Performative Liability Reduction
How we dehumanize ourselves through legal forms
Today I had a headache, so I took some off-brand Tylenol which had the following message printed in bold red letters on the large lid: CONTAINS ACETAMINOPHEN. ALWAYS READ THE LABEL.
I did not read the label. I took two, like I have for decades, and moved on with my life. But the warning bugged me. Did anyone behind the manufacturing of this product imagine that someone who even semi-regularly took acetaminophen would read the label every time before use? Surely no one is as delusional as that. It’s just not how humans work. We learn the proper dosage once and then forget the label. I understand the risks of acetaminophen; I’m not trying to downplay them, but I am trying to be realistic about how people use the drug. Nobody reads the label every time, unless maybe they have some form of OCD dealing with compulsions around labels. But that label isn’t an anomaly. All kinds of frivolous legal messages and warnings surround us. They take up our days. They commit us to things we’ll never realize. They sign away our rights without our knowledge. They force us to promise that we’ve read the document but they expect that we won’t, so they make reading the legal document inconvenient and annoying.
Terms of Service, Terms and Conditions, Privacy Statements, the End User Licensing Agreements, the list goes on. All these contractual statements we are pressured to make with the expectation that we will have no clue what we are agreeing to, that we won’t have the time or attention span to read them and that we won’t have the legal acumen to decipher them even if we did read them. All fair bets. The vast majority of us just click through. And maybe we run up against the details of one of these “Terms and Conditions” by posting the Wrong Sort of Post on social media, but otherwise, we have little idea what we’re signing up for. And they know this and we know this and everyone seems to be fine with the whole arrangement. We’re legal agents without functional legal agency.
I still haven’t figured out if it’s lying to say to a corporation’s automated system that you’ve read their incomprehensible Terms of Service which they don’t actually expect you to read. Figure that one out.
The point of all this is that our society is addicted to the litigious and the efficient, and that is a toxic combination. Instead, we should be driven by the just and the human. But we’re not. We’re hyper-fixated on reducing liability through meaningless contracts and warning labels (you could multiply the examples of ridiculous warning labels) and doing so in a manner that is most efficient, and therefore least concerned with the actual human person. It’s performative liability reduction, when what we need a human-centered law.
Some liability prevention actions make sense and are human-centered, like child-safety locks on medicine bottles. Sure they’re annoying for adults, but I bet they’ve saved countless lives. But a lot of liability prevention is purely performative, they are there to protect and justify the actions of the corporation regardless of its morality.
When I say “human-centered” I mean humanist, not as opposed to God, but as centering the dignity of the human person as made in the image of God. And that means not conning people into signing up for things they don’t know they’re signing up for, like using their social media data to train AI. God is still the law giver, but the focus of the law is to govern humans, and in that sense it’s human-centered.
I think this extends to medical practices as well. I don’t know how many times I’ve been in a doctor’s or dentist offices and felt pressured to sign some document for my procedure which I didn’t fully understand. No one told me that when I had my wisdom teeth removed that there was a chance my nerves could be severed and I could lose partial feeling in my tongue. But I’m sure it was in the paperwork. And it happened to me. So it goes.
Now you’re response to all this might be: “Well, why don’t you just take the time to read all these documents if it matters so much to you?” But my point is that the system is designed so that you don’t read the documents yet the documents have some measure of control over you. Even if I Take A Stand and read all the Terms and Conditions and make the nurses wait awkwardly as I parse clause after clause in the medical documents I’m signing, that still leaves everyone else. Because what I’m describing is not just a problem for me, it’s a problem in the way we are treated by each other in society. We dehumanize each other through legal forms. That’s my point. I can be as conscientious as I want about it, but it still doesn’t change the fact that the system is set up to dehumanize me.
I suppose this is a natural result of a low-trust society. The less we trust each other the more we’re going to turn to legal forces to negotiate our relationships. I’m reminded of the trend of churches who require non-disclosure agreements for staff who are leaving: low trust, dehumanizing, and liability focused. Not the sign of a healthy church, in my opinion.
I don’t have a solution to the problem of performative liability reduction. But I think it’s valuable to name it and its chief source: technique, the drive for efficiency at all costs, even the human individual. Maybe those of us in positions of influence can agitate for simpler, more accessible, and readable Terms of Service and related documents. Until then, I’ll keep clicking “I’ve read and accept the terms,” because what choice do I have? I have to use these tools. But when I do, I’ll note to myself that it ought not be this way. That this is a disordered way of living. And if I feel used as the user, I can acknowledge that the feeling is legitimate.
My headache is gone now. Two pills was just the right amount. I didn’t need to check the label.
I remember in the 90's there was a lawsuit against a company that marketed fire resistant pajamas. However, they were immediately flammable, and the child died. After that, there were safety guidelines and labels denoting exactly what that meant, and how the garment needed to be worn for them to work. (I was the homeschooled student who had to listen to talk radio instead of music.) I've always had that stuck in my brain as the difference between a lawsuit to make a difference, and a lawsuit to get money. There's now a law for it. Last year, a little girl in our county was killed while getting on the bus. The driver was young, distracted, speeding, and blinded by the sun. There is now a law that buses are not allowed to have children crossing the street. It might mean more work, it might mean more bus drivers; it DOES mean our babies are safer.
I can't read all the terms and whatnots because I actually cannot comprehend them (due to my disability.) However, like you, I feel that squiggle of guilt every time I skip past them. Some make you expand them out, or scroll the whole way down, which I do still without reading.
Society tries so hard to see the individual that they end up lumping them all together anyway.
As a nurse I always read the label, but I get your point. Thank you for covering such a wide variety of topics.