The Rise of Civilizations

Brief Overview

"Who moved my cheese?" is a book about how we deal with change in our lives.  The "Cheese" represents everything we strive for in life. In this book, four mouse-like characters are scurrying through a maze to find their "cheese". The maze represents the place we are in, be it the living community, school, or whichever organization we belong to. At the end of the story, some characters are more successful in adapting to change and thus finds the cheese they are looking for.

Change is inevitable. And our fast-evolving world is like a maze. It is how we cope with change that determines whether we grow or remain stagnant. This is why some societies flourish while others lag behind. Technology is available, but are the people embracing it?

Observations & Takeaways
"Technology is easy, people are hard" this was the phrase that provided the backbone to our first TWC class. I saw this first hand when I visited Sri Lanka a month ago. There I saw slums, I saw beautiful building structures, I saw slums built around beautiful building structures. Why is no one cleaning up the streets? I met the people there who made bricks for a living, not even knowing what a cement mixer looked like. Yet I also met bankers, fluent in English, who added us on Facebook a mere 10 minutes after we met. In the 1960s, Singapore used to model after Sri Lanka, the Pearl of the Indian Ocean, but ever since the country was wrecked by civil war, the country took a huge step backwards, allowing Singapore to advance beyond it by leaps and bounds. The country, its people so full of innovation and highly-skilled in craftsmanship, went from a leader of change to a victim of change.

That leads me to an observation. Something in common about the societies throughout history that thrived on change was the presence of a strong & visionary leader. For the Romans, there was Caesar, for the Egyptians, there was Pharaoh and of course for Singapore, there was Lee Kuan Yew. In the video we watched 'Guns, germs & steel', three factors of change was brought up when looking at societies like the Roman and Egyptian empires;

1. Advance in Technology
2. A Large Population
3. An Organized Workforce

All these 3 factors needed to be glued together by leader. A leader that sees beyond the horizons of practicality, yet is able to manage an organize his plans to the minor detail. Yes, innovation needs to be systematized too. One of the qualities often describing a good leader is that he is a catalyst for change. History tells us that societies grew because they had a leader that was a driver of world change, and who was not afraid to ride the wave of technology. This is one of the answers I would give to the burning question asked by the Papa New Guineans repeatedly in the video "Why you white people have so much cargo, and we don't?"

However, we might have noticed by now, that Singapore has done without one of these factors- A large population. This shows how technology has become so advanced in the recent century that it has eased the burden of manpower, creating substitutes for human labour. A man needs to do less, to achieve more.  This brought us to our next heated argument:        


Is technology a hazard to human health? Is this cyber age, where the world is at a man's fingertips, causing the degradation of the human body?

It is true, as generations pass, that the body is less hardy than what it used to be. This is evident in our military, where the training has gotten much easier physically as the years go by, yet the number of health problems and even deaths due to training are ever rising. Too much TV and video games? A cruel consequence of technological advancement in multimedia? Yet this is only the flip side of the coin. Technology has also made exercising (not only eating) more efficient. A person who makes the effort to take care of his body, has the supplements and equipment more available now then in the past to do so effectively. A modern day swimmer can swim at speeds faster than anyone that came before. World records are being shattered over and over again. Training techniques involving technology has made that possible. Sports shoes are being manufactured that are lighter, quicker, and better for the feet.

Choices. Choices determine destiny, not technology. And change and improvement is simply a consequence of that choice. Should we then resign to our fat, I mean fate? No. We can do something about it. Right now, it is easier to buy a burger from McDonalds, rather than cook a healthier meal at home. Therefore, what we need to do is to make these better options more available and accessible.  The gym should be easier to get to then the LAN gaming shop. Health products at present are being priced so high, it makes being unhealthy more cost efficient. If we don't do something about it now, we're in danger of decreasing our average life expectancy to even smaller digits.

Issue for further discussion
We use technology to maximize our time, to increase our efficiency, so that we can achieve more in a day and by getting our hands less dirty. But what good does it do us if it is killing us faster? Making life shorter, thus decreasing the time we have? The irony of it all.

Class Rating: 9