THE MEDIOCRE REVOLUTION
I've been thinking on a number of things that i've observed both in the course of my professional day and in society in general. I've come to realize that while life 100 years ago was far far from perfect and people had far fewer protections (both physical and legal) than they do today in our society, at a macro level I've come to think that the western society of 100 years ago was much healthier than our society today.
Allow me to expand on three examples.
The first is the extreme focus on the individual. While I fully support the rise of the politial legal paradigm that resulted in the protection of individual human rights in this country and numerous others in the 'western world' we must also acknowledge the negative side effect of this paradigm. That is we have moved from a desire to protect people to one where the individual is held up in society as the centre of its own universe. Each individual equally diserving of whatever that individual feels they diserve. As a result we see people more concerned with ipods, email, and material goods than the overall health of their communities.
100 years ago most people did not have very much in the way of material wealth. Even 50 years ago my parents, neigher of them, had a car, a tv or fancy gadgets. What they did have was closeness with their neighbours and a togetherness with the community in which they lived. Things that impacted their community also impacted them quite strongly. They cared about the greater good.
Again at a macro level we see that government has gone from from trying to maintain services and programmes that maintained a strong society to a focus on ensuring individuals can do what they want. The result, at least to me, seems to be a decaying health care system, a decaying pension system and general decay across areas that are designed to make society strong.
Secondly our society has seemed to move from place where we valued knowledge to one where we value information. There is a distinct and very important difference between the two. Knowledge is fundamentally about exploration and discovery. Information is about accumulating, storing, managing, using, and/or distributing what is already known.
What initially made western society strong, and what we currently lack, is an overwhelming desire for knowlege to better our SOCIETIES and better our decision making. At the macro level this has resulted in a pscychological shift in our society from a place 100 years ago where the wealthy would spend like druken sailors on any number of foolish projects designed to revolutionlize society. Most of them turned out to be crap, but some, the light bulb, the air plane, the automobile etc. turned out to work pretty well. Most people in society are now soley focused on using what exists as trying to discover new things, new ways of doing things is inherently risky and financially draining. Instead of driving for knowledge, we simply use and reuse information. We have substituted increasing knowledge for improving the speed at which we convey information.
What made western society great was its ability to risk all for innovative and immaginative ideas to better society. What we have no is a society where individuals are so risk adverse that knowlege is substituted for information. This is a major reason for why our societies seem faster and have more gadgeths but also why our society seems to be less secure and less innovative than that our of our grandparent's generation.
Lastly, we have moved rapidly away from societies that demanded results in both business and government to one that is focused solely on discussing and recommending results. The bottom line of this means that more work is done, but less is ultimately accomplished despite calls for constant and increasing finanacial resources to get things done.
As the individual is now the most important actor in our society, governments fear intruding into the bubble of the individual or in any way offending them as they fear an information backlash by those individuals who oppose them. For fear of offending, bad press, or otherwise making some individuals a little uncomfortable governments now choose to provide information about what they are doing but never ever announcing that something has been accomplished.
Because we now deal in information and not knowledge governments and individuals fear experimenting with ideas that might help for fear that they might hinder. The result is a perpetual process where nothing is bettered and for fear of failed idea experiments, our social systems are left to rot slowly. Never being improved because of a lack of knowledge and innovation and for fear of the backlash of the all powerful individual.
In order for Canada, western society and ultimately the world to progress beyond its current state of stagnation (a tornado in a tin cup that does not move is still stagnant) we must return at least in part, to a collective state of mind that values 'the greater good' of the community while respecting individual rights; that values knowledge and information; and most importantly that puts governing and social emphasis on results and not just endless process.
Cheers,
P
I've been thinking on a number of things that i've observed both in the course of my professional day and in society in general. I've come to realize that while life 100 years ago was far far from perfect and people had far fewer protections (both physical and legal) than they do today in our society, at a macro level I've come to think that the western society of 100 years ago was much healthier than our society today.
Allow me to expand on three examples.
The first is the extreme focus on the individual. While I fully support the rise of the politial legal paradigm that resulted in the protection of individual human rights in this country and numerous others in the 'western world' we must also acknowledge the negative side effect of this paradigm. That is we have moved from a desire to protect people to one where the individual is held up in society as the centre of its own universe. Each individual equally diserving of whatever that individual feels they diserve. As a result we see people more concerned with ipods, email, and material goods than the overall health of their communities.
100 years ago most people did not have very much in the way of material wealth. Even 50 years ago my parents, neigher of them, had a car, a tv or fancy gadgets. What they did have was closeness with their neighbours and a togetherness with the community in which they lived. Things that impacted their community also impacted them quite strongly. They cared about the greater good.
Again at a macro level we see that government has gone from from trying to maintain services and programmes that maintained a strong society to a focus on ensuring individuals can do what they want. The result, at least to me, seems to be a decaying health care system, a decaying pension system and general decay across areas that are designed to make society strong.
Secondly our society has seemed to move from place where we valued knowledge to one where we value information. There is a distinct and very important difference between the two. Knowledge is fundamentally about exploration and discovery. Information is about accumulating, storing, managing, using, and/or distributing what is already known.
What initially made western society strong, and what we currently lack, is an overwhelming desire for knowlege to better our SOCIETIES and better our decision making. At the macro level this has resulted in a pscychological shift in our society from a place 100 years ago where the wealthy would spend like druken sailors on any number of foolish projects designed to revolutionlize society. Most of them turned out to be crap, but some, the light bulb, the air plane, the automobile etc. turned out to work pretty well. Most people in society are now soley focused on using what exists as trying to discover new things, new ways of doing things is inherently risky and financially draining. Instead of driving for knowledge, we simply use and reuse information. We have substituted increasing knowledge for improving the speed at which we convey information.
What made western society great was its ability to risk all for innovative and immaginative ideas to better society. What we have no is a society where individuals are so risk adverse that knowlege is substituted for information. This is a major reason for why our societies seem faster and have more gadgeths but also why our society seems to be less secure and less innovative than that our of our grandparent's generation.
Lastly, we have moved rapidly away from societies that demanded results in both business and government to one that is focused solely on discussing and recommending results. The bottom line of this means that more work is done, but less is ultimately accomplished despite calls for constant and increasing finanacial resources to get things done.
As the individual is now the most important actor in our society, governments fear intruding into the bubble of the individual or in any way offending them as they fear an information backlash by those individuals who oppose them. For fear of offending, bad press, or otherwise making some individuals a little uncomfortable governments now choose to provide information about what they are doing but never ever announcing that something has been accomplished.
Because we now deal in information and not knowledge governments and individuals fear experimenting with ideas that might help for fear that they might hinder. The result is a perpetual process where nothing is bettered and for fear of failed idea experiments, our social systems are left to rot slowly. Never being improved because of a lack of knowledge and innovation and for fear of the backlash of the all powerful individual.
In order for Canada, western society and ultimately the world to progress beyond its current state of stagnation (a tornado in a tin cup that does not move is still stagnant) we must return at least in part, to a collective state of mind that values 'the greater good' of the community while respecting individual rights; that values knowledge and information; and most importantly that puts governing and social emphasis on results and not just endless process.
Cheers,
P
posted by Patrick at
1:39 PM
6 Comments:
You should send that to the Globe & Mail... they have a page for people like you.
Anyway, you missed one thing: Intellectual laziness. Why take care of your car when you can just buy a new one in a couple of years? Why learn to use a computer when you could use Windows instead? Why study science when religious dogma is more palatable?
This is, of course, connected to your point about materialism. Our toys and gadgets distract us, and both their ubiquity and their failure rate dilute their value and turn them into commodities. Remember when people actually loved their cars or their computers?
You're right, though, Pat. Socialism is waning in this decade in favour of materialist "we are all individual"ism.
By
Anonymous, at 6:51 PM
Tom I might consider cleaning this up and sending it to the globe.
NB: This was not meant as a promotion of socialism. Perhaps more of a promotion of Galbraithian Capitalism.
Cheers,
P
By
Patrick, at 10:53 PM
I just meant the underlying ethic of socialism -- concern for the well-being of the community.
HAIL MEDIOCRATES!
By
Anonymous, at 11:37 PM
Hail!
Cheers!
P
By
Patrick, at 7:55 AM
I agree with most of your comments about individualism and materialism, and agree that you should think of writing this up for wider publication.
However, I disagree with your concern about the split between knowledge and information. While I would like to see more invested in development of knowledge, I don't think it should come at the expense of the information economy we have built. I do lament the effect that short term planning and risk minimization have had on knowledge development.
The exploration and discovery inherent in advancing knowledge is difficult. Moreover, it increases in difficulty as our frontiers of knowledge are advanced. In sciences, at least, we are no longer in the position where much can be accomplished without extraordinarily long education or large research facilities. Creation of fundamental knowledge is being seen as a specialized task, not one to which the average individual can aspire.
I think the emphasis on information is actually a good thing. While a lot of time is spent shuffling digital TPS report cover sheets from one computer to another, the management of information is what allows knowledge to be used in practice.
You wrote "What initially made western society strong, and what we currently lack, is an overwhelming desire for knowlege to better our SOCIETIES and better our decision making". The more skilled we are as a society at working with information, the more efficient and, I believe, more effective we will be at decision making. Perhaps one of the most important skills people need to learn these days is assessing the value and accuracy of information. This is not a mechanical skill; this is essential when our information comes not from trusted colleagues but from disparate untrusted sources.
Better inforamtion management skills for society as a whole will enable better knowledge development. Take for example stem cell research in the United States, where misinformation in large blocks of society is preventing effective research and creation of knowledge. Better information leads to better decision making and, hopefully, the betterment of society as a whole.
By
Anonymous, at 10:24 AM
Ah yes Douglas, but large blocks of the United States are still capable of reading the New York Times; and they still choose not to.
Perhaps Patrick's argument would be clearer if he said "data" instead of "information". Then you're both right: Data is ubiquitous, but people care about it as a commodity, disregarding or lacking the knowledge that makes data useful. "How big is your spreadsheet?" vs. "What does it mean?"
By
Anonymous, at 11:43 AM
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