6. Function at the junction
“The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Before proceeding, it’s time for a test. It’s actually an exercise to challenge your brain. The problem is this. We have a balance scale and eight pills that are all the same color. One of the pills is poison and the others are plain aspirin. The poison pill weighs slightly more than the others and can be discerned by using a balance scale. How do you positively determine which is the bad pill in exactly two weighings? A weighing is defined as loading a set number of pills on each side of the scale and making a determination. Think about it and I will reveal the answer later in the book.
Spirit Bear: The Simon Jackson Story is an outstanding 2005 Canadian movie about unions, particularly relating to working together – people with other people and humans with the animal kingdom. Karmode bears, known as spirit bears, are cream-colored, but not albino bears nor from the family of polar bears. They are related to the North American black bear of British Columbia. At times a Karmode bear can have two black cubs and a black mother can produce a white cub.
Based on real-life events, this inspirational motion picture is the story of a fifteen-year old boy, who is saved by a Karmode bear when being preyed upon in the wilds of British Columbia. Soon Simon realizes that this rare white bear is in danger thanks to the lumbering industry, with only 400 of these magnificent animals left in the region. The corporation is out to destroy the very place Spirit Bear calls home.
It makes a convincing argument that one person can affect change. This young political activist is deeply inspired not only by the white bear, but by other people around him. They in turn may have lost hope but instead are motivated by Simon, who stood up to big business. These corporations have so many places to harvest wood, and could do so without so much devastation to resources and wildlife if only they acted in an environmentally sound way, instead of clear cutting.
Simon’s task is formidable, as he is up against not only the powerful forest industry but also the provincial government. The Backstreet Boys and Prince William joined the movement and the result is 2500 square miles being saved on Princess Royal Island. Not many large land protection battles won have been more significant. For his leadership, Time Magazine recognized Simon as a Hero for the Planet.
On March 26, 2015, The Nature of Things had a feature on Spirit Bear entitled, The Spirit Bear Family. The Jeff Turner family returned to the Great Bear Rainforest of British Columbia to watch and film a family of Karmode bears. What surprised them was the ability to record these fine animals without any concern on the part of the white mother and her two black cubs.
Spirit Bear illustrates the connection between man and animal. It also gives us hope and should convince each of us that we can make a difference. Obviously if a group joins in to help, matters will be that much easier to accomplish any goal. As Susan Kusena points out, Self-reliance starts with yourself, by doing something for yourself and succeeding. Then your friend will come and ask you what you did and join you, and then another, and one day you have a movement. One person finishing a task might take ten hours, but two others pitching in might lower the time to three hours or less. This doesn’t always apply as it takes nine months for a woman to give birth but tossing in another female won’t produce a child in four or five months. If a computer team of five needs twelve months to complete a system, adding five more won’t have the project done in five months or even eight. It could wind up taking longer than a year. People get in the way; there’s training that may be needed; more participants might mean more blaming others.
This outcome certainly applies in today’s computer world as I witnessed at the first corporation where I worked. At that time computers worked much better than in the 21st century. A computer program or system works if it always functions without any problems. This implies that no system works since humans designed it, and no one is perfect. We’ll have to settle on degrees of success. Looking back over the evolution of technology, along with what I’ve documented so far, you’ll have to agree that there have been too many failures and not enough good results. Quite a few more examples will follow.
My late Aunt Esther, also my Godmother, referred to some people who needed finishing school with the words, She (or he) is a Doozy. I’m not sure how to spell that last word and my spell and grammar checker doesn’t either – what a surprise – but phonetically it’s Do, as in do the right thing, followed by Z. This describes some of the businesses I have worked with in the publishing business. One company I still associate with seems to have employees who only speak Swahali or maybe they’re from another planet – not that there’s anything wrong with that. Unfortunately I don’t know that language. I did have some luck by phoning people at the corporation but there were other times when the person I talked to seemed to have just been hired off the street. Emailing the establishment or leaving a message on their voice mail results in me having the answer to my question about one or two days before they got back to me. A few times I was instructed that what I asked was my problem since I was a publisher, even though I was only a writer. I could just as easily included this discussion of frustration in chapter 11.
If you think about it, society and technology has so many impediments to keep marriages together, making them work. My efforts writing this book, surfing the web or checking email has the same difficulty. Consider writing a document. I need a PC, software for document processing, electricity and that’s not all, so there has to be a union of three factors, at least. Looking at your email can’t usually be done without at least seven computer components. Do you think that all of these can work together so you can check your email without any problems? Just think about it. If your answer is yes, you guessed wrong and haven’t experienced enough technology.
Sadly, technology in past years has created too many results that are doomed to failure. The corporate systems of a quarter century ago had better chances of problems being solved because fewer companies were involved, unlike the email challenge. Obviously today’s gadgets behave fine, but not always. Many of the chapters that follow deal with working together. If you just look at a PC and all the software that is supposed to work simultaneously, there are bound to be frustrated programmers and users. There’s no way of bypassing that possibility.
When Simon Jackson worked with others, people put aside differences, achieving a goal. The union of the technological pieces needs to follow that same idea. Computers can’t talk to each other without companies that work together instead of having their own agendas. If one part of the whole has bugs, five others that work almost as planned will crash.
What can be done about all this faulty software? Perhaps we’re too reliant on email, web sites, PCs and phones when we should be enjoying nature more. Buying less of these failed technologies might send a message that we won’t accept their limited creations. Instead support companies that provide less stress and fewer headaches. Don’t be taken in by a corporation that says you need a new PC, phone or software in your home every six months. Not everyone uses computers or checks email. That makes the tech dilemma and solutions even more troublesome. Still, to a great extent we all need to shut off technology as much as possible. By doing so, we’ll be helping the environment and contributing less to landfills.
The song, “Function at the junction”, from the 1994 CD, Four chords and several years ago, by Huey Lewis & the News, indicates why processes fail because too many people join together but are heading in different directions.