Lady of the Night - Maryam Sarah Javid

A girl ghostly white
Strode out alone into the night

Stillness prevailed there
No sign of any wind to blow away her despair

She appreciated a rose, its color light yellow
Was it also abandoned by its fellows?

She flicked it aside
A rose diminished of its pride

She came to a standstill
She no longer had the will
To let her thoughts spill

Frustrated she cried
Like a jilted bride

She looked up, darkness had consumed all beauty
The sky was darker than a chimney thats sooty

But she looked again and saw a beam
Then two, three, four more formed a team

No, the night was not diminished of its beauty
For four stars still performed their duty

NSA and Privacy

Thanks to Edward Snowden, the continuing and almost continuous drip of NSA revelations over the last few months has starkly revealed the massive erosion of privacy that has taken place in the last 10 years. This is a major and in my view massively negative development.

Our societies are built on an expectation of a reasonable amount of privacy. While all of us recognize that communal living precludes total anonymity, we don't expect all our conversations, messages, emails, thoughts, whatever to be accessible to total strangers. The expectation is that whatever aspect of our personal and family lives we choose to share is done on a voluntary basis. The freedoms that Western societies take for granted and that people in many parts of the world aspire to are contingent on this  minimum expectation of the levels of privacy available to us. When these levels are breached, people feel betrayed and violated. So why is this notion of privacy so important? The answer lies in the kind of society we want to live in.

Democratic societies have massive flaws. They can be paralyzed and even hijacked by determined special interests. It is a pure myth that they are by nature peaceful. Some of the most destructive wars seen on the planet have been launched by democracies. However, they are also inherently robust and stable. When they largely function as they are supposed to, they tend to allow space to the people living in them to develop their own opinions and be able to voice them in reasonable safety. There is a level of trust present between citizens and between citizens and the state that translates into all areas of social, political and economic life. This trust is present because citizens in such societies have reasonable expectations of privacy.

Quasi democracies, absolute monarchies, dictatorships etc. on the other hand are much less robust and stable. As a result, they are also largely paranoid. This paranoia results because the man at the top of the heap always fears for his position. These societies tend to to be intrusive and try to minimize or ideally eliminate all notions of privacy for their citizens. As a result, there is a much lower level of trust between citizens and between citizens and the state. This lack of trust is reflected in turn in all areas of social, political and economic life.

The actions of the NSA have breached this level of trust. Granted that all nations have a duty to protect their citizens from external threats and in today's society, these threats also emanate in the digital realm. But the response to perceived threats is totally disproportionate to its magnitude. The type of violence that most countries in the world face is not sufficient to threaten their existence. So when governments behave as though all threats are existential - in other words when they become paranoid - they act to reduce both the level and the expectation of privacy amongst their citizens. Inevitably, this will result in lower levels of trust among the citizenry which will ultimately impact all aspects of society. The paradoxical effect is that efforts designed to preserve cherished freedoms and a hallowed and traditional sense of society and of one's place in it will result in undermining those same freedoms and that sense of self.

Related articles

• NSA's Secret War Against Online Privacy Seekers (sgtreport.com)
• Edward Snowden and NSA (rihara09.wordpress.com)
• Privacy Matters! (singingsanoritta.wordpress.com)
• The Internet: The NSA Circumvents User Privacy (guardianlv.com)

Fitna

Fitna is an Arabic term that denotes a condition of chaos and upheaval. It is usually used to describe warlike conditions during which normal operations of a society are overturned and a condition of extreme uncertainty and fear exists. I use this term because there is no proper English equivalent for it and this term accurately describes the condition of the world and of humanity at this juncture.

For approximately 300 years, a paradigm of ever increasing "progressiveness" has been taught in our educational institutions and propagated through the media. The story this paradigm tells is by now very familiar. It is a tale of steady "progression"; of ever increasing prosperity; of increased sophistication in our world views. It describes a world in which each generation is healthier, happier, longer lived, more knowledgeable (and I can keep on talking in the same vein for quite some time) etc. etc. than the poor benighted souls of previous generations. In this story, the world is safe, secure and in many respects even predictable as compared to the past when life was generally speaking nasty, brutish and short. Each generation is thus more "human" than the previous one.

However, behind the shining, glittering facade of this progressive paradigm story lies a much darker reality. There is a state of chaos and uncertainty at all levels starting from global, drilling down through national right into local and personal. Everyone's lives in all corners of the globe have been touched by this chaotic and uncertain state, this fitna. There is massive income disparity and an even more massive opportunity disparity between different nations and different classes of people within nations.

These disparities have deep historical roots. Before discussing these roots, let me tackle an issue: why is the "progressive" story mentioned above so powerful and seductive? All paradigms need to be built on a kernel of fact. Without this, a paradigm is built on foundations of sand and will be quickly swept away even though it may seem to have a seemingly permanent hold over its proponents. The kernel of fact around the progressive paradigm is that it does describe a massive disruption that industrialization caused in the lives and mentalities of people. This disruption caused a sharp break from the experiences of past generations thereby resulting in a massive re-evaluation of old certainties and moralities. Over time, it also resulted in a massive improvement in the material condition of all citizens. Coupled with new philosophies and new concepts of morality and ethics, there was a conviction that humanity had reached a peak starting from a savage past. Viewed from this lens, all of prehistory and history becomes a march towards ever greater physical prosperity and new ideas about the human condition that render older thoughts obsolete. This was a wonderful new world and the benefits of the resultant civilization needed to be spread to all corners of the world. This provided part of the later impulse towards Empire in the West. Partly because of the factors discussed above, Western imperialism was unique in at least one respect: it sought to undermine local traditions and customs that were deemed to be "barbaric" and instead impose Western style institutions and customs that were deemed to be "civilized". So the whole process of industrialization resulted in massive disruption both locally and abroad.


So what does all of this have to do with fitna? Quite a bit. There were two major ideas that became increasingly associated with the process of industrialization. One was the idea of the inexorable march of progress highlighted above. The other was an ever increasing belief in the power and efficacy of "Markets". The second idea was kicked started by Adam Smith's seminal work The Wealth of Nations and was cemented by the obvious material prosperity engendered by industrialization. The two ideas combined over time and resulted in a third idea: that we can have infinite material growth despite living in a world in which many essential resources are finite in quantity. However, there is a problem with the third idea that was the child of the first two ideas. Where is the material growth going to come from? Ultimately, every economic activity (and indeed every non-economic activity as well) needs to serve some kind of need at an individual level. There are only two basic ways to ensure continuous material growth. Either increasing number of people participate in the "Market" or the same number of people buy ever increasing quantities. The usual solution is to have a mixture of these two.


The problem is that while the machinery of industrialization needs to churn incessantly. For this to happen, individuals need to be kept in a state of constant dissatisfaction and tension with their current condition and if people are reluctant, then the appropriate change needs to be forced on them. This type of thinking results in attempts to mold the individual into a particular stereotype. This is where fitna comes in. The consequences of this type of thinking will be explored in a later post.

Related articles

• If growth is the problem, why hasn't it been stopped?

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• Challenging the Selfishness Paradigm

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Poverty - A Poem

Poverty

A Poem by my daughter Maryam

Why do we complain about the unfairness of life?

We have been stroked by its handle, not felt its sharp knife.

Our hearts moan because we do not have the latest iPhone.

But have we stopped to see the cries of those without a home?

They come begging at our door, desperate for help.

But all we do is dismiss them with a rude yelp.

"Be not harsh to the orphan and the needy," says our Lord.

But some of us do not heed this and whip them with a steel rod.

Though the whole world we cannot feed.

We should not refrain from doing a good deed.

And prevent drowning in a pool of greed.

Disappearing Languages

One of the many homogenizing effects of globalization and the spread of Western culture is the steady disappearance of local languages in many areas of the world. A few languages are becoming global in nature while the rest are slowly withering away. Even the fortunate few languages are changing and adapting new vocabulary and forms. This ofcourse is a natural progression in the evolution of languages. A truly static language is a dead language.

The question is does this phenomenon matter? Does it matter if some languages disappear? After all no language is pre-ordained to exist forever. Languages evolve under a particular set of social, historic and geographic circumstances. They represent a particular outlook and a particular way of thinking. In this respect, they preserve a diversity of though processes and opinion at a global level. Therefore when a particular language disappears, a particular way of thinking goes with it. We end up with a sameness in thought processes. The reason this happens is that a particular languages imposes certain constraints on its speakers. It also emphasizes some elements and relationships. For example, in Urdu, there is a separate word for maternal grandmother, maternal grandfather, paternal grandmother, paternal grandfather, father's elder brother, father's younger brother and so on whereas in English, such fine familial distinctions are not made.

Again the question can be asked: despite all of the above, does it matter? I think it does. All societies constantly face new challenges and new sets of circumstances. People speaking different languages approach these problems and circumstances from different perspectives. If languages disappear so that only a few remain, then we will end up with a sameness in outlook. Lack of diversity can mean the difference between successfully forging a path into the future or getting stuck and remaining stagnant and slowly becoming more and more irrelevant.

Related articles

• How to save an endangered language (oup.com)
• 'Talking dictionary' could help dying languages survive (canada.com)
• Traditional Urdu could be dying out: Research (newsweakpakistan.wordpress.com)
• Mixed up meanings (lanternhollow.wordpress.com)

The Forgetting Pill

It seems that it is now possible to selectively erase memory. The discovery is being touted as a treatment for erasing painful memories. While the discovery is in the laboratory phase, it is only a matter of time before the treatment is offered to the general public. No one likes painful or traumatic memories. So a treatment like this one would almost certainly be taken up by a large number of people.

Should a treatment like this be used? This questions is related to another one: what makes a personality? All of us undergo many different experiences in our lifetime. Some of these are pleasant, many more are unpleasant and a few are downright traumatic. Generally speaking, we also do not retain all the memories of all our experiences. However, every experience, pleasant or unpleasant, helps to develop our personality. These experiences help us to become a unique individual. Over time, they help us to grow and mature mentally. Why is a person in their 40s generally considered more mature than someone in their 20s? The answer lies in the greater number and variety of experiences that the older person has gone through.

So the question becomes, what will happen to our personality if we start to selectively erase memories? What is the criteria for erasure? If experiences help us to mature, then surely erasing the memory of those experiences will cause us to regress. Will that not make us less than what we are? How will anyone grow or learn if unpleasant experiences can be easily and selectively erased? It is said that we learn from our mistakes. How can we learn if we choose to forget about them? I feel that this is an alarming development. Unfortunately I fear that all too many people will choose to erase memories that they consider painful. This will not enhance us as human beings. It will instead degrade us to become little better than animals living in a rosy haze.

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• Memory (shelvesandboxes.wordpress.com)
• The Forgetting Pill (neatorama.com)
• Erase my memories? (notoverit.wordpress.com)
• Learning To Forget (wired.com)

The Liberal Arts Major - Valuable or Parasite?

Do Philosophy or History or Literature majors have any role to play in society? Are these essentially luxury goods whose consumption is detracting from other, more "serious" majors like Physics or Mathematics? There is an increasing push to tailor education for commercial purposes. University after university has dropped or slashed liberal arts majors because they are not thought to be marketable. At the same time, the economy has become increasingly technical with a correspondingly higher demand for technically trained people.

This is not simply an academic debate. This is a debate for the heart and soul of a society. Economic growth depends on increasing technological skills. Thus universities which prepare future workers should concentrate on technical subjects. The problem lies in the increasing technological skills part. As the overall knowledge base in any field increases, it becomes more and more difficult for an individual to have an overall command of the subject. So perforce, individuals have to go for specialization. Even in this narrower area, developments are so rapid that there is a constant struggle to remain up to date.

Along with this rapid pace of technological change, a convergence of different technologies is simultaneously occurring. All of this is lauded as being unquestionably positive. However, these technologies are also having a major impact in the way in which we interact with each other. For example, social media has made possible connections with people whom an individual would not otherwise meet. There is greater and easier access to different types of information. It is possible to link up with friends using apps. Romances have blossomed and marriages have occurred because the protagonists met through Facebook or Twitter or email.

It is not just technological change that is occurring. There is rapid and massive societal change also occurring due to this technological change but which is also simultaneously feeding the latter. Social mores and values are being affected. The question is how do we determine whether these changes are positive or negative? Infact what do we mean by a positive or negative social change is a question that needs to be debated. So who is going to do that? The technically trained major? This person is taught a narrow subject. He/she is largely unaware of developments outside their area of expertise. However, this is an area where the "soft skill" majors do well. Liberal arts tends to train individuals to think, question, analyse and recommend. So the question actually should be can we as a society afford not to have liberal arts majors?

Related articles

• The Math Problem, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Liberal Arts (chrismarchello.wordpress.com)
• Technological progress not slow or steady, but superexponential (santafe.edu)
• 6 Cool Technologies That Will Change Your Life (businessinsider.com)
• What Are You Going to do with THAT Major? (ospreyaceadvising.wordpress.com)
• Terrifying Technology (leastevens.wordpress.com)
• Intended Outcomes for a Liberal Undergraduate Education (ericteske.com)
• Want to Make a Lot of Money? Don't Major in Business. (danerwin.typepad.com)

Government Deception

Governments deceive and hide information and activities from their populace. This is a given. They do so for a lot of reasons - some of them legitimate and others less so. National security is typically invoked for the governmental deception. Once an issue has been labelled like this, it becomes difficult if not impossible to debate it in any rational manner. Nationalistic emotions and fervour is quickly whipped up to stifle debate and discussion.

Every form of deception has costs associated with it. For individuals, these are to a large extent non-monetary but they are borne by the individual alone or by a relatively small number of individuals many of them unwittingly. Unlike individuals, the costs of government deception are borne by the entire society. Thus the US was sucked into the quagmire of Iraq on the basis of lies and fabrication. The trillions that have been spent and the billions that continue to be spent come from US citizens. Similarly, the entire Vietnam war was triggered on false pretences and accusations at the cost of a large number of deaths, traumatized survivors, large amounts of money and severe setbacks in US global standing. Infact the US continues to incur Vietnam related costs as it struggles to re-integrate traumatized survivors into the general society. More recently, the full extent of the banking bailout was hidden from the US population. Much more money has been spent in a so far futile attempt to shore up the banks than was publicly revealed. Again the cost of this is being borne by US citizens in both financial (in the form of enormous indebtedness) and non-financial (in the form of dilapidated infrastructure, lack of jobs, general rise in lawlessness etc.) terms.

The story is very similar elsewhere. In China, pollution data that affects the health of millions has been concealed. In India massive corruption takes place under the table. Large government contracts in developing countries are routinely signed not on the basis of national interests but because of corruption that is then hidden from the population. The effects of government deception are the same everywhere. A suspicious citizenry that no longer trusts its government, greater and to a considerable extent unnecessary impoverishment as resources are sucked into individual and corporate coffers, gradually rising tide of lawlessness and over time, a weakening of the state as important and necessary institutions are (often deliberately) hollowed out.

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The Modern Entertaintment Complex

The power of the modern entertainment complex, specially its audio/visual component is enormous. It is like a siren song: very hard to resist and equally hard to pull away. The modern entertainment system is both communal and atomic. A movie experience in the cinema is a shared one. However at the same time, since it is also passive, it is atomic: each individual is wrapped in their individual cocoon. Unlike say a theatre experience, there is no engagement with the audience. Similarly, a hit TV series will have millions of people tuning into the show at the appointed time. In that sense, the experience is a shared one. But at the same time, it is atomized since each person in sitting in their home watching the show. Music and sports are partial exceptions. A live concert or a live game is a participative experience. Everyone who attends a concert (or the game) has an individual experience. At the same there is a group dynamic at work which lends an added dimension and greatly enhances the experience. However, the vast majority who watch the "live" show or game on TV miss out on this particular element thereby reducing them to passive spectators.

People are inherently social. Of that there can be no doubt. The culture of each area is built through shared experiences. The very concept of a nation is built on shared experiences. These shared experiences at different levels help to build our individual personalities. We are not solitary creatures leading atomic lives. Why is solitary confinement such an effective punishment in prisons? If we are deprived of some level of social interactions, we wither. Yet the modern entertainment complex is geared towards an atomized individual largely denying the existence of the social component.

Today's entertainment complex is the modern equivalent of the bread and circus of the Roman era. The effect is identical: lull the mass of people into a stupor which prevents them from thinking too hard about the way the modern world is structured and run. Ever noticed how characters in dramas, serials and movies almost never watch TV or go to a movie? Invariably, they lead exciting, fulfilling lives without the need to sit down in front of a box and mindlessly stare at it. In real life of course, the big studios invest heavily into getting people to sit down in front of the TV or go into the cinema or tune into the "live" game. The time that is spent in this fashion, our minds effectively shut down. The soul shrivels a little bit. At the end of the day, there is a feeling of wasted time and wasted opportunity.

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Commercializing The Sacred

The Christmas season is upon us. People around the world are preparing to spend this time with their families and loved ones. They are also gearing up for their Christmas purchases. Over the years, this particular aspect of Christmas - this emphasis on the commercial side - has assumed greater and greater importance. Retailers look anxiously at this period for signs of lagging consumer demand. This is the time when a major chunk if not the bulk of their profits are made. A sacred and solemn occasion has largely been reduced to a singular aspect.

Christmas is not the only occasion that has been commercialized in this fashion. Other religious festivals in different religious traditions have been affected in a likewise fashion. These sacred rituals and traditions serve an important purpose. In an ever changing, fluid world, where today's values are overturned tomorrow, these are occasions that serve as anchors to stability; when we can take a break from trying to negotiate through a morass of ever changing values. Unfortunately, we live in an economic system that does not respect boundaries. The essence of the existing capitalist paradigm is ever increasing, ceaseless growth. The result is that occasions that should remind us of eternal values becomes a homage to the gods of commerce. In the process, we tend to lose sight of what is important and become fixated on what is trivial. How many of the presents that are desperately searched for each Christmas (or Eid or Diwali or whatever the occasion may be) will be remembered even a month from now?

9/11 Trauma

The effects of 9/11 continue to reverberate throughout the world. The event was a terrible tragedy which resulted in the murder (there is no other way to describe it) of thousands of innocents. Without doubt, this was a traumatic moment for Americans. The question is why is this event still such a major trauma on the psyche of Americans 10 years after the event?

America has faced far more dangerous and traumatic situations in its history. The civil war was a defining tragedy which played a decisive role in forging the nation. The two World Wars resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans under conditions far more terrible than those of 9/11 in New York. The civil rights movements had far greater implications for American development. Why then has the US reacted (and continues to react) so hysterically to 9/11? Forget about what the US is doing to the rest of the world. America has eviscerated its vaunted domestic freedoms; something it did not do during the Civil War when its very existence was at stake.

Why is the US population still afraid? What exactly is it afraid of? If the situation is considered objectively, the US is still the largest and richest economy in the world. It has the largest and most sophisticated military. No matter what its present economic troubles, there is currently no country in the world that can seriously threaten its existence or its integrity. Its way of life is in no danger of being overwhelmed by anybody. Indeed, the opposite is true. Other countries are afraid of the cultural juggernaut that is Hollywood. Its news broadcasters and other forms of cultural exports are eagerly snapped up by people around the world.

Given all this, why has a section of its population been demonised because of their religion? Why does the general population seem afraid of Muslims? Where is the fear coming from?

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• 9/11 Mental Health: What We Now Know About Trauma (huffingtonpost.com)
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Fear of Sharia

It seems that Western civilization requires an other; an outside enemy which is then identified to be implacably evil. Nowadays, that role is served by Muslims. Not only are Muslims and Islam in general under attack in a lot of circles, various aspects of a Muslim lifestyle are also under attack. For example, what exactly is so terrible about the niqab that the French (and other European countries) tremble in fear for their civilization? Or take the whole issue of building mosques. What is so terrible about a mosque that people are up in arms against their construction? Are they afraid that these mosques will serve as bastions of terrorism?

The current flavour of the month as far as fear of Islam goes seems to be the Sharia. Many people and organizations in Western countries see a sinister agenda that Muslims have of imposing Sharia law over their countries through force and deception. For many Westerners, Sharia is the proverbial big bad wolf out to impose harsh, punitive punishments for the slightest transgression. Most people in the West react in a visceral fashion regarding Sharia. The fact of the matter is that by definition, Sharia law is only applicable to Muslims. It is not, indeed cannot be applied to non-Muslims. In this respect, Sharia law is perhaps more liberal than secular law. The latter insists on its universal applicability; everyone must perforce submit to it. Sharia law on the other hand affects only Muslims. Other religious groups are governed by their own set of laws. So perhaps instead of non-Muslims being afraid of Sharia, it should be the other way round. Perhaps Muslims should be afraid of arbitrary imposition of secular law.

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The Success of the West

An enduring question for the last 500 years has been the historic and ongoing success of the West. Why has a tiny slice of the world been able to so comprehensively dominate global discourse? Many reasons have been postulated and a large number of books published on the topic. I particularly liked Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies and Ian Morris' Why the West Rules--for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future on this topic. The way events happened have complex reasons. It is difficult if not impossible to cite one cause or one set of causes as being responsible for a particular event. To ask why the West came to dominate the world to the extent that it has is perhaps asking an impossible question. Nevertheless, it is an important question as the multitude of books and research on the topic attest.

History is both personal and social. At the latter level, history is a dance of societies adjusting to their environment and to each other. Different societies have risen and fallen over the centuries in this continuous dance. Despite this, in nearly all parts of the world, there was an essential continuity as new societies arose from and in place of old ones; this continuity was reflected in the mores and customs of the new societies which borrowed elements from their predecessors. Until fairly recently, this was a natural process and a consequence of the dance of societies.

The great disruption to this process was the rise of the West and the concomitant offshoot colonialism. Western dominance has multiple causes all of which worked in an interlocking fashion. There is no single element to which this dominance can be ascribed. Recognizing this, historians have made an effort to identify the set of elements that worked together to cause Western domination over the last 500 years. Indeed, this effort is not a recent one at all. As societies around the world came under the rule of Western powers, there were increasingly urgent attempts to understand the causes of this seemingly unstoppable process.

So what kind of elements are we talking about here? One example is the historian Niall Ferguson who in his book Civilization: The West and the Rest identifies 6 killer apps (taking a metaphor from the computing world) that together were responsible for Western domination:

• Competition
• Science
• The Rule of Law
• Medicine
• Consumerism
• The Work Ethic

Why is it important to try and look at the roots of Western dominance? What possible relevance can a topic like this have today? As I have mentioned before, history and its study is exceedingly important. Today's world did not arise in a vacuum. It is the result of the interactions of the dance of societies in the past. While Western dominance was a great disruption to the natural evolution of different societies, the dance of societies did not end; it started occurring to a different tune. The cadences of the new tune were imposed by the West. For this reason alone, this is an important area to look at. Western domination also had important consequences when the process is viewed from a global level. These are consequences that are not often appreciated. Finally, tomorrow's world will be established in a framework defined by Western societies. That in turn has important consequences for the future and again for this reason it is important to study the elements that led to Western domination. All of these - the rise of the West and its causes, the consequences of that rise and the future effects - have an important bearing on us all.

Related articles

• Niall's Ferguson six killer applications (nickfatsios30.wordpress.com)
• Civilization: The West and the Rest (thewesternexperience.com)
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• Death of the west (whitelocust.wordpress.com)

The Purpose of a Nation State - II

Why are we still grouped together under nation states? What is the role of such an entity in our lives? A question like this goes into the heart of the current political arrangements and debates about the future of the world. There is no doubt that over time, nation states have developed a powerful emotional connection in the minds and hearts of the people living within them. There is also no doubt that nation states conferred a powerful advantage to those who developed them in the international sphere.

Questioning the raison d'etre of nation states can be tricky since this is typically a highly emotional topic. History has shown and continues to show that people are willing to undergo severe restrictions on their personal freedoms if they can be convinced that the nation is under threat. Witness the steady erosion of cherished civil liberties in the US since 9/11. The UK has one of the largest number of security cameras in the world; about 1 camera for every 14 people. This is a country that slowly and painfully developed parliamentary democracy and established modern concepts of personal and civil liberties and then extended these concepts around the world via the British Empire. The US in turn developed its own political and civil system because the founding fathers were strongly influenced by enlightenment concepts originating from the UK. In this regard, the US ows a strong debt to the UK.

Still the question now needs to be asked: what is the purpose of a nation state in the 21st century? There is one very important role that most nation states have fulfilled to some degree in the past and continue to do so: provide a safe environment for its citizens in which they can grow economically, socially and personally. They do this primarily by providing continuity of policy. Nation states do not often experience wild changes of policy and law. They also often have competing interest groups operating within them. This typically helps to counter arbitrariness. To what extent is this role still valid in an age of globalization where international trade treaties and protocols increasingly act as limitations on nation states?

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The 2012 Meme

The 2012 meme is getting increasing play as the end date of the Mayan calendar comes ever closer. Speculation abounds as to what will happen on or near the due date. Ideas range from a transcendental ascension to death and destruction on a massive scale and everything in between. These ideas have been around for a long time now but only fairly recently have they started seeping into mass consciousness. You know an idea has entered the cultural mainstream when school kids can have a knowledgeable discussion about it.

Most people tend to fall into two mutually exclusive and largely antagonistic camps regarding these alternative ideas. The skeptics camp peremptorily dismisses these ideas and memes as being fantasy. According to this camp, adherents of such ideas or even people who keep an open mind about them are running away from reality and retreating into a fantasy world. It helps that a lot of such ideas smack of conspiracy theories which helps the skeptics to dismiss them as fables. It also helps that there are a number of people who espouse genuinely strange ideas that cast a shadow over the whole genre; the most recent example of this being Mr. Harold Camping who famously proclaimed the rapture and the beginning of the end of the world on May 21, 2011. The skeptics are helped along with the "official" media which is also firmly on their side and largely tends to dismiss the 2012 meme and related ideas as being essentially absurd.

The other camp can be labelled as the true believers. Their attitudes are frequently conditioned by the fierce rejection of their ideas by the skeptics. These people have over the last decade or so been able to disseminate their ideas to a wide audience thanks to the worldwide spread and adoption (specially in the urban areas) of increasingly high speed internet access. The Net along with ever more powerful computers have enabled almost anyone to upload high quality video and audio on any subject they choose. A quick search on Youtube on 2012 or any subject for that matter  will quickly illustrate this point. The interesting thing about these ideas is that they are usually extremely well presented - frequently much better than the skeptics who have a tendency to fall into polemic.

Read both sides and one will think as if both are living in parallel universes. They frequently talk past each other and seem unwilling to listen to the other side's arguments. This is unfortunate because it is only through an open debate that wrong ideas get exposed and expelled from the mass consciousness.

Devaluing Education - III

It is impossible to predict in advance what type of education will be most useful later in life. That however has not prevented people from doing exactly this. The result as I have discussed before has been a narrowly focused educational system that excels at producing technocrats. What is the problem with that? This after all is the current requirement. All the market incentives are geared towards pushing people into a technically oriented education. Anything else is devalued with the consequence that potential students do not opt for such courses. The result is that increasingly higher educational institutions are closing down entire departments due to a lack of demand and increasing costs in providing the education to a shrinking pool of students.

This has several consequences. One consequence (that I highlighted earlier) is a gradual loss of innovation. This is perhaps a surprising conclusion. On the one hand, innovations build on previous ones. As knowledge progresses across many fields, ideas germinating in one area can fertilize another (sometimes completely different) area. As the body of innovation increases over time, such cross fertilizations become increasingly common. The result is an exponential increase in innovation which is exactly what we have seen in the last 10 years. However, for this process to work, ideas have to germinate across many fields. If there are barren patches amongst the productive ones, the potential for cross fertilization decreases. Furthermore, this tends to be a self-reinforcing cycle. Over time the barren patches become more so and effectively increase in size whilst the opposite happens to the productive patches. The result is that these latter become more and more isolated from each other. The scope for cross fertilization which is a necessary ingredient for innovation to occur deteriorates and the rate of innovation can actually slow down.

Another consequence of note is that technical innovation tends to run amok if there is no restraining influence. This influence is exerted by people trained in the humanities and arts that are currently being denigrated. Consider an example. The 19th century saw a series of amazing inventions. I would like to mention just two: the birth of the chemical industry and the invention of the machine gun. The former gave rise to amazing new products while the latter conferred an overwhelming military advantage to the Europeans over the rest of the world. Needless to say, there was quick and widespread adoption of both amongst the developed nations of the time. Nobody pondered over the full ramifications of both. These were highlighted by the horrors of chemical warfare and the mindless slaughter of millions on the battlefields of World War 1. Once a technology is invented or an innovation unveiled, it will be used. Sooner or later, it will be used for baleful purposes. If people end up being mere technocrats, they will be surprised when it is used for such purposes.

I read a lovely short story (called Profession) by Isaac Asimov that explores similar themes. The story posits a world whereby knowledge relevant to a person's career is literally downloaded into the brain. No need to tediously study for 18+ years. This was instant knowledge at the push of a button! Yet the question remained: where will the new innovations and inventions come from in such a scenario? Treating knowledge only as a means of acquiring material things or earning a salary results in such a scenario. We thus end up with an impoverishment of the soul that ultimately reflects back on our economy and material things. Small minds can conceive of small things not soaring projects.

Exponential Growth and Trends

Two trends started at roughly similar times and fed on each other: the dawn of industrialization and the beginning of formalized pursuit of scientific knowledge. Not only these two trends fed on each other, they were also propelled by an ever faster internal dynamic which in turn fed into the interactions of both. This means that both the process of industrialization and the increase in scientific knowledge are on an exponential curve. Both started slowly and then rapidly increased. Thus we see that the time taken for a scientific discovery to make its way into the classroom is becoming shorter and shorter. Similarly the time taken for a product or process or service to move from the lab into the hands of consumers is also becoming shorter and shorter. This is a blistering pace which is rapidly kicking up in gear as the effects of exponential growth kick in.

Where will this take us? At this point it is hard to say. The past is no longer a guide to the future and indeed has not been so for over 50 years. Each new discovery and technology has had enormous repercussions that have in some fashion radically broken from the past. The light bulb, for example, has enabled us to carry forward daytime activities well into the night. Not only that, it has encouraged new forms of activities and businesses that simply were not possible before. Night clubs are an example. No one will dance late into the night in candle light on a regular basis. High rise buildings are dark, dingy places without the lighting made possible by the light bulb. Without it, the number of high rise building that exist would be much lower. This has obvious repercussions for businesses and individuals.

The light bulb in turn depends on the reliable generation of electricity which requires an understanding and theory of elctro-magnetism. Thus a scientific discovery holds the key to an invention that other inventions and forms in turn depend on. A good example is computers. These machines have revolutionized business and personal interactions. Email for example is an integral part of the lives of large numbers of people. Email cannot exist without computers.

The TV is another example. Coupled with the light bulb, it made possible a new form of entertainment and information dissemination. Before the TV, people made their own entertainment which was essentially local. Now a vast industry exists for the sole purpose of entertainment. A new form of story telling has been invented that is immediate and compelling. Previously, information was also harder to disseminate. Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth would not be possible without the kind of mass dissemination that TV offers.

Airplanes have woven a web around the world that has made travel cheap and convenient. Not only that, it has made possible new types of businesses specially in perishable products. There is a thriving export market of flowers from African countries into Europe and the US. This is a type of business that is impossible without airplanes; flowers are simply too perishable.

As these few examples show, over the last 50 years or so, new discoveries and inventions have ever rapidly made the journey from discovery to the class room to the market. Each has caused a disruption in the fabric of our lives. Their collective impact has been such that our current activities and the things that we take for granted would have seemed incomprehensible and magical to our ancestors living just a 100 years ago.

What will our lives be like 50 years from now? What kinds of activities will we be engaged in? What will be our concerns? These and similar questions are pondered upon by futurologists. The scenarios they conjure are fascinating and often illuminating. Their analysis however has a fundamental problem. We tend to project the present into the future. We identify existing trends and project them forward. No matter how radically different the analysis may seem, it is at its heart a projection of current trends into the future. However, if the recent past should teach us anything it is this: the future is going to be completely and unexpectedly different. New discoveries can easily and very quickly stop current trends in their tracks and kick-start new ones. It is impossible to predict what these new discoveries will be like. What we can be sure of is that there will be big disruptions in our lives and possibilities will exist that we cannot even imagine today.

Related articles

• Big Idea: Technology Grows Exponentially (bigthink.com)
• Kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants: and regulation (clubtroppo.com.au)
• FutureMed: Healthcare & Medicine Migrate From Linear Growth to Exponential Growth (downtheavenue.com)

Interconnections

The world is holistic. There is an interconnectedness amongst all the systems that operate within it regardless of whether the system in question is natural or man-made. Changes in one area have often large repercussions in other areas that on the outside seem unrelated. An example of this is the current problem of the invasion of non-native species in many areas. Plants and animals introduced into ecosystems in order to control a problem or for aesthetic reasons have become major pests which require expensive and laborious methods to control. The problem is that we tend to treat each system as being isolated with little if any connections to other systems. Doing this simplification has generally served us well in a narrow sense otherwise the problem of analysis, design, construction and operation of said system otherwise doing so becomes too complicated.

Over time, we are slowly realizing the complications that arise from the interconnected nature of the world. Consider some examples. DDT was touted as a miracle pesticide when it was introduced. Its ability to kill off vermin was remarkable. Unfortunately, its ability to kill off other species, specially birds, was also remarkable. The slow disappearance of these species started having knock on effects that multiplied over time. Solving one narrow problem to the exclusion of other effects led to the creation of new problems that required solutions. Another example. CFCs were the solution to the problem of finding a stable refrigerant for use in fridges and freezers. Ultimately it was realized that these molecules were responsible for the thinning of the earth's protective ozone layer and in fact created the ozone hole over the Antarctic. Again not having a holistic view led to severe problems later on.

Consider a man-made repercussion. Why have a large number of Mexicans flocked into the US in recent times? Part of the answer is that these people were displaced from their farms where they used to grow corn. Why did this happen? Subsidized corn from the US flooded the Mexican market after NAFTA dropped trade barriers between Canada, US and Mexico. The price was so low that the Mexican farmer could not compete. Notice the connections. Farming subsidies in the US are evaluated on the basis of their effects on American farmers. NAFTA was supposed to bring the benefits of trade to all the signatory countries. The farming subsidies and NAFTA ended up displacing poor Mexican farmers from their lands. This led to an immigration problem in the US.

These are just some examples amongst many such. These were grand experiments that were carried out in real time. Even today, such experiments are still being carried out. Genetically modified (GM) crops are all the rage today. They have definite benefits. The seeds produce better crop that resists pests more effectively. What is unknown right now is what effect the interaction of these new crops with the rest of the natural world will have. Do not believe reassurances that there will be no effect. There will be an effect or (more likely) effects. What is unknown at this point is precisely what these will be like.

Related articles

• NAFTA Cost U.S. 700k Jobs, Report Says (huffingtonpost.com)
• Farm subsidies face $30B hit under GOP budget plan (sfgate.com)
• An Urgent Memo to the World (thenaturaleye.wordpress.com)
• When "free" trade trumps U.S. law (salon.com)
• A Liberationist Reading of United States Foreign Policy on Trade and Border Traffic with Mexico: NAFTA, Immigration, and Drug Violence (billwalker.wordpress.com)

Devaluing Education - II

The whole purpose of education is to make a better person. More caring, more empathetic, better able to socialize. This implies a clear emphasis on the non-technical side along with the technical side. What has actually happened is that the technical side has been strongly focused on while the non-technical side - the Humanities if you will - has been degraded. This is to a large extent a function of the reward system whereby people with a narrow technical degree reap large, if not insane, financial rewards and are lauded in the popular media as visionaries.

As mentioned earlier, this results in a stampede of students entering the flavor-of-the-month degree program. This has resulted in boom and bust cycles. When a large number of graduates in a particular area enter the work force, there are usually not enough jobs for them so students entering universities avoid that area. Four years later, there is a resultant bust as companies scramble to hire talent and the whole cycle starts all over again.

Apart from this, there is a major damaging aspect to this inordinate focus on a narrow technically oriented education. It encourages a narrow mindedness that discourages innovation. Every field develops a particular "way" of doing things; an orthodoxy. This orthodoxy encourages speculation and research in particular areas while ignoring others. For most purposes, this is actually a good thing since it focuses people. Unfortunately over time, the orthodoxy becomes stultifying generally without the participants realization. At some point, this will prevent people from exploring areas which may be promising but of which there is certainly no guarantee that they may be useful later on. Innovation thrives on the ability to ask questions and to go into areas that are currently considered silly. Orthodoxy on the other hand demands a focus on the safe. With innovation, we get radically new products, services and ideas that can have the ability to enrich our lives in unexpected ways. With orthodoxy, we get at best incremental improvements.

Why did Sony not come out with something like the iPod? The company had a major lock on the portable music industry thanks to the then ubiquitous Walkman. Why did it take a total outsider to shake up this industry dramatically? The same question can be asked about the mobile handset market. Apple was not the first one to introduce a smartphone. The device was actually pioneered by Palm. Why was an outsider able to shake up the industry to such an extent that the dominant mobile set manufacturer found itself having to dive off a burning platform into a cold, dark sea?

I set these examples to illustrate a point. A wide education (as opposed to a narrow, technical one) exposes people to alternate points of view and alternate ways of thinking. This exposure will result in a greater sophistication in personal mindset. It will enable a deeper, more holistic thinking. Instead of blindly accepting the current orthodoxy in a particular field, there will atleast be the ability to probe and ask questions. Who can tell what fruits may be reaped at a later stage from exploring an area that may seem irrelevant at that time. Steve Jobs, for example, audited a calligraphy course in Reed College. He later credited that course for introducing multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts in the Mac. Today we take these for granted but these were revolutionary things at that time. An apparently useless course resulted in major dividends down the road. Indeed the Mac gave birth to the desktop publishing industry so we can say that that course gave rise to a major new industry.

The point is that it is impossible to determine in advance what may be useful at a later stage. Casting a wide net will undoubtedly catch much dross. There will however be a few gems whose value will be realized later.

Related articles

• Apple's Big Success: Devaluing Everything (slashgear.com)