Mr Churchill, erstwhile PM of the UK said on the floor of the House of Commons on the 11th of November, 1947 that "Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
Said quote having been beaten to death from time to time by many a commenter to justify everything from fascism to electronic voting to pornography. The key to (ab)using the quote lies of course in paraphrasing it, emphasizing a word or two to change it's meaning (emphasize "tried" for instance in the last bit and the meaning changes completely, opening the field for the user to propose an entirely new form of government for trying!) or simply going full anon with ; 'Someone once said' and then proceed to cast aspersions on their intellect and/ or intent. That can be done with any good quote, whether actually uttered by a dignitary or made up on the spot (full disclosure: I've often made up quotes for school/ college essays, and mostly attribute them to Bertrand Russell - a man hardly anyone has read and who could plausibly have had an opinion on anything).
But I digress. This here is supposed to be a meditation on Democracy. More specifically Representative Democracy.
The infamous "they" say democracy in general started with ancient Greece of course, and conjure up images of potbellied, half-robed, and flaxen-bearded sophists gathering in yonder agora for a good spot of drunk verbal jousting. They also say the tradition spilled over into Rome where unfortunately some bloke called Julius had other ideas.
This is hogwash, of course... for one thing Greek democracy (particularly in fabled Athens) was participatory, not representative, and although Aristotle did say (and condemn many of us, myself included)" "To take no part in the running of the community's affairs is to be either a beast or a god!", what us modern people fail to acknowledge is that Graeco-Roman citizenship was exclusive! Women, 'barbarians', and slaves had no vote, no say. Citizenship was for the privileged few.
This was probably for the best because a) it cut down the number of participants in the debate in yon fabled agora and b) it probably cut out the 'salt of the earth, unwashed masses' types who wouldn't be 'wise' in the Socratic sense anyway.
Of course, beyond early Rome, there were few instances of even semi-democratic republics (unless there were some in Africa that got wiped out by slavers before the historians knew it). In India for instance, the authority and dharma of kings were institutionalized by many means, not least through religion, but also through the works of Chanakya and his ilk.
So let us then fly past the monarchies and the feudalism and imperialism and fascism and communism with scarce concern and arrive at a seminal epoch - Earth circa 1947, post World War II, when Imperialism was in its death throes and the cognoscenti were mostly nodding their heads in acquiescence when Mr. Churchill said what he did. The consensus was, 'Democracy Rocks'.
The consensus also was that we needed a more... acceptable way to keep the unwashed masses in check than slavery or the denial of suffrage to women, both of which the western cognoscenti now considered despicable, although their own Bibles silently (for the former) or actively (for the latter) encouraged the practices. Fear not, for the Brits and Yanks had in the time past come up with practical representative democracy, which they proceeded to prescribe to a world in flux.
Representative democracy is convenient to the cognoscenti. It is power in the hands of a representative who, by definition, will be elected from among 'the best of us'. S/he will be more qualified, better educated, wiser etc. than the people s/he represents. "More qualified" is the new "Powerful"; "Wiser" the new "Manly"; and "Politically connected" the new "Royal". Which is sort of predictable when one frames the descriptions in a post-industrial, faux-egaletarian, more crowded, and income-gap ridden world.
It would be tedious now to walk you through the dense history of the past sixty-two odd years, so instead take a moment to view the rushes: democracy fails (for the most part) in Africa, flounders (for the most part) in Asia and South America, takes on a local, somewhat corrupt but vibrant flavor in India, and finds zealot levels of belief in North America and western Europe. (we will conveniently forget the Middle East and anything west of India for the length of our discussion, where the black gold seems adequate reason for the prescribers to withold prescription from time to time e.g. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan).
Of course, the prescribers do get an anomalous zealot elected to high office in the last 9 years of this period who foolishly starts, well, prescribing zealously... but then his work will (one assumes) be undone in a few years to come.
More pertinently in the here and now, the world's largest democracy is currently in high gear, electing officials to various levels of office. We vote in millions, for reasons as varied as from a bottle of free booze to a high falutin philosophy. Every one of my closet elitist friends is afraid Mayawati will be PM (perhaps not recognizing that maybe Mayawati being PM is the logical next step in the emancipation of the under-privileged). The dance of democracy, that imperfect goddess, is in full flow.
So here's my question: Why hasn't anyone pointed out the obvious? That democracy, in the cosmic scheme of things, is only a recent invention with an at best spotty track record?
Why isn't anyone concerned that in most democracies (India, the US, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan for about ten years of its sixty year lifetime) seems to give the world as many (albeit less potent or long lived) dynasties as any other form of government?
Why isn't anyone concerned, (this is most puzzling for me) that the cognoscenti everywhere seem to be alternately at war with or engaged in manipulating and hoodwinking the very masses they want to serve?
Why aren't we concerned in this age of information and the world wide web that although participatory democracy is actually almost feasible in this day and age, we ('wisely') still stick to the representative variant? Why aren't we concerned about the obvious focussing (and consequent abuse) of power this allows?
Think about it - a voting machine on every street corner, that uses biometrics to establish identity, and on a timebound basis allows you to vote yea or nay on not representatives, but issues, bills, and propositions before local, state, and national governments.
Does that really sound so impractical or unreasonable? Why have elections where we exercise our right every few years? Let the 'unwashed masses' of yore rule, continously. Remove this creamy layer of elected officials. Let the bureaucrats get their instruction directly from the public they serve! Sure, we'll probably see a guillotine or three, and almost certainly have a couple of wars and a disastrous foreign policy for a while... but hey, it will be the people's rule.
Perhaps government will break down and political parties will transmogrify into lobbying groups - people wont vote on issues unless they have their skin in the game somehow. Certainly people like me who wax eloquent about their apathy and agnosticism will not bother to vote every hour or day or week when we don't vote every few years! Perhaps the litany of boredom that is governance will actually put most voters to sleep...
But doesn't all this happen anyway? Wouldn't true technology-enabled participatory democracy be democracy in all her glory?
More to come... out!
Apr 26, 2009
Apr 25, 2009
Politics and Me
Let me start out with a confession that will shock no one (it should) and concern even fewer people (which is tragic). In my life of just over 28 years, having lived in India from birth for the most part, except a four year spell in the US, I probably know more about the constitution and politics of that land than I do of my own. Head hanging appropriately shamed, the only mitigation that comes to mind is the fact that I really did not know/ care about politics until a few years ago, so in some sense I 'awoke' while in the US. I must also say my taste for politics was defined and honed by a spectacular TV show - "The West Wing", which in itself is, over its seven seasons a course in liberal American politics.
Growing up in India, politics was always something you tapped your nose about and sighed knowingly (although you knew nothing). The thing to do for those my age was to say we thought politics was dirty. Of course, if you pressed us for detail, we could respond with scant little other than a few movie references; or perhaps with some headlines that had pierced the indulgent media cloud that was forming around us. We laughed at Laloo, tut-tutted the Thackerays (and turned up our noses at those who wouldn't), and stared slack-jawed at Jayalalitha without bothering to understand.
I never got that these politicians who obsessed about things we cared nothing about (suitcases filled with cash, endangered ethnic identities, and buffalo care) were in fact representing us, our ideas and ideals, our hopes, dreams, nightmares, and philosophies. Until far too recently, I couldn't tell a leftist from a right-wing nationalist or a centrist if my life depended on it... curious, because I had spent hours obsessing about the very philosophies that they espoused.
My otherwise trivia-obsessed mind never drew lines to connect Lenin and Trotsky with a Naxalite or a Jyoti Basu, or Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan with Montek Singh Ahluwalia and P Chidambaram. Laughable as it sounds, I was obsessed with understanding some philosophies of economics and governance without recognizing they local variants!
Fast forward to 2009... and we are in the thick of an election season. Another confession - I haven't voted this time (registration and location issues were a convenient excuse) but before you cite all the damn Tata Tea Jaago re commercials let me explain why.
If there is a sin I am guilty of, it is apathy. I don't glory in the fact that I have the wherewithal to admit it where a lot of others don't. I also don't want to propose any solutions or remedies to my condition because, well, I am apathetic to it. Anyway, this blog isn't about what I propose to do about it. This is, (to borrow a wonderful phrase from R Scott Bakker, whose mind-blowing book "The Judging Eye" I am currently reading) an attempt to analyze 'the darkness that comes before'.
Why is it that I am apathetic?
First of all, I don't have too many problems with the way India is run. I am rich enough, escapist enough, and 'travel-enabled' enough to have all these problems seem distant. I live in a gated community that charges premiums on everything to make sure only the 'elite' live here. The beggars on the street are a dull buzz outside my air-conditioned car. I have a good job, eat well, drink expensive, and am allowed to live in a cocoon of my own design.
In fact, if there were one difference between me and the pre-ascetism Prince Siddartha (beside the fact that no banyan tree is going to see me get turned into a Buddha any time soon), it would be that I've had more than the fabled four moments of 'realization' - I've seen poverty, and death, and hunger, and pain, et al - and I walked on past them. Maybe ascetism (or a realization that my comforts are holding me back) is needed before one is truly enlightened, but I am selfish and blase enough to deny myself denial.
The fact is that in a complex reality like India, I am in the minority in the class sense. I don't have tales to tell of a childhood of poverty that I had to pull myself out of by my bootstraps. I was well-provided for - coddled, actually - as a child, and the only difference between me as an adult is now I know where the money comes from!
But then apathy isn't all that keeps me from being political. There is perhaps a deeper reason - my agnosticism.
Another reality is that I just can't tell the difference between political parties and philosophies in India. They are peopled with semi-senile geriatrics or dynastic mediocres who think power is their birthright, for the most part. I do see once firebrand revolutionaries and activists reduced to the role of ignorant yet arrogant pimps in the horse-trading games that repeat at each level of government. Quid pro quo is not only the way in India, it seems to the guiding philosophy!
To vote, to be politically active, is to make a choice and to be convinced of a direction and a philosophy/ vision. I am, first and foremost, a disgusted agnostic.
If I were to have political opinion, I suspect I would be labeled a conservative in India; against unchecked free markets, against invasive government, against affirmative action, for aggressive and engaged foreign policy (particularly projection of regional power), for devolution of power to the states, for uniform civil codes and several key constitutional amendments (beginning with the removal of 'socialist' from the pre-amble, which to my mind is an anachronism now), etc.
To be sure even these opinions sit in my mind with a hundred caveat emptors and while I lean in those directions, I haven't made up my mind.
It is perhaps that hesitation, that recognition that today's just cause could well be tomorrow's grave error (or genocide without the need for brute force) is what keeps me in my stall while all the other horses are running around. I am genuinely afraid of political/ activist passion.
Given that believing/ doing something might not work out for the best, I resign myself to believing/ doing nothing with any force. (I'm not a nihilist - just an armchair commentator with mild preferences).
This is made further strange that my parents are activists, and always have been. They have stated preferences and they do what they say they should. From my earliest days I have seen them fight for some social cause or other (although, it must be said they too for the most part shun the regular channels of elective politics and believe more in people's movements).
I think I am beginning to understand now why I didn't ever feel like jumping in and helping them... first of all, the family dynamic never behooved me to do it just to please them, and secondly, somewhere in my subconscious sits an agnostic sage with the advice:
"Believe nothing, and be wary of passion; passion leads to unreason"
I know that sounds smug and convenient... but not to me. I can't say I've lived by that statement all of the time, but I can confidently say I have most of the time.
Anyway... I just realized I've gone past the point where this post could've had a good punchy finish, and into ramble territory.
So let me conclude by saying... I am a political work in progress... and might - just might - vote the next time. Assuming all things don't remain equal...
Growing up in India, politics was always something you tapped your nose about and sighed knowingly (although you knew nothing). The thing to do for those my age was to say we thought politics was dirty. Of course, if you pressed us for detail, we could respond with scant little other than a few movie references; or perhaps with some headlines that had pierced the indulgent media cloud that was forming around us. We laughed at Laloo, tut-tutted the Thackerays (and turned up our noses at those who wouldn't), and stared slack-jawed at Jayalalitha without bothering to understand.
I never got that these politicians who obsessed about things we cared nothing about (suitcases filled with cash, endangered ethnic identities, and buffalo care) were in fact representing us, our ideas and ideals, our hopes, dreams, nightmares, and philosophies. Until far too recently, I couldn't tell a leftist from a right-wing nationalist or a centrist if my life depended on it... curious, because I had spent hours obsessing about the very philosophies that they espoused.
My otherwise trivia-obsessed mind never drew lines to connect Lenin and Trotsky with a Naxalite or a Jyoti Basu, or Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan with Montek Singh Ahluwalia and P Chidambaram. Laughable as it sounds, I was obsessed with understanding some philosophies of economics and governance without recognizing they local variants!
Fast forward to 2009... and we are in the thick of an election season. Another confession - I haven't voted this time (registration and location issues were a convenient excuse) but before you cite all the damn Tata Tea Jaago re commercials let me explain why.
If there is a sin I am guilty of, it is apathy. I don't glory in the fact that I have the wherewithal to admit it where a lot of others don't. I also don't want to propose any solutions or remedies to my condition because, well, I am apathetic to it. Anyway, this blog isn't about what I propose to do about it. This is, (to borrow a wonderful phrase from R Scott Bakker, whose mind-blowing book "The Judging Eye" I am currently reading) an attempt to analyze 'the darkness that comes before'.
Why is it that I am apathetic?
First of all, I don't have too many problems with the way India is run. I am rich enough, escapist enough, and 'travel-enabled' enough to have all these problems seem distant. I live in a gated community that charges premiums on everything to make sure only the 'elite' live here. The beggars on the street are a dull buzz outside my air-conditioned car. I have a good job, eat well, drink expensive, and am allowed to live in a cocoon of my own design.
In fact, if there were one difference between me and the pre-ascetism Prince Siddartha (beside the fact that no banyan tree is going to see me get turned into a Buddha any time soon), it would be that I've had more than the fabled four moments of 'realization' - I've seen poverty, and death, and hunger, and pain, et al - and I walked on past them. Maybe ascetism (or a realization that my comforts are holding me back) is needed before one is truly enlightened, but I am selfish and blase enough to deny myself denial.
The fact is that in a complex reality like India, I am in the minority in the class sense. I don't have tales to tell of a childhood of poverty that I had to pull myself out of by my bootstraps. I was well-provided for - coddled, actually - as a child, and the only difference between me as an adult is now I know where the money comes from!
But then apathy isn't all that keeps me from being political. There is perhaps a deeper reason - my agnosticism.
Another reality is that I just can't tell the difference between political parties and philosophies in India. They are peopled with semi-senile geriatrics or dynastic mediocres who think power is their birthright, for the most part. I do see once firebrand revolutionaries and activists reduced to the role of ignorant yet arrogant pimps in the horse-trading games that repeat at each level of government. Quid pro quo is not only the way in India, it seems to the guiding philosophy!
To vote, to be politically active, is to make a choice and to be convinced of a direction and a philosophy/ vision. I am, first and foremost, a disgusted agnostic.
If I were to have political opinion, I suspect I would be labeled a conservative in India; against unchecked free markets, against invasive government, against affirmative action, for aggressive and engaged foreign policy (particularly projection of regional power), for devolution of power to the states, for uniform civil codes and several key constitutional amendments (beginning with the removal of 'socialist' from the pre-amble, which to my mind is an anachronism now), etc.
To be sure even these opinions sit in my mind with a hundred caveat emptors and while I lean in those directions, I haven't made up my mind.
It is perhaps that hesitation, that recognition that today's just cause could well be tomorrow's grave error (or genocide without the need for brute force) is what keeps me in my stall while all the other horses are running around. I am genuinely afraid of political/ activist passion.
Given that believing/ doing something might not work out for the best, I resign myself to believing/ doing nothing with any force. (I'm not a nihilist - just an armchair commentator with mild preferences).
This is made further strange that my parents are activists, and always have been. They have stated preferences and they do what they say they should. From my earliest days I have seen them fight for some social cause or other (although, it must be said they too for the most part shun the regular channels of elective politics and believe more in people's movements).
I think I am beginning to understand now why I didn't ever feel like jumping in and helping them... first of all, the family dynamic never behooved me to do it just to please them, and secondly, somewhere in my subconscious sits an agnostic sage with the advice:
"Believe nothing, and be wary of passion; passion leads to unreason"
I know that sounds smug and convenient... but not to me. I can't say I've lived by that statement all of the time, but I can confidently say I have most of the time.
Anyway... I just realized I've gone past the point where this post could've had a good punchy finish, and into ramble territory.
So let me conclude by saying... I am a political work in progress... and might - just might - vote the next time. Assuming all things don't remain equal...
Apr 22, 2009
Indian Premier Lame
Yes dang it, I know. Tis the big show, the holy TV pilgrimage for most Indians these days. The most cash-rich sports league in the nation. A breath of fresh air in the cricketing world. A way to build bench strength in Indian cricket more effective than any before it. A marketer's dream come true (even with the move to rain-plagued South Africa). A celebrity making device for Lalit Modi and an ego-stroking device for Shah Rukh Khan. Another way for Indians to waste their time listening to Shilpa Shetty wax eloquent about things she doesn't know. And an opportunity for that host guy who sits with Arun Lal in what the wife tells me are the most atrociously put together clothing ensembles beyond what's in my closet.
But, with apologies, it is an exercise in Lame. Fail. Cannot haz cheezburgr.
First of all: Bangalore Royal Challengers, Kolkata Knight Riders, Chennai Super Kings? Are you kidding me? A nation of over one billion and we can't come up with names not inspired by booze, a dumb but fun David Hasselhoff show that was badly remade last year, or whatever it is Super Kings is based on (cigarettes maybe)?
Secondly: there is a singular lack of differentiation between the teams. Watching , I just can't pick favorites. One problem is, there's nothing particularly Mumbai about the Mumbai Indians. You could call them the Bhatinda Brawlers, make Bhajji captain, and be the same team (of course, you'd need an international venue in Bhatinda)! Why aren't the teams regionalized? Well, I understand why, and they are good reasons, but at least do *some* zoning to make sure the teams can capitalize on the regional identities they have embedded on their names, and pick players from, you know, the city they claim to be from? If they were truly regional, we'd get some nice fanbases delineated... at this point, I just can't cheer for a favorite because I'm having a tough time telling them apart. (the garish uniforms do help in this regard and have ensured that I will never cheer for Mohali with their hint of pink, or the wife for the garish red Mallya team, whatever it's called).
Which brings me to how there just isn't enough of a team image/ reputation yet, and the owners/ players are just too damn polite (of course with Shah Rukh Khan, its hard to get the maniac to comment on anything or anyone other than himself, so...). Some marketing guy needs to tell them to sling mud at each other, get some rivalries going, and make this interesting. They can't do that right now because its like the Buddy League where losing captains go pat the back of the winning one over a beer at the end of the day. Where's the venom? I thought the whole reason why cricket got boring and T20 had to be invented was that it was, you know, sedate. Lose a little more of 'gentlemanliness'... the Aussies will teach you!
Third: They really need to move back to India. Or don't call it what it is called now. That move made me angry, and just added more dollops of lame to the lame sundae.
And finally, either get the cheerleaders less clothes, teach them to dance, or get them a damn half-time show so they do more than just randomly flail around on the sidelines.
Anyway, I feel slightly sullied by the fact that I've actually blogged about sports now - me, with my history of playing no Cricket other than EA Sports' excellent Cricket '97 on the PC, or golf on Wii Sports. So I'm off to take a bath. Out.
But, with apologies, it is an exercise in Lame. Fail. Cannot haz cheezburgr.
First of all: Bangalore Royal Challengers, Kolkata Knight Riders, Chennai Super Kings? Are you kidding me? A nation of over one billion and we can't come up with names not inspired by booze, a dumb but fun David Hasselhoff show that was badly remade last year, or whatever it is Super Kings is based on (cigarettes maybe)?
Secondly: there is a singular lack of differentiation between the teams. Watching , I just can't pick favorites. One problem is, there's nothing particularly Mumbai about the Mumbai Indians. You could call them the Bhatinda Brawlers, make Bhajji captain, and be the same team (of course, you'd need an international venue in Bhatinda)! Why aren't the teams regionalized? Well, I understand why, and they are good reasons, but at least do *some* zoning to make sure the teams can capitalize on the regional identities they have embedded on their names, and pick players from, you know, the city they claim to be from? If they were truly regional, we'd get some nice fanbases delineated... at this point, I just can't cheer for a favorite because I'm having a tough time telling them apart. (the garish uniforms do help in this regard and have ensured that I will never cheer for Mohali with their hint of pink, or the wife for the garish red Mallya team, whatever it's called).
Which brings me to how there just isn't enough of a team image/ reputation yet, and the owners/ players are just too damn polite (of course with Shah Rukh Khan, its hard to get the maniac to comment on anything or anyone other than himself, so...). Some marketing guy needs to tell them to sling mud at each other, get some rivalries going, and make this interesting. They can't do that right now because its like the Buddy League where losing captains go pat the back of the winning one over a beer at the end of the day. Where's the venom? I thought the whole reason why cricket got boring and T20 had to be invented was that it was, you know, sedate. Lose a little more of 'gentlemanliness'... the Aussies will teach you!
Third: They really need to move back to India. Or don't call it what it is called now. That move made me angry, and just added more dollops of lame to the lame sundae.
And finally, either get the cheerleaders less clothes, teach them to dance, or get them a damn half-time show so they do more than just randomly flail around on the sidelines.
Anyway, I feel slightly sullied by the fact that I've actually blogged about sports now - me, with my history of playing no Cricket other than EA Sports' excellent Cricket '97 on the PC, or golf on Wii Sports. So I'm off to take a bath. Out.
Apr 14, 2009
The World in General
So I've been ruminating all day today about complexity, progress, perception, and reality. Or you could say I've been thinking about the parts of the blind folks' elephant that they are for quite some time now.
I know you feel a rant coming on, so in the interests of brevity, let me attempt to summarize in a few brief sentences:
1. The world is incredibly, inexplicably complex.
2. We perceive but a part thereof, and jump to wild conclusions and hypotheses based on observed phenomenon or (let's face it) bombast and hot air.
3. We then set out to affect the reality we scarce understand based on what will, in time, be proven naive and flawed plans.
4. Thankfully, one surprising facet of this reality we don't understand is also that in the short term and the long, we do make what seems to be progress most of the time...
5. And in a world where the laws of thermodynamics seem to be holding in both the short and long terms, we spend a finite amount of energy to achieve a predictable result, and leave the reality we seeked to impact forever changed (hence increasing its entropy).
6. So I've been ruminating about what it is that keeps us from, you know, falling flat on our faces...
If you didn't get some or all of that, let me stop using pseudo-geekspeak and give you an illustrative example.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... humanity itself.
I think it is fair to say that no scientists or politicians or philosophers or men of industry - or anyone else in history has ever had a blooming clue what's what with the world. A milder version of said statement would be that none of us has ever completely understood the world and planned or acted based on anything other than a limited or flawed understanding of the world.
So we have thoughts, ideas, policies, religions and wars being designed and executed basically by people who have some miniscule part of the puzzle solved. They are all of ephemeral half-life and for good or bad end up changing the world in their own way.
And from their cues and miscues we have this emergent behemoth made up of billions of living, breathing, eating, shitting, humping, and sometimes thinking organisms that is human society and it is (arguably) better off than it was when this mess started a geological second ago. There are even macro-trends that can be deduced and macro-projections of our trajectory that we can make... so long as we forgive ourselves the fact of not seeing the occasional hundred year economic depression or thousand year dark age in this corner of that continent or some such.
So I'm wondering what is the secret... the guiding force... the fountainhead of all this "forward" motion?
(Here I will ask you to imagine I inserted a diatribe on whether it really is forward motion or simply chaotic helter skelter that our limited minds with their limited senses perceive as forward motion)
Of course, when I think this, I have no blooming idea what the answer is. I'm just saying I'm pretty sure no one else does either.
Also, I realize that the so called "illustrative example" I set out to give has in itself become a vague diatribe in need of an illustrative example or simplification of its own.
Ah well... enough said for now I think.
PS: What? You feel like tearing your hair out because I just blathered on for a few minutes without actually going anywhere but I did actually (maybe) manage to engage if not entertain you for a while? Well... there's your illustrative example then.
I'll save some more crap for later. Toodles!
I know you feel a rant coming on, so in the interests of brevity, let me attempt to summarize in a few brief sentences:
1. The world is incredibly, inexplicably complex.
2. We perceive but a part thereof, and jump to wild conclusions and hypotheses based on observed phenomenon or (let's face it) bombast and hot air.
3. We then set out to affect the reality we scarce understand based on what will, in time, be proven naive and flawed plans.
4. Thankfully, one surprising facet of this reality we don't understand is also that in the short term and the long, we do make what seems to be progress most of the time...
5. And in a world where the laws of thermodynamics seem to be holding in both the short and long terms, we spend a finite amount of energy to achieve a predictable result, and leave the reality we seeked to impact forever changed (hence increasing its entropy).
6. So I've been ruminating about what it is that keeps us from, you know, falling flat on our faces...
If you didn't get some or all of that, let me stop using pseudo-geekspeak and give you an illustrative example.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... humanity itself.
I think it is fair to say that no scientists or politicians or philosophers or men of industry - or anyone else in history has ever had a blooming clue what's what with the world. A milder version of said statement would be that none of us has ever completely understood the world and planned or acted based on anything other than a limited or flawed understanding of the world.
So we have thoughts, ideas, policies, religions and wars being designed and executed basically by people who have some miniscule part of the puzzle solved. They are all of ephemeral half-life and for good or bad end up changing the world in their own way.
And from their cues and miscues we have this emergent behemoth made up of billions of living, breathing, eating, shitting, humping, and sometimes thinking organisms that is human society and it is (arguably) better off than it was when this mess started a geological second ago. There are even macro-trends that can be deduced and macro-projections of our trajectory that we can make... so long as we forgive ourselves the fact of not seeing the occasional hundred year economic depression or thousand year dark age in this corner of that continent or some such.
So I'm wondering what is the secret... the guiding force... the fountainhead of all this "forward" motion?
(Here I will ask you to imagine I inserted a diatribe on whether it really is forward motion or simply chaotic helter skelter that our limited minds with their limited senses perceive as forward motion)
Of course, when I think this, I have no blooming idea what the answer is. I'm just saying I'm pretty sure no one else does either.
Also, I realize that the so called "illustrative example" I set out to give has in itself become a vague diatribe in need of an illustrative example or simplification of its own.
Ah well... enough said for now I think.
PS: What? You feel like tearing your hair out because I just blathered on for a few minutes without actually going anywhere but I did actually (maybe) manage to engage if not entertain you for a while? Well... there's your illustrative example then.
I'll save some more crap for later. Toodles!
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