Crisis Crisis Everywhere…• History makes it evident that
- The last two/three decades have witnessed a state of profound worldwide crisis
- The crisis is multidimensional, encompassing
Health,
Environment,
Social relationships,
Economy and Politics, and even
Moral and Spiritual values
• For the first time the most intelligent beings on this earth are threatened of extinction
Reasons: The Nuclear Madness• Nuclear Weapons – Oh, we have enough to destroy the world several times
• 3rd world countries do business of military equipments more than their national income
-A bit of statistics
15 million people (mostly children) die of starvation
500 million are undernourished
40% of the world population hardly know the term “Health Service”
• Surprisingly, 50% of the world engineers and scientists spend their life in making “more deadly weapons”
Give it a Thought!
• PENTAGON (US military industry)
- Constantly persuades all other countries to buy more and more nuclear weapons
A really funny ideology
“THE MORE WEAPONED YOU ARE THE MORE SAFER YOU WILL BE”
• Hence the age old idea of
“ATOMS FOR PEACE” – is now a painful
reality
What Experts Say??
• NOTHING
- A striking sign of our times
Experts fail to deal with urgent problems even in their own fields
• In 1979 the Washington Post ran a story under
the heading “The Cupboard of Ideas is Bare”
In this the prominent thinkers round the world admitted that they are unable to solve nation’s most policy problems
Why is this failure??
• Probably because
- Solutions were local and lacked a narrow perception of reality
-No holistic view, even though the problems were systematic and closely interconnected
• Its high time to get rid of the concept of static societal structure and believe in the dynamic patterns of change
The Way to Analysis
• Crisis and change share a historical relationship
• Chinese philosophers use the term ‘wei-ji’ for crisis which means “danger followed by opportunity”
• Crisis leads to cultural transformation necessary for the development of a civilization
The Challenge and Response
• The genesis of civilization is a pattern of interaction – probably like the game of cards
• Toynbee identified this fact and called it the “Challenge-and-Response” in “A Study of History”
Challenge
Response
Rise and Fall
• Challenge from the social and natural
environment provokes a creative response
- Induces the society to enter into a process of new civilization
• This response generates cultural momentum and
takes the society beyond an equilibrium – a new
challenge
• The initial pattern is again repeated
For Whom the Bell Tolls…
Growth of civilization as a result of a creative response
Decline of civilization as a result of a new challenge
• Growing civilization – Versatility & Variety
• Disintegrating Civilization – Rigid & lacks inventiveness
Yin and Yang• Numerous philosophers observed this
recurrent rhythm of cultural growth
Ancient Chinese – Yin and Yang (two opposite polar forces)
Ancient Indians – Prakriti & Purusha
Saint Simon – Organic and Critical
Herbert Spencer – Integrations and Differentiations
• Henceforth we will use the terms Yin and
Yang
Transitions of Our Times
• Reluctant but inevitable decline of Patriarchy
• End of fossil fuel age and the beginning of
renewable energy age
• Change in value system (Sorokin)
Sensate – Matter alone is ultimate reality
Ideational – Absolute Spiritualism (beyond the realm of the material world)
Ideal – Intermediate between Ideational and Sensate
Do’s and Don'ts
• Since such a cultural transformation cannot be prevented so,
They should not be opposed but welcomed – mainly to escape agony
During the change reject the conceptual models that are obsolete in current scenario
Recognize new values that were once discarded
Can Physics Help Us ??
• Newtonian Physics
- Perhaps not
- Mainly due to the reductionist viewpoint which believes Any complex phenomenon can be reduced to
some basic building blocks and then analyzed independently
- Most of the other sciences (e.g., psychology, sociology, economics) are biased towards Newtonian concepts
The Systems View
• Modern Physics
- Yes
- Mainly by introduction of a holistic framework
- This branch of modern Physics is well known as the “Systems Theory”
The Cultural Dynamics: What Systems Theory has to say??
YIN YANG
Contractive
Responsive
Cooperative
Intuitive
Synthesizing
Demanding
Aggressive
Rational
Analytic
Competitive
• YIN & YANG – Properties of living organisms, society, ecosystem ……
• More specifically – Two parts of the same human nature
One asserting the self – ego-system
The other integrating with the society – eco-system
The Forces of Dynamics AltogetherF1
F2 F3
F4 F5
• Any guess about the forces!!
F1, F2, F3 - Ideal, Sensate, Ideational respectively
F4, F5 – Yin, Yang respectively