Big Boxes for Small Minds

Classifications are for recycling.

“Government should be run like a business.”

You still hear this said.  It betrays a rather simple mistake that we are apt to make.  We tend not to discriminate enough between different forms of human activity.  All institutional bureaucratic structures are not the same. 

The more that we are able to recognize the unique aspects of things, we bring not only realism into our lives but also beauty and reverence. 

Yes, governments, of all sorts and sizes, have things in common with boy scout organizations or private hospitals, or terrorist bands.  When humans collaborate at first they choose established patterns and then only later improvise.  Their improvisations become new models and the resulting structure is significantly different.  It shouldn’t “run” (whatever that means) like something else. 

It is not the “uniqueness” I am urging you to appreciate.  That may be what the artist is expected to accomplish.  I’m saying that institutions “run” differently.  The names on the doors and their titles react to different stimuli and follow different paths. 

It is enough to say, I think, that simplistic classifications are the platforms from which careless people spout dangerous advice. 

We can borrow from one form of activity to improve another.  At risk, I should add.  But don’t hire a dentist as a tree surgeon.  He’s likely to do a root canal.