Sarah recently posted about a troubling scene where bystanders jeered at a motorist in the wrong place. I am witness to such events on a daily basis – not quite as blatant but similarly disturbing. Usually related to pedestrian traffic, and usually involving public transport.

A sigh, or a grunt, even a look of disgust at people not following to explicit or implicit rules. I must admit I am guilty myself of getting annoyed when people don’t move down the carriage and block the doorway on trams and trains.

These are afflictions of an increasingly segmented life. Time-box everything to the nth degree. It allows two things: 1. Operate on auto-pilot – no need to think about routine tasks, we can instead peer into our smart phones at twitter, facebook, news feeds, etc. 2. Improve the efficiency of the well-oiled machine, eliminate gaps, delays, interruptions to our momentum.

Public transport operators have a reason to act this way: they have SLAs to meet and if they run late they get penalised – evident in the recent Footscray station debacle where getting the train moving was more important than the safety of a sick/injured passenger. We can’t really expect anything more from an organisation, which has emphasis only on efficiency and profit, not on ethical values and moralistic behaviour.

Many believe we need to change our organisations to act more ethically, with a conscience. But perhaps, in reality, it is organisations that are changing us. We are losing our compassion for others in our increasingly mechanistic behaviour, replacing moral thought with concern only for meeting our own personal SLAs.

Statistics are the cornerstone of every modern Western society. Governments use them to guage public opinion, and more increasingly private enterprises rely on statistics to narrow the focus on their target audiences. Contemporary business procedures almost universally dictate that you need to understand your target audience in order to provide services and products that will best serve the customer. Unfortunately, as with most dogmas, when these principles are applied without reservation the original purpose is lost and a large part of society becomes marginalised.

Polls, surverys and focus groups can all generate a wealth of information, however there is one piece of information that is typically the focus: what does the majority want. Of course there is nothing wrong with responding to the majority on individual issues, however when the same methodology is applied to a group of issues collectively, a poll becomes a profiling excercise, whereby the implementors use statistics to predict the overall feeling of a populace on a number of issues. The problem with profiling however, is that it doesn’t necessarily represent any form of reality.

The best we can realistically hope for with this type of social profiling is that the majority will have some of their opinions on individual issues addressed, but as a whole you would expect noone to be represented in the entirety of their views. To achieve even this level of representation for the majority, the issues being addressed collectively must be related, in that unrelated issues can generate wildy different opinions amongst individuals, and any attempt to consolidate such opinions into a collective majority view would be futile. The danger then, is that companies, governments, etc. may not fully understand how issues relate to each other, and may build their campaign on a foundation of poorly implemented statistics.

Australian politics is at a crossroads right now, with no party being able to capture the favour of the majority. As political parties rely so much on polling the electorate, it would suggest that in Australia the number crunchers have failed to generate meaninful statistical data regarding the issues that resonate most strongly with the public.  Or maybe the parties have just lost their faith in statistics. Whatever the reason, it is clear that noone really understood what the electorate wanted.

Perhaps more of a concern is how companies, both large and small, seem to give greater importance to servicing existing markets than allowing new markets to form around their products and services. This is the act of entrepeneurs without an idea – leaders without vision. The only thing companies seem clear on is that they want huge profits, and however they achieve that goal isn’t really all that important. So they rely on statistics and social profiling, trying to determine what people want and are willing to pay for. For these companies the unfortunate truth is that without even a moral compass to guide you, generating reliable and useful statistics is very difficult. Unfortunately for the rest of us, these companies also have greater liberties than government when it comes to smoke and mirrors magic tricks (i.e. advertising), often leaving us deceived by the fine print. And as for companies like Woolworths, Kmart, Costco, what do they stand for? Lower prices, every day? That’s not a moral position, it’s a slogan. But we all know that the consumer majority will happily choose lower prices over morality, but what we don’t see is that these choices are slowly eroding our own individuality.

As more companies focus on serving the consumer majority, the diversity of products and services is sacrificed. The resulting homogoneity in turn forces the consumer to change their behaviour, and start buying products that everyone else buys. Start doing things the way everyone else does. Stop thinking for yourself and fall into line. Hang on, wasn’t it supposed to be companies that respond to consumer demand for products and services? How is it then that companies can change consumer behaviour? Has the moulder become the moulded?

So the next time you deal with a profit-focused enterprise, consider the alternatives, even if they are more expensive. Nothing less than your own individuality is at stake.

Recently I have noticed a significant increase in the number of email surveys I am receiving. Regardless of the industry – from health insurance to charities – it seems that practically anyone that has my email address wants me to complete an online survey about myself, their current services or potential future services. I guess it seems like a reasonable way to gather information about your customer base, and I probably wouldn’t mind so much if these surveys weren’t so excruciatingly boring!

Which I guess is why they tend to offer prizes as incentive to complete the survey. But here’s a cheaper option guys – figure out how to make a survey short and to the point and you’ll find more people will do it for nothing. As it currently stands, if I have to read a page more than once (usually due to a bad layout), there are more than three (3) questions to a page, or there are more than five (5) pages, chances are that I won’t finish your survey. Now if I, as a Gen-X/Yer (somewhere in between – I still don’t get these classifications!) cannot concentrate on your survey, then the ADD generation to follow will have no hope whatsoever.

And whilst the number of booths in shopping malls trying to sell you something are steadily increasing, their numbers are dwarfed by the proliferation of people with clipboards asking for a moment of your time to do a survey. Even if I had the time to spare for a survey, these days I just wouldn’t do it for fear that if they get my name and address there’s a good chance I’ll end up on yet another spammers list somewhere.

Because that is the way it works. The more cooperative you are in sharing information the more likely you are to be punished – harassed no less – either by phone, fax, email or snail mail. So the lesson we (eventually) learn is don’t trust your details to anyone unless you have no other choice. But even then you will not be able to completely avoid the harassment we all must experience.

Did you know there is a position at an abattoirs whose job it is to fire a bolt into the side of a cow’s head? Cow after cow on conveyor is locked into place ready for the executioner to pull the trigger. Would you sleep at night if this was your job? Some wouldn’t, but many would – after all they are just doing their job.

What about police, soldiers and, dare I say it, ticket inspectors? Are they all “just doing their job”? Many will use that excuse when confronted with a morally challenging and/or confrontational situation. But this is not a valid excuse for a rational, thinking human being. We are not machines programmed to perform tasks, nor can we suggest that we are in no way accountable for any one of our actions. We are complicit in every single thing we do, be it through choice or that which is dictated to us.

So how far are we from a society such as those portrayed in movies such a V for Vendetta, or Children of Men? If governments – or, more commonly these days, private companies to which governments are outsourcing responsibilities – continue to dictate morally ambiguous job descriptions, is this not leading to a world that disregards any moral responsibility?

Unfortunately our future society may in fact be even worse than those alluded to by the movies. Our future will not be one where the detriment of society can be traced back to a single individual or group of individuals. Rather we will find that most of the bereavement of our moral responsibilities is the result of some seemingly innocuous decision made in the bowels of a government or organisation. A decision made to streamline a process, or to improve efficiency. Moreover, these decisions will be made by morally just individuals like you or I, who didn’t have the foresight to understand the repercussions of such decisions. Such decisions will be made for the benefit of the organisation or, more ironically, society as a whole. And those that make these decisions cannot be held accountable as, after all, they were just doing their job.

Case study of a broken system 1:

Every week I use Melbourne’s public transport system to get to and from work. Depending on the location of the work, I will typically use the train or tram network. Public transport in Melbourne is not free, and the governing bodies spend millions of dollars every year making sure you are aware of that fact. Despite this, there have always been, and I suspect always will be, mechanisms to avoid paying for use of this system.

As a financially-deprived university student I may have been known to take advantage of these mechanisms from time to time, typically as a means to afford some kind of social life at least on par with the dead. However, against all odds I managed to serve my sentence of poverty and emerged the other side into a well-paying career. With my new-found wealth I no longer had a need to avoid paying for public transport, and as such have made every reasonable effort to do the right thing. Unfortunately this is not enough.

This morning I realised my weekly ticket had expired. I had no coins to buy a ticket on the tram (they ONLY accept coins, and if you don’t have any, tough luck!), so I decided I would catch the tram to work anyway and buy a ticket when I got there. As luck would have it, inspectors boarded my tram and started checking tickets. I explained my situation and showed them my weekly ticket that had only just expired. Naturally he pulls out his pad. “Do you know what I am doing?”. “Are you going to fine me?”. “No, I am just reporting the incident”. You can just imagine the think tanks that come up with the scripts these guys spout: “What words can we use that will defuse an inflammatory situation?”. I suspect they are the same guys that governments use to come up with terms like “Unlawful Combatants”, or “Collateral Damage“. Anyone with half a brain will recognise such doublespeak as an insult to their intelligence.

“You know it’s my job to make sure people have a valid ticket”. Sure. Is it not also your job to use your brain to assess the situation and decide if someone actually deserves to be fined? The police are capable of giving warnings all the time, how is this any different?

“Do you understand what just happened?”. “Are you going to fine me?”. “I will report the incident. If you get a letter in the mail from the Department of Infrastructure then yes you will be fined $158″. Wow, thanks for being so honest with me.

So I guess this is the price you pay for not paying attention to detail. I don’t have a budget. I don’t know exactly how much I am paid every week, or how much interest I earn from my investments. I don’t know how much I have in my super. I haven’t done tax for a couple of years. I don’t catch the same tram/train to/from work. I don’t sit in the same seat when I do. I don’t time my journeys, so I am sometimes late. I sometimes run out of milk. Finding insurance of any kind is a mind-numbing chore to me. I don’t abuse people that don’t stand on the right left on escalators.

And of course, I don’t always keep track of dates..

So I guess this system is just not meant for me. I relish the day that I no longer depend on public transport. It is a sad fact, especially when we should all be considering it more and more. Ultimately it seems, to lead an existence focused on the meaningful things, as opposed to an anally retentive focus on the meaningless, is a privilege that will cost extra.