knew, the doctor, the bank manager and teachers were the living, breathing symbols of uprightness.
In 2018 a MORI poll showed that nurses, doctors and teachers were still the most respected professions (the financial crisis had put paid to bankers’ reputations by then), but this may not continue.
Since then we have seen so many stories in the media which undermine their reputations. I will look at them in later posts.
One of these stories was told by a teacher – let’s call her Anne – who works in a secondary school. She has always considered teaching to be a vocation. She thinks of herself as a committed class teacher working for the good of her pupils and of her school. She does not consider herself a cheat. But she tells how on more than one occasion she has artificially raised all the children in her class a full grade, (although she kept them in ability order to avoid suspicion). And Anne goes on to admit that recently, when her less able pupils’ coursework would give them low grades, she has completed their work for them, passing it off as their own, in order to make sure that they got better grades.
In another story, a Chief Inspector of Police coming up to retirement is being interviewed. He says how proud he is that his work has been used by politicians to claim that crime is falling and that detection rates are rising. He is proud too, that his work has helped his colleagues receive performance-related bonuses. He admits that he did this by getting the policemen and women under his command to fake the figures, but says that that’s what he had to do. He would tell his men and women to downgrade the seriousness of the offences they were recording, so that the number of serious crimes would seem to be going down. As an example, he tells of a villain who shot at another man at close range but missed and broke a window. The police recorded this as ‘criminal damage’ rather than attempted murder. It wasn’t just that, he goes on. His officers would boost their official detection rates by bribing convicted offenders to ‘admit’ to whole series of crimes they had not committed, in return for the charge against them being changed to a lesser offence.
A story from an NHS Hospital Trust told of a respected surgeon who was asked by her managers to postpone an urgently needed but complicated and time-consuming operation on one patient, to free up her timetable to do routine minor operations on four other patients. The reason she was given was that the hospital needed to meet waiting time targets. The surgeon did as she was asked and performed the four minor operations. Her first patient died soon after.
We, the general public still find these stories shocking. But for those who work in those sectors, the stories are all too familiar. Those in the know may not approve, but they are aware that all this has been going on for a long time.
I started to research and write this blog because I wanted to know why people in professions that we trust so highly are being asked to lie and cheat. Why they are being asked to act so anti-socially and to break the modern equivalents of the Hippocratic oath. I wanted to know why so many who are asked, acquiesce. And I wanted to know why so many policy makers, managers and people on the front line continue to support a system that is clearly failing to achieve the targets for which they are being asked to sacrifice their integrity. Why do they go along with this? Why does no one call a halt?
What do I mean by ‘Cult’?
The reason that the title of this blog is The Cult of Artificial Stupidity, is that its subject is not artificial stupidity itself, but rather the irrational belief that policies that result from artificially stupid behaviour, such as those imposed by the target culture – policies that clearly do not work – should be imposed on people who must then be made to follow them unquestioningly.When I ask what makes a cult, I'm not asking why someone starts a cult. Nor am I qualified to explore how a cult ensnares and holds onto its adherents. In this blog all I need to ask is, "How can we characterise cults? When can we call something a cult rather than a philosophy or a modus vivendi?
Michael Langone is Executive Director of the International Cultic Studies Association. The ICSA is a not for profit network with a mission to “provide information, education, and help to those adversely affected by or interested in cultic and other high-control groups and relationships.” He may or may not have his axes to grind, but he and his colleagues certainly have encountered many different cults in the forty years of ICSA's existence.
He has written a checklist intended as an analytical tool to describe what makes a cult [1] . It runs to some 15 bullet points. I would pick out five to support my case that the proponents of artificial stupidity are a cult:
- Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
- The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself …(i.e.) the group is on a special mission to save humanity.
- The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.
- The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members’ participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before they joined the group
- The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.
[1] Langone, Michael D. "Characteristics Associated with Cultic Groups" in https://www.icsahome.com/articles/characteristics ICSA 1015. Accessed 25/11/2019
[Next: The target culture – origins (1) ]
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