Maybe we should have listened to Cassandra?
Bill Schweber
The current financial crisis has many causes: greed, deceit, Ponzi schemes, easy debt and more. Guilty parties are everywhere, including in the mirror. There’s plenty of blame for all.
But there is a cause we prefer to ignore beyond just bad, unethical or illegal behavior. According to Greek mythology, the heroine Cassandra was blessed with the ability to foresee the future, but cursed to have her predictions constantly ignored. It’s the same here. Those who said we needed to do more than just “shop till you drop” to remain a productive and growing economy were scorned.
Too many companies decided they didn’t have to design or build anything; they could just do the up-front product definition and end-phase marketing, and leave the nasty middle business of actually adding value via engineering and manufacturing to their invisible partners elsewhere.
Funny thing is, after a few years, these partners realized they didn’t need those companies to do the first and last parts of the job—they could do it themselves, “you’re no longer needed.” So over a decade these companies morphed from creative engineering, design and production operations into marketing nameplates and then into unneeded appendages.
It’s not the outsourcing of jobs itself that’s the problem, but the shift in focus from creation to consumption. Shopping and spending have become the new religion; there are so many malls you can literally walk from one to the next in many parts of the country. We—the media and its audience—are obsessed with celebrities, while we ignore the true creators of long-term wealth: engineers, scientists, mechanics, technicians, electricians and those in related professions.
I don’t know why this change occurred, but I know when it did. In the 1960s, our society’s priorities shifted and its icons morphed from builders into consumers and their enabler, including celebrities, who bring little real value to the party. In years past it wouldn’t have been unusual to see an engineer heralded on the cover of a mass-market publication such as Time or Newsweek, but now most mainstream media is devoted to Hollywood’s hot stars. Those of us working with the remaining core of innovators may be too immersed to realize the full impact of this dramatic shift.
Perhaps this situation was inevitable, as the success and prosperity of a society sows the seeds of its demise. We become complacent—even lazy—and we forget that it took hard work to achieve our desired results and it will take more hard work to sustain them. We forget that consumption must be matched by production or we become a nation of shopkeepers and buyers—until it all comes crashing down.
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I typed this one for sharing.
- Re: Maybe we should have listened to Cassandra? (A good one from EE Times)posted on 10/10/2008
苦瓜辛苦了。很好的文章,有空的时候我来详细解析下。 - Re: Maybe we should have listened to Cassandra? (A good one from EE Times)posted on 10/10/2008
Cassandra是特洛伊战争中的先知,可惜被民众遗弃。
傅聪最推崇她了。我也欣赏这个戏剧原型。说到制造业,我公司每年
野餐活动的大大小小礼品,全是中国制造的啊。
又说可怜的中国制造业,环境等。说到三鹿。前回有人提珠江三角洲
断指。怎么说呢?搞政治,搞金融的胡搞,搞牛奶,搞海产也跟着胡
搞,资本家让工人断指,工人也断一回资本家的指。
我是从来不喝酒的,Cassandra?凭一点天良,一点因果而想。
苦瓜敲得辛苦,用心良苦,谢了!
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