The Critical Path

The wise and observant have pointed out that the essential human problem is the difference in the perception (understanding) from the actuality (reality), and that the essential human work is, reconciling that difference. Because the technology has become so formidable at creating whatever images they can conceive, the differences between the image and the actuality, can be immense for the undiscriminating and unwary -- but it also makes it glaringly obvious, to those who can discern these differences -- if they merely want to.

For those who don’t want to notice these discrepancies, the manipulated images and deceptions, are all they want to see, and they want to look no further. It becomes the cultural blindness that everyone agrees not to see -- no matter how much it is the glaring error that distorts everything else so that nothing can be resolved satisfactorily because the source of all the problems, cannot be altered.

That manner of problem-solving is called the critical path -- of finding the critical element that causes all the other problems, and not being able to make that determination, merely causes all the problems to remain unsolvable. Then no matter how much the culture or organization does, all their efforts just reinforce the difficulties. It’s a fairly common phenomenon in dysfunctional societies -- in which the major work, is to create more problems because it creates more jobs -- to “solve” them. “Solve” becomes a euphemism for creating more problems -- and more jobs, and so the reports in the newspapers, are invariably about society’s problems becoming worse and more dire each day.

In the reporting of it, the newspapers (media) hopes to sell more newspapers. So the investment is in things getting worse. And so that is a huge problem built into the institutions of the past -- which have as their imperative, the perpetuation of themselves -- even at the expense of the society it was created to serve.

Thus it is very important to define the objective of our institutions as being more than just their own reasons for being and self-aggrandizement. People have to be willing to sacrifice themselves to the greater cause -- and not just serve their own personal ambition at the expense of everybody else.

One would hope they teach these lessons in schools, but they obviously don’t -- and in fact, often teach precisely the opposite -- especially in the “professional” schools, of which personal success must come against all one’s peers. That is simply the reality of their profession -- and those who will not comply to that ethos, are weeded out for not having enough “drive” (ruthlessness) to succeed, which is also the shared cultural blindness of not seeing that which would distress “outsiders” as the critical flaw.

In the land of the ignorant, the teacher is king. In the land of the wise, there is no need for teachers. In the land of the criminal, the lawyer is king,. In the land of the just, there is no need for lawyers. So the cultural blindness and the critical path, is the complete elimination of the problem -- and not just a better solution that multiplies the problems and perpetuates them.