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?

Related articles

• 9/11 Mental Health: What We Now Know About Trauma (huffingtonpost.com)
• Human Resiliency and Trauma (bigthink.com)

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)
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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.

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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.

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Devaluing Education

What is the value of an education in humanities? Nowadays, the answer is not very much. People are far more inclined towards technocratic degrees. Thus we have a large number of people interested in getting a degree in business or a degree in computer science but relatively few people interested in getting a degree in say philosophy. Why is this?

Mainly this is a factor of economics. The jobs market simply does not value a philosopher as highly as it does a banker. The reward system thus transmitted is very clear. Get a (strictly) technical education and reap the benefits. Do something else and you will be flipping burgers for the rest of your life. So students flock to whatever is the degree flavor of the month. In the late 1990s, the internet boom and its associated hype was at its peak so everyone flocked to obtain a computer science degree. A few years later, the boom collapsed and finance became the flavor of the month. So there was a general stampede for the exits and into finance. Earlier still, an MBA had become the flavor of the month. Consequently, there was a uptake in business administration programs. At one point medicine and engineering were hot and whoever you talked to wanted to become a doctor or an engineer.

However, there is a rather large fly in this particular jar of honey. As mentioned above, potential students get a clear cut message: get a technical education and reap the rewards. What is left unstated is that the rewards will depend on demand and supply. The problem is that as the herd of potential students stampedes into a particular discipline, the supply of graduates in that discipline increases dramatically. Unfortunately, in most cases the demand for such graduates does not increase commensurately. This happens even if there is a bubble in that particular area. As a result, potential employers are in a position to pick and choose. This reinforces the hold of the elite institutes like the Ivy Leagues as their graduates tend to be strongly preferred over graduates of other less exalted institutes even if the latter have greater knowledge than the former.

So we have a problem of a large number of highly qualified (if in a relatively technical sense) individuals looking for work. The kind and level of jobs which previously a Bachelor graduate would get are now getting Master's graduates. So the Bachelors degree has become in a sense useless; simply a stepping stone towards getting the Master's degree that will get the sought after job. As the number of such graduates has increased, this devaluation of the Bachelor's degree has started to affect even the top tertiary institutes. The end result of this rather skewed incentive system is that students are being pushed into certain areas at the expense of others.

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Connections

The future is made of and affected by decisions made in the present just as the present is a product of decisions made in the past. Nothing happens in a vacuum. There is always a context within which events and trends occur. These decisions are made at an individual level as well as at a collective, usually subconscious level. Till now, the present has always been understandable in the context of the past. All the major trends and events to-date can be traced and understood via events and decisions in the past. Events, trends, technologies are often connected in surprising ways.

For example the profession of a social media marketer was simply not possible before the rise of social media sites like Facebook and 4Square. These sites in turn depended on both the widespread availability of the Internet and the mass roll-out of high speed connectivity. This widespread availability of the Internet in turn depended on creation and availability of the appropriate networking technology which needed the development of the appropriate protocols so that different devices could communicate with each other. All of this was driven by the desire of the Pentagon to create a robust communications network that could withstand a full scale nuclear attack. However this desire was necessitated by the Cold War and the development of nuclear weapons; the latter in turn had been developed as a result of World War II when it was feared that the Nazi Germans were on the verge of creating them. So we can clearly see the connections between a modern profession (social media marketing) and seemingly disparate events and decisions made in the past.

The interesting things about the connected nature of the world and how it develops is that no one can predict how technological change will proceed and since that is not possible, it is also not possible to predict the future shape of society since social developments are heavily affected by and in turn themselves affect technological change. For example, in the early 2000s, no one was concerned about the privacy impact of social media simply because said media did not exist. Now, there is discussion about how Facebook will impact and drive social change specially among a generation that has grown up with it. Five years from now, we may well be discussing the impact of some technology that is no one is aware about today. Decisions are made today without knowledge of what the ultimate impact will be. Incidentally, this aspect has been explored in a wonderful BBC series called Connections which highlights the surprising connections between developments in the past and the development of modern technology.

As the series also highlights, there is a corollary to a connected world. Over time, the number and nature of connections will deepen as disparate developments take place and start to be used in other contexts and in ways never anticipated by the original developers. This increasing interconnectedness will in turn drive this process further and faster. As a result, the pace of change will quicken over time and in fact this is what can be observed as well: the pace of change has increased dramatically over time, specially in the last 100 years. What is more, there is no indication that this pace is slackening. Infact, it is accelerating. This has profound implications for social and personal developments and this brings us straight to the concept of the Singularity in the human context (which will be the subject of a later post).

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The Seduction of Power

Power of any sort is the ultimate seduction. The cliche is that power corrupts. I believe, it does not corrupt so much as it seduces. The form, level and amount of power does not matter. Most people think of financial corruption when they think of the corrupting influence of power. However, what usually proves irresistible is the urge to use this power to massage the ego.

Consider bureaucracy. No organization can exist without some form and level of bureaucracy - a point often lost in all the bashing that this institution endures in the popular and business press. Thus every entity regardless of whether it is a private institution or a public institution has some sort of bureaucracy. This is true irrespective of whether the institution is in a developed country or in a developing country. However, there are twin evils of a necessary institution - petty bureaucracy and red tapism. We all suffer from these two facets and all of us without exception decry them. But at its heart, what is petty bureaucracy and red tapism. The ability of the bureaucrat to exercise this power in a fashion that stokes his or her ego. This person can be morally upright, intelligent and diligent and still exercise his given power in a fashion that demonstrates to others exactly how powerless they are. This is a seduction of power.

Most high officials in organizations are offered varying degrees of protocol. Thus for example, the CEO of a private company can have the use of a company jet. A judge may be offered say a police escort. All traffic may be blocked for the passage of a president or a prime minister. At first, there may be feelings of gratitude and a sense of humbleness. Many times people in such positions come from more humble backgrounds. Very quickly however, these things are taken for granted. Indeed there is a feeling of outrage if there is any talk of revoking such perks. Why? These things massage the ego. They whisper to the concerned person "You are better than the rest. These are your natural rights because you are so superior and so important. Yes traffic should stop for you. You do important work while everyone else basically loafs around." When this mindset develops, these perks mentally morph into inalienable and essential rights. This is part of the reason why US automobile executives flew into Washington in the aftermath of the 2007/2008 financial collapse despite the fact that their companies were basically bankrupt. This factor is also partly why they were so bewildered by the harsh criticism that they subsequently endured.

Why can you not afford to argue with a police officer who stops you for a traffic violation? The officer's ego is all too often tied up with the exercise of the power that he has to stop and check a vehicle. Any roadblock to the exercise of that power hurts his ego and makes him all the more determined to impose his will over the hapless driver. Whether the driver was actually guilty of a traffic infraction is besides the point. This is how power seduces. The police officer has been allowed a limited form of power but that in his mind makes him a cut above the rest. At higher levels where the power allotted is greater, this factor is all the more important. This could be why people in the higher levels of a hierarchy (regardless of whether the hierarchy is in the private sector or in the public sector as I have mentioned above) behave in an arrogant fashion without concern for other people. In their mind the power that they have (which typically is only because of their position) makes them better than the rest. The longer they are in their position, the more rightful are the perks and privileges that they have. This is the seduction of power.

Related articles

• The Seduction of Intellectual Acuity (afeatheradrift.wordpress.com)

Hypocritical Attitudes

The head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn is accused of molesting a hotel employee. The former governer of California and the fearsome Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger admits to fathering an illegitimate child with a member of his staff. Singer Chris Brown is accused of assaulting fellow singer Rihanna. Charlie Sheen has a spectacular meltdown which is all over the news. Some members of the clergy in America are apparently unable to keep its pants zipped up. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is accused of frolicking with girls young enough to be his grand daughters. South Carolina Governer Mark Sanford flies off to Argentina to visit his mistress without informing his family or staff.

Are these people nuts? They seem to think they have a right to behave in any fashion they see fit. These people really seem to believe that normal rules of conduct, decency and morality do not apply to them. And then they have the cheek to lecture the rest of us on issues of morality! The examples given above are taken from developed countries. Developing countries have much more egregious examples of public figures behaving abominably privately while donning a public mantle of morality. For example, members of the Saudi royal family are famous for hijinks abroad while maintaining a puritanical state domestically. It is this mismatch between private behavior and public posture that outrages. These figures seem to consider the rest of the population no better than children who must be admonished about proper behavior. This is an insult to our intelligence. It is also rank hypocrisy.

Related articles

• Strauss-Kahn arrest: Even the French are dismayed (csmonitor.com)
• Schwarzenegger Marriage Terminated After Fathering Child With Household Staffer (chicagonow.com)

Technology and Blogger Downtime

Blogger recently went down for about 20 hours or so during which no posts could be published. This was without doubt a great inconvenience. Unfortunately this was not the end of it. When blogger finally came back online, I discovered that my last published post had disappeared. I waited over the weekend hoping that Google will be able to recover it but alas it was not to be. I am forced to conclude that this post is irretrievably lost in the wilds of cyberspace. I like to think of this vanished post as my lost little child crying for help all alone in the cyber wilderness but no one is able to hear it. As can be gauged from the links below, this was a widespread problem that affected a large number of blogs, their publishers and readers. I guess these are the hazards of technology.

This incident also neatly highlights our dependence on technology and the problems that this dependence can represent. There is no mystery why we have not only become so dependent on technology as a society but this dependence is rapidly increasing. Technology liberates us from drudgery. It makes possible new ways of working, playing and socializing. It connects us to friends and loved ones living in far off places. These are all positive outcomes in that they liberate energies that would have been otherwise occupied.

However, therein also lies the danger. The very forces that enable new ways of working, playing and socializing also ensure that the repercussions of any failure are hugely magnified. Remember the millennium bug scare of 1999/2000? Many people now dismiss it as a boondoggle but the possible repercussions could have been devastating. The problem at that time was that no one could predict how computer driven systems would behave when the year date changed from 99 to 00. It was the possible interactions of systems that were unpredictable. There was the distinct possibility of electricity failures. That would have ensured the total failure of almost every other system in place since electricity is a basic driver of our society. The provision of essential services such as health and law enforcement also could have been severely impacted. Again this would have had a strong, possibly devastating impact on society. All these possibilities came into being because over time we were switching over to computer based systems from the older manual systems in the name of efficiency and the quest to provide superior, better service.

Since then, we have become ever more dependent on technology. The 1999/2000 period seems positively quaint from today's perspective. Cell phones were not widespread. Smartphones were not even a gleam in anybody's eye. The Internet had barely got off the ground as far as consumers and most businesses were concerned. Systems were linked internally but there were relatively few external linkages. Supply lines of organizations were not geared around internet enabled computer based systems. All of these things have come to pass. Today if the net is down, we simply cannot work and play. For example, if Facebook goes down for even a short time, literally millions of people are unable to connect and thousands of organizations are unable to transact their business. The repercussions flow much more rapidly and affect a far greater number of people and organizations.

An example: airlines across the world are now linked together in strategic alliances. They are able to coordinate their schedules thanks to computer based systems. Similarly individuals are able to plan out their travels thanks to the internet which can display the schedules and linkages of dozens of airlines from any point to any other point. Great stuff right? Tight linkages brought about through the magic of computers. And then a volcano with an unpronounceable name erupts in Iceland. European airspace shuts down and suddenly airlines around the world find their carefully constructed and coordinated schedules torn to pieces. Passengers find themselves stuck at airports in foreign countries often with money running out.

Another example: The solar storm of 1859 is the most powerful such event in recorded history. Auroras, which are usually confined to the polar regions were seen around the world right into the tropics. The high technology of the day, the telegraph system was knocked out of commission. Now imagine what such an event would do today. Satellites would be knocked out thereby cutting off communication systems. The electro-magnetic radiation has the potential to knock out computer systems around the world. Since we now depend on these technologies for the smooth functioning of society, there will be massive disruptions throughout the larger system including severe disruptions of food and essential supplies. Can such a massive solar event happen today? Definitely. Some scientists believe that the current solar cycle which culminates in 2013 could end in an event of similar magnitude.

Older systems were robust because of their primitive nature. Current systems are much more sophisticated and complicated. They are also much more efficient. Unfortunately they are also much more sensitive to disruptions. Older systems were isolated. As a result if one system got knocked out, others would not be affected. The telegraph system was disrupted in the solar flare of 1859. That did not affect say the health system. Today's systems are interconnected. A disruption in one is quickly transmitted to others. Modern systems may be more efficient than previous ones, they are also far less robust. Blogger's disruption was an inconvenience. The next disruption may well be fatal.

Related articles

• Downtime for Blogger, Microsoft and Twitter (datacenterknowledge.com)
• Google's Blogger "20.5" Hour Meltdown (websitemagazine.com)
• Blogger Down Due To Maintenance Problem (huffingtonpost.com)
• Blogger ate my post (tobolds.blogspot.com)
• Blogger Boondoggle (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• A Weekend Like No Other... (dna100.blogspot.com)
• Google's Blogger outage makes the case against a cloud-only strategy (zdnet.com)
• Google Blogger Glitches, Posts Vanish (searchenginejournal.com)
• What happened Friday? (franklinmatters.blogspot.com)

Desperate Despots - III

At some point, all despotic regimes face an existential crisis. The original reason through which they had seized power and justified it no longer exists. There is a continuous tension between a despot's desire for a docile, cowed population and the need to expand and grow the economy if only in order to increase the pickings. No matter how slowly this growth comes, inevitably it leads to a generation which does not remember the original conditions and whose expectations are higher than those of the previous one. For such regimes, this is a dangerous time. Dictators are very careful to ensure that there is no viable successor apart from family members. Any other person is a potential threat and all such threats are ruthlessly removed. So anyone who is even slightly independent is quickly eliminated and the people who are left are essentially yes-men. Such people are very careful to shield the despot from ground reality for their own survival and preservation of their fortunes. As a result, when there is a popular revolt, the regime is inevitably taken by surprise.

At this point dictators have a choice: give up power or do whatever it takes to suppress the uprising. There is no third alternative. This does not stop some of them from trying to offer concessions but these never work. A dictator depends on fear of his power in order to retain control. As soon as a concession is offered, the fear is removed and at that point the despot is doomed. No matter what the circumstances, the initial attempt of all dictators is to try and retain control. The question is why?

By the time a popular revolt takes place, a dictatorial regime has normally been in power for several decades. By this time, a favored clique has built up around the despot which depends on him for its privileges. It is very much like the kings of old and their courtiers. If a dictator goes, this clique will find itself the target of reprisals and confiscations. This is a very valid fear since their wealth is generally obtained through corruption and other ill-gotten ways. So the clique will first attempt to placate and then to suppress in an effort to preserve itself. The despot goes along because by this time the only information that he is getting is being filtered through this clique.

Another reason why dictators try to hang onto power is that usually they and their family are the most corrupt elements in the setup. Loss of power will mean loss of privileges, an inability to use their position in order to make money and the very strong possibility of accountability by a new regime eager to prove itself to a demanding and suspicious public. Apart from this, power brings with it a relevance on the world stage that would otherwise be denied to dictators. Individually without their power, most dictators would not be looked at twice even within their own countries. They often have few if any redeeming qualities to commend them. Power gives them a chance to strut like peacocks on the world stage. Power also seems to act like a revitalizer. Dictators are often the very picture of health until they are removed from power and then their health crumbles suddenly. Ferdinand Marcos of Philippines, Mobuto Sese Seko of the Congo and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt are prime examples of this phenomenon.

Equally complicit in this whole process are outside powers who tend to support dictators. The reasons for this support are also not hard to fathom. In addition to their small clique, dictators are also often beholden to these outsiders for personal and financial support. The quid pro quo is that dictators can force through policies and concessions that favor the outside powers but which may be highly unpopular domestically. Such policies and concessions would never pass muster under a democratic setup.

Whenever they come to power, dictators arouse high expectations from the populace wearied of the corruption and nepotism of the old regime. Inevitably they fail those expectations. Any high ideals that they may personally have had at the beginning become diluted and eventually disappear over time. by this stage, theirs is often the biggest snout in the trough and all thoughts of improving the lives of the populace have gone out of the window. The rhetoric however becomes increasingly florid. Eventually a stage arrives at which only the dictator and his clique believe in their words. By this time, they are almost completely divorced from reality. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely may be a cliche, that does not make it less real or less painful.

Related articles

• Correcting their mistakes or self-interest? (radiopinoy.wordpress.com)
• Dirty Dictator Loot (thedailybeast.com)
• Middle East Extreme Makeover Starts at Home (civicchoices.wordpress.com)
• Could We Have Made It to the Finish Line on Our Own? (stevebeckow.com)
• More White Anting of Western Civilisation By The NZ Herald (truebluenz.com)
• Instruction Manual for Despots and Dictators: 7 STEPS To Increase Your Power (psychologytoday.com)

Desperate Despots - II

Despots generally come to power through one of several routes. Most typically, they seize power after a period of instability which is usually caused by extreme dissatisfaction with the previous incumbents. In such cases, dictators come in with a promise of bringing stability and jobs. Examples are the Islamist regime of Iran, Saddam Hussain in Iraq, Hafez Al Assad in Syria, Gamal Nasser in Egypt, the Al Saud family in Saudi Arabia, Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan (in fact all the military dictators of Pakistan fall under this category) and many others. Sometimes they come to power as a result of independence struggles. Examples of such dictators are Ahmed Ben Bella in Algeria, Kamal Ataturk in Turkey, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia. Still others are handed over power by their despotic predecessors. Examples of such dictators are Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Bashar Al Assad of Syria and Kim Jong Il of North Korea. Yet other dictators are essentially imposed on their hapless countries by foreign powers. Such dictators have included Mobuto Sese Seko of Congo and Sukarno of Indonesia.

No matter what route they take, all despots freeze the social development of their country and vastly slow down its economic development. The reasons for doing so are not hard to fathom. An educated, informed citizenry which has access to unbiased sources of information from which it can draw informed conclusions is a dangerous one. Over time, such people tend to demand a greater input on the running of the country. These people are also most likely to demand the unbiased enforcement of laws which in turn requires the establishment and development of independent institutions particularly the judiciary and the police.

Dictators on the other hand require a docile, cowed population which will not pose a threat to their rule. They certainly do not want an impartial application of laws and independent institutions. Such things are a direct threat to their rule particularly the latter. Independent institutions pose as counterweights to the dictator's power and prevent him from arbitrarily using it. Rapid economic development will eventually require an educated workforce which brings with it severe problems from a dictator's point of view. Questions will be raised regarding credibility and legitimacy that a dictator would prefer not be raised. In order to effectively perpetuate his rule, a typical dictator prefers to establish a small, corruptible clique which will be beholden to him for its privileges and riches

Related articles

• Op-Ed Contributor: Portrait of a Despot (nytimes.com)
• Understanding Today's Middle East: Dictators v. Despots (blogs.forbes.com)
• Dictator chic (salon.com)
• 7 steps to becoming a successful despot (theglobeandmail.com)
• Arab despots also think elections are unnecessary (yilmazalimoglu.com)

Desperate Despots

What makes someone cling onto power at all costs? What makes them believe that their country cannot survive without them? Time and again we have seen long time, generally aging despots cling fiercely to power. In the process they frequently destroy whatever achievements they may have accomplished. These attempts are always ultimately futile yet in case after case, the lessons of other countries are not learned.

Today there are many cases of this phenomenon. For example, Robert Mugabe is clinging desperately onto power in Zimbabwe. In the process, he has destroyed his legacy and the country that he helped to build up. This is the man who successfully fought off a racist white regime that was determined to suppress the black population and keep whites at the top of the social and economic heap. They were actively being helped by South Africa which was ruled by an equally racist white regime. Yet the outcomes in the two countries are very different. South Africa was able to dismantle the apartheid regime and establish a vibrant democracy. There is a credible opposition party in the country and there is no active suppression of dissent or alternate points of view. Zimbabwe seemed to be headed in a similar direction until recently. At some point, Mugabe decided to hang onto power and in the process destroyed the institutions and the middle class that he had helped to build over a twenty year period. The man who would have been remembered and revered as the father of his nation will instead be reviled as its destroyer.

Other cases abound specially in the Middle East. Until recently, Egypt and Tunisia were ruled by kleptomaniac dictatorships which actively and viciously suppressed dissent until they were overthrown largely through people power. Syria and Libya are both undergoing their popular unrest but in this case, the regime has responded viciously. Yemen is another such case where there is active unrest and active attempts at suppression. Dissent in Bahrain has been suppressed with the active support and help of Saudi Arabia. An interesting case is the Ivory Coast. Elections were held in which the incumbent lost. Instead of respecting the people's verdict and handing over power, he tried to cling on and triggered off a civil war which mercifully did not last too long.

There is also an additional complicating factor. Major outside powers frequently actively support dictators in developing countries. The reason cited is almost always realpolitik and it is an astonishingly short sighted policy. Outside support for a corrupt, autocratic regime generates severe resentment inside the country and inevitably leads to a backlash. The most prominent case here is Iran where the Shah was supported first by the British and then by the Americans. The extent of the support was to the extent that a democratically elected regime was actively overthrown and the dictatorship of the Shah restored. When the backlash came and the corrupt royal regime was overthrown, the resentment against the US boiled over and since then the latter has had a major problem with Iran in the region. Similarly Bahrain has stored future troubles for itself by its suppression. Instead of allowing the mounting popular pressure to dissipate, it has been capped. Pressure is thus building up under the surface. Whenever the inevitable explosion comes, the backlash will also fall on Saudi Arabia.

Related articles

• Royal couple face rogue's gallery of despots in Abbey's front row (independent.co.uk)
• Washing away the chaff in Zimbabwe (andrewgrant.me)
• In Iran, the Despots Grow Desperate (pajamasmedia.com)
• Arab despots also think elections are unnecessary (yilmazalimoglu.com)
• Op-Ed Contributor: Portrait of a Despot (nytimes.com)