The (credited to) Chinese saying, “May you live in interesting times” was once reframed by a colleague of mine. He suggested, “May we live in less interesting times.”
His statement was made years ago in yet another major economic downturn. Today, we are living in the turmoil of economic inflation as well as civil unrest, political uproar and even active military conflicts in Europe and the Middle East as well as threats of more in the Asian theater.
If you Google the term, “Tension at the Margin,” you will get almost nothing. This scientist has long used this terminology do describe surface tension such as shown between water in a glass and the air as well as other intersections.
So it is with life. There is a level of good tension between a well-ordered environment and total chaos. Successful societies live in that tension. Unsuccessful ones either fall into Totalitarian Order or decent into Disastrous Chaos.
Benjamin Franklin is credited with the prophetic statement when asked about the political structure of the emerging then new United States of America, “A Republic, If You Can Keep It.”
Tension at the Margin is defined and well understood by Physics. Human behavioralists seems to think that this is an abnormal situation. It is NOT!
The Chinese philosophy concept of Ying and Yang speaks to this issue–“opposite but interconnected, mutually perpetuating forces.” Is this not the same as what Physicist believe about the natural world?
I the choice is a Dictatorship, Warfare in the Streets or a Republic, I will take the Republic Tension at the Margin.
There are almost 9 billion people in the world and best I can tell none of think exactly the same. These differences should be celebrated and capitalized on. All other positions are economically and socially disadvantaged.
What is your organization doing to capitalize on this Positive and Natural Tension?
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See our Economic Value Proposition Matrix® (EVPM) for additional information and a free version to build your own EVPM.
The author’s credentials in this field are available on his LinkedIn page. Moreover, Dr. Shemwell is a coauthor of the just published book, “Smart Manufacturing: Integrating Transformational Technologies for Competitiveness and Sustainability.” His focus is on Operational Technologies.
“People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.” (Martin Luther King speech at Cornell College, 1962). For more information on Cross Cultural Engagement, check out our Cross Cultural Serious Game. You can contact this author as well.
For more details regarding climate change models, check out Bjorn Lomborg ands his latest book, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.
Regarding the economics of Climate Change, check out our recent blog, Crippling Green.
For those start-up firms addressing energy (including renewables) challenges, the author can put you in touch with Global Energy Mentors which provide no-cost mentoring services from energy experts. If interested, check it out and give me a shout.