Time is an arrow! Or is it? In America, for the last at least fifty years, and perhaps much more, productivity has been defined as larger, more and faster. Economics of scale have been the holy grail of all efforts, from the farm to the retail store. Sales of every quarter must exceed the previous quarter, or the CEO’s position is in danger.
This has been encouraged by government leaders who have believed that this was the way to wealth and power. Leaders who believe in this paradigm set policies that encourage “biggerring and fasterring”. We moved people off the land to live in bigger and bigger cities, so farms could get bigger and bigger. The people worked in factories of ever increasing size that were surrounded by the bigger cities.
In this scenario everything is a straight line to progress. In fact, many government leaders literally called themselves progressives and actively pursued these ideas.
There is nothing wrong with this theory of course, except that it doesn’t reflect the real physical world in which nothing is a straight line. The earth is round, the planets orbit in circular motion which gives rise to circular seasons. The day revolvers and morning differs from night. The heartbeat, probably the first sound a human hears, is marked by systole and diastole and the blood flows in repeating cycles. Youth is followed by four periods of time from birth to death and new generations arise periodically.
When man’s concepts of order are not in agreement with nature, it is always nature that wins. It may take a considerable amount of time, but straight lines never continue upward. Eventually the cycles will turn them down, so those progressive ideas will always eventually lead to decline.
This is why a people who loose site of agriculture and the natural cycles of nature, and who begin to put their time and energy into the straight line progression of industry will always reap what they sow. The lineup will become the line down. Those countries that do not grow their own food, will eventually loose site of the wisdom of nature.
This is not some weird concept of nature worship, it is physics. Chemical reactions never proceed in only one direction. They are reversible under proper conditions, or they trigger yet further chemical reactions which changes the circumstances of the first reaction. The environment selects the plant and animal that survives, but the surviving plant and animals change the environment. Physical laws proceed in one direction only so long as the initial state is maintained. Once the physical world has changed to a new physical state, the laws of physics will change directions.
The problem with modern concepts of business, management, and government is that those teaching and executing the policies have lost sight of the fact that life and the world are cycles, requiring periods of rest between periods of growth and different behaviors during different seasons, all in preparation for the next cycle. If we wish to live at peace and with some kind of understanding, we must accept the concept of death. We must embrace the winters as much as the summers. We must alter our behaviors according to the cycles of our world, the times of our lives, and the periods of the universe.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Saturday, July 9, 2011
UNITED
Bees produce. On the average a hive of honey bees can produce sixty pounds of surplus honey a year. But there are numerous kinds of bees, and while they all produce the same things, they don’t all produce the same amount.
All bees produce more bees, and provide pollen and nectar for their offspring. But only honey bees produce pollen and honey beyond the immediate needs of their offspring, because only the honey bee colony lives from year to year. Honey bees must put up stores for the winter. If the stores are inadequate, the colony dies.
Stay with me here. This is about more than bees.
A single bee, like most native bees, lays an egg and provides it with sufficient stores to survive the winter. After provisioning somewhere between ten and thirty eggs, which takes around six weeks, the adult dies and leaves the offspring to their own fate.
A single honey bee lives only about six weeks as well. But it spends its days serving the needs of the hive in various ways and provisioning the hive so that some descendents of the hive can survive the winter. At the peak of summer a beehive may contain 150,000 bees. Even over the winter, the colony will usually contain several thousand bees.
OK, so now we get to the point.
If a solitary bee can only provide for maybe thirty bees, how can a collection of bees in a hive produce and provide for several thousand bees?
They are UNITED! Each bee is programmed to do what it is supposed to do at each time in his or her life. But they all treat the hive as if it were there sole reason for existence, which, in fact, it is. A honeybee without a hive dies. But working together towards the same ends enhances survival of each bee as well as the whole.
An individual person can only accomplish so much. By working together we can produce more. The difference is that humans are not programmed to do only certain tasks. Humans can choose. This makes unity far more rare and difficult to achieve. However, those who accomplish and produce the most find ways of convincing others to unite with them in common, mutually-supportive goals and activities.
In most cases in history, and still in the world today, unity of a country has been achieved by force or accident. But one country has united by voluntary consent of the people. These people embraced a set of common constraints, responsibilities, and commitments called a constitution. They did so for the purpose of uniting because they were convinced that unity would better preserve the peace, protect the citizen, foster economic opportunity and allow individual self-determination.
Each individual gets to choose how carefully he or she adheres to the commitments and responsibilities of the constitution, but we are the first people in history to attempt to live like the bees, united in purpose and support for the good of all.
Bees do not reinterpret their purpose with each generation. They do not renegotiate their responsibilities or opportunities from season to season. It is the stable unity that has allowed them to flourish for thousands of years.
Mankind is not pre-programmed to a life like the bees. But we are programmed to live in groups. The lone survivor is a fascinating subject, but in reality a myth. Humans accomplish more when they are united and cooperative in social groups. The successful business man is able to encourage others in common goals and activities.
The value of the US Constitution is in its planned method of uniting the group for safety, efficiency, and economic benefit while protecting the individual to choose their own goals. It will only be advantageous to the country as a whole when it is treated with respect and as a rigid, only pragmatically flexible, foundation for the good of all mankind.
All bees produce more bees, and provide pollen and nectar for their offspring. But only honey bees produce pollen and honey beyond the immediate needs of their offspring, because only the honey bee colony lives from year to year. Honey bees must put up stores for the winter. If the stores are inadequate, the colony dies.
Stay with me here. This is about more than bees.
A single bee, like most native bees, lays an egg and provides it with sufficient stores to survive the winter. After provisioning somewhere between ten and thirty eggs, which takes around six weeks, the adult dies and leaves the offspring to their own fate.
A single honey bee lives only about six weeks as well. But it spends its days serving the needs of the hive in various ways and provisioning the hive so that some descendents of the hive can survive the winter. At the peak of summer a beehive may contain 150,000 bees. Even over the winter, the colony will usually contain several thousand bees.
OK, so now we get to the point.
If a solitary bee can only provide for maybe thirty bees, how can a collection of bees in a hive produce and provide for several thousand bees?
They are UNITED! Each bee is programmed to do what it is supposed to do at each time in his or her life. But they all treat the hive as if it were there sole reason for existence, which, in fact, it is. A honeybee without a hive dies. But working together towards the same ends enhances survival of each bee as well as the whole.
An individual person can only accomplish so much. By working together we can produce more. The difference is that humans are not programmed to do only certain tasks. Humans can choose. This makes unity far more rare and difficult to achieve. However, those who accomplish and produce the most find ways of convincing others to unite with them in common, mutually-supportive goals and activities.
In most cases in history, and still in the world today, unity of a country has been achieved by force or accident. But one country has united by voluntary consent of the people. These people embraced a set of common constraints, responsibilities, and commitments called a constitution. They did so for the purpose of uniting because they were convinced that unity would better preserve the peace, protect the citizen, foster economic opportunity and allow individual self-determination.
Each individual gets to choose how carefully he or she adheres to the commitments and responsibilities of the constitution, but we are the first people in history to attempt to live like the bees, united in purpose and support for the good of all.
Bees do not reinterpret their purpose with each generation. They do not renegotiate their responsibilities or opportunities from season to season. It is the stable unity that has allowed them to flourish for thousands of years.
Mankind is not pre-programmed to a life like the bees. But we are programmed to live in groups. The lone survivor is a fascinating subject, but in reality a myth. Humans accomplish more when they are united and cooperative in social groups. The successful business man is able to encourage others in common goals and activities.
The value of the US Constitution is in its planned method of uniting the group for safety, efficiency, and economic benefit while protecting the individual to choose their own goals. It will only be advantageous to the country as a whole when it is treated with respect and as a rigid, only pragmatically flexible, foundation for the good of all mankind.
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