The Peaceful Progress Paradox

I am reviving my blog after almost a year now! Writing from the land with lush and lapidistic landscapes, Scotland – I am now living for the first time in my life – completely alone! No hostel, roommates, family or friends around leaving me with the mete of the time for myself extensive and ennui. Perhaps that brings a perfect placement for pondering pointlessly and paradoxically, things I consider my forte!

So I bring to you readers (the few they may be, if at all any! – But hey, I write for myself not an audience) the paradox of peaceful progress.
To start with, I define progress as measurable relative advancement of an entity over a period of time as a result of actions and activities involving resources and capabilities which are either evolved or obtained. E.g. An athlete gains more speed which puts him in front of a race thereby – here he has shown relative advancement in his position through the use of resources and capabilities available to him by means of practice and perseverance.

Now let us take this notion and preconditions to a larger system, our society. In absolute terms, has the world advanced from what it was 100 years earlier? Absolutely yes! But that goes un-noticed and un-comprehended and hence, what will prevail is a relative advancement: All of humanity did not have means of telecommunication 100 years back. Today some have matured and modern communication capabilities, some societies lack this advancement – this would remain a parameter of progress only until the ground gets levelled and when all societies reach the same state e.g. having a land telephone line, it will no longer be a measure of progress. As we may see, we have already moved into measuring advancement in terms of internet penetration and not based on the extent of land telephone line penetration.

Thus the parameters of relative advancement help in defining the progress and they will change once the level ground of equality or saturation is attained.

That definitely gives an edge to those societies / entities which establish the parameters, hence the clash for patent and intellectual rights. The one who owns the parameter obviously holds the ability to accelerate or decelerate the extinction of the parameter – be it nuclear technology or 3g mobile telephony, the guys who made it wants to control it.

Another factor which is going to control advancement is the availability of resources. Resources enable the endeavour to advancement, but not without the capability to utilize the resources to advance the parameters under relative measurement. That would explain the resource rich Africa being backward in almost all the measurable parameters of advancement.

That being understood, how does an entity acquire the capability to utilize these resources if they were not able to establish their own means? Electricity has been around for more than a century now – but still not omnipresent. The capability to convert coal or oil into electricity has still not penetrated every place on earth, but it can be observed that the speed of this technology being spread is increasing. This has already been researched and established through the new field of study called “Clock Speed”.

What can be observed is that when an entity establishes a parameter, it does it through the creation of a new capability, a capability which was not known to other entities before thereby throttling themselves to a higher place in progress. The key to the entity remaining in this higher platform will only be possible only till the exclusivity is maintained, as explained before, when the other entities match this capability – the result would be a raised level platform for all entities to share thereby resulting in the extinction of the parameter. Thus spin bowling was an exclusive forte of the first team which created it thereby leading to its progress, but ultimately diminishing this advancement as others caught on. Toyota leads the market with lean manufacturing only until other companies match or better this new capability.

Which means in order to remain progressive, the advancement has to be sustainable as well as at a higher rate than other entities. This would mean to hold on to the capabilities and thereby establishing new parameters of progress oneself at the same time, acquire the capabilities and thereby diminish the parameters of progress created by other entities. Simply put, steal neighbours goats and guard yours!

Thus the progress of the entity is the difference between the rate of creating new parameters / capabilities and the capability of catching up with those created by other entities.

This would bring two entities confronting for each other’s capabilities at the same time not divulging each other’s. Not a fair trade eh? But if progress as defined above were to happen, and that’s precisely how I think today’s world is defining and measuring progress we have many societies fighting with each other – either for resources or for capabilities.

That to me establishes all the quintessential requisites for paradox – Peaceful Progress!

Now I also see that this is an apparent paradox and a non-paradoxical paradox (Ah! Yes… I am getting to my elements aint I). The way out of this apparent paradoxical situation is to simply change the definition of progress – Instead of considering multiple entities, create one common omni-entity which has homogenous access to all the resources as well as the capabilities. We still would have relative advancement and would be relative but to oneself! This would apply to both micro and macro environments.

Change the definition and perception to avoid confrontation and contradiction!

PS:
All through our history, progress has been relative and that is how we have been building our societies on. Starting from sports to class rooms – we see rankings as a measure of progress. The progress report a kid gets does not measure his capabilities, but those of his peers and he is expected to be only as good as the best of the peers! There could be a whole world of possibilities beyond this restricted relative measurement and this is not the only circumstance I can think of where progression is nothing but digression.