Suffering – Sometimes There Is No Reason
In general when a puzzle sits in front of safety, it must solve it and in safety all problem solving is deemed good. There is little talk of faith, sustaining contradiction, suffering, uncertainty, paradox, wisdom, discerning or doubt when one must find a reason, certainty and control.
One of the preoccupations of safety is the quest for reasons. Every time there is an event, big or small, safety comes in to find out why. And we must know why because safety believes there is always a ‘fix’. Whilst many times this is true, on just as many occasions it is not true. We simply find an attribution that everyone will accept, and then doubt and uncertainty will go away. Then we can get back to busyness of life and ‘move on’. The knowing why of philosophy is not what I am talking about here, philosophy is not about answers, solutions and certainties but about understanding the paradox in struggling to know why.
Polanyi (The Tacit Dimension) discusses the 2000 year old Platonic problem of Meno showing that philosophy sometimes helps one understand that there are no perfect answers, particularly in the explicit realm of thinking. The Meno problem cannot be answered without the acceptance of contradiction and paradox in epistemology. Indeed, the challenge of knowing can only be tackled through an understanding of tacit (implicit) knowledge.
There is no comfort in uncertainty and doubt, life is much easier when we know things with certainty. It is important too not to confuse cognitive discomfort and paradox with ‘cognitive dissonance’. Cognitive dissonance is about much more than wrestling with paradox and contradiction. Big deal for holding two conflicting ideas, that is not cognitive dissonance. Sustaining paradox is foundational to philosophical maturity, whilst cognitive dissonance is much more about the distress experienced in conflicting ontologies.
In general when a puzzle sits in front of safety, it must solve it and in safety all problem solving is deemed good. There is little talk of faith, sustaining contradiction, suffering, uncertainty, paradox, wisdom, discerning or doubt when one must find a reason, certainty and control.
This week a close friend and safety manager was greeted in the morning with the news that overnight someone on shift fell down some stairs and as a result had died. For the purpose of this recollection let’s call this person Ted. Ted was a fit 35 year old with 20 years experience in the plant. He was meticulous about PPE and safety. It is also important to note that the organisation is imbued with the language of zero. Every entrance in this organisation has a flashing board displaying safety data, with more calculative semiotics than a high school maths lesson. Calculative organisations confuse data for safety.
It is so tragic that Ted has died. The person who found Ted was distressed, maybe Ted had been laying there unconscious for 60-90 minutes. Ted’s hard hat had been thrown by the impact and his head had been hit quite hard. All the energy of the organisation went into action. The worker and family were offered counselling, the regional manager flew in, the site was trawled over for days trying to piece together the situation whilst Ted was hooked up to life support in hospital. Contact with the family was developed and more information on Ted’s status was provided through them. He was taken off life support after 3 days.
Many days of investigation ensued with no answer, no fix, and the zero on the flashing leader board jumped from zero to 1. This one could not be swept under the carpet, as had been the last few times. This event could not be wished away by ‘spin’ and there was no clear ‘fix’. In an organisation full of engineers and problem solvers there was bewilderment, this did not make sense. The stairs were well lit, painted, edges were clear, steps well maintained, handrail in place, there was no time pressure, he wasn’t carrying anything, it was only 50 minutes into the shift, Ted was fit, what went wrong? Why did he fall? Safety must have an answer so, more days must be committed to find one, more people put on the investigation job. After a week still no answers.
Sometimes the disposition of ‘problem solver’ is good but not always, sometimes it’s time to shift our energies from solving to more human pursuits in empathy and resilience in fallibility. The trouble is, the semiotic of zero doesn’t allow this, it primes for perfection and counting, not people-centredness. In zero, fallibility must be eliminated, and if there is an event, it is considered only temporary, we will get to perfect one day.
When organisations set low order goals such as numerical goals (measurable goals) organisations get stuck in low order thinking. There is no lower goal in the psychology of goals and goal order, than zero. Zero attracts the winners whilst suffering attracts the losers, and there must be no suffering or loss in zero.
The language of ‘zero’ doesn’t facilitate empathy but rather stimulates embarrassment, we need to make fallibility go away, this curious fallibility with no answers. The enemy of zero is the number one and, the inevitability in human life of suffering. The energy of zero is analysis, whilst the dynamic of I-thou (Buber) and suffering is ‘indwelling’ (Polanyi). Indwelling is discovered through the ‘gift’ of suffering. Similarly when following-leading is one’s ontology, suffering makes sense. When organisations publicise 1 on a flashing board that professes zero, the organisational anti-suffering discourse becomes demonstrably silly.
Just as leading requires ethics, suffering demands indwelling.
When a culture has been ‘primed’ for years to be calculative and perfectionist, there is little space left in the organisation for empathy and the understanding of surprise. People mustn’t make mistakes, people mustn’t come to harm, there is no suffering, risk must be eliminated, there must be answers – there must be no risk. Maybe steps and stairs need to be banned? Maybe policing handrail holding with sackings is the answer. There are countless technician speculations and attributions that help the technicist resolve the unresolvable, until the next time.
The fear of risk is the fear of death, the fear of risk is also the fear of living and learning. The fear of suffering also constrains ones ability to find meaning in living, this is why the language of zero is meaning-less. What is most sad about the lovers of zero is they they suffer in denial because it fosters disconnectedness from the rest of us who know we are fallible. This is why I wrote some time ago that my aspirational goal for life is zero death (see My Target Goal Is Zero Death). How ridiculous does it sound to speak in such nonsensical aspirational language. And when suffering does come, zero has nothing to say. The denial of indwelling is the denial of humanness and there can be no indwelling without suffering and pain.
And sometimes we have to learn that there are no answers, that the human fallible condition is real and that we all suffer. And much of suffering and loss is unseen. Much of suffering and loss in ageing is masked by make up and medicines, but these only play with the inevitability of suffering, so later in denial we are less resilient to tackle our loss. It is in times of no answers that we must know how to be, not to do. When one suffers we don’t want ‘fixers’ about, we want people who know how to be present rather than perfect.
Many of the people in Ted’s organisation have been saying ‘I don’t know what to say’ and ‘I don’t know what to do’. ‘We all knew Ted, this doesn’t make sense’. Unfortunately zero doesn’t prepare us to console people in suffering, for empathy with a family, for the awkwardness of practicing presence not ‘fixing’. Zero doesn’t prepare people for suffering, and there is nothing like suffering to test one’s methodology of reality. When life must be perfect, standing beside a person in acute suffering must be tough, no wonder that zero lovers don’t know what to say or do. If you keep talking non-sense no wonder suffering makes no sense.
Dr Rob Long
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