Post August 16, 2020
I seem to have been stymied on this one for quite a while. Maybe for most of my life. I have collected a large number of “gimmicks” that enable individuals, groups, and even large organizations to help them vary the amount and character in creativity in their lives. But at some level of population I seem to not have many answers that even I believe.
If you follow what is going on in the world right now, you get an excellent view of this limitation. In fact when I do, I really believe that we are Homo Demi Sapiens, and need to evolve where we can make some major moves, and I don’t think one person (me) has the answer
I have been watching the tug of war between those who want the past , and those that want a major change in the future , and how this division seems to have increased in the past years, and think this is an excellent time to view the tug of war. There seem to be a number of apparently insurmountable problems.
As the number of people involved in making major changes, even if a majority agrees, the number of people who do not grows. If three of us, or even ten of us, disagree on what TV channel to watch, those who disagree will either go find another TV set, go drink a beer and talk, or go home. If millions of people disagree with the direction a larger number of millions want to take, we have a problem. A logical answer is a compromise. Another possibility is a yet another direction that more people accept, either because it is “better”, or because they are tired of disagreeing. But as the number of people on each side of the change tends to equalize, the result seems to be paralysis. As an example, I give you the U.S. government and medical care.
There seems to be agreement that we have a problem. The rich seem to get better care than the poor. Some of our people cannot afford care at all. Some changes need to be made. There are no perfect solutions, but we can do better with what we spend. How do we do this? No simple answers, but people seem to demand simple answers. Scandinavian countries have better medical care, but devote more of their economy to it. England is pretty good, but they have been tuning their program since 1948. The U.S, chose a program some eight years ago (The Affordable Care Act) and has made some changes, but there is no program that will please everyone, so we should be working on what we want. Instead we elect a president whose platform included stopping the Affordable Care Act, and going to a terrific new health care act. Could he define that in detail? He didn’t even try. Could anyone define and implement a “perfect” act? I think not one that would please everyone. We are stuck.
We are stuck across the board. We have allowed the U.S. government, and in fact our population, to divide themselves into two warring groups. This is happening more and more around the world. We are getting more and more “strong man” leaders, who historically do not last very long, and typically do not listen closely to people who have spent their lives understanding difficult We have a large population of smart people who reached a high degree of understanding of problems that we must solve –saving our environment, poverty, controlling pandemics, etc— but we do not seem to give control of solving such things to the people who have spent their lives working on them.
This is not a problem restricted to problems that the press and the media like to flaunt. Change is endemic to our species, and we are lucky that it is, because we have done well by it. But we should change at a rate that is consistent with what our population can handle. Too fast, and there will be resistance. I have noticed that even my friends specialize in things digital are starting to fight the constant changes in software. Too slow, and we lose our ability to take advantage of our ability to improve our lives.
I stress change in nations, but there are other large groups of people that should be able to change without internal wars. Very large religions often lag behind the values of the flock. A few members of my family are Catholic, and it is interesting to see how the church handles practices and beliefs that have been part and parcel of their beliefs for many years —no women in the priesthood, no contraception, —and either ignored or viewed negatively by members of their flock. There are also the militaries of countries who equip themselves with weapons, tactics, and other beliefs and tactics for the last war. I got a taste of that because I was in the U.S. Air force, and stationed at Edwards Air Force Base. Next door was the Naval Air Test Station. They were working with heat seeking rockets and radar operators in the back seat. Many of the high ranking Air Force Officers were World War II ace and enraptured by machine guns that had a higher rate of fire.. We younger folk sometimes pointed out that you couldn’t guide bullets after they left the gun barrel. We were not popular. Donald Trump gained wide distribution of a photo of a pro-military celebration with him standing between two tanks. Tanks?
I’ll let you know if I have any insight on this one. But don’t hold your breath. In my next post I will talk about the “ space race” and the U.S. in the 1950,s during which I was a young engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. We were responsible for the first unmanned missions to the moon. Venus and Mars. It was a wonderful experience, supported by most people, cost the country a great deal of money, and resulted in a large amount of creativity.from a large number of people. I’ll also say a few words about Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, and the U.S. during World War II, two examples in which the U.S, got together made some major changes, and fixed some big problems. Such things happen.
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