Heard this one?
Man: “What is that drink you’re mixing?”
Bartender: “Rum Dandy. It’s got sugar, milk and rum.”
Man: “Is it good?”
Bartender: “Sure, the sugar gives you pep, the milk gives you energy.”
Man: “And the rum?”
Bartender: “ Ideas about what to do with all that pep and energy.”
Jokes aside, how come we never have any answers? Instead we are charged with an optimism without bothering to figure out the nitty gritties of how things work.
Alfred North Whitehead states – “It is the business of the future to be dangerous…The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.” Knowing that, do we have a game plan? I suspect that most of us believe that our resistance to change will keep the future away. It is never that simple.
Meanwhile, our problems are vested in todays. A work environment that demands competence, and a daily involvement in the never ending Herculean feat of gaining recognition, which is an integral part of being a cog in the wheel. Knowing that one is dispensable, we have to become competent egoists conveying an impression of indispensability. Our best efforts need to go into the promotion and advertising of our worth.
I’m told, two things happen to cogs in the wheel. Either they become idiots, or sharp survivors, who have the ability to survive at the cost of others. Such extreme competitiveness slowly erodes the spirit of cooperativeness.
Extreme specialization has created a assembly line society where only the system is important, the individuals being replaceable. The fallout is isolation – that is individualism in the extreme.
Take a look at one of the ramifications of this – the loss of the interdependence of one generation with the next. With the boom of information accessibility, dramatic lifestyle variations caused by work demands and frequent geographical relocation, there is very little need of one generation on another. When we no longer inherit the family trade, or the ancestral home, and family ties get relegated to e-mails and phone calls, personal bondings weaken. Are we aware that the reciprocate spirit that was operational between one generation and the next for over a couple of billion years is eroding fast? Altruistic considerations are unimportant, but one must give a last check at the pockets before discarding the old shirt.
Children are the casualties of work-life. They’re relegated to leisure time activity. Once you strapped your baby on and worked in the fields; it would be out of place to expect the board meeting to pause while one changed the diapers. Montague, an expert on child rearing, states that “the impersonal child rearing practices which have long been the mode…, with the early severance of the mother and child tie and the separation of mothers and children by the interposition of bottles, blankets, clothes, carriages, cribs and other physical objects, will produce individuals who are able to lead lonely, isolated lives in the urban crowded world with its materialistic values. “ Sounds practical and convenient?
Or there may be a strong chance that we may, out of convenience or practicality, simply stop having children.
Foresight was never our strength. Perhaps, that is the reason why we always end up in a Catch-22 situation. For example, has anyone noticed that our playgrounds have changed, going hand-in-glove with our current lifestyle trends? Carl Sagan, the famous space scientist, endorses this viewpoint. Take the explosion of computer games. “this sort of information gathering,” he says, “is precisely what we call play. And the important function of play is thus revealed: it permits us to gain, without any future application in mind, a wholistic understanding of the world which is both a complement of, and a preparation for, later analytical activities. But computers permit play in environments otherwise totally inaccessible to the average students.”
We have come a long way from catch-catch or hide and seek.
A natural evolution? The time to stop and think is when one is in shallow waters – not when out of one’s depth.
Man: “What is that drink you’re mixing?”
Bartender: “Rum Dandy. It’s got sugar, milk and rum.”
Man: “Is it good?”
Bartender: “Sure, the sugar gives you pep, the milk gives you energy.”
Man: “And the rum?”
Bartender: “ Ideas about what to do with all that pep and energy.”
Jokes aside, how come we never have any answers? Instead we are charged with an optimism without bothering to figure out the nitty gritties of how things work.
Alfred North Whitehead states – “It is the business of the future to be dangerous…The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.” Knowing that, do we have a game plan? I suspect that most of us believe that our resistance to change will keep the future away. It is never that simple.
Meanwhile, our problems are vested in todays. A work environment that demands competence, and a daily involvement in the never ending Herculean feat of gaining recognition, which is an integral part of being a cog in the wheel. Knowing that one is dispensable, we have to become competent egoists conveying an impression of indispensability. Our best efforts need to go into the promotion and advertising of our worth.
I’m told, two things happen to cogs in the wheel. Either they become idiots, or sharp survivors, who have the ability to survive at the cost of others. Such extreme competitiveness slowly erodes the spirit of cooperativeness.
Extreme specialization has created a assembly line society where only the system is important, the individuals being replaceable. The fallout is isolation – that is individualism in the extreme.
Take a look at one of the ramifications of this – the loss of the interdependence of one generation with the next. With the boom of information accessibility, dramatic lifestyle variations caused by work demands and frequent geographical relocation, there is very little need of one generation on another. When we no longer inherit the family trade, or the ancestral home, and family ties get relegated to e-mails and phone calls, personal bondings weaken. Are we aware that the reciprocate spirit that was operational between one generation and the next for over a couple of billion years is eroding fast? Altruistic considerations are unimportant, but one must give a last check at the pockets before discarding the old shirt.
Children are the casualties of work-life. They’re relegated to leisure time activity. Once you strapped your baby on and worked in the fields; it would be out of place to expect the board meeting to pause while one changed the diapers. Montague, an expert on child rearing, states that “the impersonal child rearing practices which have long been the mode…, with the early severance of the mother and child tie and the separation of mothers and children by the interposition of bottles, blankets, clothes, carriages, cribs and other physical objects, will produce individuals who are able to lead lonely, isolated lives in the urban crowded world with its materialistic values. “ Sounds practical and convenient?
Or there may be a strong chance that we may, out of convenience or practicality, simply stop having children.
Foresight was never our strength. Perhaps, that is the reason why we always end up in a Catch-22 situation. For example, has anyone noticed that our playgrounds have changed, going hand-in-glove with our current lifestyle trends? Carl Sagan, the famous space scientist, endorses this viewpoint. Take the explosion of computer games. “this sort of information gathering,” he says, “is precisely what we call play. And the important function of play is thus revealed: it permits us to gain, without any future application in mind, a wholistic understanding of the world which is both a complement of, and a preparation for, later analytical activities. But computers permit play in environments otherwise totally inaccessible to the average students.”
We have come a long way from catch-catch or hide and seek.
A natural evolution? The time to stop and think is when one is in shallow waters – not when out of one’s depth.
Copyright © 2014, Lima Sehgal
Republication or dissemination of the contents of this article are
expressly prohibited without the written consent of the publishers of Jobnet
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