Heroes Not Zombies

The day I walked in a forest and encountered scattered, gorgeous red petals from some bushes, I came to an intersection. The path split and you had to choose which way to go. Smack on the intersection was this guidepost, which clearly directs you to go right. The fact that the arrow was painted the same shade of red as the petals strewn on the path struck me as not a coincidence. Somehow, it gave weight to the instruction. It helped me feel, yes, this is the best way to go. It “fitted” with what else I could see.

I’ve often wondered about this whole instruction/direction thing. I mean, who decided the path to the right was the best one to take? And why? I suspect it was laid out like this to make sure that everyone went the same way as they walked through the woods.

Shortly after I moved to this village in South West France, I came upon a panel near the church. It had a large map of the village and surrounding countryside and it had a couple of suggested walks traced out in coloured, broken lines. You could choose to follow the yellow walk, the blue walk or the green one. They were connected, so if you followed the shortest one, you’d find an intersection, where you had the opportunity to leave that route and expand into the intermediate walk, and, in that walk, there was a point where you could choose to leave that and follow the longest path. All the walks began from, and returned to the church. The panel said there were markers along the way. A bit like this red arrow, but rather than arrows, the markers were just “way markers” with dabs of paint according to which walk you were following. Some of the markers would have all three colours on them, and some, just one. You get the idea? Well, we set off to take one of the walks but pretty quickly, the markers vanished. Every intersection we came to seemed to lack any kind of marker whatsoever. Well, we eventually found our way back to the church, but wondered if the markers had all long since disappeared. The next time we decided to follow the route “clockwise” instead of “anticlockwise”, and guess what? There were clear markers at every junction. Whoever had set out the paths had painted the posts so they could be seen clearly as you followed a clockwise direction round the vineyards. But because they only painted one side of the posts, when you followed the paths anticlockwise, you couldn’t see a single marker!

Who decided there was only one way to follow the circuit? And when they did decide that, why didn’t they make that clear on the map at the start?

So, what’s this all about?

There’s no doubt directions and markers can be helpful. Very helpful. But rather too often they are a bit rigid, assuming that there is only one “right way” to go, and that everyone should go the same way.

That’s when I have a problem with them.

Life isn’t set in stone. Human beings are not all identical. There really is no such thing as “one size fits all”. So, I’m wary of “guidelines” and “direction indicators” and want to understand what lies behind them. So often nowadays, even the markers and signposts are missing. We are fed into a computer algorithm and coerced, pushed or pulled, along the same “choices” to make the same ones as everyone else. That problem is compounded by the way companies keep their algorithms secret. You don’t get to see the values, beliefs and intentions which the companies use to create them. And what if your personal values, beliefs or intentions are different from theirs?

In health care there are metre high piles of “clinical guidelines” and “protocols” now which every practitioner is expected to follow. I understand the good intention behind the creation of these things, but we have to accept that the future can’t be predicted, and that every patient is actually different, so there can be no single guideline or protocol which will guarantee the best health care for everyone.

Alongside that, I think the overuse of guidelines and protocols undermines the healthy development of both expert skills and “professionalism” and tends to give more weight to “processes” than to people (patients and practitioners).

That whole thing has got much worse during the pandemic, with an explosion of plastic arrows on the ground directing your movement and coloured strips setting new, otherwise invisible boundaries and limits. It all leads to a feeling of being micro-managed. It’s not comfortable.

How do we go forward in a better way? I suspect we need more transparency, more accountability and more flexibility on the part of the creators of these directions. A bit more humility would also help to prevent arrogance and righteousness in those who think they know what’s best for you better than you do yourself.

What’s your experience of directions, of markers, of guidelines, protocols and algorithms?