As I ponder over the paradoxes of our society and nature, I begin to see more and more how our traditional linear paradigms about advancement and growth jars too much against reality.
There are many things that appears contradictory and yet continue to co-exist peacefully in the world without apparent conflict except in our minds. There are tyrants who are charismatic, loved and admired but also incompetent democratically elected leaders who could set a country back by decades. And there are both decentralised and centralised systems that appear to thrive, and also implode.
We ask ourselves if history proceeds through its course regardless of individual’s actions and it is just collective macro force created by the tiny actions of every individual that matters, or that it progresses through the agency of a few, put in the positions of power and influence? It’s not clear at all.
So when we think that progress in the system involves maturity of technology, of having regulation, standardisation, proper rules of engagement in place, we also recognise that these things stifles innovation and block new, emergent contenders from taking over incumbent structures.
Similarly, having contending standards or technology pathways look as though they are going to create a gridlock that prevents the industry from adopting a single unified approach.
The western, perhaps Anglo-Saxon, thought models make it difficult to hold those juxtaposing, contradictory ideas together because it supposes that there is just this one way that is the right way.
What if that is not reality at all?