The efforts against the times
( วันที่ March 30, 2014 )
Prof. Dr. Likhit Dhiravegin
Fellow of the Royal Institute
Time is a convention created by human beings calculating from the orbit of the Earth around the sun by fixing the passing of the orbit into hours and minutes and seconds. It so happened that by human convention the orbit of the Earth around the sun known as around the clock is fixed at 24 hours, plus or minus. Days, months and years follow the same calculation. Years are dictated by seasons ordained by nature. If human beings changed the hours from 24 to 48, it will become accordingly. Of more importance, as the Earth time which needs space or the surface of the Earth as point of calculation, once human beings leave the planet Earth, time will disappear unless a watch is with them to tell time of the Earth. In the space it is timeless unless one pin points a star and calls it star time which is another creation and convention. With the passing of, for lack of an alternative, time, human body will age and society will change. Time fixed for human life or longevity is around 60-90 for normal cases. Hence no one can fight against time which will bring decay and death to the body.
The issue of death, which means running out of time for the normal functioning of the physical body, has led to religious belief of life after death which is a means of fighting against time. Story about the attempt to look for elixir by the Chinese emperor is a well-known story. And indeed, it was the Daoist monk who tried to come up with a cocktail of chemicals for the elixir that led to the discovery of the gun power. Ironically the attempt to have a long life to live forever turned out to create the lethal power that has killed so many lives. The most that men can come up with now is to slow down the process of aging by either modern medicine or herbal medicine or by meditation, yoga and what not. Everyone dies anyway and as Lord Keynes said, “In the long run, we are all dead,” something the Lord Buddha and other sages had said before.
On the aspect of a society, a political system, a kingdom, or an empire, it was recorded in history that attempts were made by the rulers to maintain them as long as possible. But history tells us that empire waxed and waned, Kingdom rose and crumbled, nation-state became glorious and declined, etc. There is no permanency which confirms the cliché, in effect, that “everything changes but change.”Change occurs when a new era dawns. A new era is a change in the configuration of power and economies. It is related to the emergence of science and technology and of equal importance, if not more, social technology. A change from animate energy to that of efficient inanimate energy starting with the steam engine and later machine run by fossil oil led to dramatic change in the method of production in industry and the social technology in business management in commerce. Such changes will also lead to a change of ideas and concepts and the modus operandi of the social organization.
More importantly nations that have state of the art of this new science and technology and social technology will enjoy national power resulted from national growth leading to disparity of power. And this is the principal factor that results in a change of the era. The age of bow and arrow was replaced by the age of gun powder and subsequently by the nuclear power. Today, we are embarking upon the space age. With this change, other aspects of change will follow. Hence change in social management, in social structure embracing human relation, in political structure embracing power relationship and political role, and economic structure involving the production mode and relation between the labor and the owner of the means of production, etc., are inevitable.
But culture dies hard and adjustment is slow for those who stand to lose the big stake. Those incumbent power elites are not willing to let go of their privileges and interest in wealth, status and power. This will result in contention between two groups of people, the entrenched ruling elites who are determined to maintain the status quo and the newly emerged groups who demand for a bigger piece of the pie in both the concrete demand in material terms and the abstract demands including rights and freedom and equality. Change is thus apparently inevitable. When the times change, era will shift and other things will change accordingly. Social organizations, power relationship, human relationship, economic distribution, etc., will change Acts which are the tendencies against the times will not be able to survive and sustain. As one cannot fight against death, society cannot fight against the change of the times or the change of era. The change of the new era may be stalled but eventually change will take its toll. The wheel of history cannot be stopped or reversed. Anachronistic or superannuated system cannot withstand the change of the times and the shift of the era. Resisting change admittedly is a pestilence at the heart of any society but eventually reality will reign supreme. Charles Darwin gave us the warning, “It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent but the ones most responsive to change.”
It is an irony of history that the more a society tries to resist change, the quicker the process of change. The attempt to resist change, ironically, has the contrary result of acceleration of the process of change. This stemmed from the overreaction and over-compensation for inadequacy leading to the aggravation of the situation. Status panic, coupled with the fear of losing wealth and power prompted many ruling elites of many societies abound in history, to resort to irrational-drastic tactic of resolving crisis suppression of the by violent means and by brute force, only to further aggravate the situation inducing what is known in psychology terminology as reactance. Sanity, sangfroid and realistic evaluation of the situation gave way to wishful thinking and inordinate confidence to the detriment of the existing establishment. The harder the attempt, the sooner the demise will take place. This is an irony of human wisdom or the lack thereof.
A human being cannot defeat death or fighting against time. A society likewise cannot fight against the times or resist the change of an era. It is a fact of life, pure and simple!
The efforts against the times
( วันที่ March 30, 2014 )
Prof. Dr. Likhit Dhiravegin
Fellow of the Royal Institute
Time is a convention created by human beings calculating from the orbit of the Earth around the sun by fixing the passing of the orbit into hours and minutes and seconds. It so happened that by human convention the orbit of the Earth around the sun known as around the clock is fixed at 24 hours, plus or minus. Days, months and years follow the same calculation. Years are dictated by seasons ordained by nature. If human beings changed the hours from 24 to 48, it will become accordingly. Of more importance, as the Earth time which needs space or the surface of the Earth as point of calculation, once human beings leave the planet Earth, time will disappear unless a watch is with them to tell time of the Earth. In the space it is timeless unless one pin points a star and calls it star time which is another creation and convention. With the passing of, for lack of an alternative, time, human body will age and society will change. Time fixed for human life or longevity is around 60-90 for normal cases. Hence no one can fight against time which will bring decay and death to the body.
The issue of death, which means running out of time for the normal functioning of the physical body, has led to religious belief of life after death which is a means of fighting against time. Story about the attempt to look for elixir by the Chinese emperor is a well-known story. And indeed, it was the Daoist monk who tried to come up with a cocktail of chemicals for the elixir that led to the discovery of the gun power. Ironically the attempt to have a long life to live forever turned out to create the lethal power that has killed so many lives. The most that men can come up with now is to slow down the process of aging by either modern medicine or herbal medicine or by meditation, yoga and what not. Everyone dies anyway and as Lord Keynes said, “In the long run, we are all dead,” something the Lord Buddha and other sages had said before.
On the aspect of a society, a political system, a kingdom, or an empire, it was recorded in history that attempts were made by the rulers to maintain them as long as possible. But history tells us that empire waxed and waned, Kingdom rose and crumbled, nation-state became glorious and declined, etc. There is no permanency which confirms the cliché, in effect, that “everything changes but change.”Change occurs when a new era dawns. A new era is a change in the configuration of power and economies. It is related to the emergence of science and technology and of equal importance, if not more, social technology. A change from animate energy to that of efficient inanimate energy starting with the steam engine and later machine run by fossil oil led to dramatic change in the method of production in industry and the social technology in business management in commerce. Such changes will also lead to a change of ideas and concepts and the modus operandi of the social organization.
More importantly nations that have state of the art of this new science and technology and social technology will enjoy national power resulted from national growth leading to disparity of power. And this is the principal factor that results in a change of the era. The age of bow and arrow was replaced by the age of gun powder and subsequently by the nuclear power. Today, we are embarking upon the space age. With this change, other aspects of change will follow. Hence change in social management, in social structure embracing human relation, in political structure embracing power relationship and political role, and economic structure involving the production mode and relation between the labor and the owner of the means of production, etc., are inevitable.
But culture dies hard and adjustment is slow for those who stand to lose the big stake. Those incumbent power elites are not willing to let go of their privileges and interest in wealth, status and power. This will result in contention between two groups of people, the entrenched ruling elites who are determined to maintain the status quo and the newly emerged groups who demand for a bigger piece of the pie in both the concrete demand in material terms and the abstract demands including rights and freedom and equality. Change is thus apparently inevitable. When the times change, era will shift and other things will change accordingly. Social organizations, power relationship, human relationship, economic distribution, etc., will change Acts which are the tendencies against the times will not be able to survive and sustain. As one cannot fight against death, society cannot fight against the change of the times or the change of era. The change of the new era may be stalled but eventually change will take its toll. The wheel of history cannot be stopped or reversed. Anachronistic or superannuated system cannot withstand the change of the times and the shift of the era. Resisting change admittedly is a pestilence at the heart of any society but eventually reality will reign supreme. Charles Darwin gave us the warning, “It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent but the ones most responsive to change.”
It is an irony of history that the more a society tries to resist change, the quicker the process of change. The attempt to resist change, ironically, has the contrary result of acceleration of the process of change. This stemmed from the overreaction and over-compensation for inadequacy leading to the aggravation of the situation. Status panic, coupled with the fear of losing wealth and power prompted many ruling elites of many societies abound in history, to resort to irrational-drastic tactic of resolving crisis suppression of the by violent means and by brute force, only to further aggravate the situation inducing what is known in psychology terminology as reactance. Sanity, sangfroid and realistic evaluation of the situation gave way to wishful thinking and inordinate confidence to the detriment of the existing establishment. The harder the attempt, the sooner the demise will take place. This is an irony of human wisdom or the lack thereof.
A human being cannot defeat death or fighting against time. A society likewise cannot fight against the times or resist the change of an era. It is a fact of life, pure and simple!
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