0-9713854-9-1
copyright ©2003,2004 earth_phoenix productions all rights reserved
- Only reason not to get everyone into the same culture would be that you fear that cultural direction fo the mainstream is completely off and it acts as your insurance policy - 00001-10000 Society - Why Does Society Work the Way it Does- A History, Examination, & Prediction - copy right 2003 Earth Phoenix Productions Prelude: The point of this book is to explore how society moves forward and how it solves the various problems before it that must be solved in order for it to advance. This book takes as a premise that society as a whole is advancing. In basic form, it explores why society came into being, a theory for where society is going, and then attempts to show how some of the current problems of society integrate into this structure. Lastly, shows how some of the changes in society will take place. As a last note: Many of the topics reach into and discuss very openly ideas that are at the core of many people’s values. Some sections give what could be construed as pure opinions and have little unbiased data to support the suppositions. I’m not sure that any amount of data would support certain contentions made because, a lot fo the book deals with things that have yet to happen (and some issues are hard to quantify). With that said apologia said, enjoy. I. So Why Have Society Anyway - A Prelude II. What is Society Anyway - The Actual Core Concept III. How does Society Go Forward? Motivating Societal Change IV. Obstacles in Society - Problem Conflict Resolution The SoapBox Chapter V. What Will Happen to Society - Visions of Heaven, Hell, and Reality from Economists, Futurists, Socialists, and Acid Dropping Hippies CHAPTER I. : So Why Have Society Anyway? - A prelude You know with all the problems with living inside a society, one might think it best to divorce oneself from its boundaries. I mean why deal with all those other crazy people in the first place? Other people always want resources from you and many times you don’t get exactly what you want from them so why put up with it. Come on let’s find a cave. Oh all right, two separate caves one for you and one for me. Here you go in your cave and I’ll go in mine. So we’re now all alone? Ok ready here we go. Ah yes solitude, hey wait a minute it’s pretty dark in here isn’t it? Well we’ll have to fix that somehow won’t we? Hmmm. Can’t call the electrician. Say that brings up a point, what are the disadvantages and advantages of living in a society anyway: Disadvantages - Having rules and regulations imposed on one that govern ones behavior and conduct that generally are enforceable. - Some energy and resources that could serve one’s own interests are devoted instead to serving others. - Having to adapt your ideas and customs to that of other people. Advantages - There is increased security in numbers. - The ability to specialize labor that results in tools and instruments that increase productivity at any task one needs to accomplish. - Having multiple people creates insurance - stabilizes food / goods supply because if one avenue of production fails other avenues may still succeed. If I have ten fish and only need two I can sell the other eight fish to the farmer whose crops failed. - Other people introduce new ideas and increase the scope of societal knowledge. Wow what a good thing society is when you look at those benefits. Let’s form one today! Oh yeah the whole reason this book can be written is because we live in one. Then why does society feel so imperfect much of the time? More on that later, but for now it appears that there are good reasons to live with other people even if they are a pain in the neck some of the time. How to establish a society? - Hmm wow we agree to live together isn’t that great? A common union with common laws designed to achieve common objectives. Hey wait a minute, how do we do that? I mean how does one set the directives for a bunch of people anyway? I mean whose going to decide what goals to follow? A big problem initially huh? - And I do have to admit my time machine is on the frits right now so I can’t go back and look, but I do have a few ideas on what started the process of having a leader and having followers. Here’s a few possible quotes from the early leaders of prehistoric man -er woman: “I’m the leader because I just saved you from the Saber Tooth Tiger so if you’ll follow me you’ll survive” “I’m the leader because if you don’t follow me you’re going to eat my spear.” “I’m the leader because I possess the secret of fire and only people like me can it. If you want to benefit from fire you must follow me.” And in truth you can see a little of each of these statements in modern day leaders. Almost every leader in industry, politics, military, and society achieves that position do to the ability to get things done, the knowledge they possess, or the ability to make oneself feared and of course it’s all because of men that we have such brutal forms of governance. I mean women are incapable of using such tactics to become the leaders of groups. Especially say that sweet little old lady who shames her children into doing just about anything. She’s incapable of being a despot. Oh you mean she’s capable too! Oh well then I guess this concept applies to both genders. Need for Infrastructure So now a leader has been selected and the troops have agreed that they will follow orders. What’s next? It’s time for networking. Yes computer science was born right after we had a war chief and a tribe (which is the stage I talk about in human development). Well not exactly that type of networking, but all of the sudden, when we have central authority there are new problems. Now that we have all these bodies and they’re not doing all the same things how do you get them to work together and efficiently use resources? Hmmmm. Well, in order to make a bunch of people work together, (by modern standards a small bunch, but a bunch nonetheless) you do need to construct a few functions to “network” the various people in the society. In order to create these functions you do need a few things: Commerce - yes the exchange of different goods and services began and with them the idea of a “price”, or an agreed upon value of goods and services which was established to help connect people to the items they wanted to get. The concept that we needed a basic form of exchange for commerce came about because of the division of labor. This division created a need to establish the value for a product or service that is not relative to any other specific good or service but has an independent or universal value. (Put another way a pound of beef is not worth 2 eggs or 1 woven scarf, but is worth $5. This $5 can buy any item all year round. Where as if the beef and the eggs are not produced at the same time, then two parties involved will have a hard time exchanging goods without money) This universal value system as pointed to in the parenthesis is called money and although basic to today’s transactions, it would have been a major revolution in the dawn of civilization. Leadership: I guess I said before that a society needs leadership from which to take direction, but now the issue comes out how precisely do you pick the leader? For the moment let’s say the leader is picked somehow, but the way you pick a leader is another element you need for society. And you need an established structure above all else that will pick the leader. And while talking about leadership, at first you pick a leader, but very quickly that will blossom into having a leader and having the power structure underneath the leader to support the leader’s ability to direct society. Religion or a social order can be part of that, but for now you pick the leader, a belief system, and the “team” of people responsible for making sure the leader’s will is distributed to his subjects. Religion - when you’re in a society and you’re not just killing for food, you now have all this free time. Why in tarnation should you be farming? I mean you have a more complex society than just one the size of a single family so you need some way to justify authority over this larger group other than just being great grandfather/ grandmother. . (Because with a larger group of people you have a leader who is removed from your direct oversight and every human being justifies taking orders reluctantly so why farm when the king/queen isn’t here to beat me?) There must be some higher order in the universe. As you start having a chain of command at say a society of a couple hundred people, the need evolves for everyone to have their less-than-leader status be justified. Bingo! You need a social ordering system whose basic point is to justify authority and create order in the universe. This system could be a religious system, or the constitution of the US. The basic need of a social ordering system is to justify why every man or woman who wants to be king of society, is not. Or put more gently, that every person does have a meaningful place in the universe. Even if a leader has authority by the ways mentioned above, it’s no good unless people don’t challenge it for a while (It’s hard to lead society if you are constantly challenged.). Hence a social ordering system is born to prevent challenges all the time and to keep people productive and hopefully happy. You could lump, for the present time of societal development, religion and a political system into the same concept. It is still the same concept in modern time actually, but as society developed, the pieces that make up the order are more fractured in order to take care of specific needs and there are also different currents of thought as well. But as an example what does it mean to be an American (the idea of having a nation such as the U.S. is a social ordering system)? Apparently it means that we do agree to defend each other. When someone attacks the US, it apparently does provoke a net defensive response, even if on the fringes there is some resistance to the response. In spite of differences, people in Texas in the end, in spite of different accents do believe they are allied with people in New York. And as a last note on this topic, by definition, a religion or social ordering system has to be convincing: ” It is the word of God.”, “Doing God’s will not your own.”, “Freedom is an inalienable right!”. If an ordering system or religion is not convincing, the people in different places who are united by it, will not agree to all of it’s tenants. People die in war for these beliefs and it only works if people believe strongly in them. And hopefully along with leadership, commerce, and religion you’re actually having some of those pesky human beings make actual products and do actual work as well, but let’s assume that’s happening for now. So it All Works Now that this new structure is in place, not all people in society are scavenging for survival constantly. Because people don’t need to scavenge all the time, they have free time to be idle. And as the puritans say, the idle mind is the devil’s playground and thus people in society develop . . . Inventions - Now that not all time is spent surviving, surplus production is achieved. People in society have new ideas popping up to do things differently. Some of these ideas are disastrous and others are quite useful. How to sort them out? How to get the useful new ideas out to others so that they can be used to help society? I gave this section the title of invention, but really it could have been titled invention and education as a concept. Or perhaps it should be titled writing/communication as a formalized way to record ideas and communicate them is necessary. Once writing in some form comes along, you can record the advances that society makes. With these records of inventions as they are introduced to society, life for the new society becomes easy and so everything is happily ever after . . . Or sort of . . . Or sort of . . . ? So now everything works. We have a way to determine who does what and how to exchange things. But now how to use the new ideas that creep up? Well that’s a new question. In addition, those new ideas started creating questions as well and we find out that it becomes important how our society did each of those things needed to start the society. What In tarnation do I mean by that ? Well everything we did to start things up had ramifications, so let’s take a look at what we have now. Leadership - How precisely did you select a leader? Is it based on the ways of the early pharohs in Egypt who were sons of Gods? In that case you better hope society doesn’t develop tabloids, otherwise the pharohs’ secret affairs with humans of the opposite sex or their other vices might be on the front page of the Ancient Egyptian Times and what will the citizens do if their social order is destroyed because their god isn’t actually a god so that person’s mantle for leadership goes away? That is what may have happened to the Mayas whose society collapsed in part because a bad drought may have made the living god look powerless. (The Mayan God-ruler was supposed to nourish the sun and the rain with his blood in sacrifice and when the blood sacrifice failed to produce results, what do the people then believe? They actually believe the king is a god and there is no way to accommodate his failure, so Mayan society would be shattered by this) This system of ruling as a God is much more fragile for accommodating new ideas or situations than say a democracy (and the above example is an illustration of how society could not deal with an unexpected event very well because of the fragility of the social order). Why all this god business? - Well from a practical standpoint maybe it was one of the few ways to justify authority back then because simply put the rulers did not have that much control over their subjects. As an example, let’s jump to today. Why don’t many people attack the USA? - Because it’s suicide to do so. If you really get the USA mad it can theoretically destroy the world. Will that ever happen? Probably not, but maybe the reason for all these divine aspirations is that the leaders’ actual power was limited because an Egyptian army could not possess weapons that would automatically defeat an opposing army or an insurrection. So a leaders’ real power in early historical time is still limited because he or she can’t really 100% count on defeating the enemy in case of a challenge. And it’s never 100% - more like 80-98% at best even now. Yes you might 1-10% defeat the US, but still if you’re say Fidel Castro do you really want to take a direct assault on the US if there’s at least an 90% chance you’ll lose? Yes there’s a reason it hasn’t happened in the current time. (But incursions from Vikings and pirates were much more frequent against the Roman and the British empires which had less developed military strength.) The point is because the ability to challenge leadership in early history is high, there’s more “magic” to justify a rulers’ power. Therefore leaders need to be related to God in some way in order for them to rule, but what effects does this have? Hmm - well if you are a god, you’re not human and as suggested up above the members of your society better not find that out you can’t do the miracles that you claim to because if you can’t, society is disrupted (In that case the reason that society should follow the leader disappears). As the example stated, the Mayan society may have been destroyed when their leader’s blood did not stop the anger of the sun god and return a stable weather pattern to the society instead of a drought. So leadership based on the premise that the leader is a god in many societies seem to be a bad idea in the sense that their rule is based on authority over things they can’t actually control. The next technique of governance was used in the dark and middle ages as well as in later Egypt. In this leadership system, the ruler becomes the high priest or a person given direct authority by God. So in this next phase, we get the high priest or a king anointed by god so that that figure doesn’t have to do miracles, but still has the divine authority to lead. This system works better than the concept of being a God-ruler, but the issue here is those pesky inventors. Each religion had a dogma. Even the “modern day” practices of Catholic/Judaic/Islamic traditions have a dogma or set of beliefs. Religion has to give answers and justify the way people spend their time, the way society works, and the way other things in the world work as well. Without this meaning, people fail to have stability as they go about life in society. However, the dogma that justifies people’s existence with different regulations and traditions inevitably comes in conflict with new developments of society in social or technological reforms. An example is the fact that today’s workforce must be fairly flexible and the idea of high holy days has become obsolete. Other ideas where modern religions have come into conflict with science include the issues of a geocentric universe, cloning or abortion. So this is the tension as society moves forward. Now in past, scientific discovery was put back years by religion. Not only scientific discovery is affected by religion, but historical discovery is affected when say Native American historical records were destroyed or altered by Catholic Spanish priests (French and English helped too) because it was the devil’s handiwork. The dogma of each religion is always an issue because as people conditioned to believe a particular religious dogma meet new people or new situations, inevitably the religion’s dogma fails to handle the new situation well. In the case of Christianity or Judaism the religion is revised slowly to handle the new reality. For Christians the idea that you can cremate the dead and do not have to bury the dead is a change as is the idea of religious tolerance. Still in modern times, you have to deal with abortions and genetic manipulation both of which in time will be legal and approved, but as of now are still in contention. (I realize some people do find abortion morally offensive as well as cloning or other bio-tech stuff, sorry, but I do believe in time that both will be legalized and become accepted parts of society.) And while in the past religion is the predominate social ordering system, the same tension that’s betweeb religion and invention is now also seen with say the American Constitution and web databases as the American Constitution and Bill of Rights are another social ordering system. Aside (Sorry to not mention China, the Middle East, or India, but I’m less familiar with their societies. ) So now your society or our society has a religion and leadership structure. These structures were based on the past needs of society, but society gets bigger and it begins to chafe under the new inventions coming forth and . . . And that’s the point of this last section of the dawn of society: That society has a cycle. It’s formed, it first has a basic structure that it depends upon and then it grows out from that structure and ideas that formed it have to be reshaped. This model of new innovations or new problems and then adjustments to them has now been in play for at least 2 or 3 thousand years and that’s the way society has shaped itself and grown. Wait a minute did I just say that society shapes and grows itself? Well yes actually it does and one major premise of the book is that society is very much like a growing organism that is maturing within time and is changing and developing organically. Take that idea in as you look at the second section. Ok now we have the basis of why society can exist so next . . . CHAPTER II. : What is Society Anyway? The Actual Core Concept A simple question that deserves a simple answer, so here it is. A society facilitates the security, knowledge, and quality of life of the individuals contained within because these individuals choose to live together and share resources. But how does society work? Oh boy there’s a hard question! We’ve established there are leaders, followers, and there are mechanisms that allow us to distribute wealth and govern capital, how exactly does it all work? What is the process by which society moves forward? Here I establish a basic theory. I’ll start with the meaning of society part I - Birth. You’re born, I’m born. Are we going to be an architect, astronaut, doctor, lawyer, waiter, telemarketer, plumber, or journalist? It’s difficult to make a leap about the nature/nurture debate of psychology in one sentence, but I believe that when we are born, we have a personality that clearly develops depending on experience that we have. But whatever the amount that each part influences how we turn out, it seems that you do travel to a path in life in one way or another. If you’re not where you want to be, you’re unhappy and can feel it. In this case, you have the choice to put up with current conditions or try to change them. Now try to how society relates to each person as they enter their role as a worker. I know it’s a stretch, but humor me in going along with the idea that a tenant of a working society is that it attempts to sort out people and place them in positions where they find the most satisfaction. You’re allowed to try whatever you want. The stronger societies allow this mechanism to take place as readily as possible. So you have these people in your society that you are sorting into different positions. So how do you define that process of putting a person into a particular job? I know it’s a bit overused, but let’s talk about Maslow’s triangle. The Basic Idea: Society as defined by Maslow’s Triangle What follows is the idea that governs how the rest of the book unfolds. Originally, Maslow’s Triangle was used to describe every person’s hierarchy of needs. As an assumption, this book postulates that society is like a person and has the same hierarchy of needs and that each person satisfies a need of society by the type of work they do whether it be a doctor, construction worker, soldier, or inventor. In the next paragraph, I put the various roles people play in society into different sections of Maslow’s triangle. In the paragraph after I show how if one thinks of society as a whole, one could see society at a certain level of maturity with respect to Maslow’s Triangle just like a human being. This chapter deals with placing society in it’s current phase of development, the next chapter speaks to how to change and make it progress. The fourth chapter presents some of the current obstacles that society wrestles with and the last chapter explores what inventions might help society reach the self-actualization or the final level of the pyramid. Okay that’s the book in summary and here is the theory. The Roles for People in Society (Broken down as part of Maslow’s Triangle) Here are the categories for Maslow’s Triangle we all know and love: Basic Needs, Security, Social, Esteem, and Self- Actualized - With the basic categories of Maslow’s triangle named, think about society as a basic organism. Now try to think of the way each person might help fulfill a need of societies in a particular portion of Maslow’s Triangle. And as I go through the individual explanations, I describe actual jobs and more of a “role” that a person at a particular level plays in society. Jobs (actual jobs done in society) are very concrete things which are easier to understand, but which may not describe a state of mind perfectly. Roles are nebulous things that are hard to put definite edges on, but make for a better understanding. Both descriptions fit each category a little and I use both to give a fuller picture because neither alone is very adequate. Self - Fullfillment - Thinkers - People who just want to solve a "problem" just see what will be. Thinkers can be in many different professions: artists, economists, scientists, philosophers, businesspeople, or contractors. Oriented towards conceptual thought. More important than what profession someone is in is the approach they take. Thinkers are people who try to discover paradigm shifts in whatever industry they’re in. “Do things a completely new way.” Esteem Service (Waiters)/Emperors - people in society who have occupations that satisfy that part of society who wants "the finer things in life": architects, artists, musicians, performing arts, fine clothing, and sports. In a broader definition, the finer things in life are those things that are not essential to survival directly (anything that is not basic food, water, clothing, shelter). In other words, snow boots are essential, designer jeans are not, and their making would fall in the esteem category. The other aspect or role of being at the ego level is wanting to get ahead for yourself. Those people that are not purely interested in solving problems or exploration, but still want to change things and push them ahead. The difference is that someone on this level is content to beat someone at his or her game while on the self-actualized level someone is more interested in pure discovery. An ego driven person need not shift a paradigm because it’s not that person’s aim, a better mousetrap versus doing away with the mousetrap and using something else. Social - Businesspeople - The people who keep the ship running. They tend to the basic organizing of the lower functions (food, security, shelter). (aka- politicians, lawyers, engineers, business owners - even organized religion) (And as a note some businesspeople do belong in the upper categories, but the basic concern of distributing needed services just to keep society flowing is at this level of maturity) As for a role this is a very practical who figures out what needs to be done and proposes the schedule to do it (but there is no emphasis or need for innovation.) Security Workers- More basic understanding of the world rules. Right and wrong or “might makes right” - military, police, EMT, firemen. Direct oversight of the more basic functions also applies to this level. “I want this particular task done”. And that is the role direct oversight and supervising a task. Food, Shelter, Clothing - Workers- The people that labor and directly deal with providing these things. I think of fast food restaurants or supermarkets. The people who either manage or own them are at least in the social category. (And could be higher up) This category is for people who work and do actual labor. The tasks that they do are what put them in this definition. Ok so we have different jobs and society is trying to fulfill this hierarchy, simple right? Changes Taking Place - So society is like an organism and now we’ve examined a little how the pieces do fulfill different functions. In addition, like an organism, society itself is changing and growing. To illustrate this point first here are some of the “levels of maturity” for society and later some of the areas where you can visualize the changes in society. How mature is society as a whole? And by this I am talking about the human society and the people on the face of the earth as a whole. First to measure the level of maturity for society you need a Baseline. Let’s pick the most advanced culture at the current moment, 2003, the US society. There are signs that it’s at the height of it’s power and the Asians / Europeans may well take the crown away from it, but the Americans (those Americans from the USA) are currently the center of world political, cultural, and economic development. So let’s use the US as the baseline. I will address in later chapters why including the rest of the world is not a good idea when making this comparison for how advanced world society is. (See the World Economy section). And as a last note, I do not mean to say the US is the best society in the world, nor that it’s philosophy or people are any better than any other people, only that the most societal innovations are at the moment concentrated in the US which is what makes it the current power in the world. That’s why it’s the baseline. Once you have this baseline to look at how mature society as a whole is, now take Maslow’s Triangle and see how many things society has managed to achieve. (in terms of development) Basic Needs - Food, Shelter, Clothing- Given the amount of noise we make about it, I know the environment may go at any given time, but I believe hunger and starvation are not major concerns in the US at this time. Perhaps in the 1930’s during the dust bowl was the last major time hunger was an issue, but this country hasn’t had a hunger problem in years, many years. (I realize that a few children are starving in America, but on the whole, hunger is not a problem for society). Clothing and Shelter also seem to be needs that are met, maybe if the real estate boom continues, who knows, it will be too expensive to live indoors. This category appears to be satisfied and I conclude that our current society has advanced beyond basic needs, all joking aside. Security - The technology and infrastructure of our military seems to allow a great deal of security as the threats are no longer organized nations, but now seem to be moving toward terrorism. Notice how the dominance of weapons makes it much harder to even contemplate the attack on the US than say Rome where yes they had the biggest army, but it would have been hard to wipe out any attacking enemy with the technology of Ancient Rome. (It was easier to attack Rome during the height of its empire in say 0 A.D. than it is to attack the US today because the amount of punishment that Rome could inflict on a rival societies’ infrastructure with its weapons is significantly less than that of the US). Likewise there were many more bandits in Roman and medieval times whereas bandits are much less of a threat today to various cargo routes. Today’s weaponry, while it causes many issues when used, makes direct attack on a technology-based military very difficult (or in other words today’s weaponry is a greater deterrent). As a more basic goal for security, other species are now annoyances and humans do not fear elephants, tigers or any other specie. The insects, bacteria and viruses are a bit different, but security from other species has been achieved and overall I would argue security is well in hand and society has met this goal. Social - How does society deal with this issue? I believe it’s a bit more contentious. Are there great social disparities, unrest and turmoil? For the most part no, but . . . there are many religious and political groups campaigning for peoples rights and trying to negotiate a better way to deal with many different issues. African/Caucasian relations have yet to be fully normalized, although some progress has clearly been made. Homo/Heterosexual relations are not addressed and there are a few social issues that are still debatable. My belief is that we are close to addressing the social needs of society in a constructive way, but this one still has a bit of work. Our society does not accept all of its pieces. For this category to be fulfilled, your social class and race should be accepted and people should be willing to work with people who have vastly different cultures from their own. It has come much closer on this level, but there is some work yet to be done. So overall society is trying to pass this level of development, but has yet to fully. Ego - I guess if social needs are the outward differences that society’s people have to overcome, then the ego needs are the inward differences. Once one gets done with problems of race and religion/social order, one deals with the other seven deadly sins (I do mean the Christian definition of the seven deadly sins most of which fall into issues of this category) in human culture. Do contractors socialize with bankers and why not? As a banker, are you ever curious about what a contractor does? Do you ever feel comfortable with your boss, your co-workers or are their certain things you have to hope they never find out because they will not accept you for who you are? Are coworkers and people you run into every day in adult life ever like the friends you had as a child? The reason that there is so much consternation in the adult years is that there are all these little hang-ups about the way my life is going when compared to the way your life is going. Another way to see the ego level is to look at the education system. The basic point of education should be to help you find your role in society. Why do people cheat in exams? At the current time, we blame the people cheating, but why is there advantage to be gained (or seeming advantage to be gained) in pretending to be someone you’re not? Because businesses and Universities have an ego based deal going where we don’t actually look at people and judge. We judge imperfect statistics of them and we want only the “best” and Universities get judged on reputation, not accomplishing a much simpler objective of helping people find out what they want to do. All of these “getting ahead” notions, are also ego issues in society. If society is to get through this phase people must be able to get over these hang-ups. An example of a test for ego integration is a situation where someone can be the driver of the economy and be the most powerful CEO and still be able to have a regular conversation with a contractor working on his house and walk out on the street and not be mobbed. In essence, when famous people are regular people and the dogmas that are currently in place change and no longer hinder communication or in other words when all those reasons not to do what your “heart” tells you to disappear and you just do what you want to. When this happens society will reach the ego level. Self Actualization - always hard to imagine being two levels up. Think of a society where you can just follow your own pursuit and make money off it without doing what one has to do now which is always doing it on the side while doing something else to make money. Neither pure art nor pure science is freely supported in our society and currently the need for money is paramount before doing any activity for a long duration. At this level, and starting in the ego level money should stop being a barrier to doing something. Resources should start to be freely available for society members to pursue their interests. People also become self-actualizaed and less abuse of others should follow from this. Notes on the basic idea: What was said above is the entire basic idea. The rest of chapter two deals with clarifying what was just said and trying to iron some finer points to the argument. How to Recognize Immaturity? I’m writing this section because I’m not sure the last section clarifies what I’m trying to talk about. Instead of trying to codify what level of maturity our current society is at, let’s talk about immaturity. In general why don’t people like Albert Einstein, Tesla, Nietsche, and other reknown philosophers, scientists, and economists lead society? In our current model of society, these people always play background roles in setting policy and we put people in office who generally aren’t the smartest. With the processes of current society there are all these machinations to go through to get new things done. When progressing or implementing a change to make society more efficient, there is currently a long process to go through to make changes. As an example, democracy for one was a despised concept when it was first introduced. The idea that common men could choose a president was reviled even in the US; that’s why there is an electoral college so that the will of the voters could be corrected if it was wrong. Mass education was feared at first and required endless debate before enacted. There are many commonly used ideas today that throughout time were rejected at first and the inventor condemned as an evil person by society. Some would argue debate is necessary to iron out the kinks in an idea and while that is true, I would contend that the reason for so much debate in the current political system is that some people are actually trying to solve the problem, half other people don’t understand the complexities in society and a quarter of those do not care, and finally another quarter understand enough about the system, but choose to exploit the system for profit in ways which usually exacerbate tensions between the two sides in a particular problem. (Certain filmmakers and cartoonists are very guilty of taking cheap political shots that play on the fear of the masses in order to increase the contribution to their own financial gain) Why is it unusual for a smart person to be the leader instead of the advisor? Why do innovations take such a long time to add (several years or decades is long at times)? Many of the things that brought about the computer or genetic revolution were invented by people who did not receive much of the financial or social credit for their inventions. It took many years for society to recognize the value of their ideas. An argument can be made that scientific advances need to take time because of testing to make sure it’s safe or changing manufacturing configurations and etc. In truth, that’s false, a great deal of the problem is also getting sufficient funding to people who society tends to reject at first, and hesitates against letting the idea be developed. (while some vetting of ideas is a good thing, if possible it would be better to speed up the process and allow new credible idea ideas to be more quickly funded.) This slowness and indecision of the invention process and the choosing of leaders who are not so bright nor talented in a group of people points to me to inefficiency in society. Leaders do not have to be smart or creative at the moment. People who make decisions can be smart, but many can get by with pretty average intelligence and the decisions that are made by leaders affect many people. In addition, in current society, there is still a “witch-burning” attitude to smart people who are many times pushed away, because they are not understood by a great number of people. This is where I argue that our society and human society is not at its apex and is immature. And if this conclusion is correct then it follows from before that society has future levels of maturity to remain. How do you Recognize Change in the Maturity of Society? I wish I knew, being a mortal and all I’ve only lived in one stage of maturity in a society and have yet to live through or into a second stage of maturity. But as an example, as mentioned currently politicians and ruling folk of this world come from which part of maslow’s triangle, that’s right they come from the social part. People such as lawyers and businessmen make up the current ruling class. In feudal times, the rulers of society were Kings, Caliphs, Emperors (psst people who fought in battles) so which part of society would they come from? While their own persona might not be thinking of this, the things they did were all related to security part of Maslow’s triangle, weren’t they? As stated above, why can’t the rulers be the people who think up new inventions or new social ideas? If the rulers were at one time always from security, as society progresses the way should be opened up for people who are smart and are in the higher levels of Maslow’s triangle to become the leaders. But actors and scientists are all wackos and everything would go into chaos right? Or maybe because as a society we are not ready for someone with that level of thought in government, and aspects of society are not prepared to deal with people in the upper realms of maturity as our leaders (again many people who don’t understand innovative ideas give a strong negative reaction to good ideas when first proposed because they are new. That’s one point and another point is that we don’t yet have the “social infrastructure” to support higher ideas in organizations and government. If you are careful in current society it would be possible to help much of the poor, to distribute wealth fairly, and have a higher quality of life for everyone. But right now, many people who have wealth fear the poor and do not wish to make things equitable in terms of realizing that they aren’t worth 1000 times someone else’s labor. There is racism, there are a lot of fears, and each of these issues in any situation can cause great harm. It’s like bus stations could offer free showers if everyone took care of them and cleaned them after use and wouldn’t that make everyone’s trip more pleasant, but they don’t because of the fear that certain passengers will abuse them and like in college campuses, destroy the showers or whatever. Handling the dark side of people is what always slows down society and with respect letting higher level people do the governing. It would require mechanisms to ensure that people would in best faith implement directly the ideas of higher level people instead of trying to exploit. (In chapter I do an example of zoning laws and how restrictive they have to be in order to prevent the developers who think, “if I can cheat a little and get an extra unit in then I can make more money” that goes through issue of the person who can do the most harm sets the level of maturity (or all mechanisms in the system have to defend against the most harmful act). At the moment we can only on a social level of cooperation from by the safeguards built into our system, to enforce compliance. (Note that regulating is not necessarily the implied solution, but coming up with a way to make people be more cooperative is the solution, regulation may be limited to having a social level of compliance versus an ego or self-actualization level.) The flaws one has to watch out for in a societal system seem to be part of human nature, but until measures are put in place to counter that force in society the person who can force people to obey is more useful than the thinker to society). At the moment coercion, is a more effective way to implement a plan than just telling people about an idea. You have to communicate yet with people who do not look at world economics as a system, but see their own pocketbook and mathematicians, scientists, actors and artists have trouble with this communication or do not specialize in it. So if at some future point these people become more likely to be leaders then it would be a sign that society has reached another level of maturity. (Their leadership would probably start when they enter government, but also as in the case where the merchant class developed in Venice, more societal resources would be concentrated in their professions instead of other professions.) (When say being a philosopher or mathematician is a good way to make a living instead of a programmer/businessman. And no programming or what is paid for is not really high-level computer science. High-level computer science deals with algorithms that are not as well compensated for.) As noted, the military hasn’t disappeared, but its power has been subsumed by lawyers or people on the social piece of Maslow’s triangle. These people currently lead the government. The farmers (who provide basic needs) aren’t seen in the picture as their services are so well taken care of. Likewise money is currently very important (as a reliable indicator something’s value), actually the credit card is the start of money being less important (personal worth is becoming more of an issue than just an individual possessing coinage), but money wasn’t as important when the value of coinage was sketchy in the Dark Ages where bartering for goods and the use of a sword for enforcement were more important than the money itself. Change occurs like that, the older system and things contained within it do not go away, they are just subsumed by the newer system. The newer ideas rise in importance. (money and the merchant as power symbols came about as currency fluctuations across empires stabilized and direct force (security) became less important). This is the cycle that you see as a society goes through the process of maturity. One last issue, even in the dark ages the king acted as a law maker, why are things different now? The answer is that it was much more important at the time that he directly be the general of the army and not just a lawmaker. The reason for the analogy to being a lawmaker is that yes, the king passed laws too, but it wasn’t as important as defense at the time. Because the legal system wasn’t as reliable, many penalties weren’t as spelled out then, and similarly, today we do have Microsoft and Albert Einstein, but the power is still in the social class and scientists and artists do not in generally hold the power, but are present in society. (Like laws existed in medieval society, but security and the military held the power). In fact in Microsoft’s case one could argue their existence proves my point in that their invention is taking the idea’s of others and knowing how to sell them to the general public versus actually creating them from scratch. Society as an active thing Now I used levels and gave everyone a clear indication of “their job” with respect to society. But if everyone who was in the business developed to the social level then there would be no person who was an inventor would there? So maybe what I gave was an easy approximation, but the better approximate picture is a little harder to tease out. If you accept the general premise that society as a whole is not yet self-actualized then how does art or science get created? (Because if as stated above society is on the social level, then perhaps no one is doing ego or self-actualized things and inventing new things). The answer is invention occurs currently in a couple of ways. As an example, “the leading American Artist” at the current moment does not draw artwork for self-actualization. He clearly draws it for business purposes that makes it fall into a social or ego need that it satisfies for someone else. Science is done to satisfy food, security, and social as well as ego needs. So the first reason we have some people doing art and science is they’re doing it not just to pursue knowledge, but to satisfy lower level needs. The second answer to this question is that society isn’t all neat and although most people are on the social level of development, some people are higher and lower than that. There are people on higher levels of society where resources are available such as universities, monasteries, corporations and other places where a group of people may be able to do self-actualized things while the rest of us struggle with social issues. Likewise there are others who still struggle with basic needs issues and security and that is how society works. There is an aggregate population that is on the social level of development and then there are extremes that are on higher and lower levels. These two avenues give a hint of the actual complexities of society. A Person is not the Same as the job he or she holds - Ok to try to spell this out. Think of five levels of the triangle like a thought, in this case how each would move dirt. Pretend you want to move a hillside to build a baseball field. Think of it this way: Level I - move dirt -physical -Basic Needs Level II - manage a bunch of people who move dirt -Security Level III - give people a reason to move the dirt -Social Level IV - how will dirt be moved in the future? -Ego Level V - Why do we need to move dirt? Can we do the same thing using something else that’s better? -Self-Actualized Each of these levels of thought is a “job” in society. Someone in society does each of these jobs. What I didn’t do well before was separate a person from the job he or she holds. Albert Einstein could choose to move dirt a Level I thought, but Mr. Einstein would probably not be satisfied just moving dirt as his intellect would wander and he would probably be driven to do something in level V which is what he did (Level V being taking an original problem and constructing a new way to do it). So we have people performing each of these jobs right now, but some people are either more or less intelligent than the job they do for various reasons. So what I’m saying is Albert Einstein could go to the whitehouse and be a Senator, but may not be very satisfied by that position. The suddle thing I’m trying to point out is that each job only requires so much intelligence, but the person can have a different intelligence level than the job requirement. But I keep the contention that people in general who are self-actualized will eventually be the rulers of society when society can accept the things they say. At current moment, we need the ego and social people to act as conduits for their thoughts to society. Because the thoughts of an Einstein or a Tesla or Buckminster Fuller upset too many notions people on lower levels of maturity have and for society to function these people cannot be upset all the time, society would break down. (Look at cloning or even in my book I treat religion like it is an imperfect concept; either one of these ideas causes many people a great deal of consternation) The other social orders may not like the thoughts that occur from these people who are self-actualized yet the higher people’s thoughts are the ones that ultimately help society to progress forward - you need to figure out the electric light bulb and computers for the first time. But a person who translates the idea from initial concept to workable product for the masses is currently needed because of the gap of total societal maturity. Some people look at thoughts IV and V and say but those don’t appear to accomplish the task at hand, no today they do not, but if no one ever thought about those things then there would never be any improvement in our inventions that are needed to sustain a growing society. So therefore thoughts of category four and five are necessary tasks and the progressive thoughts are essential for just basic survival as well, because if no one gave out new ideas and the human did not improve itself then eventually because the earth and the environment changes constantly, no one would have new ideas to address disasters and the changes society faces. Why do we need this Stuff?- Ok, ok after reading the above list a couple things don’t quite fit and I am going to use the paragraph to try to deal with the inconsistencies in the theory. First of all, the basic tribe somehow produced a self-actualized inventor who was just able to invent fire while everyone else worried about security and food? How humans first were able to become sentient and start the process is a mystery I can’t quite solve just by thinking about it. Some inventions are also made by the need to solve a problem and maybe things like the wheel or fire or even flight can be found in Nature and be duplicated and this would explain some initial inventions. However things like integral calculus are hard to find direct examples of. For some of the simpler inventions maybe people who are on the lower levels and don’t just think for the fun of it can figure out fire or wheels, or flight, but some of the current technology needs to be figured out by people who are higher up on Maslow’s Triangle and devoted to science or inventing in order for it to be produced (I don’t think a lawyer will invent an atom-smasher on his or her spare time, unless like Wilbur Wright she actually becomes a scientist). I don’t mean to say that every current scientist is self-actualized by Maslow’s definition, however it is more likely that people who are in college educated professions are going to be social or higher up where as more basic jobs tend to have people social or lower in them. (although inventions may not only occur to people in higher levels of Maslow, inspiration is a funny thing.) You can be self-actualized and be a cashier, but it’s more likely that if you are self-actualized you would want a different job which allows you to think. The point of this first paragraph is that a self actualized or ego person who comes up with a new invention for society can be in any walk of life even one atypical to that person’s intellect. And also that the first basic inventions (a hard term to define but before say 1000 AD) could be figured out by people who did not have a strong creative focus and only as things have become increasingly esoteric in science is it necessary to more strongly focus on something in order to invent it. Second, I guess sort of answered by the first objection why do you need ego and self-actualized people to have a society. I mean if you have a leader who is on the social level and gives orders to people in security and basic needs shouldn’t you be all set? Yes, but what you would have is also a very static society set up to work as long as the leader only has to manage current situations. That was said before, but now why do you need self actualized people and not just people on the ego level to make needed changes to the way society does things. On the ego level the idea is to advance the current service, to keep playing the same game, but to do it in a better way. On self-actaulized, one just goes with one’s interest and invents a new way to do things which may be better but may not at run more efficiently than the old way. (A first car when compared to a horse). Without the self-actualized level of thought trying to rethink how things are completely, it is hard to develop effective strategies for new threats. An ego person is not as capable at handling a new idea, just at correcting an old and fixing for variations on an old theme. (You need a self-actualized person develop time travel, or nuclear fusion - a trip to Pluto by an ego level person would involve improving current technology versus using new engine technology) In short, the ego person can carry one along the rises of a market cycle, but it takes a self-actualized person to create a new market. The Dark Side of Society Now in the spirit of the idea that society is not all neat and tidy, if we extend the simile that society is like an organism and the typical occupations are like most of the cells doing their thing, being the heart and lungs and blood etc., then the typical organism also has waste products, gets infected, and sweats. To extend the simile let’s talk about some other groups not yet talked about in the model. One other group is the criminals who are not on the chart, people who engage in prostitution, drugs, or weapons smuggling. Do these people serve valuable functions within society? Yes unfortunately they do. The reason is that certain needs of others go unmet and are deemed illegal. When a need has to be fulfilled, but is illegal a black market appears almost like magic. The reason it is unfortunate is the black market status always carries with it negative repercussions (negative effects on personal development) for the people engaging in that activity. Another group: the people who do nothing - This can be someone who is very rich or someone who is very poor. I know what some people are thinking, if I could be very rich I wouldn’t do anything. Well I’ve never been very rich, but at one point in my life I could contemplate what it would be like if I didn’t have to go to work because I didn’t have to. While it is fun to go at things at a slower pace or at least a less constant pace than is demanded by most employers, it isn’t fun to do nothing at all. Sitting home and watching TV or just going out to entertainment becomes boring. There does end up being a lack of balance. I think many times with these people who don’t do something, there is a reason other than no need. It’s because of pain they’ve suffered do to mistreatment or misunderstanding of society. While people are lazy sometimes because it’s easier than working, the need for goods and services will overcome this most of the time. (and for those who don’t need to work, boredom is the remedy to not working) But when the barrier is greater than just laziness or boredom, a need for goods and services is not enough. A lot of times these people represent the imperfections of society as a whole and many times society does not want to acknowledge its failures. Another Group: Those who Wish to be Supported by Others The many people who do not wish to help society as a whole. Some are deemed criminal and locked up in prison. Others however may not wish to work and think other people can be tricked into paying for their living. This may be a stereotypical welfare mother who has no desire to leave welfare or a white-collar con artist. The difference between these people and the people in the above group is that in this group an element of trickery or parasitism exists that is harmful to the host versus in the above category the host is not harmed. This behavior seems to be as natural as the others and it seems necessary to give people not fitting into the regular structure a place to be. Many people in society have to find their way into a good place gradually and getting rid of this component would prevent some people from gradually finding their place. (The greatest redeemers may once have been theives.) Also these people, like a disease or scavenger in nature, point out flaws in the structure of society. Whether it is to change the way certain people are raised so that the resulting value system does not believe that they are owed a living or to change the security a corporation employs so that it is not prone to attacks by con-artists, in a dark way having a few parasites around may actually be a good thing. So What Does It All Mean? “So what are you saying (from the above section on the maturity level of society as a whole) is that the best thing for society would be to let all the whackoes just have resources to do whatever they want to? “That way different things would be tried and we could all advance society faster.“ -- Well the answer is yes, mostly. Have you ever looked at who the whackoes are? People such as Martin Luther King, Buckminster Fuller, Isaac Newton. In my opinion, they were all full of ego and greed and selfishness and yet the best parts of their lives were taken and used by society and what harm they caused mostly forgotten. Isaac Newton was known to put down the work of fellow scholars not because it was bad, but because of his own vanity. So if letting the whackos experiment is a good thing, why don’t we let more people fly kites in thunderstorms so they get zapped with lightening? Because there is a danger that society will lose to many resources. If people are allowed to do wacky things they may use up a lot of resources without any benefit and we cannot afford that at the current time (resources being not just minerals and materials, but also to a great degree a chance to kill people and take away time and energy from more productive activities such as regular business.) All this stuff is a resource and at the moment in society the potential increase in creativity is not worth the problem of the wasted resources because society is not yet efficient enough to afford just endless resources for experimentation. (And yes just as food is a great deal more plentiful in the twentieth century than in earlier ones, I do believe as society improves its efficiency, resources will become boundless) CHAPTER III. : How does Society Go Forward? Motivating Societal Change So from chapter II, you have all these people interacting and they create a society that has a certain level of maturity. But what is the best path to get society to develop as a whole? Hey no one thinks about it like that anyway? - Well yes that’s true, but to a certain degree the different societies have been trying to figure out the best way to manage the human beings within them throughout history. How do you make people be productive, healthy, happy, and . . . make them contribute to the human species. There are many ways to represent the different paths, but I am going to divide it into two pieces: First, what is the driving motivator to push society forward and second, what are the general cultural conditions that govern people in society as a whole. A. First, the driver of society: How do you motivate people to work together, accept authority, and contribute ideas? There are a few different approaches that have been tried to date: Slavery? - Slavery was tried in almost all societies at one time or another, but most people don’t like to be slaves and the problem with forcing people to work for someone is that the resentment built into that system prevents the overseer from getting people’s ideas and little more from them than just their physical energy. In addition, slavery requires oversight and is dangerous because slaves want to escape and possibly take revenge on their former owners.. Religion? Another technique used in ancient and to some degree modern times is religion. Almost all religions prescribe a path that involves being a productive member of society; “Use the talents that God has granted you wisely”. I’m trying to think of one religion that does not and I can’t. Although perhaps Daoism is not as prescriptive, the society that has Daoism also has as it’s foil, Confucianism or Hinduism (both of which do have strong societal paths). In ancient times the belief in the religion’s dogma was supposed to make you work harder as in Egypt with the pharaohs where the God “pharaoh” decreed and you obeyed your God. Apparently this works a little better than slavery as religion is in decline today, but it is still used whereas slavery is almost non-existent (almost). In today’s societies, religion is in decline. Even though we have different amounts of practice of religion, the basic role of religion and the direct power of the church have changed tremendously. In the US, Asia, Europe, and in other countries this seems to be a common occurrence. One reason for this of course can be traced to the European 18th and 19th centuries that have been called the Age of Reason where Galileo and others challenged the Christian church dogma and the way things in the Universe were understood. This is where conventional religion started to loose its line authority within society and begin to be moved to a more advisory role. (Actually if you look at the whole process starting with the pharaohs who were god kings, going to Greco-Roman Caesars, then the divine authority of Kings, and finally the democratic movements that occurred in Europe, you see religion continually changing from line to advisory authority in the realm of science and politics.) Religion is in decline, so what’s next? Money as a motivator So what else motivates people now? Money? Monetary systems have existed for several millenia. It’s value and usefulness has increased a great deal in the current centuries because more stable political regimes and better world communication make coinage more stable in value and more accepted as a medium of exchange. In the past, status, property, and societal rank were determined by family ties. And family rank to some degree determined if one possessed things. In Europe, it was not until the Renaissance that the idea of merchants who had power alongside the nobility developed. It was in the 19th century, in the US, with Rockefeller, Carnegie and the like, that the idea of having a wealthy person who wielded social power came into fruition. The developments of insurance and credit as well as making many more services have a “quantified” value instead of being favors granted by a king or officials made this possible (zoning laws, citizenship, land value). In addition, the idea of working for money instead of being forced to work evolved slowly. Earlier in the course of human history, there wasn’t enough trust in the monetary, social, and political systems to allow humans to work for money. It used to be very important to own your own land to guarantee food for your family. As money has become a stable system, the idea of power through land has changed a great deal. In the current society, land is not the guarantor of power, but money has become so. (The second wealthiest man in the world tries to own almost no land and has all value in securities). Basic Structure - So how does this money-based system work? If one does not have their own business or means of support one has to find a job to make money to get the various goods needed for survival. In order to find a job and later in order to keep it one has to be at least somewhat willing to do what one is told to do and to willingly contribute to the enterprise one is hired into. (And if you own a business, your customers will keep you willing to do their bidding.) By this system, you have turned a rebellious human being into a willing and obedient worker for another person without absolute force of slavery nor the expenditure of energy that religion takes to do the same thing (churches, ministries, advertisements and events to make people believe - why do you think there are so many fewer holidays now, there’s no need for the church to be so active in people’s lives). And now with large organizations you can play the other workers against each to ensure that each worker keeps up a steady contribution. This does appear bad for the worker, but compare it to being a serf where your profession and freedom were determined for you almost always by birth. I guess the evidence that most people live in houses and drive cars if they want to suggests that this system may give more to the worker. And the flip side to employers playing workers off against each other is that as much as people claim that a company can dominate the landscape, strangely enough companies are kept competitive by law in the US at least and companies are then forced to think very carefully about how they treat the people who work for them as workers play off against various companies for the best deal. (In addition, as a worker’s ideas and energy increases in value, in a more knowledge driven economy, a method of willing contribution instead of forced performance through the practices of slavery or coercion will be more critical.) Encourages working in the system - There’s more to it obviously. Money for work as a system discourages efforts outside the system. Artwork, philosophy, mathematics, and pure science done for their own pursuit are discouraged because they are not paid for. This appears to be a flaw, but is not completely because society does not want everyone to be an artist. Society wants to encourage most people to have to work for a living as people who are not highly driven in the arts and science exploration will not produce useful experiments and are more valuable as workers. (their offshoot experiments would not yield useful benefits and would just consume resources) So only the people who really are sincere are allowed to just do art or science outside of the system. . The flaw is those people who should be doing art and science do not receive initial funding quickly and it would be a better system if those people could be given more resources more quickly. (When I talk later about the lack of funding being a safety mechanism, it still would benefit society if productive artists and scientists could be found and aided with resources for their research/personal needs to prevent many of their suicidal deaths or loss of time instead of the current system which waits till they die to recognize their contributions. ) The need to discourage mass exodus from the workforce is the paramount concern, however, which makes this a hard problem. How do you open the door to art and science while making sure most people stay productive? Shift Resources between Professions - The money for work system also encourages certain types of labor to be valued over other types and thus we have the whole respect issue where bankers and lawyers are more respected than contractors. Computer scientists who may make lots of money have an equivalent amount of education to architects who do not make a great deal of money. This ability to shift money into various sectors of the economy seems beneficial to society as a whole because it can encourage or discourage people from going into various industries and thus help to put human resources where society needs them. At the current time, the disdain for certain professions that are not considered as valuable is a negative in this equation. The idea that one skill or set of knowledge is more valuable than another skill or set of knowledge is highly debatable. The reason this pay discrepancy seems to occur is due to rarity, more people like to learn how to fix cars than do linear algebra. While society values the people who do algebra more monetarily, maybe it would be best to say that each person gets their own rewards. I’m not saying that solely to be diplomatic. If you’re a laborer, yes you don’t make as much as others, but much of society is structured around your needs/desires. Entertainment, clothing, and food are tailored to the masses’ needs and wants where as the scientist goes into a fast food restaurant and sees not a menu, but many times sees conundrums because the food/entertainment is not tailored to his/her needs (In particular a Doctor looks at coffee, soda, ice cream, and fried chicken/beef and sees death). That person may get more money, but has to use it to cope with the difference in lifestyle. The lack of respect the masses have to the needs of those with specialized knowledge and the disdain those with specialized knowledge have for the masses prevents integration of those skill sets. If those sets were integrated, it generally can lead to something even more valuable. Also in the workplace, the bad feelings between the owner and the workforce or between laborers and say engineers are created because of this lack of respect which makes a company less efficient. So money appears to be the current driving factor in society. After having looked at that what’s next. B. Second, general cultural conditions - Ok so we have this system to motivate people by giving them money. There is a second part to motivating people to work toward society as a whole, however. As the saying goes, “money can’t buy everything” and some people will be more cooperative in helping society if other needs are being addressed in addition to or instead of just receiving the goods and services that money buys. When you have any sort of business or functioning organization, a key ingredient to keeping the organization viable is to attract members or clients and a key way to do that is to figure out what motivates them to use your service and then give it them. In public TV/radio some people give to the station out of the goodness of their heart, but others want a free T-shirt, and by accommodating both needs, one brings in much more money than if you treat the T-shirt buyers as less than altruistic. In the spirit of the fact that some people want free T-shirts while others want to be altruistic or have other needs, these next topics deal with motivation in everything besides money. The way a particular society/culture creates an environment that affects individuals that I term cultural conditions, also effects what people end up doing with themselves. Ok here are the examples: Cultural Conditions- Ok the first part of this section explores the overall theme by looking at the various pieces of American Society. As a New Englander who lived in the Midwest, traveled to the South and West, and as a telemarketer who has called every state except Hawaii and Alaska (both of which I’ve been to) I can to some degree speak of the cultural differences within the various places in the country. What does this have to do with the efficiency of society? Well in reality those little cultural differences have to do a great deal with the different people in different regions of the country trying to set up a successful society just like every corporation tries to set up a successful corporate culture. In each case they are trying to make the people in their place happy and productive in their region so that they contribute to society when money is not enough on its own. Let’s look at a few models: (And a note before I show the models. I know this section will flame up a few passions from almost any reader in the US because I do make broad generalizations about different sections of the country. No, they’re not completely accurate and yes it’s hard to sum up say Maine to New York as New England or Tennessee to Texas as the South. The point of the section is to provide a broad generalization that helps one look at how the regions interact, and not to get into every complexity within each regional culture. Look at the pros and cons each regional structure has, and how those differences affect the way people live their lives within its confines. The base point is that the certain things that are acceptable in some place like Texas are not in New England and I do believe it is hard to argue with that statement. The other point is to look at the effects that has, and not to get embroiled in regional pride about if each region is characterized correctly and especially not to get into which region is “better” than another.) New England Demeanor - cold, not overly courteous, direct and to the point, helpful when asked to be. Also, I would describe New Englanders as competitive or at least always striving to be more than they are. Rational- People in New England value independence the most, “good fences make good neighbors”. You are allowed to be who you want to be as long as you are not harming someone else. Personal discipline is stressed and caring for your own needs and taking care of yourself is emphasized. Fitting within the community norms is less emphasized here then it is the rest of the country (save possibly the west). Community - People come together strongly in times of crisis, namely winter, and of course to fight a common enemy as well. Other than emergencies, everyone is generally busy with their own plans and activities. What this creates - New England culture revolves around separate little communities with little centralization. This creates this culture with great loyalty to one’s hometown, but not to the region as a whole. Even if you live in a suburb of a major city like Hartford you are from Avon, or Colchester, or Windsor not from Hartford itself. As a consequence, Boston is the only large city in New England. New England’s atmosphere creates all those charming small towns that New England is famous for, but lack of strong central authority makes it very hard to get New Englanders to work together in a cohesive unit. Also, you never forget your racial identity in New England it’s always a plus or a minus, that you are made very aware of by others who seek out your racial or class differences (what’s different from the west is that this occurs even among Caucasians i.e. Irish versus Italian). And to clarify it’s not that I think New Englanders more racist than any other part of the country, but unlike say the Midwest, it’s extremely important to note any racial or class differences even if later they are not held against you. But you must be made aware of them. Midwest Demeanor - Aloof, very well mannered. Long winded in speech Rational- People in the Midwest value practicality. Put in “their terms” they don’t want to be seen as doing something foolish or stupid (wanting something more than they need). Community is valued and the group is valued. You can’t leave the group if born in the Midwest and you can’t join it if you are not born there. Community - The idea of community is very strong. Pittsburghers wear their Steelers jackets, Chicago is a Bulls or Bears city (and with due respect although Pittsburgh is not really the Midwest, the values in Pittsburgh are not eastern either). People are expected to have communal values. A Chicago native gave an example of a neighbor telling her as a girl it was her bedtime and she should stop playing and go to bed. As a New Englander, I am very offended by this as the neighbor had no right to do that, she was interfering in someone else’s family. She thought it was perfectly normal that neighbors would care for neighbors’ children. As a Midwesterner might say, “We let you do what you ought to be able to do and if we don’t allow it then it shouldn’t be done anyway. “ What this creates - Midwesterners aren’t innovators by nature. It’s not because I hate the Midwest that I say this, but because Midwesterners tend to perceive new things from the coasts as something to make fun of. Yes you can laugh at New Yorkers and San Franciscans as being wacky and somewhat stupid for their funny ideas of artwork and life, but these are also major places of innovation and the Midwest does not like to be funny so it isn’t generally number one at anything (because underneath being funny or stupid is a risk and necessary for social and many scientific innovations). But the Midwest does serve as an important “judge” for the country on whether something from the coast actually makes sense and should be adopted or should be thrown out. The reason factories appear here is that people respect the group culture much better than in say New England. More Soldiers and factory workers come from this region than New England possibly because the culture emphasizes cooperation. Also more CEO’s come from this region as the people who run corporations have to respect group ideas as well. What will be weaker are scientists and whacko individualists who innovate in society, but rarely profit form their ideas completely. The West - Demeanor - Laid back, unstructured, also more willing to change ideas (such as weekends are always off) Rational- People in the West value freedom over everything else. You have the right to do whatever you want and there should be very few rules. New Englanders have self imposed rules which every “respectable” member of society has for himself or herself. They don’t have to be exactly the same, but they must exist. In the Midwest, the group imposes rules Calling Westerners is the most unfriendly call for telemarketers because Westerners view the call as an infringement on freedom and structure imposed in this way is unacceptable. (In addition because they view the call as an infringement on their rights they feel no obligation to treat the telemarketer with any respect unlike New England, the South, or the Midwest) Community - The west does have large cities, but in general less of an “urban core” because everyone wants the freedom to have a car. California is the most populous state in the union yet LA has one of the smaller subways. San Francisco does have MUNI and BART, but almost by necessity as it is an island. I don’t know enough about westerners to make too many generalizations, but notice the software companies and the junk bond King Michael Milkin got their start in this region of the country. Ideas are tried here that are not allowed to flourish in the East coast’s by contrast more rigid structure. Some are good, some are bad, many are very innovative. Likewise new cultural and political events flourish here (recall the governor). What may be weaker besides many factories are banking institutions and spending habits, as personal freedom does seem to mean less need for fiscal discipline that is a household word in New England. There are cities, but the idea is you can drive anywhere and the structure is nowhere near as stifling as it is on the Megalopolis on the Eastern seaboard (Where the build up extends forever). South - I know the South feels a little left out, but after offending the rest of the country, I was hoping to keep at least part of it in good spirits so someone might buy the book. But ok just so you’re not overlooked. As a yankee, I do feel worse about doing this one. Demeanor-very polite, non-hurried Rational- The South respects Tradition with a capital T. The positive in this is its acceptance and love of community, and it’s natural tendency for discipline. Negative aspects would include unwillingness to change its ways. Community- Southerners value community, and of the regions share certain traits with Midwesterners and New Englanders. They like the Midwest don’t really like to make fools of themselves (not that any region likes to make a fool of itself, but where there is more hubris there is also more experimentation). Although the South likes structure more, like New England, it is proud of its heritage and respect of tradition in the older Southern culture is key. What this creates- The South is very diverse, I suppose you could say that of any region in the country, but there are technology pockets and extremely historical pockets in the South at this moment(depending on whether certain individual cities decided to adapt to the 21st century or not), and more than any other region, I think the South from Virginia to Texas struggles the most to define what it is in the modern world, because many of its places are not well linked in culture right now(Go to Atlanta and then to Charleston, SC for a shock). I know less of this whole region than of most of the others and I have trouble coming up with a common thread. The South has large cities which are sort of like the East and Midwest, but Southerners do not as a whole believe in mass transit (Atlanta’s subway is a lot smaller than New York’s or even Philadelphia’s). Many Southern cities could be appear to have deliberate separation in certain places, because more than the North everyone is expected to be in their place. In the South certain things are not permitted whether it is that this area is more for wealthy people or violence is not allowed on TV, the south likes to limit certain behavior more than even the MidWest (Where freedom of thought is taken very seriously despite the fact that Midwesterners believe you ought not do more than think freely). Southerners prize having their rules of etiquette followed and while I do generally look at such rules as foolish, they do regulate a system and as Midwesterners act as a gatekeeper on the coasts, Southerners provide the counter-argument for being conservative generally (not necessarily in a politically conservative sense ) “You yankees put what on your TV set?” - When the experiments in West and North East go awry Southerners hold out the longest on new social ideas and preserve a working model of society to come back to when the Coastal ideas mess up the country. And although I do not like the constraint personally, I am grateful to have a portion of the country in essence providing insurance for the rest of it. As known the South is possibly the strongest in military tradition, defense of the country. At the moment as stated there is an old and new South and it is hard to talk about Texas Instruments, Dell Corporation, CNN, and VMI in the same breath. There you have four different social customs even in the US for different ways of organizing people and how it does influence whether a region producers artists, judges, factory workers, IT workers, gamblers, or military people. As can be seen by the way I wrote this part, these different regional ideas actually play into the US as a whole as each part of the country tends to watch the others back in a way. The West provides wacko ideas, the East, ideas and business climate, the Midwest acts like the producer of everything, and the South the stabilizer. In a complex fashion these different parts of the country work together for the whole even if most of the time they’re too busy fighting with each other to realize that. The Cultural Overview - Ok so I used the different cultures of the US regions to bring out the idea, that the culture you put around human beings affects their productivity and the type of contribution they make to society. The idea of regional cultures affecting the environment and productivity of a person is just the tip of the iceberg, here are a few other issues to consider with respect to the environment and how they affect people in a society. Why all the Extras - Ok so money sort of functions like a religion as to why people want to work and are motivated to push society forward. So if the whole point of society is to improve its systems as well as scientific and business interests why is there a tremendous amount of energy spent on football & basketball stadiums and mass market movies whose content is to some degree controlled via money? In arts/entertainment, to get the money or more important really is the brand name that gets your work put somewhere where people will look at it takes a lot of grease. If it’s not that important to control entertainment, why is that? (Why does it take so much money to get your work out to the general public)? The point is that for an apparatus of fun there is a lot of infrastructure behind it. It’s not all so spontaneous. Hmm perhaps the whole system of typical life in society should be examined. I mean how do school, the workplace and all this entertainment contribute to the advancement of society? School - School does two things: it gives children a needed time to explore and it employs people who have useful ideas, but are generally not so useful in business. It serves as research and development center as well. Although for some people they would be better if plucked away at an early age and put to work, many people benefit from some free time at least in early childhood to explore. Those who explore the most (not necessarily places but also ideas) will make that exploration into their career and the really successful become say entrepreneurs or penniless artists, but they find a path they can follow with passion and that leads them to contribute to society in a very useful fashion. School gives a good excuse for this development time to occur and yes I am suggesting that for many, the classes themselves may not be so important. If business people ran education it would be very directive and that may not be so ideal. Some of the lessons learned might be better, but a lack of idealism would perhaps not be such a great thing because exploration for exploration’s sake is valuable to the advancement of society as shown by the fact that the societies that explored the most tend to be the dominant ones. (Such as say Western civilization.) What’s your point with this - why have work ? Workplace environment Work - So we structure getting things done around this concept of going off to a foreign place (in the sense that it’s away from home - for the most part) to do work. Here there is an in clock and an out clock. Is this the most efficient way to get work done? Well if it is do you work that way at home? From 8 to 5 I am going to clean my room. Is this how you work ? - Not usually, at home things are scheduled around other things sometimes at the last minute for a smoother flow. But office work requires group work and communication is necessary. So is a more structured setting necessary? - Yes to some degree although whether that justifies the whole day in an artificial environment that few people love is another thing. I guess to get to the point, work is a little like school at the moment. We need a distribution mechanism for goods and services this is what society has come up with to make people be productive, but like school it isn’t really maybe all that necessary for people to actually accomplish tasks and like school it’s a little bit set up to keep people who would get into trouble from getting into trouble. Those who are very curious and abhor the normal work schedule do find a way around it. But the current “eight to five” routine keeps many people moving in the right direction and this way management knows where you are and does not have to worry as much, which is a concern. As a note on my comments, having dealt with a few more people since writing the first idea, I start realize many people do need to be forced into a structure in order to be productive. However, believe it or not there are those who are productive if they are not under supervision and can work independently and that is what the later part of the paragraph addresses and at some point I think it’s important to realize that the workplace is a construct. People who own businesses are allowed their freedom from this system and these people a lot of times do develop more responsibly or are at least more willing to be responsible for themselves. If you own a business, you think a little differently about things like taxes and paychecks and what it means to earn a dollar. In a business, you see your worth is variable where as an employee you get attached to the dollar figure and $500 a year less or more means a lot. Breaking down money and job descriptions is a big thing and most people like the stability a workplace provides and many seem to not be able to handle the idea that one day you wake up and you’re no longer needed. You can’t do what you’ve done for 10 years. Today your 200 hours of labor is only worth $100 instead of $1000. It’s really real in business that stuff like that happens and people get very emotional when their jobs leave, but realize that in business it works much more in giant flows not a steady stream that everyone as an employee is exposed to. The workplace seeks to stabilize the stream. Greed is a factor of being an owner and some business owners do exploit their employees and society allows owners to beat their chests and make 30 times the worth of a typical worker although their labor may not be worth that. This is largely because they may take the fall if they puff themselves up too big, but as an employee when you do a good job you are also paying for when things go bad and you aren’t making your actual salary. (Employees are supposed to be guaranteed a salary no matter what, where as higher management pay is linked to bonuses and owners can theoretically go bankrupt if everyone else goes down where as an employee should not) Both the employer’s ego and the employees overestimate of their worth seem to be real factors in society with respect to work and compensation. Play - And finally to address my first question why do we build football stadiums and hold rock concerts? Because that’s what people want? Not precisely, but because it has become an essential component to hold together a society that is fractured by necessity (it needs soldiers, hippee artisans and programmers all at the same time). I get into this in later chapters, but it is necessary to have individuals in society with almost completely different life philosophies who must work together. In addition, the reason for having all the extras is that many people in society lose sight of their dreams as they age. When you’re young almost all people want to be something and have hope of doing something with their lives and a curiosity to explore. As we age, many people have their dreams dashed and start to live on in body, but in spirit they die off because the world is much different from what they imagined as a child. The effect on workers is that many people who work for companies are not there by choice and what do you do to make someone productive if they aren’t actually getting what they want out of life? Well you can give them money and authority, but those are limited in supply so what else can you do? The other solution society has come up with to keep these people gamefully employed is to give them diversions to keep up with. By diversions I mean football, theatre, gambling, outdoor recreation, you name it. Now not everyone who works for someone else is unhappy and I don’t mean to imply that everyone who likes to go gambling is unhappy with his or her life. However, many people who do not wish to deal with the harder issues of life turn to these forms of entertainment to alleviate the stresses in their lives. And although it’s a bit direct, by harder issues I do mean people do not want to face up to challenges that prevent them from doing whatever it is they want to do. And it is hard at first to try something particularly when you become older and no one actively encourages you anymore. Many people stop trying after x number of failures which is the darker side of aging. That’s why we need play in society, it helps many people still contribute to society even though they have become tired of life, and as a note it is possible to be tired of it for a while and then become re-interested in life at a later date. Coercion (from a societal level) A factor in all the regions and in every societal structure is something I will term coercion, but something other people would call the law. Yes it’s a pain to be told that you have to do things you don’t want to and in some cases to do things that don’t make sense, but there is a proven need sometimes for people to change their behavior and the law is a much more sophisticated way of doing that than say a gunpoint. The law is actually a very measured system with at least a few checks and balances to prevent abuse as opposed to say a sword or gun, both of which as instruments of coercion have been greatly abused (by abused it is much easier to use them without regard, or without a justification so that there use is not applied equally). But yes the law is a measured way of enforcing behavior and that would mean I’m implying that coercion seems to be a good thing. Well if it isn’t, mom and dad should not be able to tell you to do anything, but in this society they do and apparently there is a good reason for coercion. In truth much of education of a young child does at some point involve coercion. What is the reason for coercion? What is less painful? Being spanked by your mother or being finding out that toadstools or spiders are poisonous after they kill you? Coercion ends up being less painful. For example is it better to subject a person to jail for a crime of say theft then to let them be killed when their victim has a gun and shoots them? (Which may start another murder which may start a war.) Coercion is a necessary and practical means to help out society and that’s why it exists. And in order coerce equitably you need a set of rules hence you have laws and a need for the law. One note on coercion before going on. The balance between making people tow the line and getting work accomplished (order) and letting people have the freedom to make different things (creativity) is a constant struggle in society. I see this a great deal as I go from my native New England to other parts of the country. New England in frankness is somewhat lower on order and higher on creativity than parts of the Midwest and perhaps the South. I am not by this implying that Southerners or Midwesterners are stupid, nor actually less creative. However, what amazes me as I sit here writing in Pittsburgh is that the Pittsburgh society trains its young people to be loyal to the city. It’s very common for many people to wear Steelers jackets. You can be smart or you can be stupid, but you have the same jacket and some similar values. In Connecticut where I’m from there is no sports team nor any factor that unites people from different regions in CT and eccentricity is tolerated a great deal more. New England also feels much more baronial as what town you originate from is very important and loyalty to Hartford would be unheard of. (as those of towns around Pittsburgh still consider themselves Pittsburghers) With that last statement let me clarify a bit on the note. While I talk about community loyalty in this paragraph more than coercion the two are linked in many ways. The regions of the US with stronger communal values also are much more likely to be more coercive because they have those strong values of what people ought to do. So if what I wrote above above seems like I talk about coercion and creativity and then launch into a speech about the community values of Pittsburgh and the Midwest it’s because behind those communities there is also more enforcement of societal rules. These seemingly small cultural differences have enormous ramifications on both places. Pittsburghers are trained to accept authority and work within a system this seems to make them much better workers as a group. (This would apply as well to Chicago a city I know some of and I would assume other midwestern cities). Because there’s an assumption that everyone has the same cultural values, Pittsburghers are less tolerant in the end of people who do not share those values. (And with respect, not that they’re mean, they are very friendly to strangers, but in long term relationships say school and work they have a very hard time accepting people who do not share their value system) Why aren’t you celebrating with your family on Friday, it’s a black and gold day? Now I know that the idea of accepting others is instilled in children in both Pittsburgh and Chicago, however both societies make less room for actual acceptance. This is a weird fine line I am drawing, but a very important one. It is one thing to say you’re free to eat, practice religion and speak your mind, but in the same breadth look over someone’s shoulder and ask them what they’re doing when say they look like a hobo when they’re sitting in the park a while actually drawing a building. (free in word to do what they will, but not necessarily free in action) By this last statement I am pointing out that in certain regions of the country you can obey the law, but still be outside the norm and people will harass you just for being outside the norm. It will be done because they care about you as a stranger even if in the end they have no right. I realize the Midwesterners may feel miffed at this, but I can point to similar situations I was in, in Wisconsin, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Portland Maine where as an artist I looked a little odd doing things such as sitting in a park in winter in Pittsburgh or in Kenosha Wisconsin where for running along a road in winter, with my jacket off (I tend to be hot blooded) a police car pulled over and searched me for weapons and drove me to the train station (which is where I was headed) where as in Portland Maine for various reasons I decided to sleep outside a bus station for four hours in the middle of the night and no one bothered me. All of these incidents occurred within nine months of each other. I know there will still be fur flying, but by my own experience New Englanders appear to be more tolerant of eccentricity than are Midwesterners. (and while no charges or any penalty was actually imposed by the events in Pittsburgh or the Midwest, just the fact of calling attention to the behavior as odd has the effect of acting in a way to squelch it). And I should end by saying although I’m fairly fond of eccentricity, it is not a desirable thing. This points to the fact that in certain regions, you are still supposed to accept and live by the order established in those communities, which happens to be very strong. Order is least strong in regions like New England or California where good fences make good neighbors (or do what you will harm none), but this is also where many eccentrics come from. Less order tends to allow more creative thinkers where as in Pittsburgh some of that is taken out of the people who live there. It’s not all bad or good because Pittsburghers are very loyal to their city and do work together much better than New Englanders which are both admirable traits, but it comes at a price. And the trick in the future is how do you get the benefits of order and comradeship which encourage communication between blue-collar and white-collar workers to work together while having the benefits of letting each group be its own which encourages eccentric people to have their egos and eccentricities and do things in odd ways, but therefore to also be discoverers. This is not only a battle for law obviously. It is also a battle for society. To this day we are experimenting with society in order to find the happy medium to have people respect the community and also respect those who choose to be different and all the regions in the country struggle with that. CHAPTER IV. : Obstacles in Society - Problem Conflict Resolution The SoapBox Chapter Note to the reader: Ok my theory of how society works which involves society moving towards a higher level of maturity can be understood without reading this chapter at all. You can completely skip it and go to chapter five and not miss anything in understanding it. So what will you miss if you don’t read this chapter? In this chapter I try to show the current struggles of society more closely relate to the hypothesis with several real problems that society currently deals with and how solutions may arise, but primarily I do try to show that there are very good reasons to have some of the current conflicts in society and that the world actually does make sense. The Inventions Mentioned in Chapter I Ok we’re about to talk about the tough stuff for the here and now. How do problems in society get resolved? In the history section, chapter I, we mention the fact that these brilliant people come up with inventions that solve problems for others and then they just sort of leave the stage as the social ramifications hit the fan (every solution to one problem usually has or causes several other ramifications). So what happens when we have new technology? Before dealing with individual obstacles I wanted to give a general case for what happens each time society adapts to the new things going on inside it. Let’s look at cloning, the car, and the computer, abortion, which are current obstacles that society has to deal with. Or perhaps first, let’s talk about something society has been successfully integrated. Let’s talk about the idea of being a merchant. In the medieval times when the center of power was military and composed of castles with knights inside them, the economy was based mostly on farming. As more land was settled, transportation and communication improved and better technology for mundane things like road building came into existence and that stabilized trade routes. More security and more stable trade routes had the effect of stabilizing currency value. Trade thus became a dominant form of exchange. As the trade route became more important, castles were linked by trade and the knights had to start to share power with the merchants. The clergy who with the knights ruled between the 8th-16th centuries began to decline because the idea of transit and trading goods and services began to be more prevalent and important than the person who was in charge of an individual cathedral/monastery. As this happened the idea of merchant towers or buildings that display a merchant’s power came into being and the idea of “merchant princes” arose. In a few more centuries philosophers would propose the age of enlightenment and the idea of democracy would be spelled out. Finally, the 18th century American and French revolutions occur and yes I am linking to some degree democracy and capitalism because democracy is part of the defeat of a military and clerical rule of society. But as you trace these changes in the basic ruling structure of a society, one can make the argument it occurred over the 7-8th century until the 20th century where in the 1900’s Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford became the first ruling elite merchants with tremendous amounts of money and power, but with no noble title. I’m trying to illustrate how society does change due to improvements in just a single facet of itself and then society evolves into a new form over time. So now how does this affect today? Well what one sees as one looks at the battle for an end to a feudal monarchy and a move to a trade based system is there were many small improvements and wars as society adjusted to what it would be like to have a new economic system. Napoleon and his defeat and the rollback to a more monarchical rule in Europe marked this idea of a fight with battles and adjustments as societies stepped into unfamiliar territory. North American was at first an exception to this as it was a good place for many repressed people to try out many different ideas. Many of these ideas have appeared to help society leap forward as they were implemented (although others like Puritanism did not work out). The reason for this exception in the “New World” (formerly the Native American World) is that it was easier to implement new social/ economic ideas because the strongly entrenched hierarchy did not have to be defeated. Six Goals of Society Now with all that in mind, to deal with many of the problems of society I try to put forth six “goals” or ideals of doing things in society that society tries to achieve and represent the complexities of achieving them. Goal I: Making the Best and the Brightest Racism (Perception) - the problem of the inequity of wealth distribution in our current society as determined by one’s religion, sex, race, and any other distinguishing characteristics other than pure talent and ability. Ignorance versus Education - how do you get a factory worker to respect Warren Buffet? - or better yet how will the factory worker respect the WTO that will take away his/her job? Education versus Education - yes I meant that-I’d like to just leave the joke, but let’s talk about the objectives of our current educational system and perhaps why and where it fails Goal II: Using your Brightest and Best -How people are inhibited by themselves and society from being everything they can be. Business Coercion- How do you give orders to subordinates. Family Ties- Competition Goal III: Most Efficient way to Create and Distribute Goods Evolution of the Economy from Shopkeeper to Corporation - Main street is being destroyed by evil big corporations and we are all becoming corporate that just follow the orders of corporations. - bing - bleep - Is that true? Centralized Distribution World Economy - how does world economy work without destroying the participants? Black Market- why does the economy have a shadow side? Sales-Advertising - The wonders of 21st way of product distribution. Conquer the World Trade economy/environmentalism - how do the global trading cities compete with the environment ? Goal IV: To Spread New Knowledge and Ideas Innovation - how is an age of /or group of technology created? Copyright Professional Pecking Order Goal V: To keep a healthy Environment Surburban sprawl/Environment -Why don’t cities grow in one big block? - How to wrestle with the fact that barbarian wilderness seems to be beneficial. Goal VI: Improving the Health and Well Being of All? HealthCare - What is the best model? Societal Messages - how to change a persons behavior Goal VII: To have a working legal system that regulates peoples behavior Crime/Imprisonment - How to deal with the temptation to go beyond the system and how then to deal with transgressions - reframed as a problem - drugs and human beings and other illicit activities have yet to be integrated into society and is it really efficient to lock people up in a place where they are raped and murdered at a great cost to society for many years? Healthcare - how do we take care of people Laws- Crime Imprisonment- Why Have Justice- GOAL I:Finding/Creating The Best and the Brightest This chapter and the next one are much harder to organize than the first three. This particular question deals with the precept I think many would agree on generally that the best and thre brightest people should lead society. This first goal deals with finding the best and the brightest people, the next goal deals with using the best and the brightest people. These two goals do run into each other and I try to separate them with a fine line. To talk about the first goal this section breaks down into some the issues which prevent all talented people from being trained and recognized equally. First of these is favoritism, which is further divided into racism and perception, and to conclude this section, I talk about some flaws with the educational process itself. Favoritism- the first reason that we do not always create the best and the brightest in society is favoritism. As people we tend to select certain individuals that we would prefer to educate and help than others and the reasons are not completely based on merit. I split favoritism into two categories, racism and perception. Racism deals with grouping that are more conscious and obvious and perception deals with more subtle things that may not be applied to a whole group or are more hidden (attitudes, dress, hidden speech pattern distinction for example). I try to talk about why favoritism exists and why in the past it did (and still does) have value to groups in society. Racism is evil - sounds like something many people do and ought to believe, Doesn't it ? Oh really, do you want to be alive? First, what is racism? Underneath racism is a way that you, a specific person, or a species can distinguish yourself from a group. Or in another example, racism is how one group of beings can distinguish itself from another different group of people/beings. With that definition in place - I would like to make the statement that it's a pretty good thing our pre-historic human ancestors knew the difference between themselves and the non-human species. Then there's human history during the Roman, Chinese, Muslim, Indian and other ancient civilizations where I think they appreciated the ability to discriminate between themselves and distribute resources only to those that were friendly. In earlier history, people who were friendly were assumed to be the people who looked like you and were of the same race. In this instance, racism or the practice of favoring one racial group over the other, was a tool for survival. The Problem with Racism in the Current Time Now we have the 20th century and a multi-cultural society. Boy have we got problems! Now other cultures have dealt with multi-culturalism for a few more years than the US (South America in particular), but in general it is a new phenomena that creates problems because the old way of seeing your enemy and your friend through recognizable physical features no longer holds. So in this new diverse societal model does racism make sense? Initially it would seem to. Because our culture is not homogenous there is an argument for racism whether spoken or unspoken. Caucasians can count on similar beliefs from fellow Caucasians, but even more subtly (especially to non-Caucasians) Irish will deal easier with Irish, Germans with Germans etc. Dealings with people who are like you is an easy way to have some assurance that you are dealing with someone with common values and beliefs who will not be your enemy. What practical implications does this sort of racism have? As an example, when you’re a landlord, you are responsible for damage to your apartment. Because the tenants can cause you a lot of grief even if you are able to evict them. If there is a way to screen out bad tenants then you will look at it closely because it’s your personal headache if you fail to screen out tenants. One or two bad experiences will make you even more likely to look closely at ways to make owning the apartment less of a headache and a more reliable source of revenue. This is why redlining and racial profiling exists. Is it fair? Absolutely not, but it is pragmatic to either give or take away more trust from someone if experiences have demonstrated that a person with these characteristics or from this group of people is likely to be helpful or harmful. There is this practical argument for racism in our society today that is demonstrated through racial profiling, business and apartment redlining, and other things that were mentioned above. To start to change the occurrence of racism in our society, I believe one must first acknowledge that racism has been a form of self-defense and pragmatic tool for several centuries, if not millennia. Why doesn’t this argument work all the time and why won’t it work in the future? Why is there a backlash to racial profiling? Well the counter to it is that the strongest societies gather information and resources from all their members. Flexibility allowed Europe to defeat China even though China was a great power into the 1400’s. (Another example is that the societies or communities which allow integration in the US are generally more successful than those that don’t .) New ideas are key to societal progress and must be allowed eventually. It is also very costly to shelve so many human resources in prisons and keep potentially talented people in lower wage jobs or risk making them threats to the public by not supporting them which is what racism does. Thomas, Gray, a famous English poet once argued in a poem called “Gray’s Elegy” that you may not make a Van Gogh by neglecting to bring someone up and educate them, but you also may not make a Hitler. I would argue that people like Hitler are created when you decide to exclude smart people from the process of power or mistakes are made with their education, and instead you install others more like yourself or better known to yourself instead. Perception - Alright in the above portion on racism I set up the dual nature of current society where on one hand all these groups that traditionally don’t trust each other are now being pushed into forming a collective society, but all the groups are still unsure how to act with each other. So What Happens Now? Society as a whole is starting to abandon the idea that a racial group makes up friends and enemies. So the last part of favoritism deals with the natural issue that comes up: how do you screen out your friends? By friends I mean not actual personal acquaintances, but people you do business with, people you hire, people you want in your University, people in many life situations that you in some way depend on. Right now it is very common in business or in other arena’s to only examine the surface of a person’s character. People judge you on a quick look at a resume and many don’t take an extra second to make sure to look more closely and consider all possibilities of that single page of information. In academia, if you need to transfer to schools, many do a very superficial scan of your credentials and determine your status more based on the name of the school more than how the course descriptions of your classes match with those in the University. After that quick glance or handshake people then type you. You are a jock, nerd, handicapped, African, Hispanics, Jew, Caucasian, Native American, fat, thin, male, female. People used to scan the package from the outside to know what’s inside and they are still used to doing that. The recognition that a person isn’t just one thing or another is still not a comfortable in society. Was the beggar on the street a veteran? Is the bank teller a great artist at night? From now on it continues to be more difficult and it seems that the time needed to figure someone out should be increased as people become more complex and organizations seem to have to scan for more diverse sets of talents. People have probably become more complex over time as there is greater access to different life styles as there is a great deal more of communication. But what could be more helpful in scanning than that master tool of information, the computer? In addition, one thing that is being used instead of race like a uniform or distinctive dress style. Uniforms have the effect of labeling people in a certain way regardless of their makeup. Education- education is the second part of finding and creating the best and the brightest. First let’s look at the precept the more education creates a better person and second lets look at how well the current educational system performs at its goal of bringing forth the talents of each person. Ignorance versus Education- Is Education always a good thing? Unfortunately not in our current society. The title of this section is the best and the brightest, in the sub-section, I examine what happens when being the brightest is not the best? I use a stereotype to explain here: the emotionless soldier and the compassionate priest. The soldier is trained to think of an enemy as foreign and to “do a job” and at the same time there is an emphasis on not seeing the enemy as a set of people. The inflection implies no greater ramifications than doing the job when in effect murdering someone. I have not personally been a soldier, but those I have interacted with seem to dislike foreign things. Why is that? It’s a trick that’s been used for generations. If you dehumanize the enemy you make them easier to kill. Would a priest or anyone who has tried to understand a conflict from both sides be a good soldier or will they think too much about their actions to make them effective? Socrates, the Greek philosopher, was condemned by Athens when Athens lost to the Spartans because too many Athenian men thought about what they were doing and did not want to fight. One can be a thinker and a soldier, but if every soldier was enlightened each one has to go through the moral dilemma of whether it is right to kill and that is very risky if it occurs on a battlefield. What happens if half the soldiers decide they can’t do what they’re supposed to do? So are soldiers better to be ignorant of those they fight? Maybe the right answer is yes because they are likely to be less effective at what they need to do if they know too much. Workers in a factory or office are similarly trained by society. Most laborers believe they don’t have the chance to be anything but the laborer they are and accept their position in life and usually with that accept the fact they cannot be out of debt and must continue at their present job for life. Some people live like this, but others try to change their lives by going to college or starting a business. People who try out ways to change their consciousness ( such as college or business ownership) tend to believe they can change what is happening and by the activities they choose they reinforce that. And the act of education however it occurs tends show people that they can change their lives. Do you want all your factory workers to have that drive and always want the top job? Or are they easier to handle if they have less drive and accept a given pay rate and working conditions and are generally obedient (there are two sides to this which I will explore later). In many instances, workers play around a bit during the job because they do not like to admit how much power their boss has over them and how bored they are with the repetition. I can only speak from my own experience, but after having experienced what it’s like to be independent of a boss and not have the supervision, I never want to go back. I understand that others don’t seem to desire this, but I think that many stay in their jobs because they don’t receive the opportunity to see the other side or are afraid of what happens. Does that mean I’ll never work for someone else again? I’m actually going to have to shortly, but my goal now is to free myself from that position and that has impacted my lifestyle choices and makes being free not an airy construct, but a possible reality. There are really very few people who are trapped in a particular lifestyle, but most people don’t have the dream that something else is possible. It also doesn’t make you a bad employee if instead of feeling trapped in your job, you feel you have possibilities. The reason that works is because if you feel you have possibilities and the way to achieve them is through the benefits or income that your job provides; you agree to your job instead of taking it out of necessity, you tend to work harder as an employee and direct your wish to be free towards the place it can do most good; the time you are off work working on your own things. Education versus Education - Ah yes the wondrous wholesome sound of it. Let’s educate our children so that they have a better future. Yes, but the wrinkle in that idea is that humans run the schools and the educating is done within the economy. Every child when growing up has an individual side and wants to express himself or herself. It is only as we get older that after being convinced we’re no good at this or that that we stop wanting to do everything. A few foolish people survive the transition and still want to learn regardless, but most people do experience a little oppression within the educational system. The point I’m making is that learning as it naturally occurs is a very individual and very illogical process (logic being defined as things one thinks should be learned together). It is extremely difficult to define how long one should study, with what intensity, and on what subjects, to become educated. However, when in school, any school, school turns learning into a regulated process with the people managing the students perhaps being those that generally do not like working for or in the business sector they are supposedly training the students to go into. What happens because the learning environment currently has little to do with the student’s needs, nor really the employers is that many people are hurt a great deal in school and never have the chance to find what they truly want to do. Most people who do find out what they want are very persistent and I do blame the educational system in the US and in most other countries as well in part for the fact that many other people do not find out what they want to do. It does hurt society that so many people do not find their place. In addition, those who are persistent may still take years to find their place, and that may be years of wasted productivity. Now perhaps I am an overeducated young person rebelling against my professors for things I should have said to them in class, but because I have seen both a community college and now two University settings I do know a thing or two about different teaching styles. In a community college the emphasis is on getting a student to finish the degree, learn something and move on. In the community colleges I have seen, the emphasis is put on presenting material that is from a book and can easily be studied so that a student who does show at least some effort is successful. A University (a place that calls itself a “higher” learning institution) has a different objective than a community college and also has a different teaching style. A community college places as its objective to make sure that people come out of it who are able to work at jobs. A “University” has the “higher” goal of enlightening students to think and act for themselves implied in which is the ability to lead society. Due to this goal, instead of just conveying the knowledge in the course for students, universities do make it their aim to make courses more challenging so that a student has to learn to cope with more confusing situations. Yes I am stating that University policy appears to be to complicate teaching material purposefully so that a student has to struggle. The good side of why a University does things like this is to help people grow in personal ways as well as with information. What might objected to in this stretching and weeding process is that people sometimes have extenuating circumstances that hurt their performance and also that educational institutions have stricture put on them as well. One thing to consider is that every University that has a reputation, has a vested interest in making sure there is “quality control” for the students that it graduates. This means that some of the courses are difficult just to make sure people don’t get through who aren’t trying or who are not interested. What happens when someone has a rural background where oral communication is very different from oral communication as used by people in cities? In addition, what if graduates who pass after struggling don’t quite feel good about the way they passed (for example not feeling very competent in the subject because you couldn’t understand this example of that even though you got a passing grade)? Even the most talented student may come from a different background than his or her professors do, in which case if the class depends upon understanding things in a certain venue that student may well struggle for communication issues, instead of a lack of desire, or lack of ability. This is a failure on the part of the university. That’s the basic issue with the academic system that although learning is the stated goal, a professor has to communicate his/her subject and cannot be caught off-guard by responsibilities to industry concerns for graduates, the universities concerns about all students with this degree conforming to specs to maintain the universities reputation, or by the professor’s research or other non-didactic interests. The next part elaborates on the prices of barriers. The Price of Barriers These additional barriers may make students unsuccessful and their reaction to their failure could be very adverse. As an example, I had a friend who failed in a University because being honest meant one thing to him and something else to the professors, I do speak from experience. (He didn’t actually fail, he left because he was so disturbed by what he saw). He has never put his life back together yet and his father practices the profession which he is in and which he studied for. In addition to a situation like that described above, the people who study and still barely make it, loose confidence in themselves as a result are also wounded. That phenoma may be why many people remain in jobs they are not suited for. (It seems so hard to go back.) Price of a Reputation The stretching can have a positive effect if done correctly, but a University can fail students if it gets caught up in its reputation. A University may be more concerned about where it’s graduates go than what they learned because the people who graduate reflect on the Universities reputation, they must be made to be special because otherwise anyone could teach students and the university would not be able to charge several thousand dollars a year for tuition. So to make students “special” they are rigorously tested in their classes instead of being taught at a pace or in a way with which most people can learn at comfortably ( or perhaps said in a better way, the emphasis is not on making people comfortable to learn). Instead, courses are accelerated and actually meant to make a few people fail so the rest will feel special and the university looks elite. (Having seen two university systems at work, I do speak from experience). “ But you can’t teach the wave theory of physics to idiots!” I no longer believe that it is impossible. Mostly, a university psyches out students with less exposure to the educated culture and less formal training by making these artificial jumps in early classes that students with more familiarity with the system know will end. Those students with more experience get through these jumps with past knowledge while those who have less education going in feel like they’re too stupid to figure it out. Obviously persistence does pay off, but there are a group of students who fail because they do not understand exactly what is being tested. “Yes, but hard courses build character”, a very traditional argument from the University. The thing is that for every person who needs to feel good, by overcoming these fake academic challenges, someone does not end up feeling good. (And every person you hurt either must recover, or becomes stuck in a job that they don’t want or just not be productive in life.) Fake Challenge The reason I call an academic challenge fake is that as I explained earlier, almost any knowledge can be taught to anyone. I take that as an underlying premise. The reason it is so difficult for many to pass classes, assuming they study, is that there is more going on than just teaching knowledge, some professors try to help you by putting you in situations where you will gain pseudo-work experiences. Examples would be group situations, having multiple assignments to keep track of, forcing one to do a lot of research and intentionally not explaining certain things in order to force the research. While this all seems like such a good help for young people because one does have to go through these experiences in work, a lot of the pressures in a work environment feels different and what is done in the classroom generally becom