Alec Baldwin And That Fatal Shooting
Incompetence, and how an unnecessary death occurred
Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed on the set of Western movie in New Mexico in 2021. The facts are debated by many who were there. He general narrative at this time was that a gun held by actor Alec Baldwin fired a live round while he was rehearsing a scene.
Baldwin has denied pulling the trigger and has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He is expected to go on trial in July.
The film’s armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was responsible for the weapons on the set, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
I don’t need to repeat a summary of the events so far. What really happened,and what happens so often in our lazy “whatever” world is incompetence.
What the world needs more than ever is clear intention and PEEPPASA, and there just isn’t enough of it.
PEEPPAASA — that which is Practical, Effective, Efficient, Productive, Precise, Accountable, Accurate, and Self-aware, is clearly lacking in the world.
With an understanding of PEEPPAASA a person can embrace an intention to do what needs to be done, and to do it well.
Often when a problem solver or decision maker is brought in by a community, a business or any organization for that matter, competence becomes key to getting things done.
The challenge for anyone in a leadership position within an organization is that they may be confronted by liars, cheaters, and incompetent individuals. This challenge is natural in any organizational culture that allows team members to rise to their level of incompetence.
This concept was articulated in the 1960s as the “Peter Principle” — A business concept originally presented as a humorous exploration of the slow rise of incompetence in middle and upper management. It was first presented in 1968 by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their popular book The Peter Principle.
It is the Peter Principle that caused that death on the set of “Rust”.
The basic theory is this: “Every individual if placed in a hierarchal organization tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence”.
In life, individual members of a group will seek to elevate themselves and in time will reach a level of incompetence. They will reach their level of incompetence essentially because they are ill-equipped or lack the skill required to complete the task expected of them. Often this incompetence will simply fall through the cracks until something catastrophic occurs as happened on the set of “Rust”.
The Peter Principle was not an original idea, but something about the book brought it recognition in the mass culture.
Dr. Peters was a trained academic, but his theory wasn’t based on statistics. It was based on what he had observed and gathered from those who preceded him.
Basic and simple in concept the book, “The Peter Principle,” offered a description of a natural, common process that takes place in virtually all groups and which often leads to their collapse, or to chaos. This is what occurred on the setoff “Rust.”
This concept of inevitable incompetence was greatly influenced by the work of Dr. William R. Corcoran. Dr. Corcoran observed that the principle of diminishing return could be applied to technology of virtually every type including vacuum cleaners and the evaluation tools used to manage change. Dr. Peters took this concept and applied it to human beings in groups. We can now see its application in the unnecessary death on the set of “Rust.”
In the end, if incompetence in the system is not addressed it will accumulate and critical mass will cause the entire system to grind to a halt, or produce a single consequential failure. If nothing is done to address the issue it will cause the entire system to ultimately collapse. That means many unnecessary deaths on many film sets.
Most of us have noticed or been affected by systems, especially in government bureaucracies, where incompetence seems to run rampant but the system seems to go on and on.
Some systems, seem to have unlimited supplies of money to prop them up while a new supply of competent individuals becomes available to complete the work left undone or done ineffectively by those who have reached their level of incompetence.
It’s easier to understand the world financial crisis that happened in 2009, the recent failure of mid-size banks, and the up-down randomness in cryptocurrencies. All of this can be traced on some level to incompetence and an understanding of the Peter Principle can clarify all this on a fundamental level.
Clearly whatever Dr. Peter’s intentions may have been when he wrote the book, what he jokingly called the “salutary science of Hierarchiology” has important ideas to teach us over and over again. In life, in any substantial situation, we need to assess our own strengths and weaknesses, our own competency, and incompetency. And the competency, and incompetency over those around us.
It might be said that the Peter Principle is a representation of some natural law. I think it is generally accepted that any function in any group will be used in progressively more difficult and challenging applications until it becomes dysfunctional and ultimately fails to function at all. Dr. Peter also observed what Dr. Corcoran had previously observed with technology and he applied it to humans. Today we can do the same in relation to Artificial Intelligence versus Human Intelligence.
With this ability and the wisdom that comes with the conservation and balance of our individual resources, an individual will usually resist the desire to stretch the capabilities of an object, the hierarchy, or their own capabilities.
The Takeaway
One thing to keep in mind is that virtually all humans do things out of habit. The only way to avoid a “knee-jerk” habitual response is to live life consciously. One of the major sources of unnecessary struggle in life comes from our doing things habitually. There is great benefit in making decisions consciously and with intention for by doing so, we are less inclined to do something a certain way simply because we did it that way before. If that had all been noted Halyna Hutchins the film “Rust” director of photography would still be alive today.
©Lewis Harrison, all rights reserved.
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