Forms and Dehumanisation

A common practice nowadays is filling out a form for just about anything you can think of. Schools, banks, contests, potential employers – just about anything will require you to complete a form. Even in emergency rooms everywhere, if you are lucid and able you most definitely will be filling out a form before you can continue with your treatment.

Understandably, you want to know more about the person in front you hence the need to fill in a form. The fields in forms typically request your usual personal information: Your name, gender, residence, date and place of birth are just some of the few facts one has to provide. Sometimes recent medical history is included (have you been hospitalised in the last six months? If yes, why?), and some companies ask outright about your criminal life (have you been apprehended for any crime in the past? If yes, please explain why in detail). Forms standardise data, telling us who you are, and who you’ve become. And, according to behavioural psychology, where you’re potentially going.

Yet at the same time it is a depersonalisation process. Your life and experience becomes merely a stat in someone’s demographics file. Sad, isn’t it? Your lifetime of efforts and joys and tears condensed into Please tick the appropriate box.

Then is the form truly objective in its assessment of who you are, being as it is dependent on tables and questions that are designed to place you in your particular box. What happens if you don’t fit their mould?

The far end of this adherence to forms would be the movie “Gattaca”. The protagonist begins life as a naturally-created being in an age where genetic perfection (through manipulation) has become the norm. As he does not fit the genetic bill he is deemed as a lesser member of society, worthy only of subservience to the genetically pure.

This scenario isn’t too far off. To a lesser extent it is already happening today. In many places paper meritocracy is in play, and in the struggle for commensurate livelihood many are left by the wayside. Many are found wanting if they do not fit the form perfectly – simplistic as that sounds.

Since we are using forms to measure one’s merit, would it be fair to state that a clear, standardised definition of true meritocracy is lacking? As objective and just meritocracy wishes to make itself it is still subject to who is deciding what is meritorious and what is not. If merit is subject to the interpretation of any one person, then culture also plays a big role in the constitution of merit.

Granting that there is a valid need to level the proverbial playing field, over-dependence on one aspect does not paint a fair assessment of any individual. More importantly, the assumption that stellar paper merit will limit your risks is false: Personal qualities will still dictate the long-term suitability of this candidate for the position at hand.

I don’t disagree with the basis for forms, but where are we taking it to? And where is it taking us?