Email
to Professor Jared Diamond, and
Two Parallels to the Dynamics of the Proposed Program
Below is the body of a self-explanatory email I sent to Professor Jared Diamond, author of The Rise & Fall of the Third Chimpanzee and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, among other
books. It is being shared with readers
(with permission) because it sheds significant light on an aspect of the topic of the blog – more specifically, on how the human condition brought about by downsides dwelt on
in the blog articles affects the
mechanisms of decision making by people’s elected representatives, which
decisions impact their lives for the better or for worse. This also elaborates on account under the
subheading “Public Policy Making” of Article #13: “World Basic Education
System” (2015). The email was dated
March 3, 2017; some minor changes were made later. The two parallels follow the email – the second part of the article/post.
I stared reading your book The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee and found it very
informative and interesting. The purpose
of this email, however, is to provide a comment on the book.
The problem of “the lack of political will,” towards
eliminating/minimizing of which the book aims, has deeper and more
intrinsic/subtle and also more benign roots than you seem to realize. The writings on my blog www.rifatafeef.blogspot.com,
especially article #13 labelled “World Basic Education System,” would provide
significant insight/illumination into the matter.
My point will become clearer if we note an implicit
theme/premise underlying that quote – that human action has a knowingly irresponsible side, which implicitly implies that
they are aware of the consequences of their actions. My argument, given the way the human mind
works (see article), is that they don’t know what they are doing, by and large,
and whence the long-term consequences of their actions; they are just unable to
see beyond the immediate horizon, if that!
(This is not to say that humans do not have an irresponsible side, but
it is mostly a secondary factor and more often than not would not contribute
significantly to their ill-advised actions.)
Of course, the fast pace of change of the world we live in and the
resulting complexity would make necessary long-term thinking doubly
difficult, besides shortcomings of their ability to begin with.
To drive the point home and as an example (which just popped
to my mind) I urge you watch Gone with
the Wind with a focus on the mindset of the Southern elite on eve of the
outbreak of war, and note that sensible advice/accounts (by the movie’s hero)
fell on deaf years. (Margaret Mitchell
had admirably described a complex socio-psychological situation, and the
movie was faithful to the novel.) This
is a direct outcome of the
fact that we make sense of the world based on the info bases in our brains,
which are drastically limited (see article).
Thus a foremost reason they were unable to comprehend the reality of the
situation and take the advice they received was because they did not have the necessary info for understanding and thus meaningfully evaluating that advice and hence were unable to give it
its due weight. (To be sure,
there are other significant factors, but most of them would likely be related
to the problem we are considering here.)
This state of affairs also by and large describes the state
of mind of those in positions of power, say those in the US Congress, regarding
their stances on contemporary issues of significance. This is, of course, besides vested interests
and obligations to toe the party lines, forms of which they currently take are
most likely the outcomes of their lack of the needed knowledge – if endowed
with right kind of knowledge, they would have been able to satisfy both, by and
large, without necessarily jeopardizing the right decisions beneficial to their
nation as well as humanity at large. (In
this regard, please note that their being given “explanations” about issues –
in the form of reports or presentations or in any other form – will not help
them much to understand; to really understand, they have to first master the
basic vocabulary and concepts of the subject matter, in the same way one has to
first master basics of a language in order to understand fully any
communication using that language; one might also note the many long years it
usually takes to actually master a new language, or a profession for that
matter, which attests to the difficulty of the process.)
The state of mind of the members of Congress was also put in
a nutshell in another movie I saw, titled The
Distinguished Gentleman. Its lead
character (played by Eddie Murphy) who considers himself a “con-artist,” which
is a politically correct euphemism for a crook, got lucky by being in the right
place at the right time and exhibiting much ingenuity and with a lot of help
from his associates got himself elected to Congress. On the first day of office, he goes to
Capitol Hill with his entourage, enters the building, puts his index finger in
his mouth, and holds it up – to gauge the “political wind.” This is precisely the state of mind of the
newly elected plotting their carrier advancement, in which process the choice
of the butts to kiss plays a key role.
Given their very limited info bases and regardless of educational backgrounds,
the complexity of issues one is faced with forces them to resort to any means
to survive. (Yet another movie I saw much later, after this post was published, titled Game Change which is about selecting Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as the running mate of Senator John McCain in the US presidential election of 2008, and which the filmmakers proclaim to be fact-based, although perhaps a bit exaggerated, would amply illustrate my basic argument – that elected officials are anything but capable of formulating sensible public policy; this is quite apart form the irrational sentiment-based way the public tends to vote – you've to watch the movie to understand the gravity of the issues.)
This is the state of the currently most advanced nation on
Earth. What about other nations? A similar logic applies to leaders of all
stripes around the world. And with this
in mind, what are the chances of their being able to come up with relevant
solutions to the increasing range of problems of our fast-changing and complex
world? A common outcome of limited
knowledge/understanding is that when faced with a new situation, we tend to
stick to the familiar. Thus in view of
the complexity of today’s problems, a common reaction would be to sing the
party songs louder and whence dig in their heels deeper which, among other
things, would lead the differences of opinion about issues with the “other
side” to become wider – not that either side would be much aware of their
nuances; a vicious cycle of self-reinforcing, thus perpetuating, destructive
behaviours. This would naturally lend
much of their actions to be reactionary rather than logic-based and thus
rational.
This in turn means that under current circumstances,
logic-based recommendations as those of your book are unlikely to be effective
(towards achieving its proclaimed goal).
In the same vein, so would the thesis put forth in the articles on my
blog. In general, the vast majority of
the audiences in both cases are likely to lack broad-based knowledge
necessary to grasp the range of deeper implications and, unfortunately, many of
the relatively few who might are also likely to lack the courage needed to
propel theoretical concepts towards practical implementation – a-thousand-and-one
excuses will surface to urge them not to stick out their necks! Thus only a tiny fraction of the audience can
be hoped to be counted on in addressing the issues in question.
In all likelihood, ancient civilizations that collapsed (I
do have your book, but haven’t managed to read it yet) due to shortsightedness
of their rulers would also have had farsighted people (their relative
proportion can be expected to be higher than it is now given the much slower
pace of change of their world and their much less complex life conditions, and
also given that today’s highly specialized education would tend to make us lose
perspective and thus lose the wood for the tree) some of who are likely to
have cautioned their rulers of the dire consequences of their ill-advised
actions but went unheeded, likely for comparable reasons. And this
is a recurring theme in human history.
(The postscript refers to a current example.)
_______________________________________________________________________________________
PS: Article #5
titled “From a Local Focus to a Global One” is a one-page overview of the
process that led me to the understanding of our complex problem, and thus to
the simple and effective, albeit necessarily partial, solution. The theoretical side of the problem described
in the post is supplemented by my more than two-decades-long experience of
dealing with the former Maldives President (besides interactions with many
colleagues as mentioned in it) whose lack of understanding of today’s complex
world and the unwillingness to face reality and learn from mistakes (typical of
many people, particularly the high-ranking) besides a host of other
unfavourable factors ultimately led to his downfall; this is not to mention
that the ill-advised actions being pursued by the current president (who
happened to be his younger brother) will most likely push the nation to an unbelievably pathetic condition, if not worse! The more recent of my writings aimed at preventing such a
fate are on my blog aimed at local readers www.rifatafeefmaldives.blogspot.com. All of my writings about policy matters had
been sent to successive presidents – in a format that, according to our custom,
would have made them at least aware of them – along with several hundred of the
local politico-technical cadre, and most of the earlier writings to two rounds
of parliament members as well. In retrospect,
all that effort had been largely a waste of time, which should not be
surprising in view of the theoretical reasoning given above; most other reasons
for that outcome such as their lack of interest and being engrossed in pursuit
of self-interest are also largely due to that reasoning, by virtue of which
they lacked a vital realization – that the tiny Maldives is vulnerable on
numerous fronts and that the nation and her citizens sink or swim
together.
The following shows how dynamics of the proposed
program parallels those of two unrelated phenomena and dwells on its potential; it also shows how the program will greatly dampen the human tendency for
self-destruction. The piece is not part
of the above email, although it has referred to Professor Diamond’s work;
it is nevertheless published in the same article/post as the email because of
their complementarity.
Much of humanity’s existence is marred by the kind of
destructive behaviour described in the email above. And while that description is focused on
decision-processes in the government, the same shortcomings also operate in
virtually all walks of life – from family life to business and corporate life to all societal interactions without exception. I have
argued in the articles on this blog that the downsides inherent in human nature
as well as those arising from the current set-up of our education systems
(which inadvertently exacerbates the outcomes of the downsides of human nature,
both described in the articles) are responsible for the bulk of the woes of
humankind and that they can be countered to a large extent by the right education
policy, and thus raise human wellbeing to unprecedented heights. The constituent elements of the proposed program are described in the blog articles, particularly in article #13, “World Basic
Education System” (2015).
The program is focused on the younger generation. This choice arose from the facts that downsides
arising from the human condition mentioned above are psychological in nature and
are outcomes of our behaviours, and given, as argued towards the end of the subtopic
“Understanding the Social World …” of article #13, that the foundation of our
behaviour is laid when we are young children and that as we grow older such
behaviour becomes largely automatic and beyond our conscious control. (These form our habits – many of which are counterproductive
– we use to navigate through the complexities of everyday life.) As a result, efforts aimed at changing adult
behaviours and mindsets would be largely in vain; it is much like trying to shape
a piece of clay that has already hardened. This is quite apart from our lack of understanding of complex issues as a result of our very limited knowledge bases to begin with.
We would therefore be better off aiming for children whose thinking is
still malleable and can be guided to the right path. It is also vital that our focus be on the
program instead of burdening children with trivialities that will not
contribute towards achieving our goals.
The purpose of this piece is to draw some parallels between the
strategy behind the program and aspects of two topics that are unrelated to it,
and through exploring the dynamics inherent in the latter, help readers to visualize
the huge potential of the program. It
also shows that the workings of the program will dampen an inadvertent danger
of technological advancement to a significant degree – our tendency for
self-destruction, which is currently a great concern for those who think
seriously about humanity’s future.
The first of the two topics relates to biological evolution
of more recent times. It is commonly
agreed among scientists now that humans share more than 98% of their genes with
chimpanzees. Furthermore, in his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee,
Professor Jared Diamond points out that we might have shared perhaps as much as
99.9% of the genes with our near ancestors of just before 40,000 years (a blink
of an eye on an evolutionary time scale measured in billions of years) and
wonders about the remaining 0.1% responsible for the enormous difference
between us and them – factors that enabled Homo
sapiens to evolve from a species who could probably utter only grunts and
had no propensity for innovation to one who had developed coherent speech and an
unquenchable thirst for innovation that ultimately led them to not only overcoming
the restraining earthbound gravity and become spacefarers, but are now
deciphering the nature of life itself which was an impenetrable enigma for the preceding
millennia and able to dig into the deepest of the smallest particles in nature
and gaze into the farthest corners of the universe. The key aspect relevant to us here is the
notion of a tiny initial change inducing an entity to go through a
mind-boggling transformation.
The second topic we shall consider here relates to aspects of
Chaos Theory, which according to Wikipedia is “a branch of mathematics focused
on the behaviour of dynamical systems
that are highly sensitive to initial
conditions”; emphasis added. Without
going into technical details (of which I’m not a master anyway) we can focus on
how the internal dynamics of the system can be influenced/changed by imposing small
variations on successive stages of its life (“stages” here is actually a hypothetical construct used for clarifying the concept; in reality the process is a
continuous one with no discernible separation between the stages) and change the
results to suit our needs.*** A familiar example
is a hurricane or cyclone which causes immense damage to life and property –
think of Katrina and Sandy. For over
half a century now, scientists in many countries have been using “seeding”
techniques to dissipate their ferocity, but with mixed success rates to-date –
the nations include the US, Russia, China, India, Australia, Israel, and recently
some Persian Gulf states. The technique has
huge potential in regions where drought or damage due to hurricanes or
tornadoes is a sizable concern. (The US,
however, has apparently stopped using the technique due to its inconclusive
results and potentially damaging side effects, while most nations cited continue
to use it.) If science can improve the
technique to make its outcomes persistently positive in a conclusive way, it
can be considered a second example in which initial conditions, when nudged in
the right direction, can yield enormous dividends.
The proposed program has characteristics shared by the above
two examples in that minor changes of the right kind to initial conditions can
yield enormous positive results and, unlike numerous social programs of
ambiguous outcome, has the potential to better the human condition decisively. Obviously, any program set in the right
direction and maintained over a sufficient period of time can bring about
desired outcomes. What differentiates the program and the two examples from the crowd is both the huge size of the changes and the relatively minute timeframes over which such change can take place. For our program that duration, at least to achieve
the first decisive results, can be set realistically at less than three
generations from the time of its universal adoption (one generation – younger and school and college years – for
learning and habituating the elements of the program; another – mid-20s through mid-40s – for putting them into
practice in real life conditions; and the third – late adulthood – during which maturity will be
reached, beyond which the full benefits of the program will continue to be
reaped) which is a tiny moment compared to the centuries over which education was
used as a means for uplifting humanity. Well,
two aspects of humanity did get uplifted by education – that which improved its
health and that which improved its life conditions. But the vital aspect we are dealing with, failings of which continue to inflict much damage on humanity, was neglected
to-date. That neglect, however, was not
intentional – just that educators of the world were not aware that such
an aspect even existed! Once our program
is adopted, improvement of this aspect of the human condition would continue
to grow beyond the timeframe cited and at exponential rates, just as improvements
related to the other two aspects had or, for that matter, just as humans
evolved exponentially from their near ancestors to become the Earth’s dominant
species or just as the ferocity of destructive hurricanes or cyclones and tornadoes can be dissipated
and rendered harmless by rather small adjustments to their internal
dynamics. This is, of course, in addition to the indirect but immediate benefits accrued to humanity due to the new awareness/understanding the program will bring about to adults while it is still being operationalized; and for further improvement in this direction, the basics of both communication and social psychology could be incorporated at secondary and college levels as core subjects. (The benefits that could be hoped for from the measures mentioned in the last sentence, however, would be rather limited in comparison to the enormous benefits that would accrue by our program, which is focused on the young – for the reasoning given above.)
Where we will head from there is anybody’s guess. Hopefully, not towards self-destruction, as
technological progress has endowed humans with that capability. In fact, as we shall see, improvements to the
educational aspect of our concern will generate inherent mechanisms that will
work to dampen such a tendency, the lack of which can be said to be responsible
to a large extent for today’s precarious situation. The damage due to the lack of such dampers had
been felt by many for a long time, although no one seems to have done much about
it; their lamentations being implicit in the many expressions that bemoan the fast
pace of technological advancement while sociocultural development continued to remain
relatively stagnant, which by itself is a peripheral outcome of the central
thesis of this blog; see also footnote #5 of article #13. (But we can see that improvements to what falls under the rubric of "sociocultural development" would not help minimize/alleviate the problem of human tendency for self-destruction, for it does not address, as does the program proposed here, the real causes of the problem – what happens where the rubber actually meets the road; see below.)
We can now finalize the parallels between the elements
of our program and the two examples which, as stated, is the purpose of this
piece. And given that those elements
have already been spelt out in article #13, here we shall only highlight the
parallels in relation to the format we have been using – initial conditions and
affecting mechanisms. We have two levels
of the initial condition – one inherent in the human nature itself (see account
under “Making Sense of the World” in Article #13) and the other created by
human action, albeit by necessity (account under “Specialization”). The prime characteristic of both (related to
our topic) is that it progressively hinders effective communication among humans
and leads to, in addition to downsides listed in Article #13, misunderstandings,
ill-will, the resulting strife, and ultimately self-destruction. Advances in technology had exponentially
increased the killing power at the disposal of human groups, and the spectre of
annihilation of the entire human race is now a reality. Thus the reduction of ICBMs, while laudable, is
not a solution (it is like putting out a fire after it has already happened);
the solution lies in changing the mindsets behind those ICBMs (arranging things
in such a way to ensure that a fire does not happen in the first place).
Much of the downsides arising from the two levels of our
initial condition can be mitigated and rectified by the program arising from
the accounts under the subheadings “Understanding the Nature of the World” and “Understanding
the Social World …” in Article #13 towards improving the world basic education
system; it forms the affecting mechanism through which we can tame outcomes of both levels of our initial condition, and also the foundation on which we can build a more
enlightened mindset that will underlie a much better world. For the program will not only overcome the barriers posed by our initial condition to a significant degree and minimize the downsides outlined in Article #13, but it will also minimize miscommunication and ill-will and thus the tendency for strife and whence self-destruction. And we can see that our program can not only
raise human wellbeing to hitherto unprecedented heights (which is our primary goal – what we began with, anyway)
but will also go a long way towards guaranteeing the very future survival of the
humankind.
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*** Strictly speaking, the focus of Chaos Theory is on systems that behave according to their own internal dynamics, not under human influence, and one of its central tenets is "order in apparent chaos." But I believe there is no harm utilizing the concept for our own purposes.
