- Experimental Theology: The Bureaucrat
The second most common question I get is this, "Do you like being a Department Chair?" My answer is complicated, a yes and a no. On the one hand I don't like managing the administrivia of a bureaucracy. I struggle with this part of the job. Plus, I keep waking up expecting to find that I have dead, soulless eyes. But on the other hand, as a bureaucrat I have a certain range of powers within the system. And my goal, in light of those powers, is this: humanize the system. This is the part of the job I like. I've written about this before, about how bureaucratic systems demonically dehumanize people. As a part of that system one of the things I can do is to work against that process.
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The task of government in this enlightened time does not extend to actually dealing with problems. Solving problems might put bureaucrats out of work.
In former times it took dozens of clerks, secretaries, and administrators to create a bureaucratic milieu capable of diffusing responsibility for misinformation and disservices.