Chapter 2

A Thought for the Future

Let Us Fashion our Life on A Clean Slate

I have mentioned in my book, Life of Style, about the glaring deficiency of a unique living style for the human, and that too, unlike all the other occupants of our planet. One can easily notice, each form of life maintains its own way of living, which brings all its assets to good use, while meeting the challenges, each face.

We are not able to ‘feel’ this deficiency, because of two reasons. One, we celebrate as our unique faculty and strength, all that we do to register (of course, without acknowledging it!) and counter this deficiency. Two, we happily continue to copy some other form of life, whose style would be the one suiting whatever be our current need or desire.

Aren’t we living a copied life?

And, I feel, this peculiarity has been escaping our notice so far, since, we go on improvising the style we copy from all the others and feel thrilled about it. Moreover, we happily labor a lot for improving our lifestyle, patting ourselves for the results we constantly make, though it is mostly for compensating for the ills, the copied lifestyle continues to cause. Not only this, but also we overlook the fact that as a result, our life, rather the way we live our life, do not mix seamlessly with the rest of the world, and again, unlike the rest of the living ones of this planet.

Over and above all these, we exhibit certain differences, even when we approach the very same issue. One that arise with we ourselves, or one arising from matters concerning living things other than ourselves, or one that pertain to non-living things, are always treated differently.

Interestingly, where it is impossible to be otherwise, we are quick to note that our life do not gel well at all, with the environment and all that constitute it. And also, in such circumstances, we incessantly labor to bring in some harmony by correcting everything else but our style of living.

Assuming that we go on living like this, what all can happen?

Yes, there are plenty of predictions, raising alarms as well as offering corrective suggestions, each focusing on one or a few of the many facets of our current life, lifestyle, or all that comes out of it. I find, none of those account for the origins of our lifestyle, the one that made our life into a unique one. I think, this only will be having a major say, as far as the future go. For, it is clear. Unless we address the origins, all the improvisations or corrections to our living style could turn out to be of no avail. The very same force that made the lifestyle to deviate from the optimum, shall now cause the corrected one also to de-link from the optimized one. And, fortunes of human race shall depend primarily on what shape, our lifestyle will take. In this light, let me try to envision the issues that could lie ahead and the possible remedies.

I am sure, a real discussion about the future will have to take the past, the present, and the long path that can be traced between the two, into consideration. Our past will be rather sketchy, and more so for the period beyond the advent of printing. The present need not have been so, but it is so, being entirely subjective, and the subjects themselves being highly individualistic. It can be easily seen that one tends to see whatever one wants to see, and it depends on one's current temperament or leaning, something definitely unpredictable. And lastly, coming to the long path that lies between the two, one thing stands out. More than the people and their priorities, what matters at any juncture is the direction, the state, whether belonging to aristocracy, democracy, or something else, has currently aligned to. I therefore feel, effectively, one's future is nothing but the future of the state, one is a part of.

In this light, let us look at our future. Presently, we think of states as nothing but an extension, or a collection, of families, the basic unit of organized human living. I think, no, it is not so. I have mentioned elsewhere, we learned of the possibility of forming a social group, and as an extension, a society, by looking at other forms of life. However, as we needed to give allowance to a heap of widely varying and human-specific transactions, the idea of a political existence too, cropped up. Thereafter, the political as well as the biological impetus coincided, and human family was born. That is, we humans would have been developing an urge to group ourselves following the pattern of organizing a state, since it was serving well.

Accordingly, we can assert, human societies are nothing but states. And, social control is quite akin to governance of those states. Now, when we examine governance of states, certain aspects that are common to all come to light. Let us say, the major parts of governance are more or less the same, everywhere. Namely, formulation of a policy and its execution, supervision, identification as well as correction of irregularities, and the election, or other means of instituting a team including the head of state, all of which in an ascending order of importance. Whether a nation is following a democratic government or not, choosing a leader assumes the most significant of the spots that defines the nation.

And this idea percolates down. Accordingly, every unit or organization in a state gets assessed, more from the charisma that emanates from the top than anything else. In short, leadership has come to assume the position of the greatest value, overshadowing the necessary and significant contributions from individuals and group, or the results arising from the efforts put in by a wide spectrum of people.

As a consequence, activities of visible governance take the first spot, everywhere. In a nation, the head of state, and in every arrangement or other expedient, the chief executive, stand to merit full and undivided attention. Naturally, all the aspects and indicators of an effective governance, like the ease of living, to mention one, get relegated to spots that fall vacant at random. True, the edifice of government addresses issues, but it is never at an optimum juncture. As a result, a good collection of unaddressed issues become a permanent feature of any human society. Since we have been overlooking this aspect for ages, the dictum of a perpetually violent human society takes over. And we end up designing our state with due allowance for inherent violence. In short, the best is always there assume leadership, or the most visible spot, like all other forms of life. A calm society is not one of the expectations, unlike all the others. In other words, human society is one designed for violence.

I think we need to note, in every well running machine, it is the invisible internals that do the trick. While the machine is performing its designed functions, both by reacting to signals, and by absorbing unwanted or unexpected parameters like shock, if any, the hidden internals come to good use. In human society, the invisible internal is an area yet to be researched and studied. It should not be difficult to fathom, we will have the best of the plans, but will be limited in our abilities of execution, and we will have no idea, why. Naturally, issues like how appropriate is our design, how it can be made to gel with whatever aims we may have, do not merit a top spot. Also, there are many more questions of similar vein that do not find a place at all. Consequently, the ones looking after the delivery of plans and programs face considerable difficulty.

For example, those involved directly with the execution and materialization aspects of these plans need not get to use the most appropriate of the implements or guidelines. Which perhaps may result in the wide use of improvisations and other stop-gap arrangements. Evidently, not only that the correct, established procedures are not adopted at all levels, but also one will not be exploiting one's capabilities to the optimum. Though the state of the art is faithfully reflected by those conceiving a project, the associated mechanisms of delivery shall be leaving much to be desired. Result: the best of the creation embroiled perpetually in bottlenecks and missing deadlines that many a time lead to violence.

Of course, we visualized this, as well as the need for a cure, long back. And for that we kept on adopting many different strategies. Though we couldn't find a fitting one, in the process of coming up with a cure, the aggregate of it metamorphosed into the current lifestyle, we all follow. This lifestyle, especially the fact that there exist a multitude of facets that look obscure or meaningless to all except the ones interested in it, enable us to overlook its inherent contradictions.

For example, take the case of implementing a social change. Quite often we see, all but the ones who are to institute and live with a change shall be finding and recognizing the change as an immediate necessity. And for the ones whose lives will have to change, the necessity of a change is rarely felt, since the particular facet of our existing lifestyle is delivering results. Also, the invisible internals of our society that should have been keeping it well oiled and responsive, in such a scenario, garner hardly any attention. (The ones who should have been effecting a change do not observe it, since they are already happy with the current state of affairs!)

In fact, this is the reason for the continuation of many obscure and hazardous practices since time immemorial. Such practices are nothing but the leftovers from the state of affairs of the past. And, as suggested, the people who instituted a change would not have been able to recognize those as leftovers to be discarded completely. The others added those to an already overflowing kitty of stuff that is human specific, and thus needs to be attended to at all times. And, we are happily accounting for this self-destructive twist in our character by the maxim that ours is a violent society. Else, an answer would have been there by now, this being something too obvious to be missed!

Of course, we also have been overlooking one more significant fact. As I mentioned at the beginning, we humans fashioned family living after our chosen state. But, somewhere on the way we forgot about this, our attention being fully devoted to other visible aspects like the pomp and glory, the leaders carried along. Not only that we did not make enough efforts to modify our living style to align with the messages emanating from the state, but also started to tinker with the state to make it suitable to the current living style. Over the years both our living style and the states' domain of existence have started to de-link from each other, giving rise to random eruptions. Instead of probing, here also, we just paint our race as a violent one. I think there is room for both a living style and a state that are made for each other.

What can we do now? My answer is to try altogether a different approach to the whole issue. Make a complete deviation from the top-down path, we have been following in originating and running human life, as societies. And, arrive at a new path, rather a new set of priorities, for human life. Thereafter, reflection of the new path will be seen all over, whether it is a small one like a family, a shop, or an office, or a big one like a political party, a business, or a secretariat.

Towards this, we can think of a brand-new path, putting the giant leaps we made in science and technology, to full use. While making its mark felt in all dimensions of our social existence, the new path will ease the complexity of getting ourselves governed. Where, for example, all citizens can be connected to a central server, which shall be issuing directions from various elements of government. It can also be programmed to act on the input from citizens thus connected, appropriately reacting to each and every input. At predetermined intervals, this can also decide on the continuation of the present government as well as, choosing new government, and other features of interest.

One can see, the above system enables a larger share of the state’s population to devote themselves to productive activities. Consequently, wealth, standard of living as well as public happiness, stands to benefit. The invisible internals of our societies shall garner our full and undivided attention. Additionally, computer programs shall be taking over the role of many of the elements of government that are a potential source of wasteful efforts, disagreements, and conflicts. And this can leave a large wealth of population free for monitoring, research, or other futuristic needs.

Now we can think at ease, and come up with an appropriate lifestyle to follow. Quite likely, being an intelligent form of life, we will home on a style that is self-correcting, and as a result, will remain an optimum one at all times. And that will fashion our life on a clean slate.