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Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Age of Discontent is upon us
By Fr Brendan Hoban
YOU’D imagine that it would be the other way round. But it’s a strange fact of life that the more we have, the more we complain. The better the services, the more criticism there seems to be.
Once upon a time, everything that could possibly limit and diminish our lives seemed to conspire against us – hard times, few resources, limited services, ongoing unemployment, constant emigration. There were few chances for most people to receive an education; electricity hadn’t extended to the country; few enjoyed the luxury of running water in the house.
And yet, extraordinarily, most people seemed content with their lot – if that, of course, isn’t memory playing one of its subtle tricks on us.
Now the pendulum has swung full circle. The Age of Discontent is upon us; we never seem to have enough; and it’s always someone else’s fault – the Government, the banks, the HSE, the Catholic Church, the media, the public service, the private service, Lehman brothers, the weather, or whatever you’re having yourself. And a corollary of this national penchant for deflection is that nobody seems prepared to hold up their hands and say, ‘I got it wrong; it was my fault’.
Everyone seems to be playing an elaborate game of pass the parcel.
There were always whingers, of course, people who never stopped complaining about something. But now we’ve brought it to the level of a fine art. There are a number of factors involved. One is that the number and range of platforms on which to complain have extended considerably. It probably really got started on the Late Late Show, as the legend has it, and then it advanced by leaps and bounds with the growing popularity of the phone-in – a popular, accessible (and cheap) form of radio that facilitates the most notorious form of whinging, hand-wringing and complaint.
Joe Duffy’s Liveline programme on RTE Radio One is a good example. The subject has to be topical, the target has to be obvious, the complaint has to be significant and if someone breaks down and weeps on air, all the better. Good too if some innocent gob-daw can be coaxed on air to defend an indefensible position. That really gets the lines and, of course, the advertising hopping.
Another factor is that some people have always had pet subjects to complain about – solicitors, supermarkets, clergy, mobile phones, doctors, modesty, the GAA or whatever – and have harvested a life-long hobby out of it.
Because they have played the same tune in the same groove, they come to believe that all the woes of the world could be solved if solicitors were exiled to the Isle of Man or women dressed properly. Like, for example, those who bang on about Mayo not winning an AllIreland for almost 60 years, what would they find to talk about if it all came good on the third Sunday of September? (Unlikely, I grant you.)
Yet another factor is the blessing we give to complaints. Bord Fáilte started it all encouraging us to complain if our meals were not up to scratch. Those of a reticent disposition normally feel that it’s awkward or embarrassing to make a fuss but we’re made to feel bad about that as if we’re letting down the country or at least the catering industry. (We’re also a bit nervous that a Basil Fawlty character will appear from the kitchen wielding a ladle.)
Of course some people love complaining about meals, regardless. It’s a form of showing off, advertising their culinary credentials by suggesting that the mousse was less delicate than it might be or the ratatouille was slightly overdone. And a few, of course, because they would prefer not to pay for their dinner, storming out afterwards because a fly was found hovering over their jelly and custard.
There are people, for instance, who never pay for shoes because they spend their lives returning them for this or that reason. Shoes worn for six months are brought back to shops, the shopkeeper is harangued about their poor quality and a long history of complaint and explanation is entered into between the purchaser, the shopkeeper and the shoe factory. And so on and on. Ad infinitum.
A final factor in all this is that many organisations – as a kind of public relations exercise – pretend they encourage people to complain about the services they provide.
They don’t, of course, but it seems to make some kind of sense to pretend that they do.
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t complain, if there is a genuine reason to complain. But the difficult truth is that no matter what service we receive (or provide), from time to time it will be less than it should be.
While no one, with an ounce of compassion in them, couldn’t but sympathise with the mothers who were the victims of misdiagnosed miscarriages, the truth is that no matter how sophisticated the technology, once the human factor is involved, there will always be misdiagnoses because doctors are still human.
Everyone makes mistakes and when they do procedures need to be tightened up so that the risks of making mistakes, particularly in life or death situations, can be minimised.
But the difficult truth is that where the human factor is involved, perfect systems are unachievable. And all the complaining on Liveline and its burgeoning imitations don’t amount to a hill of beans.
Pretending that human beings don’t make mistakes or that foolproof systems are possible is not just fuelling the complaints culture but living in a fantasy world. Our experience of Murphy’s Immutable Law – anything that can go wrong, will go wrong – should alert us to the limitations of this Age of Discontent.
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