Bureaucracy and Authority: How to Anger the Innocent for Absolutely Nothing
Many an intellectual out there tend to argue how the ability to form complex yet efficient organizations gave human beings the ability to efficiently execute complex projects. The ability to divide up work to different specialized tasks shared among many people is the pinnacle of human institutional achievement; it is the one thing, perhaps alongside the ability to communicate complex ideas linguistically, that set human beings apart from mere animals out there.
And modern society, with new technologies and new demands propping out everyday, has taken that gift of organization to a whole new level. Every few people one meet in life would form an organization, whether it is non-profit or a small business, carrying out incomprehensibly small projects with extremely vague and dubious purposes. And every few people that one meets in an organization would have some sort of rank, denoting the place within the command structure just as complex as the web of organizations out there.
Certainly, with the proliferation of organizations, there also emerged simultaneously a proliferation of hierarchies, of organizationally recognized “authorities,” i.e. the People with the Power. With different level of authorities set in place among ubiquitous organizations, it feels as if the entire human society, from the hospital that one first sees the Earth and the graveyard at which one departs it, has become stratified to the point that it is absolutely impossible to avoid any sort of bureaucracy when doing anything.
Ah, yes, bureaucracy. That has been my pet peeve for the past few months. From the long time setting up a bank account in Japan to just simply being a lowly presence within an extreme corporate type of it has generated so much frustration that I decided to go back to the idealistic ivy tower that is grad school just to avoid the Hierarchy for the time-being. But, like I said just now, there really is not a place in human society anymore that is completely free from bureaucracy, and in the process of getting to the idealistic grad school, I still have to deal with it.
The road to London has been made quite difficult, frustrating, and even more expensive than it already is by the recent rejection of my student visa here in Korea. The reasoning is that I have insufficient funds in my bank account, a reason that is made all the more ironic considering now they are asking this poor guy to pay another 450 bucks to submit a brand new application. Well, at least it would give me something to do and worry about when I get back to San Diego at the end of August.
The most frustrating aspect of the whole 450-bucks-went-down-the-drain experience was the fact that NO ONE at the UK Border Agency actually said anything to me when they realized that I had insufficient funds in the bank account. They simply decided to send me a text message to pick up my visa (as if it is mundanely completed) at the Seoul office, only to surprise me with an envelope enclosing a “Refusal of Entry” letter...No refund is possible and the appeal process is told to have a validity of 28 days starting the day of rejection WHILE taking around a month to actually complete...
The inflexibility of such bureaucratic process is only made worse when one tries to introduce some sort of flexibility within the existing system. At the whim of those in the positions of authority, those at the bottom who are trying their best to break free of the relentless rigidity is immediately scolded and pushed aside, forcing them to once again conform to the status quo and abandoning any further true-hearted attempts to make themselves heard.
Even in education, where idealism often trumps what is practical, and rebelliousness often successfully force long-established organizations to adapt, the bureaucracy, unfortunately, is still often the long-term winner. Even in our little camp in Chuncheon, there are often occurrences of administrators scolding the staff, and the staff scolding the students, in ways and for reasons that I, as the foreign teacher/observer, can only feel to be completely inappropriate and utterly incomprehensible. Well, I suppose sometimes the bureaucracy just wants to roar, without any particular purpose in mind besides keeping the bureaucracy itself intact.
And modern society, with new technologies and new demands propping out everyday, has taken that gift of organization to a whole new level. Every few people one meet in life would form an organization, whether it is non-profit or a small business, carrying out incomprehensibly small projects with extremely vague and dubious purposes. And every few people that one meets in an organization would have some sort of rank, denoting the place within the command structure just as complex as the web of organizations out there.
Certainly, with the proliferation of organizations, there also emerged simultaneously a proliferation of hierarchies, of organizationally recognized “authorities,” i.e. the People with the Power. With different level of authorities set in place among ubiquitous organizations, it feels as if the entire human society, from the hospital that one first sees the Earth and the graveyard at which one departs it, has become stratified to the point that it is absolutely impossible to avoid any sort of bureaucracy when doing anything.
Ah, yes, bureaucracy. That has been my pet peeve for the past few months. From the long time setting up a bank account in Japan to just simply being a lowly presence within an extreme corporate type of it has generated so much frustration that I decided to go back to the idealistic ivy tower that is grad school just to avoid the Hierarchy for the time-being. But, like I said just now, there really is not a place in human society anymore that is completely free from bureaucracy, and in the process of getting to the idealistic grad school, I still have to deal with it.
The road to London has been made quite difficult, frustrating, and even more expensive than it already is by the recent rejection of my student visa here in Korea. The reasoning is that I have insufficient funds in my bank account, a reason that is made all the more ironic considering now they are asking this poor guy to pay another 450 bucks to submit a brand new application. Well, at least it would give me something to do and worry about when I get back to San Diego at the end of August.
The most frustrating aspect of the whole 450-bucks-went-down-the-drain experience was the fact that NO ONE at the UK Border Agency actually said anything to me when they realized that I had insufficient funds in the bank account. They simply decided to send me a text message to pick up my visa (as if it is mundanely completed) at the Seoul office, only to surprise me with an envelope enclosing a “Refusal of Entry” letter...No refund is possible and the appeal process is told to have a validity of 28 days starting the day of rejection WHILE taking around a month to actually complete...
The inflexibility of such bureaucratic process is only made worse when one tries to introduce some sort of flexibility within the existing system. At the whim of those in the positions of authority, those at the bottom who are trying their best to break free of the relentless rigidity is immediately scolded and pushed aside, forcing them to once again conform to the status quo and abandoning any further true-hearted attempts to make themselves heard.
Even in education, where idealism often trumps what is practical, and rebelliousness often successfully force long-established organizations to adapt, the bureaucracy, unfortunately, is still often the long-term winner. Even in our little camp in Chuncheon, there are often occurrences of administrators scolding the staff, and the staff scolding the students, in ways and for reasons that I, as the foreign teacher/observer, can only feel to be completely inappropriate and utterly incomprehensible. Well, I suppose sometimes the bureaucracy just wants to roar, without any particular purpose in mind besides keeping the bureaucracy itself intact.
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