True creativity is a rare trait. The number of people who have discovered truly new insights into the nature of reality are so few as to be memorialized as giants. From the tiny number of people who discover such revolutionary and dramatic insights, a still small army of bright and talented people can then develop the ideas and make them meaningful and important to all of us. This is essentially how technological progress ends up benefiting all of us, as fundamental science makes the transition to technology.
As an example, building on previous work at Bell labs, William Shockley, in 1950, built the first of what became known as transistors. 56 years late, the grandchildren of those Bell lab pioneers are blogging, communicating with strangers around the world without having to know how they are doing it or what enables their computers to connect to so many. The genius of liberal democracy wedded with capitalism has been to create conditions under which that small fraction can develop their ideas and ultimately share them with the rest of us, often in unpredictable ways. In essence, America rewards revolutionaries. True insights, in any field, threaten to overturn established paradigms, and change is always potentially destabilizing. Whether we are discussing a mutative interpretation to a patient that threatens to cause him to question his unconscious verities, or scientific data that threatens to overturn established paradigms, change is difficult to negotiate.
Consider change in plate tectonics. When an area tolerates change, the strain is let off in a series of small earth tremors which relieve the underlying tensions so that when the "big one" arrives, it does not destroy everything in its path. If the strain is building in an area that is inhospitable, where there is no "give", when the strain finally crosses the threshold of inertia, the earthquake is massive and destroys indiscriminately.
In the same way, societies that are structured to reward change can evolve and are now doing so at a rapidly accelerating rate. Societies that are structured so as to resist change are at risk of massive, catastrophic, disruption.
The appeal of Islamic fundamentalism is to a familiar and static world in which the Muslim Man is on top of the pyramid of power simply by virtue of his good fortune to be born a male. Islamic fundamentalism rewards "submission" to revealed truth, not originality in thought or deed. Further, a zero-sum society rewards those who are born to the correct parents much more than more mobile societies, and more dangerously, rewards those who are most ruthless in grasping for power. Since those at the top have a tremendous concentration of power, what we in the west would consider sociopathic behavior is often seen as admirable in the leaders of such states. Saddam Hussein's brutality was well known, yet he was a hero to many Arabs. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who regularly threatens mass murder, is a hero to many people who prefer to believe their failed societies are failures because a small minority of powerful people have kept them down rather than take responsibility for building a successful society of their own.
Strains are building in the Middle East; tectonic plates have been set in motion.
Watch the results of today's voting in Iran.
Watch the price of Oil.
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