“There are a hundred paths to heaven: 99 are for intelligent people, and one is for everyone else.”
Bruno Medicina

“The opposite of courage is not cowardice, but conformity.”
Robert Anthony

The Brutal Goal of Bureaucracy: Making You Replaceable

Do you know what the fundamental need of a bureaucratic structure is? It is to separate the function from the person, so that whoever holds a given position can be replaced as easily as possible. So, once the “job description” has been verified, it must be relatively easy to find a suitable person to fill that role. This gives rise to the need for a portfolio of diplomas, certifications, standardizations, resumes, and so on: the broader and more rigid the structure, the more replacing a person resembles replacing a machine part or a computer board.

The obvious goal is to prevent a structure from becoming dependent on a person’s whims or health. In this way, the system aims to function independently of the individual. A position held by someone who is impossible to replace would be a devastating situation for any organization.

Apparently, we must get used to the idea of standardization. Dressage, in reality, begins the day we are born: we learn to eat at set times, we learn to follow a standard school curriculum (where someone else has decided what is good and what is not good to learn at a certain age), we learn to stick to a schedule, to do our homework even if it seems pointless, and to conform as much as possible to what the system demands of us, knowing that any display of creativity or independent thought, any deviation from the prescribed path, will be severely punished.

20 Years of Indoctrination: The Creation of “Learned Disability”

After 15–20 years spent under such treatment, we are ready to enter the workforce; we have sufficient technical knowledge to handle what the system demands of us, and we are indoctrinated to the point of not questioning the system’s goals and rules.

To be clear, this is absolutely necessary for the proper functioning of an organization, and the more complex and efficient the organization is, the greater the need to keep individuality out of the performance of technical tasks. Imagine if, in an orchestra, a musician decided to act on their own! It would be an absolute disaster for the entire orchestra’s performance. And this principle applies generally to any organized system: a misaligned element leads to a decline in overall performance, and sooner or later, the individual will have to choose one of two paths: either they fall in line, or they will be eliminated.

The Orchestra Metaphor: Competent but Paralyzed

But the problem arises when “submission and the suppression of individuality” become a permanent behavior. Continuing with the metaphor, we can take the example of an orchestra musician—accustomed to playing under the guidance of a conductor and a score—who is then unable to improvise a simple melody on their own (you should know that this is exactly what happens in music).

Breaking the Cage of “Common Sense”

We are therefore so accustomed to submitting to rules and standardization, to habitual procedures, to common sense, to what everyone else does, to what our parents, teachers, and priests told us to do, to what the media, celebrities, politicians, and experts of all kinds—that we are unable to pause for a moment and ask ourselves whether what we are doing makes sense, whether we truly want to pursue a certain goal, and whether we have chosen the best method.

We consider certain aspects so “normal” and “mandatory” that we are unable to see the simplest alternatives.

So, we all crowd onto that one road to paradise where the whole flock is headed, and we fail to see the other 99 paths that would be available to us if we had the courage to question the beliefs that act as a cage for our minds.

How to Find the Other 99 Paths

I don’t want this article to sound like a call to anarchy, but as we strive to fulfill our roles within the various structures of our lives (family, circle of friends, company, team, etc.) to the best of our ability, I believe it is essential not to forget that our possibilities and potential energies are limitless, and that we can ask ourselves some simple questions about the situation we find ourselves in (Is this really necessary? Are there other methods? What happens if I don’t do it? How would someone else solve this? Who established the rule? Who decided on the goal? etc.). These questions may be the key to discovering at least some of the 99 paths available to us, but which we simply fail to see due to limiting thoughts, a lack of courage, and a lack of imagination.

Let’s remember that no genius has ever made a contribution to humanity by simply following rules and procedures.

Happy creating!

by Bruno