Mentality of Undevelopment

I am interested in knowing what causes a defeated, decimated, burned to the ground (literally) nation to rise up from ashes and re-industrialize to a phenomenal state and the other to stall and keep spinning its wheels arguing over childish stupid things for decades.

I am convinced that its in a certain mentality that a nation assumes. It becomes part of their national identity. It becomes how they see themselves and their place in the world. I am not talking about slogans issued from the pulpit or tribune. I am talking about what people talk about and believe in their unconsciously held system of believes.

Let me start with this, if your nation has a good size, that is something of the order of tens of millions, there is no reason why your nation shouldn't be able to develop to the same level of any developed country. Forget about "comparative advantage." To see how absurd it is to insist that countries have to stick to their comparative advantage think about US. What was the comparative advantage of US in 1800s? You must have heard the phrase that says "cotton is the king" that was US comparative advantage. If US would have followed that principle, its main exports today would have been corn, cotton and other commodities.

That brings us to what mentality would keep you poor and underdeveloped, here is my 2 cents on the subject.

Follower mentality: the idea that we have to follow others, leaders of the field in every thing, the idea that there is something wrong with trying something yourself, something immature about trying to build something yourself, go to lab and sweat and curse until you get it to work. That's what keeps you behind, not trying yourself, makes you dependent.

Mercantile Mentality: It's always easier to buy low and sell high, and make a buck, that's all right, but if your economy is based on import/export, your economy will be linked to producers and consumers. If you get used to the easy work of trading, you can pretend you are developed but no one will take you seriously.

Victim hood: True, the main reason that a lot of countries are under developed is the policies of imperial powers of 16th to 20th century. It is again easier to say we will never develop because they made sure we won't. you must try, you must think, you must find a way.

Blaming : The is a bis theme, blaming this or that. "We never develop because we have oil" No ! this is your stupidity talking. Oil is not a curse, diamond is not a curse, gold is not your curse. Stop blaming other things. You have to learn to build things and satisfy your needs. Work makes wealth, wealth brings development. You don't want to start thinking about working, because it is easier to blame it on other things.

Language : You might not think this is important, but I think it is. I think, using english language and not try to find domestic equivalent, makes you think that every development must come from an english speaking language, in turn, it makes you think that your country would never accomplish any thing. Languages are not the same in their expressive power, but I think, it is a sad failure of imagination if we think that your language being Farsi, or whatever it is does not have the capacity to express new things. When automobile industry came to Iran, normal mechanics with high school education built a lot of words for their day to day use. Some of the Ivory tower thinkers of other fields, thought it beneath themselves to do the same.

Disrespecting your common people and their culture: Stop saying that our culture is such that it prevents development, I kept hearing this nonsense when I was in Iran. Until I came to US, and figured that things are not that different culturally, in fact in some areas, I dare say, I found americans much much less culturally developed that my own fellow Iranians. Your culture is fine. Stop blaming the culture. Have respect for common people, for the shoe shiner, for the bus driver, remember he would have been as educated as you, if someone would have put him through all the school years and paid for his expenses.
Improvement of his quality of life is the only good reason behind development.

Nearsightedness: Thinking about a quick buck, would ensure that your children will live in the same country that you grew up in. Think far and wide. The methods by which the world has developed can not work any more. Sustainable development must be engineered from start. you have to think 20-30 years down the road and build things up to support and sustain the development.

These are some of the things I have thought about in these last years. I'll update you if I thought of something else. But these are already hard enough to overcome.

Having the right kind of intelligence.

It has been said that Clinton was a clever politician and Bush was not so clever. I don't know what their IQ are, but what I want to say, is that sometimes it may not matter.

Physics PhDs are known to be smart so are Mathematics PhD's. That doesn't mean that they would be successful in doing every thing. There are certain tasks that need a special kind of intelligence.

I have seen very smart people, who are not as successful as we think they should be. Not every Harvard graduate ends up being an accomplished person.

I think, for the most part, I.Q. has been oversold. People who do good at school, sometimes do terribly awful in their professional life and vice versa.

The society at large, in my opinion would do well to avoid glorifying students with straight As, and move toward a situation, where most people can get a couple of shots at success in their first 30 years of life, and then toward open avenues.

Let people have access to resources, books, classes, internet, if it is at all possible, let people have a modicum of life sustaining resources, (food, shelter, clothing) and let them be free of the acute need to support themselves, consider it an investment of sort in human capital.

Life is complicated, it is not wise to think that every problem can be solved by throwing a bunch of smart people at it, or money or any one thing. Don't just stick to a hammer, not every thing is a nail.

An advanced society needs to have a large and diversified toolbox and a lively environment for debate. A Dynamic market of ideas, a society needs to take risk with its own people, let them have a sandbox and make a mess. The benefit of such an approach, in my opinion is much much more than its supposed risks and costs.

People have to show themselves in action and for some, it takes a bit of a time to show their talent. But I think it's absolutely necessary for the society to have the forethought and long vision of allowing people to experiment with many things and find the spot at which they will be creative.

I believe a large portion of people can be very productive, every thing requires a special kind of intelligence and if we let people find what they are good at, we will be employing the right kind of intelligence for the right kind of problem.

Under such circumstances, the overall productivity of the nation will be maximized and the well being of its people will be promoted at the minimum cost.

Geometry, Universe and Other Related Stories.

A Model of Universe that is purely geometrical, is bound to be purely deterministic. That is because, If every "thing" is supposed to be modeled after a feature of spacetime, then it necessarily follows that, such feature is already an inse...parable part of spacetime continuum and therefore such a model is purely deterministic.
If an event that at the current time is believed to have a chance of happening, happens at a later time, then that event has always been a part of space time continuum, and its occurrence has always been certain. That certainty has not been part of our knowledge, but that is because we are truly three dimensional systems, bound to constantly move in the fourth dimension without having any choice as to whether or not our fourth coordinate changes or as to what direction or with what rate it should change.
Therefore it follows that any model of universe that is purely geometrical must include a mechanism for the continues and global change of fourth coordinate.

Realizing Talents.

When I was in Iran, we used to hear about people like Prof. Javan, or Vafa or the talented Iranians who came to US years ago and succeeded.
We used to think that US and by extension the entire western capitalistic world, is just such a place, a place that you can come and succeed ! a place that appreciates talent and does every thing and any thing for that talent to be recognized. A place that makes every thing available for you, so that you can achieve your potential.

The forgone conclusion was then, that Iran is definitely not such a place. Iran was suffocating, Every body simply assumed. If you are in Iran and you are talented you will never succeed, no body appreciates you and no body cares and if you talk too much, you will find yourself in a prison and you will be either killed or crushed.

The fish in the tranquil waters, wanted to step out and see the world. The fish wanted to fly, just spread her wings and fly away.

The problem is that this picture was partially wrong, and partially right, it was half-truth, and half-illusion.

When all you have had all your life, is a blurred vision, you don't know how things are supposed to look. People who have had sharp vision all their lives, don't know what a blurred vision feels like. when all you have had, the entire time was a broken TV, you don't know how a working TV functions. Even if your TV is showing something right, you still can not appreciate that fact. If your life has only shades of one color, you never know about others.

It is important to travel and to see other places and other systems, other customs, other people. Your mind automatically starts working and comparing, you start asking questions. What do they have that we don't? What do we have that they don't? What did they do that we didn't? Was it good? Do we want to have that? Do we want our society to look like this ? So, this is important.

But on the topic of helping talents blossom, I came to a conclusion many years ago and that was that, you have to build an environment for all sorts of people. You never design a system that only works for one group of people with one sort of disposition, you build the whole thing from ground up with the idea that every one is talented in his or her own way, and every one has to have the opportunity to see all things that are possible for him or her.

The most efficient system of administration is the most possibly open minded one. Not every one would like to be an engineer or a physician, some body wants to paint, some one wants to study philosophy (hopefully not a big portion) and some one wants to write poetry. Building such a system is not easy, and it is not enough to just open the flood gate and let every one in, that is probably necessary but insufficient.

Those of us who left our motherland, have to ask ourselves a question. Were we right to assume that the western world is a place that would appreciate talents and allow them to grow ? Were we right to leave our country? Should we stay here for the rest of our lives? My answers to the first two questions are that we were right to think that way, we were also wrong to think in that particular way without qualification.

You should have no illusion, that as long as a society is built upon one paramount and over-arching principle such a society can not fulfill human's thirst for creativity and growth. Some of us, a very small fraction, will find that to an extent which is better than what we had back in Iran, and far less than what we thought we would have, or should, we will be satisfied. For the rest of us, what we make out of ourselves and what we learn about ourselves and about this society is the most valuable idea that we can come away with. For some people, a society that works based on a principle that money and material wealth for yourself is the only thing that matters and you are only as valuable as the amount of wealth that you make for yourself or for your employers,such a society, can be as limiting for human creative faculties as any fascist society.

Failing to appreciate man's hunger for creativity for meaningful and significant contribution to society has brought us to despair. The most important role that a government of people can fulfill is to tend to that endless spirit.

I am convinced that the entire path of evolution of society can be re-paved and re-mapped with this fundamental idea, that people need meaning in their lives, they need to be appreciated not only for the role they play in contributing to another lucky person's quest for amassing wealth, but also for the role that they can play, and the role that they want to play in creating a world where their ideas have contributed to every one's happiness and well-being.

The world is a big place, there is room for every one's talent, be it mathematics, or singing, building bridges or dolls, dancing or designing circuit boards. We need a system built around this. Built around realizing talents, in every conceivable way.

On Slumdogs and Smiles

India is in the news and not because of call centers and IITs or its stock market or economic growth but in spite of them.

I was watching Mohammad Yonus on c-span in which he posited that "Poverty is an artificial state imposed on people by the system"

In the time and age we are living in, this is perhaps true more than any other time. I don't have all the answers, I don't know what India should do to eradicate poverty, but I am not entirely certain that the path India is on right now leads to that very goal. The top-down economy of boosting the rich in the hope that something would tickle down after the second coming of jesus christ (or who ever that is supposed to come and save us from this unmitigated disaster) has been working only for a small slice of the society and even then at a potentially catastrophic cost of depleting earth resources for feeding a hungry planet with billions of poeple in abject poverty.

The leftist government of India, failed to raise standard of living for any one, I have heard that the problem was mainly because there was a lot of corruption. How is it that central management of economy succeeds spectacularly in Japan and South Korea but fails in India, even thought India has a number of top notch schools and companies, even though not enough ?

A new paradigm for micro-economic model based on a new philosophy for industrial production must be brought in. It must be developed with a focused attention on the people, not the ellite.

The new technology should be based on new realities of the world we're living in. The old technolgoies of mass production are decendents of the Industrial revolution era, and are not adequate to promote economic prosperity in this new age.

The new philosphy must be cased on empowering the individual craftman and allowing him to bring his vision to market using a custom made effective force multiplier that allow him or her to minimize manual work while maximize creativity and innovation there by maximizing his or her productivity.

Great Depression II

Economy is not an exact science. It never was. Applied Mathematicians have built elegant theories and models. Forecasting has become a vast industry. Although it was not too hard to see that there is an economic crisis in the making the oracles of financial industry and economy, all but few, failed to see it coming. The ones who did see, failed to communicate the depth of crisis, if they ever appreciated the enormity of the disaster. For a very long time, many predicted a gargantuan disaster in coming, this was not what they foresaw. Many people thought that the US government financial obligations will not be met in the future and this is going to be the genesis of a catastrophe. However as long as US economy was growing at a respectable pace, the government seemed to have no problem servicing its debt. The problem happened when US economy started to slow down, in the late months of 2007 and the full scale of the crisis became clear at the end of 2008.

The world's capacity for producing goods and services has long surpassed the real needs of the world's affluent population, the ones who have the money to pay for those goods and services. The World's richest countries stubbornly refused to invest in the development of the poor countries, worse, These countries headed by US, went to extraordinary lengths to prevent any improvement in the living standards and working conditions of the world's poor. The need for keeping economic growth apace, was satisfied for a long time by inducing the customers to borrow. Massive domestic and global debt was accrued, especially in US.

As Americans spent, the world came to rely on US customers, having denied the poor economic growth and development, there was no other market vast and voracious enough to be able to consume the goods and products produced in Japan, China, India, and some other countries.

The stock market bubble of 2000 imploded causing all the liquidity to be moved to housing and real estate as a safe haven. Banks got into action and created a vast new industry based on pushing US population to borrow more money. With the burst of housing bubble, people were left unable to borrow money.

Borrowing was the cash cow, the gift that kept giving for years, when borrowing stopped, people stopped buying. When people stopped buying the economy of consumption by the world's affluent stopped working. Companies raced to the bottom and started laying off their workers, shooting themselves in the foot. Some of the companies that were laying off workers had cash and could borrow, in the traditional myopia of corporate culture, they decided that laying off workers is a better way to raise money and make a profit.

For decades the world's richest countries refused to raise the level of salaries paid, in US salaries and wages have been stagnating for decades.

If you are not a real participant in the economy, if your role is to work to produce the goods and spend your salary in consuming what you have produced, you don't matter. The chieftains of industry became handsomely wealthy. Now that we can no longer spend, they would simply take their money and run.

The Industrial revolution and relentless inflation of bank notes and currencies along with the rise of Public Relation and advertising industry has completely undermined the supply and demand rules of the economy. For a very long time, the Market economy has been unable to function by naturally matching real supplies and real demands.

The chickens have come to roost.

Have a nice day.

Hope

So Iran's lunch of a small satellite called Omid, went without a hitch, and that little thing is now orbiting the earth, at an elliptical orbit with apogees of 322 km and perigees of 242 km, once every 90 minutes. So what does it mean for the nation of Iran.

First it is a milestone, it is important for our confidence, and sense of self-esteem, this however can not be fully realized. The government kept the name of mission chiefs secret, the lunch location secret, the principal designers and the team that worked to make the satellite secret. Every thing was kept in complete airtight confidence. Iranians don't trust their government (no one really should, if you do trust your government you should get your head examined) so how are they supposed to know that the people who designed tested, built and launched this satellite were or weren't Iranians ? Keep in mind that I am not saying that this is so, I am actually pretty confident that they did it, but for this success to translate in to a higher confidence it has to be publicized properly and people has to feel that this is a success of their own. Keeping every thing secret doesn't really help. They should have worked on public relation aspect much better.

Second, Just because you can launch a satellite does not mean you are now an industrial nation. This is really good, and I am happy they did it, but people can't eat the satellite nor can they live in it. We need high paying jobs, we need growth and development and technological know-how that enables us to make goods and take care of our needs. China, Russia and India all achieved launch capabilities while massive number of their people lived in abject poverty. While South Korea didn't go for space technology and yet became the 11th wealthiest nation on earth and all that with an area of 9400 sq km, True US financing and protection helped, but you have to give it to them. Let's hope that lessons learned here can be applied in more practical technologies like semi-conductor technologies.

Third, It appears to me that Iran is determined to follow the Chinese pre-high growth model. The high growth of China was built on the back of millions of low wage workers and a trade policy that allowed Western companies have their goods built in by those low wage laborers, without being taxed substantially and to keep their lisences and protections intact. We can't do that, for the simple reason that we don't have a one billion strong army of hungry starving people ready to work long hours for peanuts. Nor should we pursue any policy remotely resembling that of chinese, for the obvious reason that is inhumane exploitation of human misery. This is wrong.

What we must do is to revolutionize how we manage our economy. The Government must provide information, guidance, security, training, financing, protection and hands-off management of resources and people, by constantly shifting people's economic activities from low yield, low profit regime to high yield, high profit corridore and shifting a portion of that profit from high earning, high income levels, back to low earning low income levels of population. That way, peoples become capable of manufacturing goods and services at the same time that they become capable of consuming and purchasing them. This will create a balanced economy that can sustain itself without massive national expenditure. This can not be achieved by launching a satellite, This must be achieved by compeltely changing how we think about economic management and planning.

It's about people.

Overcoming Despair

You can defeat armies. You can take cities. You can amass wealth, or stand against rising waters. You might resolve to run in the face of pouring rain or sail in the eye of storm. There is a way to do all these and more, but How do you get through a nation that has given up on itself? How do you penetrate layers of despair one on top of the other, thick and strong. How do you poke a hole in a curtain that has not seen the light of day for hundreds of years and let the sun shine through.

How do you find that sweet spot in the soul of nation that is burning with eternal flame and pour gasoline on it, and set the spirit of an entire nation ablaze ? How ? How do you get the bells to sound so loud and with such a frequency that the whole nation resonates with you and rise up to dance? To dance one more time with the music of cosmos. To stand on its two feet and say, I exist. I am a legend. I am history, I am geography. I am now, I AM.

How do you get every one to channel their forces into the same channel and focus their energies onto the same spot, until that channel explodes and that spot burns right through?

The Power is in the numbers. Governments know that. Systems of power and domination have devised ways, matriculate processes to dominate a population of superior number and resources. The first rule of thumb is to divide them so that they can't cooperate and coordinate. That requires total information dominance. The ability of any one person to contact and communicate a large group of people at once, is a frightening thing. Every time that a large group of people listen to one person, that one person can take the role of coordinator. Coordination, Organization and Cooperation are dangerous words. But their danger is not intrinsic. That's why Systems of power allow organizations as long as those organizations can be manipulated or rendered useless.

The second rule of thumb is to achieve total psychological dominance. That means you have to have the power to immerse the population in a psychological fluid that permeates your entire environment. You have to saturate the airways, and all channels of information, to the point that people eat, drink and breath the stuff, to the point that they go to bed with them and get up with them. The power to shape opinion. that's an awesome power.

The third step is to destroy the will of your people to even attempt at standing up and you do that by instilling fear. You send somebody to the house of your adversary and you have his entire family murdered, you kill women and children and their dogs too, and you make it as horrific as you can. By doing so you increase the risk of any attempt at resistance to such level, that you kill the intent and destroy the determination of your enemy.

So to re-cap, Prevent cooperation, Achieve domination of information, psychology and shaping opinion, and just to be sure Demoralize your enemy by instilling fear thereby destroying intent.

When you achieved all three, you will create despair. A nation that looses hope, looses every thing, then it doesn't matter what you do. They won't do any thing, even if you lose domination. You can be as hapless and defenseless, once despair has set in, you are only required to keep the perception of power.

Despair is the most effective weapon of all. All else are means to this end. To overcome the power that destroying you, You have to confront, engage and destroy Despair. The key to a successful campaign of liberation is to overcome despair. And to do that, you have to go back to basic. You have to undo what has been done.

Remember for you to win, They have to loose once, But for you to loose, they have to win every time. No body can win every time, No body.

"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate"

Sometimes you arrive at a point that all roads turn to be circular, all gates seem to be locked and if not they open to nothing but another circular road, dead end or another locked door.

It's okay, I gave it my best shot. My enemies won the day.

C o n s e q u e n c e s !

We're living in a world that past actions can not be judged based on what their consequences are now. Before one makes a decision on doing any thing, one has to judge his or her decision based not only on its perceived or intended consequences but on "likely" albeit unintended consequences.

The standard of morality must not be so low as to afford a person the comfort of taking refuge in the "unintended consequences" excuse.

"Oh My god, I didn't intend for this to happen" NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

You knew that the chances are high, in fact you were almost certain that this will happen.
Yet you did it.

One message, one song, one thought, one word, one moment can bring days and days of excruciating pain upon someone, some family, some region, or some nation.

Upholding oneself to standards of morality is not easy. But at the end of the day, you want to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and say to yourself, "this person did not take any action to break any heart, destroy any life, bring pain upon any person who didn't deserve it, caused no harm, helped his family friends and strangers and made the world a better place"

One of my friends told me once, People who tried to make this world heaven for others, deserve to go to heaven in the other world, the one after this, People who made this world a living hell for people, deserve to go to hell in the world to come.

and it made a lot of sense to me. This life is our only and once-in-the-eternity opportunity to prove we're worth our existence in it.

Even these words that I write and post to the outside world have consequences. intended and unintended. The least of which is that they place a higher burden on me that any body else.

They raise the bar on me, Because if tomorrow, I am dragged out to the platform and asked why I did what I did, I can no longer plead ignorance. here I am giving out proof that I knew and I understood and I noticed.

God save me !