Umbrella A gainst Mistakes

I happened recently to hold a book titled Featik or The Man Who Makes Mistakes (featik means an umbrella against mistakes) “an honest tale of tears and laughter from mistakes.” The author — Sviatoslav Chachko, a scholar and Ph.D. in psychology — devoted his book to a well-known but still rather mysterious phenomenon: the permanent inclination of us all to make mistakes.

I don’t think people have found any comprehensive answer to the question of the sources of this organic human trait. It might have been instilled in us at the moment of genesis to deprive the king of nature of his absolute omnipotence. Or perhaps it was in punishment for the fall of Adam and Eve. On expelling them from Eden, the Creator must have told Adam not only to win his daily bread by the sweat of the brow but also to go and make mistakes. Whatever the case, human history is the history of mistakes, sometimes shameful and criminal, rarely noble and beneficial, but always dramatic. Scientific progress, discoveries, and the increased level of education and medical care have not affected this human feature in the slightest (for who can accuse animals of mistakes?). Still worse, as time went by, human error has led only to worse and worse consequences, posing a threat to the always increasing number of people and today even to the very existence of this planet. Suffice it to recall that most manmade disasters are the apotheosis of errors committed at the conception, manufacture, or operation stage of various sophisticated equipment and systems. The more sophisticated a system is, the greater the probability of error. It is no exaggeration to claim that Ukraine is living under the thirteenth sign of Capricorn, the sign of Error, for everybody around us on whom our normal life depends keep on making messing up. Mistakes abound in laws, decrees, analyses, forecasts, and reports. There is no better a picture in medicine and education. And what absolutely gorgeous mistakes bankers make! There is probably a law that makes a state’s prosperity vary inversely with the overall number of mistakes made by its citizens at home and work.

This is why I took such an interest in the book by the learned Dr. Chachko, a true encyclopedia of human errors. The author has collected and analyzed a great number of slips made in different countries at different times by such different people as emperors, philosophers, scientists, travelers, valiant knights, and fair ladies. The higher the social status of an individual, the more people suffer from his mistakes. The book contains an interesting systemization of mistakes: they are divided into Muddle, Forgetfulness, and the Mistakes of Analysis, Contempt, Solidarity, etc. (The latter mistake arises out of the human mind being often guided by what conforms to the common opinion rather than by facts and proper experience.) Among others, the book cites shameful, common, and purposeless mistakes. All in all, the author uses 846 (!) definitions of mistakes: from absurd to poisonous. He also singles out mistakes that produced something good; unfortunately, these are only a few exceptions to the rule.

What especially attracts you in Mr. Chachko’s historical, psychological, and technological pursuit is his humor, an unexpected look at ordinary things, and creative resourcefulness. The author’s extraordinary erudition (the erudite are still with us) allowed him to cite a wealth of examples. For example, an old rusted safe was found at a Yokohama dumping ground, from which an employee had forgotten to take 170 million Japanese yen. The staff of France’s nuclear power plants committed 86 errors in three years by pushing the wrong buttons. Sandra Evason, a British subject, was wrongly diagnosed and treated for cancer over seven years; she lost her job and her hair due to chemotherapy, and was deserted by her husband. In another place, highly-skilled experts failed to identify a work by Titian and thus lost huge money, let alone their reputation. A proofreader at a Leningrad scholarly publishing house put the title of a book as Leningraphy instead of Petrography (the science of rocks). The book contains many more interesting things, starting with the mythical Procrustus and ending with the practical problems of human errors at our nuclear power plants. Sviatoslav Chachko not only analyzes, classifies, and illustrates things but also gives professional psychological advice to keep us from one type of mistake or another.

However, I belong to the pessimists and think that mistakes are something like the weather which nobody can forecast exactly or change at will. Our mistakes are our habitat. Allow me to conclude with the words of Nikolai Gogol that the book’s author quotes, “The current generation sees everything clearly, wonders at mistakes, and laughs at our ancestors’ misunderstandings... While laughing, the current generation begins, quite self-confidently and haughtily, a series of new missteps, at which our descendants will laugh at as well.”