We are in danger of being seduced by the advantages that
rationalization has already offered and promised in the future. It’s true.
Cooking from scratch has become rare today. Much use is made of prepackaged
meals, frozen TV dinners, and mostly fast-food restaurants. Almost all retailers
are oriented toward increasing efficiency, and I can think of many entities,
that I engage with, that have become McDonalized.
McDonaldization
believes that almost any task can and should be rationalized. It sounds pretty
good. After all, being more efficient is a good thing. Consisted, exact and
measurable outcomes also sound good. So, what's the problem? It turns out
that over-rationalizing a process in this manner has an unexpected
side effect: irrationality.
I
personally prefer family-owned restaurants, but the charm of TV dinners and
fast-food restaurants is that they are highly predictable. On one hand, I know
that it will taste exactly the same from one time to another and it will cost
me the same from one city to another. I never cook from scratch: there are too
many ingredients and variables involved in the cookbook. And I can’t guarantee
I will like it. Even music has become McDonaldized with the expansion of
technology. I have two thousand songs in my pocket. And many other customs have
been made more predictable.
But on the other hand, I complain about the quality and the
danger of the products.
Yet the facts remain that they are all shaped by the drive
for efficiency, and that is a major problem in a rationalizing society. The
emphasis on quantity rather than quality is a main concern.
McDonald’s tells us
it has sold many billions of hamburgers, rather than telling us about the
quality of those burgers. There are many examples of the effort to substitute
quantity for quality in the world. For example, in the industrial world, we are
minimizing time for each task, we are lowering the price of the finished
product, and we are increasing the sales, ultimately, to increase profits. We
are using rational technologies to control individual independence to eventually
replace human beings with machines that lack the ability to think and act in
unpredictable ways. You’ve probably noticed the self-checkout stands at the
grocery store. Have you called your wireless provider lately? Most companies
have turned to using automated telephone operators. There isn’t much online
banking and an ATM that a teller cannot do. And once people are reduced to a
few robot-like actions, it becomes easy to replace them with mechanical robots.
Moreover, McDonald’s uses specific methods to prepare the
food and to to serve it in order to have great control over its employees. And
a rational society also uses control over its consumers. It attracts us. The
irrationality of rationality is the byproduct of the process of rationalization.
It is seen as the opposite of rationality. Rationality brings with it great
dehumanization as people are reduced to acting like robots. It tends to take
much of the mystery and excitement. Overall, a fully rational society would be
a very isolated and uninteresting place. It is apparent that our social lives
have drastically changed over the past years.
Although
progressive rationalization has brought with it innumerable advantages, it has
also created a number of problems which threaten to accelerate in the years to
come. Rationalization is occurring throughout America. More and more emphasis
is placed on efficiency, predictability, the replacement of human by nonhuman
technology, and control over uncertainty. It is not possible to fight against
this. However, controlling the process of rationalization is much needed as
well as increasing the efforts to improve its irrational consequences.
Put your
money where your mouth is.
