This is going to be a long winded post about everything and nothing. Well u get the drift anyway.
Nature has a kind of uniformity around it. It's very apparent that what appears to be a total chaos has an aura of uniformity clamped on it. And uniformity in turn is surrounded by total chaos. Right from galaxies to atom, the uniformity is pervasive. Planets revolve around a star and so do protons and electrons around a nucleus and so do nations around a powerful nation.
Scientists often peer in to the universe to catch the light waves emitted by galaxies that are just forming in order to understand how Milky way originated. What it tells us is that nature has a way of revealing its secrets. We just have to apply ourselves and look for signs and symbols. Now if by studying how galaxies are forming now we can deduce how our Milky way formed, we should be able to predict what will happen to our galaxy by studying another galaxy. The problem being we don't know which one we should be looking at. Let us leave that problem to the scientists.
With the above thought, that nature has uniformity and nature has solutions to every problem, being at the back of our mind let us turn to our society in general. In this planet we have nations that have existed for thousands of years if not more, and nations that are quite young. Now can the young nations reflect on what happened with the older civilizations and steer clear of possible causes of downfall. George Santayana said "Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it".
Four years ago, in my company, when a user needed some IT assistance on systems he can pick up the phone and call my boss who will then ask me or one of my other colleagues to solve the problem. It might be a new program or an old one that needs to be changed. It could be plain old COBOL or the brand spanking new, atleast for us, Visual Basic.
Fast forward now, the company has instituted processes and procedures. The user must call the helpdesk, who will create the ticket and assign it to a Business Systems Analyst and who then would sit with the user trying to understand the problem. His/Her interpretation would then come to the programmer for coding. There's process everywhere. Processes to identify broken processes and processes to fix such broken processes. We call it Paralysis by Analysis.
Again nature shows the way. Apparently its not in just my company. I look around and I see Intel struggling with identifying the next big thing, Microsoft struggling with their next version of OS, Dell floundering on who to sell their computers to. There's something common across all the strugglers. They probably instituted more processes. Steve Ballmer at Microsoft essentially created a big bureaucracy there so did Intel under Craig and Dell under a-later-Michael Dell.
What it points to is as the company matures it wants to organize it's desk and no one has perfected the art of organizing. Chaos is essential to come up with new ideas. Inventors are impatient folks. That's why we see Google's star ascending because, as for as I know, it lets its engineers to work on what they like. Google Labs is structured so that engineers spend 80% of their work on their own pet projects.
The process paralysis doesn't affect companies alone. Even nations are not immune to this desire to organize and suffer because of such organizations and processes. An organization has a clear hierarchy, a clear chain of command that makes a nation vulnerable to enemies. You manage to kill the top of the pyramid and the bottom portion runs helter skelter. That's why we see Hezbollah holding strong against Israel, Al Qaeda still on the loose. They have people coming in to the organization taking the place of people who have been hunted down by law.
Society suffers the most because of such organization. Again America is a prime example. The chaos four years ago was a nightmare for my management but we solved problems and users were happy. Now management has control but we are seen as ineffective department. Similary as society gets older it tends to settle down along some class lines. Today America is a young society. Anyone can become anything provided they have the desire and willingness to go thru the required pain. So was India thousands of years ago.
From being a totally chaotic society, India also started organizing. They created the varna system which identified and codified the people according to their occupation. Apparently people were free to change their occupation and hence the varnas. But as time went along this type of coidification solidified resulting in the caste system monster that it faces today. Is America today the India thousands of years ago.
I know people will laugh if reading the last line of the previous paragraph. How can a nation that is so advanced in every field that you can think of, be a microcosm of an decaying nation. But that's what nature tells me. Yes USA has great weapons, advanced science, a great university system etc etc. But remember Indians wrote kamasutra, built huge temples and other such architecture when the founders of USA were eating raw meat and never heard of the art of metals.
History repeatedly tells us that societies that prosper, be it Roman, Chinese, Egyptian or Indian has to fall down. What makes them fall down is the topic here. 2O years down the road will America be still looked upon as the land of opportunity and free, where ideas can be freely articulated and executed. The recent banning of stem cell research by the Govt. is a prime example of the codification that is taking place in this society.
For a society, to prevent itself from becoming a settled society with set societal rules, to be inventive it needs new ideas. New ideas are borne by people who want to come up in life. These are usually the immigrants. It appears that USA is now slowly closing its door on immigrants. The country no longer welcomes them, whether legal or illegal doesn't matter. For a stock market to keep going up needs fresh infuse of money in to it. Its gotto be new money. Similary for a society it has to a fresh infusion of thoughts. But the leaders of the current generation want to restrict immigration for whatever reasons which tells me that the nation has committed the first sin in it's decline from the top. It has already stopped fresh ideas from coming in.
Second is the takeover of society by backward thinking people. These are the people who swear by religious edicts and fundamentals. As pointed before banning stem cell research is not a loss to stem cell research. Its a loss to this society. The other big debate about evolution vs creation is another big harbinger of what is to come. Even in India, even in a remote village in India, a village will gladly accept that man came from primates. His religion doesn't dictate him to resist science. But in the so-called advanced nation science is a victim of religious brain-washing. Do you think the current strengths of this nation will help it to weather future downfall?
I have lived in this country for 10 years now, from 1996. The sprightlyness I used to encounter in people is missing. My bosses have changed over years and as they change I see a difference in their attitude towards everything. My first boss was like my father. We used to go fishing up in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was educated only till the 12th. When I moved to Portland, OR, my boss here was a graduate. But still he was one of the best in the company to work for. Even though he took great interest in my life and my family he maintained a distance. Of late I have worked for bosses who probably don't even know my name. Their only aim is to keep their job. They would even lie in your face to get things done and will not hesitate to fire you.
That's just not my personal experiences. What we consider good qualities namely loyalty, honesty, caring etc have been given a go-by in this society. Therefore the current material wealth this nation enjoys is just that. Its material. India thousands of years ago had the same material wealth that was considered as wealthy at that time. But that did not stop the society from getting in to a morass.
Now go back and read all that I blabbered about how nature has uniformity and solves problems. Here right now nature is showing USA, the prime example of how codification and desire to control people through organizing and bureaucracy has destroyed a nation. So what is the ideal amount of control that should be exercised to keep the creative juices flowing and to maintain the required amount of superiority for ever? I do have an answer and I will tell you if you can bring me the elixir of youth. Do you get the hint :-0)
Adios....
