DO WE REALLY NEED THEM ANYMORE?

The Age of the Institution is over, well, not really, but I am celebrating early……no longer do we have to look to hierarchical structures and organizations in order to find answers and solve the great questions of the world. No longer do we have to subscribe to or attend Institutions to make our footprint in the world, or to be respected in society. We have seen too many examples (of late) from those who have discarded institutions and gone on to make apocalyptic changes to how we as a society live, and how we think, and even how we dream. This is the Self(ie) era, or so I would argue…the ground is fertile for those who would want to strap on a metaphorical backpack and redesign the world without the guidelines and constraints of the past…..note that I didn’t say “selfish” era, not hardly…but the era of Introspection and the Independent mind. Heck, with just a lonely computer is there any knowledge that is out of our grasp?

Let me just say that I love it….and I hope the “party” is just starting.

From the book, The Road to Character by David Brooks

“Today, it is unusual to meet someone with an institutional mindset. We live in an age of institutional anxiety, when people are prone to distrust large organizations. This is partly because we’ve seen the failure of these institutions and partly because in the era of the Big Me, we put the individual first. We tend to prize the freedom to navigate as we wish, to run our lives as we choose, and never to submerge our own individual identities in conformity to some bureaucracy or organization. We tend to assume that the purpose is to lead the riches and fullest individual life, jumping from one organization to the next as it suits our needs. Meaning is found in these acts of self-creation, in the things we make and contribute to, in our endless choices.

Nobody wants to be an Organization Man. We like start-ups, disruptors, and rebels. There’s less prestige accorded to those who tend to the perpetual reform and repair of institutions. Young people are raised to think that big problems can be solved by a swarm of small networked NGOs and social entrepreneurs. Big hierarchical organizations are dinosaurs.”

Let’s take a look. It is not hard to make the case that the present Vanguard was not dependent on Institutional support. Bill Gates didn’t need Harvard, he dropped out, fast….as did Mark Zuckerburg, founder of Facebook, in his sophomore year….Steve Jobs dropped out of college, almost immediately. College wasn’t the fountain of inspiration for them…college would have been just ceremonial, a speed bump in their trip to glory. College might have even derailed them completely.

The role that college will play in shaping our future is unclear. Yes, if you want to be a doctor you still have to attend college….there is no substitute, not yet, at least, but even that construct is flawed, seriously.

As someone who received his doctorate I have had plenty of opportunity to reflect on how my education is only barely relevant to what I am practicing now. The most important aspects of how I practice were never mentioned in dental school. Though I am grateful for my education I think it was grossly inefficient…and it was very near sighted, constrained, and entrenched. What I am actually utilizing day to day via dental school could have been condensed into a few months of training and study. It is hard to bring new ideas to an Institution….the ones at the top making all the decisions are often wearing bow ties and smoking pipes, with blinders on.....or so I envision them. They are married to upholding the status quo, the “doctrines”. It is very biblical that way…almost “flat earth”. New ideas are very slow to germinate in institutions, it is a place where dust collects….but, you leave the Institution, the “jailhouse” of conformity, and there is no ceiling, only fresh air and limitless possibilities.

Think about this: Let’s look at the major medical breakthroughs over the centuries…The small pox vaccine, which saved countless lives…certainly millions upon millions, was developed not by an Institution, buy by Edward Jenner back in 1796. Louis Pasteur later further advanced vaccination science by discovering vaccines for anthrax and rabies as well as evoking the science of pasteurization…all of these achievements by Pasteur saves countless lives. And then, in 1955, Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine that all but eradicated the frightening disease that crippled tens of thousands of it’s victims each year…most notably responsible for the paralysis of Franklin D. Roosevelt. These men weren’t constrained by Institutions or by “group” think. They were beholden to no sacred cows.

The Institutions are the last place to find the cutting edge…their “edge” is often dull, and barely able to cut butter…it is glacial, and bureaucratic….think public education. Do we really think that public education has the answers to our educational demands? The one size fits all approach may have worked well during Abe Lincoln’s time, but we have entered a new century…two new centuries. “hello in there!”. Once again, the institutions have an interest in holding their ground, the old ground. There are many constructs that are threatened when new ideas storm the marketplace. Heck, Bill Clinton wouldn’t be certified to teach a course in Government in public school. Without a teaching credential, Shakespeare couldn’t teach a course in literature, Ha!,…sounds like those rules are helping the wrong people…not the the kids ---such are the archaic (and institutional) constraints that we live by.

“the loner, the dreamer, the crackpot, who comes up with some crazy idea that everybody laughs at, that later turns out to revolutionize the world……he is squashed from above before he can even get his head out of the water because the bureaucrats, they would rather kill a new idea than let it rock the boat” – Tucker: A Man and His Dreams

Take a quick break and try and think of Institutions you feel are working well.

Public Education?

The Police Force?

Marriage? (over 50% of them fail)

Congress?

The IRS?

The NFL?

Democracy? (It is always for sale)

Wall Street?

I see so many of my colleagues who are practicing in straight jackets…they don’t even question the axioms that they were taught……they are hypnotic. I think the case can be made quite easily that real innovation would come more quickly and boldly from a different paradigm. Why do our doctors, even, have to all travel through the long, often antiquated, and ceremonial corridor of the Institution? Educational Institutions should teach you, above all, to think, to inquire, challenge, probe.….not to obey, abdicate, bow, succumb, surrender…to particular doctrines…that might be fine for the Priesthood…but not much else; check the dogma at the front door. We should always be trying to build a “better mousetrap”.

This is why Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, and so many others were totally disinterested in being put through the assembly line of conformity…they were quick to get the Institutional piano off their backs and take the “road less traveled”, or in the cases of those three technological Titans…”the roads untraveled”.

Most of the heroes of yesterday came from Institutions….many from the military….Eisenhower, George Marshall, Douglas MacArthur. They were restrained, unemotional…they were products of the most demanding of institutions. Nothing is more institutional than the military. They were great men, but not authentic men. They were products, not Mavericks. They were tenacious and disciplined strategists, not visionaries. They were calculated, not romantic. Participation in the military was almost compulsory at one time……now, that notion is folly. Let the North Koreans goose step in unison, let the Russians…we will have none of that….

There were certainly a few anti-Institutional thinkers from our past…Amelia Earhardt, Frank Lloyd Wright, Thomas Edison, Howard Hughes, just to name just a few. Edison was largely taught at home.

The 60’s and 70’s started a revolution of “self help” recipe books. The bookstores are flooded with ways we can achieve ultimate Nirvana, cure our own psoriasis, find the “Giant” within ourselves, etc.. As parents we are now encouraged to teach our children self esteem, and self reliance. We can write and produce our own music now…we don’t need Capitol Records or Warner Bros. anymore…We can produce and write our own television shows and movies now……”we don’t need no stinking badges”. We just don’t need’em anymore.

In fairness, there have been Institutions that have done miraculous things…most notably NASA, which worked collaboratively to put a man on the moon, but this is the exception…and a business model that rarely has success stories.

And, while we are at it….let’s not forget to include “culture” into what we call an Institution. There probably isn’t a better definition of conformity than culture. Try being an individual in some of the world’s cultures; just try and break rank, you will be pounded down like a nail that sticks up above the others….from the American Indian to the Indians of India…from China to the Middle East…from Latin America to Africa…the thinking is breathtakingly Institutional …..it will likely stun you…from enforced female genital mutilation to enforced Sharia law, and all the horrendous doctrine found in between, even the ones we find innocent and quaint, especially those.

Little Boxes by Malvina Reynolds

And the people in the houses
All went to the university,
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same,
And there’s doctors and lawyers,
And business executives,
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry,
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one,
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

An excerpt from Peter Thiel’s book, From Zero to One

In a world of gigantic administrative bureaucracies, both public and private, searching for a new path might seem like hoping for a miracle. actually, if American business is going to succeed, we are going to need hundreds, or even thousands, of miracles. This would be depressing but for one crucial fact: humans are distinguished from other species by our ability to work miracles. We call these miracles technology.

Technology is miraculous because it allows us to do more with less, ratcheting up our fundamental capabilities to a higher level. Other animals are instinctively driven to build things like dams or honeycombs, but we are the only ones that can invent new things and better ways of making them. Humans don’t decide what to build by making choices from some cosmic catalog of options given in advance; instead, by creating new technologies we rewrite the plan of the world. These are the kind of elementary truths we teach to second graders, but they are easy to forget in a world where so much of what we do is repeat what has been done before.

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it! Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it.” – Goethe