For the past ten thousand years or so the human race has had a distinguished record of achievement. We have solved problem after vexing problem. fed the hungry, provided medical advances to cure diseases that once threatened our very survival, learned how to overcome distance to the point where we are sending probes to the edge of the solar system and beyond.
As problems arose we used our human abilities to overcome them. If those abilities were to disappear surely the human race would be radically changed.
Our ability to solve problems rises from the need of the moment, "necessity is the mother of invention", etc., but to an even larger extent from our ability to visualize solutions and how we might profit from them. Not necessarily profit in the monetary sense but in the acquisition of new knowledge or the plaudits of our fellows.
The single thread that binds together most breakthroughs is that they were achieved by individualists, dreamers, people who didn't fit the mold.
Most of the world of today is run by hardheaded, practical, pragmatic people who see problem solving as a systematic exercise. You just feed all the relevant information to the computer and wait for it to spit out a practical solution for you to follow.
This is a viable approach to problems with large amounts of available information concerning similar problems but it isn't the way breakthroughs occur. For one reason, most of the easy problems have already been taken care of. Somebody already came up with the wheel, the sail, the sundial etc. Each of these inventions, in its own time, was the equivalent of curing cancer, or developing a clean, renewable, economical energy source today.
These discoveries were probably made by individuals more or less in the mainstream of their society, folks not too different from you and me. Therein lies the rub.
Most of the major problems we face today are not susceptible to solution by the average person. They are so complex, so esoteric in nature that it requires either someone of genius level intellect or vast and very expensive education. In addition, they can't be solved just through human thought. The possibilities are so numerous that supercomputers are necessary just to eliminate the impossible. The physical components that can't be run through a computer still need great amounts of expensive production and test equipment for validation and quality control.
The costs involved in this kind of problem solving places it out of reach of everyday folks and into the venue of the new inventors, the technocrats who by virtue of their education or position have access to that kind of equipme.
Unfortunately, this also leads to an overall lack of inventive spirit in the human race. Why should we care about solutions that baffle college professors and their banks of computers? So we just sit back and watch and hope that the eggheads can come up with a solution before we are overwhelmed by whatever the latest dilemma happens to be.
The spirit of inventiveness, the dreams of the plain people of yore that solved our problems until the advent of the industrial revolution has largely disappeared. The dreamers; the Gutenbergs, the Edisons, the Morses, the Franklins, who took a minimum of education and sophistication and produced inventions that shook the world are becoming a dying breed.
The loss of this spirit is bad enough in itself but what it poses for the future is even more ominous. We will soon run out of dreams and soon after of dreamers. That may not seem important to the practical problem solver of today but there is a possibility that without dreams not only will science suffer but other human activities as well.
And I'm not saying, as some have, that the end of invention is near, that soon we'll have invented everything that needs to be invented. There are still vast worlds to conquer, it's just going to require more resources and deeper thought.
The arts in particular stand to lose as we run out of dreamers. Art generated by computer seems a poor substitute for a painting by Rembrandt or a Michelangelo sculpture. Too much of the creativity is taken over by the machine, the selection of color and texture will be flawless, and sterile. Imperfection will be ruthlessly rooted out and we will see not the soul of the artist but the technical ability of the computer programmer.
However, excepting the world of art with its obvious cultural impact, what does the loss of dreams and dreamers imply for the mundane everyday world.
To me it means that we are eventually going to reach a point of stagnation. A state in which little really new ever appears. Where what is described as new is in fact only a rehash of something old, where the serendipitous world shaking innovation is only a memory.
In some measure we can see a microcosm of such a world in today's Japan. Japanese society is one in which the individual is submerged in the group. The maverick spirit is frowned upon as unsuitable, "the nail that sticks up must be hammered down." Ironically, this philosophy has stood Japan in good stead since the end of World War II. It has produced a class of "super techs" that have proved superior to our own in the continuing development of electronic equipment and even automobiles.
The important concept in the above is "development". All the world wide admiration Japan has earned through its hard work and adherence to its ancient principles is based on innovations from outside, mostly from the United States. They have created one of the great economies in the world by taking someone else's ideas and improving and tweaking and developing them to such a degree that they simply thrash us in the marketplace.
These products must not be confused with the "MADE IN JAPAN" junk toys and notions of post-war occupation fame. They sell better simply because they are better!
In these products and in the very success of the Japanese way though may be the seeds of their own downfall. The focus of Japanese industry is on development, on the improvement of existing products. Furthermore, their culture is not conducive to unorthodox thought, the kind of individualistic unconventional impracticality that marks the great inventors in Western society. The free-thinking, risk accepting philosophy that produced the printing press, telegraph, telephone, gramophone, etc. Each one of which was ridiculed early in its existence but went on to change the world.
This isn't to say that the Japanese way of doing things is wrong, their success in the world market is abundant proof that it works. It is part of their adaptation to life in a nation of small, crowded islands not overly blessed with natural resources. They are making the best of what they have.
But what does that have to do with the way American culture works, they are them and we are us, why should we study, analyze and attempt to learn from the Japanese experience? Simply, it could happen to us!
The Western way of doing things is very different. We have cultivated a tradition of openness, of individualism, of innovation that the Orient has never known. Much earlier in our history we began exploration for its own sake. The search for new ideas, urged on by ambition and nurtured through the appearance of new technology became part of our heritage. Thus the Western world was a beehive of innovation not only in science and technology but in politics, social and commercial relationships.
How then are we in danger of losing this spirit of innovation? Through the loss of dreams and dreamers! We are moving away from the patterns of thought that brought us our free spirit. Our society has matured to the point that we are focusing ever more inward, our interests are more on personal day-to-day issues and on the micromanagement of our environment. This is exacerbated by the fact that our technology has outstripped our educational system to the point where the average person can't even understand it much less participate. Our incredible advancement has put the invention of earthshaking new products or concepts beyond our capabilities. Innovation has become institutionalized. For a superb description of the creative mind and process, read Robert Grudin's wonderful book, "The Grace Of Great Things." Nobody says it better.
The sad fact that we are on an innovative downslide is apparent not only in the technological area but in our day to day life as well. Government constantly attempts to insert itself further into our personal lives, activists of every shade and color try to legislate their point of view into law. Those of religious persuasions attempt to institutionalize their version of morality through political means. Small business, the supposed last refuge of individualism, wallows in regulation and anti-competitive litigation, while big business uses legal chicanery and mind-numbing advertising techniques to peddle useless products to television junkies.
In businesses throughout the West, but mainly those in that self-professed bastion of innovation, the United States, the triumph of style over substance, the victory of the sensationalized description of a product or service as opposed to its actual worth has made a travesty of the once dominant commercial force in the world.
Our whole society is becoming obsessed with the physical appearance of an individual. His clothes, physical condition, odor, possessions, "lifestyle", etc., have replaced his intelligence and willingness to exert effort as measures of ability. Whole industries have developed to pander to this new world of "style over substance". Major auto manufacturers produce "stripper" models of expensive vehicles so that the newly minted yuppie can afford to show off his "big name" car to all his equally newly mobile friends, even though he hasn't a chance of owning a real "TLM SUPER-ZAPPO V300." He has to be seen at only the trendy, fern adorned, "in" restaurant for his properly nutritional "Power Lunch/Breakfast/Dinner/Snack." He slakes his thirst with beer or water brought from halfway around the world (properly labeled, of course). He owns (and constantly USES) a cell-phone to properly impress those of lesser stature with his importance. He learns a jargon, not for communications with his peers but to impress those unfortunate enough not to be on the "fast track". He is judged not on his ability to accomplish anything but on his ability to impress his superiors (themselves recently graduated yuppies).
This shouldn't be a surprise in a society where the major objective of business is no longer to produce products for sale or to sell those products but to simply shuffle money from place to place and where individual success is measured by how much cash sticks to your (or your company's) collective fingers.
Has this been a cause of the decline of inventiveness or a result of it? Actually both.
Due mainly to the huge costs involved, the invention of new products or ideas has become largely restricted to people working in a corporate setting, leaving the average person in his basement workshop to develop new veggie choppers or water filters or garden implements. The major advancements are made in the laboratories and research facilities of large businesses or institutions. The results forthcoming from these facilities are the usually the efforts of groups, not individuals. The genius will always find a place but it will be more difficult for him to exploit his individual talent as he is mired in a team environment.
In the second case, our society has become increasingly self-centered, Whatever altruistic tendencies there were have fallen to the pursuit of personal success. In the main I see this as a result of the attitude present during and shortly after the Great Depression which boldly proclaimed "My kids are never going to have to suffer through anything like I did!" or words to that effect. Noble enough sentiments perhaps, but as history has shown, a little adversity never hurt anybody. We went from believing that a person must earn his way and reap only such rewards as he might be entitled to through his own effort to shielding our young from any deprivation whatsoever and providing them with rewards just for being our offspring. A new car simply for graduating from a high school, multi-hundred-dollar sneakers because "all the kids have them!" Putting them in an education system whose goal is fostering mediocrity? Hardly a way to instill the good old "American work ethic."
So the path to success began to run not through our own will and efforts but through the politics of corporate or bureaucratic life where sham and deceit are the order of the day. Where terms like "upward mobility" and "mentor" and "fast track" are commonplace. Where individual effort is always subordinated to that of the "team". A situation guaranteed to stifle all but the strongest flame of individualism and inventiveness.
"But," the supporters of corporate society bleat, "it has to be that way in the world we live in today." Perhaps so, but if true, it sounds the first notes of the death knell for the human spirit.
Melodramatic, you say? Overstating the problem?
Not a bit of it. Without the innovative spirit somewhere on the planet, without the adventurous spark that we celebrate in fiction and try to douse in life, without those willing to take risks to advance the race we will stagnate.
Oh, we might continue to exist here on our little ball of mud, we might be able to stretch dwindling resources or find alternatives to replace those that disappear, but life as we know it would be reduced to scratching out a living and trying desperately to overcome the deadly hopelessness and boredom.
Ask those who have been at war, in the front lines, and most say it consisted of moments of sheer terror separated by days or weeks of crushing boredom. But you say, "We have our TV and our parks and our roads that will take us to places where we can see and do things." "We have the 'Internet!'" Wow!
It is the loss of the human spirit that is most troubling to me. I have no desire to exist in a world where the only escape from terminal boredom is electronic or worse, chemical. Chemical escape is what drug addiction is to me. Today drugs are used to escape from poverty or crime or the little tragedies of life we all face at one time or another. How much worse it will be when we all face the reality of boredom, not temporarily, but forever.
Born: Buffalo, NY 8/7/42
Graduated: Williamsville Central HS 1960
Military Service USAF 1/27/61 - 1/4/65 Missile mechanic, 3 years in Germany.
Computer School, Buffalo, NY 1967.
Worked as a computer programmer, programmer/analyst, systems analyst, DP manager and consultant from 1968 - 1990
Became disabled in 1991
Currently living in Kissimmee, FL
Interests: politics, motor sports, history (mainly military), Web surfing, talk radio junkie.
Member of the NRA.
Favorite TV shows: CSI, Whose Line Is It, Anyway?, Nova.
Favorite radio program: Neal Boortz
Political leaning: libertarian, Constitutionalist, individualist.
Supported and campaigned for Harry Browne in 1996 and 2000. Not sure I'd do it again.
Published in: Bureaucrash, Sierra Times, The Libertarian Enterprise, Free Market Net, We Hold These Truths, The Informed Volusian
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