CHAPTER TWO
THE POSITIVE ADVANTAGES OF PERSONIFYING
Let us begin with one near-universal life experience: the way that gadgets and systems let you down just when things are most critical, when you are in a hurry, when an important person is present, or when the deadline is pending.
It does not matter whether it is red traffic lights on the way to a late appointment, or a car that won’t start, or an office copier that grows cantankerous—in every case I recommend recourse to that very obvious question “how does it know I am in a hurry?”
This is such a natural question, and it arises in so many minds, that it is easy to overlook its radical import. It is, in fact, deeply revolutionary, for it betrays a mindset for which one could be burnt at the stake in religious times, or treated as a mental case in scientific times.
The idea that an object could know anything, have any conscious volition, let alone know you are in a hurry, is anathema to religion. It is an idolatry, a pantheistic pagan notion that the church has been fighting since it emerged triumphant at the end of the so-called Dark Ages. The denial of that notion was inherited by science in the second half of the millennium—replacing the term ‘ungodly’ with ‘untruthful’, and seeing those who support the notion as ignorant or insane rather than sinful.
For the official view is still that an office copier cannot possibly know if you are in a hurry, because it has no brain, no mind, no intelligence, no consciousness or will. It is an object, not a being, and should be treated as such.
Despite this revolutionary import, I recommend that one does ask the question “how does it know?”, because it is actually a very sensible question.
Even that word ‘sensible’ can sound like a revolutionary battle cry, because we are led to believe that only science can be sensible, that the only sensible response is to say that the copier cannot possibly ‘know’.
This is because people confuse two very different things: sense and logic. It is certainly not logical to assume the copier has a mind, when there is no evidence of neural activity, of communication, or of the level of complexity associated with mental processes. Logic does have some place in magical thinking, but its role is subservient and it is certainly true that science is far more logical than magic.
On the other hand, magic is far more sensible than science because it is an application of all the senses. When we think of the copier as a conscious being, instead of a mechanical object, we are vastly expanding our sensibilities to embrace mood, purpose, affection, commitment and a multidimensional infinitude of additional factors. The copier could be malfunctioning because it is an undercover agent for arival organisation, it might be a revolutionary fanatic wishing to sabotage the business, it might simply hate me, or it might equally have fallen in love with me and be trying to attract my attention...
The possibilities are endless, they are highly illogical, but they are all simultaneously embraced by that single process of personification.
The tiny trickle of mental activity represented by logical thought has expanded into a torrent of parallel processes as the brain gears up to tackle the most challenging object in the universe—a fellow conscious being.
Next time you approach the copier under pressure you might first kneel before it and bellow out a song of praise for its steadfast support during easy times, or you might beat a drum and dance to placate it. It is then possible that the pent up aggression of working under pressure will be dissipated before you even touch the copier, and thus it may subsequently function just as it would in times of peace. In this case, the problem has been solved by magic.
Too much of such behaviour and you will be sacked—an even better solution because it not only removes you from the irritating presence of the copier but it also relieves you of the very work pressure that instigated the problem. Magic has again triumphed.
It is this effectiveness of magic that is so deeply threatening to science, and the reason that magic is forever under attack. If you are suffering aches and pains and lots of people are finding relief from the latest quack nostrum or New Age therapy, then it is not very logical to put your money and trust into something not endorsed by the medical establishment, but it is jolly sensible so to do. Who cares if the cure is ‘purely psychological’ or based on ‘mere mass hysteria’ when what you want above all is a cure?
If a bandwagon appears at the right time and place—then jump on it and rejoice. The idea that one should refuse to participate in a successful healing process here and now because it fails to satisfy certain tests in some distant laboratory has a certain logic but it is anything but sensible. A test laboratory is a wonderful thing, but its significance is proportional to its success at excluding external factors— i.e. real life—from the experiments it conducts.
We all need an escape from the pressures or monotony of real life at times, and religion and science offer welcome alternatives—just don’t confuse them with reality. Chess is a wonderful mental exercise, but it doesn’t wash the dishes.
So look at that copier and simply ask “How does it know I am in a hurry?”, and a new, more complex relationship develops between you and the copier.
But surely, isn’t complexity at the heart of the problem? What you want is just to simplify the relationship back to master and obedient, mechanical slave? The answer is that complexity is a nightmare when thinking mechanistically, but it is a richness when personifying. For our personifying skills are nourished by complexity in relationship: handling complexity and multiple parallel processing are what personal interactions are all about.
The copier is now no longer a dead object, it is a new recruit to the office team and a new relationship to explore. How do we behave towards it? With fear? With contempt? With reverence or politeness? By bullying or cajoling?
A beautiful affair is about to begin and discretion now invites me gently to draw closed the curtains of the boudoir, but not before a final moment of speculation as to what might be the answer to that magic question.
How does it know I’m in a hurry? Maybe I slam the lid down harder when I’m rushed? Or maybe I don’t allow time enough to warm up? Or maybe I press the buttons so impatiently that a loose connection is displaced?
If your new friend does reveal its secret, the chances are that the answer will prove quite banal— ‘mechanical’ indeed. But that does not mean that it would have been more quickly discovered by thinking along mechanical lines and doing a series of tests designed to ‘eliminate extraneous factors and isolate the problem’.
Mechanical answers are not the antithesis of the personifying approach, but merely a small subset of it. For even when we deal with real human beings and ask, say, “why does this person become a murderer?” the answer may prove quite mechanical— along the lines of a bullying father plus a genetic disposition—but the same principle holds: namely that the answer will generally reveal itself more quickly to one who treats the subject as a human being rather than an object for experimentation.
So, have I persuaded you to abandon mechanistic thinking and to personify the world instead?
If so, then I must hastily retract. For we live in a society where magic is an anathema that has been hounded for a thousand years. However sound you consider the above argument, its practice will ruin you: for copiers are not intended or designed to be personified in our society.
A copier is painted a dull beige colour to depersonalise it. You are not meant to winkle out its whims but rather to treat it like a slave object. When it protests you are meant to replace it—that is the quick solution by which the mechanistic thinkers leapfrog the speedy subtleties of magic.
To succeed in life you chuck out office equipment as soon as it comes alive and reveals its character, for it is but an object like the staff you should sack as soon as their performance figures drop. You may detect a sneer between the lines of my writing, but even I recognise that this is how it is and how society works.
Lorry-loads