rgbrock1;
The notion of "understanding" has changed according to economic and therefore "cultural" needs from mere mechanical how-to, to knowing one's role but not knowing what is underneath the required adaptions we all have made. That change began around 1970 when the post-war economy began to be dismantled.
It is inconvenient to commerce to have, seek or require understanding beyond what is needed to be known about one's small participative-footprint within the larger system. The notion of "NTK" - Need To Know is an adaptive term, perhaps a euphemism, has been applied to aircraft since the introduction of the 320. When many of us began flying, we had to be able, from memory, to draw aircraft systems, draw complex terminal areas and know what made an aircraft tick. We had to know aerodynamics, high-altitude flight and how to draw then analyze weather systems. I knew captains who would draw the entire route weather, analyzing frontal systems in 3 dimensions and where the icing was to be expected. No longer. "Dumbing Down" is the label applied to what has happened since 1970 or so but because today we have "normalized the deviance" we accept that people can "talk on the surface" ad nauseum and be taken seriously as knowledgeable when in fact "flying" has become "managing" a machine.
Therefore, whether it is something as pervasive and institutionalized as a democracy, or whether the environment is an aircraft cockpit, one needs certain tiny, targeted pieces of information to function within the narrowly-defined band of competency, the exceedance of which is not encouraged in either environment.
Whether one comprehends what one is doing with a click of the mouse in a Windows environment, (especially in Vista
) or what is going on underneath the push of the ALT knob on the FCU of a 320/330/340/380 type is immaterial to the task at hand. In such an environment, one's knowledge is limited to, and is, "outcome driven", and is not "needs (comprehension) driven".
We can't change culture of course but we can, through philosophical approaches, comprehend the underlying assumptions of seemingly "stupid" behaviours and alter and otherwise tweak slightly these behaviours towards original-but-masked goals, in this specific case, towards flight safety.