Customer Service as Post Modernism

I recently attended a training series put on by my government organization.  It seems that many in our department did not understand the bigger picture, the roles that people played, etc.  The intent was to describe what each department does and how we all work together.  I know it may seem unusual but I found it quite helpful since I am relatively new there.  It was a seven hour class done in 7 one hour installments, over seven weeks. 

In one session the speaker reminded us that we are all “customers” and that customer service is really important.  The comment took me back to my days as a sales manager at a mutual funds company.  I used to train sales reps in the idea that since our core funds were much the same as any other company’s funds what set our company apart was our customer service.  It wasn’t my idea but was management’s perspective.

“Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation."  From here.


Along with many others,  I feel that customer service these days is generally bad.  I remember when gas stations had attendants who pumped the gas for you, checked the oil, and cleaned windows.  That was service.  (Oregon  requires an attendant to pump gas; must be a min wage jobs program).  Today, good service has to be bought.  So, why do we talk about it so much?  I also thought, when did this focus on customer service take hold?  So, I did the usual and charted an Ngram of it.

Figure 1:  Chart of “customer service”, 1800-2008 (Google Ngrams, here).  Click on it to see bigger image.

Again, like much of what I discuss on this blog, we see in Figure 1 that the growth in usage begins in the early 1980s, with seeds planted a little earlier.  Thus, we had best consider that it is a postmodern idea.  See my earlier discussion on Ngrams and postmodernism, here.

Postmodernism is a very social perspective.  One of its basic characteristics is the emphasis on social over mental endeavors, the social interactive over the abstract.

Next, I wondered what had preceded the concept. What was the modernist concept that customer service replaced?   It would have to be something more abstract and maybe product or company focused.  I cannot come up with another word or phrase that seems to have fallen in use.   Is customer service a new idea?

Please let me know. 

The Modern Period as Cultural Takeoff

 It seems that I am constantly revisiting my own past.  For this essay I am digging out an old paper from 1995 called “Studying the Modern Period” [1].  To understand postmodernism, or as I prefer to call it, 21^st century romanticism, it is important to place it into a larger cultural context.  And that context is the Modern Period (MP).   Within the MP twentieth century modernism (ca 1890-1990) gets followed by postmodernism (ca 1960-present) with the overlap being the Awakening.

And yes, in broad terms, there is a fractal relation between the MP and its sub phases.  The MP is generally Apollonian, although some of the sub phases can be strongly Dionysian.

Inside the MP there are three important cultural cycles operating.  These are:

    1. The cycle of Apollonian, Awakening, and Dionysian phases.

    2. The cultural seasons cycle—Awakening, cultural high, culture wars/unraveling, and secular crisis. 

    3. The generations cycle—prophets, nomads, heroes, artists.

These are the rhythms of American culture.  I have previously discussed 1 and 2.  The generational model is still to come; it is based on Strauss and Howe.

I use the term period in the archaeological fashion.  It is a box bounded in time and space.  The time covered is roughly the mid 15^th century to the present.  The space starts out being Europe, including Russia, and then rapidly spreads globally.  Today the influence of Western Civilization is found everywhere.  I’m not saying it is dominant everywhere but the influence is there.

This is not a Eurocentric perspective (culture warriors bite your tongue).  I am looking at cultural changes on a large scale and one cannot ignore the 800 pound gorilla during the period in question.  In North American archaeology there have been several cultural expansions that have been studied.  In the west there is the expansion of Uto-Aztecan speaking peoples out of Mexico into the US desert west and inter-mountain region, leading to a Numic Spread, concluding in the Shoshonean migration onto the plains, the last wave being the Comanche.  There are similar studies done on all the major Native American language families. 

Similarly, Alaska has long been a cross roads for expanding cultures.  In the late 1800s Americans from the lower continent went north into the gold fields and turned the land into an American territory.  Prior to that Russians had moved across Eurasia into N America in their pursuit of furs.  Prior to that Aleuts had come across from Asia. Prior to that Eskimos had come across and they got all the way to Iceland where they fought the Norse.  Prior to that Athabascans had come across and some moved south all the way to deep Texas to become the Lipan Apache.  And, of course, archaeologists debate the number of and timing of prior migrations.  The important idea is that these migrations changed the cultural landscape significantly.  They were transformative processes affecting certain regions.

Not all explorations or cultural encounters are transformative.  The Norse briefly had an outpost in Newfoundland (here) and the Polynesians appear to have hit the California coast and left a small bit of cultural “diffusion” upon the Chumash and Gabrielino (here & here).  But no one will claim these events to be transformative processes.  

The European expansions during the MP have been transformative in that wherever Europeans went they significantly changed the cultures that they encountered.  On some continents they completely overtook the native populations (N and S America, Australia) while in other areas they spread their influence but could not completely dominate (Afghanistan, China, Japan).   European languages (English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch, German, and Russian) were spread all across the globe, and all that comes with it, religion, material culture, politics, etc.

The European expansion was a global process, not one confined to certain regions. There is no evidence that Neanderthals made it to N America or that the Mongols rode their ponies here.   Only the European expansion touches all corners of the world. Thus, it has to be viewed as the largest expansion in human history.

Moreover, the expansion was fueled by and still carries with it incredible cultural change.  From the perspective of cultural evolution, the transformation of the world in the last 500 years is equal to or greater than the domestication of plants and animals during the 4000 years of the Neolithic Revolution.  As I wrote in 1995:

The Modern Period is characterized by rapid cultural change.  In evolutionary terms the last five hundred years can be described as a period of "cultural takeoff” [2].   No other period in the human time line has the pace, scale and intensity of cultural development than does the Modern Period.  The world changed from consisting of fragmented local and regional economic, political, and social networks to being interconnected via international ones.  During this change, many new ideas and ways of life were created, to include:  progress, science, specialization, industrialization, humanism, professionalism, capitalism, communism, development, underdevelopment, advanced technology, the nation state, individualism, democracy, rationality, and modern medicine; just to name a few [pp. 119-120].

Rapid cultural change is the defining element of the MP, not capitalism, not science, not technology—those are fuel for the flame.   Within postmodernism there are those who call hyper-modernism progress thinking that they are continuing the tradition of modernity.  Others see it as being on a roller coaster ride that is impossible to exit.  The endless ups and downs stress the psyche and soul--it is a distortion of compressed time and that life  is no longer experienced at a human scale.  Not everyone enjoys it. 

At the macro level the postmodernism critic is like the break-man leaning hard on the break to slow down the express train, hoping to avoid a train wreck of humanity.  Arthur Versluis defines anti-modernism in this way:  It is…

the awareness of decline.  If the essence of “modernism” is progress, a belief that technological development means socio-economic improvement, the heart of antimodernism is a realization that “progress” has an underbelly—that technological industrial development has destructive consequences in three primary and intertwined areas:  nature, culture, and religion

The warnings of the antimodernists are often dire, but the best among them also affirm a vision of a better society—a more ethical way of life—and remind us of our spiritual purposes and responsibility.  Antimodernists, far from representing a purely negative or pessimistic current, advance a critique of the society in which we live in order to call us toward a better one. Our future quality of life, perhaps even our survival, may depend upon whether we begin to heed their warnings [3].

Those are fine words.  However, 21^st century romanticism has been a trickster.  Instead of giving us a break it has rushed us further into hyper-modernism and excessive greed.  It's Apollo on steroids. Western Civ is insolvent (here) and those who pay attention get only lies.  Instead of being wise and ethical Dionysus is on a rampage under the illusion of Rational Man. 

And yet, I’m hoping that the “best among them” shows up soon, in force, because we could sure use some ethics in today’s corrupt world.

Notes

1.  L. Moore, Studying the Modern Period: Expanding the Perspective of Historical Archaeology, Journal of Middle Atlantic Archaeology 11 (1995): 119-124.

2.  The term is generally attributed to Marvin Harris who uses it in many publications and in several ways.

3.  Arthur Verslius, Antimodernism, Telos 137 (2006): 96-130.  Quotes on pp. 98 and 130.

A Gala of Google Ngrams (updated)

OK, so I have been working on a couple essays about modernism, but as usual I got distracted.  The Google ngrams  (here too) caught my attention this week so I had to play with them.  Here are some of the cultural periods I have been discussing based on word searches [1].  Remember, these charts reflect how popular certain words were during the selected time frame. Click on a chart to get a bigger image.

Update 01/08/11: I redid all the charts using the word eat as a base line.  Also, I added a few more charts so the gala is now more a gaggle.

In the 17^th century “age of faith” people liked the words faith, love, and heart. Certainly, a passionate era.

 

 

The 17th century was a soulful era too.  The 18th was not.

Was the 18^th century an “age of reason"? Apparently not. But they liked thought.  Reason was popular before and after the 18^th century.  I guess that spike in the very late 18th century has to do with somebody writing a book called "the age of reason".

The discussion of the Enlightenment started circa 1825. The study of romanticism began in the late 19th century and then died down. Neither seem that important compared to the basic idea of eating.

Modernity and post modern are both, well, modern and post modern. Our culture war seems so irrelevant.

 A close up of the culture war. Note the change in scale from the above chart.

 

Intuition continues to slowly build like the Old Master that it is.  Meanwhile the upstart rationality has shot its wad as the young genius that it was. Now we can focus on really understanding our world, intuitively and deeply.  Yes the Age of Intuition has really begun.

But, will intuition ever overcome our basic need of eating the way science has done?

 And people wonder why the religious folks are angry at science.  Science the usurper.

All fun aside, I remain skeptical about the Ngrams tool.  I used a similar technique for my essay on reflexive archaeology [2]; there I did word counts using Google Scholar for the word reflexive.  You must understand that words change meaning and nuance, and that when they change meanings their popularity within a culture can change significantly.  Reflexive was a special linguistic and mathematical term, then the psychologists used it, and then it became quite common among educated people.  That change happened in the 1950s-1960s when the meaning expanded to cover all types of self referential and collateral relations.

Therefore, use the Ngram tool wisely and don't take the charts at face value; dig behind the numbers to really see how words, ideas, and cultures change.  Charting a few words is the beginning of a study not the end.


Notes
1. I have used the period 1500-2008 as a base line.  The corpus is English (both Brits and American), and the smoothing is 3; non capitalized words. See here.

2.  "Toward a Still and Quiet Conscience: A Study in Reflexive Archaeology," North American Archaeologist, 2001, 27(2): 149-174.

Cubism: From Moderation to Excess

         The Progressive Era (aka the Third Awakening, ca. 1890-1920) was a great quest for order after decades of romanticism.  Modernism would sweep in behind it and dominate most of the twentieth century.  Let’s take a look at some of the key designs, ideas, and values of Modernism.  They basically include linearity, geometry, squares, and rectangles. Balance and equilibrium are also important ideas. 

      At the turn of the 20^th century artist Pablo Picasso began a new art form called Cubism where “artworks, objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form—instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. Often the surfaces intersect at seemingly random angles, removing a coherent sense of depth. The background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create the shallow ambiguous space, one of cubism's distinct characteristics” [1].  As typical in an Awakening, cubism was a hybrid style--Apollo abstracting Dionysus.  This gets inverted 75 years later.

    

                                                                       Picasso 1910

     
     Cubism was just one trend that was signaling that another Apollonian era was emerging.  That trend was Modernism with its love of straight lines and angles.  In Architecture the German Bauhaus school would soon put its stamp of order on the world.  Many of its practitioners would move to the US in the 1930s and influence designs here. See the design below. 

                        Johannes Itten, 'House of the White Man - Architectural Study' (1921) [2]

     After World War II, as the middle class began expanding, there was a need to build small inexpensive homes all across the nation.  Architects and urban planners began building planned suburbs such as Levittown, PA and the many Capehart and Wherry housing tracts on military installations.  The ranch style became one of the more popular home styles in the US.   These small, modest homes are all variations on cubes and rectangles. 

                                        Wherry style home, Elgin Air Force Base, CA. [3]

     During those years plaid clothing was common.  People also used phrases such as “he’s square,” “he’s straight,” and “He’s a straight shooter” to complement someone. (A straight person is honest and has integrity; a crooked person doesn't).  Later, during the Fourth Awakening and after, people who had once been complemented in such a manner would be criticized for being “uptight” because they were viewed as being overly controlled and “emotionally repressed.”  Loosen up man.

                                                                              Plaid shirt

     The closing years of Modernism saw a great deal of beautiful architecture that offered simple and elegant designs.  The glass office building with its repetition of cubes and rectangles was the high watershed of Modern architecture.  In every day puzzles, the Rubik’s Cube (aka Rubix cube) was the ultimate game.  Below we see some nice lines and geometry.

                                            Towers of Bella Terra, Orange County CA [4]

     Even before Postmodernism got moving in the 1980s there were some early examples of Dionysian excess.  One art style is called Op Art that uses simple Apollonian lines and geometry to create eye dazzlers.  Here is one piece by American artist Richard Anuszkiewicz.  The Op Art movement is typically viewed as being an outgrowth of the Bauhaus school.

                                                           Richard Anuszkiewicz 1961

     Currently much new Romantic architecture is basically about embellishing the Modernistic standard.  If glass buildings were elegant then they also need to become opulent with more detail and materials, and they need to be contextualized (mimicking feng shui) to their environment.  Here is the MacAllen Building & Condominiums in Boston MA, built circa 1999.  It is described in this way:

                                      MacAllen Building & Condominiums, Boston MA,1999

“On the western end, the building responds to the highway with a curtain wall yielding panoramic views for the residents inside the building. On the eastern end, brickwork mirrors that of the residential building fabric, extending the logic of the storefront and pedestrian scale elements on that facade. On the north and south facades, bronzed aluminum panels reflect the industrial neighborhood component and express the structural system organization.”[5]  I think it has a nice mild eye dazzler effect.

     “Often post-modern architecture is referred to as neo-eclectic, essentially representing a revival of period styles for houses, and an unending variety of forms and sleek, asymmetrical designs for commercial buildings. Post-modernism is based on several reactions: a rejection of modernist thought; a return to traditional, historical precedents; and a re-awakened interest in history and heritage.” [6]. 

     And often it is just unpleasant to look at—not because they are eye dazzlers, but because they are ugly cubicles and rectangles.  Eventually, our new Dionysian era will stop anchoring itself to Modernism.  When it does hopefully we will be inspired by new forms of beauty.  Meanwhile all I can do is try not to cringe at the sight of such crap as below. And this crap is being built all over the west coast. Please stop. 

                                                       Neo Eclectic Hotel, Fullerton, CA

This essay is now fairly popular.  Please also see:

Modernism and Romanticism: A Visual Aid

Apollonian and Dionysian: A Visual Aid

Notes:

1. Quote and Picasso photo found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubism.


2. Picture found at http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/tablog/entries.en/2008/02/bauhaus-strikes-a-domestic-chord.html.

3. Picture found at http://www.eglin.af.mil/photos/mediagallery.asp?galleryID=7968&?id=-1&page=1&count=48.

4. Picture found at http://huntingtonhomes.ocregister.com/2010/02/12/office-towers-to-get-a-loan-mod/84557/.

5. Picture and quote found at http://www.architecturesdesign.com/2009/11/25/modern-macallen-building-condominiums-by-office-da-architecture-firm/.

6. Quote and photo from http://www.fullertonheritage.org/Resources/archstyles/postmod.htm. Not all post modernism rejects Modernism; as I've been saying, it often embellishes it.