The Third World on the Conceptual Age
The
recent triumph of the Venezuelan candidate in Miss Universe, for a
second year in a row, in my opinion exemplifies a good mix of
extensive left-brain training and a synthetic right-brain answer. She
endured almost one year of methodic preparation just like an olympic
athlete, as this country is well known in its arguably sole globally
competitive private industry, Miss Venezuela. She was asked why women
still had to deal with the glass ceiling at corporations. She
disagreed in her answer, as she boldly concluded that women already
have the same opportunities in business as men. This answer comes
from an 18 year old born in the 1990s, who has seen various female US
Secretaries of State in office throughout her life with the only
exception of Colin Powell. People of our generation, born in the 80s,
70s, 60s and earlier, were shocked with this answer because of their
left-brain analyses and statistics about centuries-old discrimination
for women, so lots of people worldwide immediately said that the 2009
Miss Universe pageant was already set up for the Venezuelan
candidate. I was surprised too on her crowning, as I think there were
more beautiful women according to preconceived standards; in fact I
did not expect her even to become a finalist in the Miss Venezuela
pageant either last year. This shows that Stefania Fernández has a
consistent ability to strengthen her qualities and improve other
people's first impressions during the crucial finalist stages of
beauty contests. This is the first time I hear a woman saying that
discrimination for women is something of the past. This conclusion of
hers, in my opinion, was a good use of her right brain in noticeing
recently changing patterns of social opportunity. In my opinion this
bold, creative answer helped her win the pageant.
Many
Latin Americans, who have used their right-brain abilities as a means
of survival based on the trickster archetype, become succesful
immigrants in North America today because of that right-brain
advantage. But the left-brain procedures, analyses and methods from
the industrial and information age are still comparatively lacking in
our local societies. That is why many immigrants and investors from
the developed world excel here because their left-brain abilities
help to convey some order in these somewhat chaotic Latin American
societies with awkward political systems. Venezuela is at a stage of
development that still needs lots of left-brain abilities in order to
produce abundance.
The
concept of abundance is accurate to a certain extent in my Venezuelan
environment. Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind is
focused on North America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia and
New Zealand, so I am sharing instead the specifics of my part of the
world. Blessed with oil money, we Venezuelans certainly have many
shopping malls and an array of consumer options just like in the
developed world, but at higher prices vis-à-vis our income. So a lot
of our population is still living under scarcity. However, over the
internet we are aware of all the material abundance available in the
developed world. Venezuelans who go weekend shopping to Miami travel
with a carefully selected list of what they want. They manage to make
very wise shopping decisions in the limited time they are physically
in the US for that purpose.
Applying
for jobs in the developed world, nowadays, involves filling out
online forms during hours and submitting resumés and cover letters
in very specific left-brain formats. I am not sure if this method
will stand the test of time, as creativity is completely dismissed in
today's job applications. Right mind abilities and artistic abilities
are penalized by human resource departments if you dare enough to
place such abilities at the same level as your financial or legal
experience. At least that is the recommendation I have been given
several times by a number of hiring decision makers. This is a
pattern of automation that, in my opinion, neglects the creative
qualities that North American and European companies should be
looking for in their candidates, associated to their right brain.
Left-brain only applications seem to be more emphasized than ever
before in an effort by recruiters to spend less time reading the job
applications.
Online
translations have not yet got to the level of Deep Blue. I do not
want to make the same mistake by Kasparov, who said in his youth that
a computer would never beat him in chess. But the French, English and
Spanish languages have so many different nuances that, at time of
writing, a good translation by a translator who has read literature
and poetry in each of those three languages is far superior than what
is being offered by any current translation software. Maybe by the
middle of this century a supercomputer will be built to recognize a
huge finite number of patterns humans use in their translations, so
computers might make great artistic translations 40 years from now.
Who knows?
Africa
is already jumping from the agricultural age to the most advanced
cell phone technology over our lifetime. It will be interesting to
see how they will profit from this paradigm shift. I admire the
development of India with their well-trained scientists, but I wonder
if they overemphasize the left-brain qualities to the detriment of
the rich right-brain culture that is the legacy of their ancestors,
the same way we Latin Americans praise our chaotic societies with our
underemphasizing of those left-brain qualities. I won't dwell much
further on this hypothesis, though.
I
applied Daniel Pink's concept "High Tech and High Touch" to
many endeavors I perform, such as imports by customer demand and most
of my writing. Such endeavors fail by these new rigid standards. On
my writing on the Time Zones and their Countries; however, I am glad
to conclude that it passes the three tests:
No
one can do it cheaper because I did it for free. I decided to publish
it online instead of in print because most people do not want to
purchase books or music anymore. I bought Dan Pink's book A Whole
New Mind in print and did not download it for the sheer desire of
spending some time offline.
There
are lots of computer-generated web pages that detail technicalities
on the specific time zone GMT-2 (Mid Atlantic time zone). However I
offer neat heartfelt paragraphs on what I believe are interesting
features of that particular time zone, so I feel I am making a
valuable contribution.
The
English version of my Time Zones and their Countries essay partially
fails the abundance requirement because there are millions of web
articles in English on the world's time zones, so that article just
receives a few visits a day. However, the Spanish version sometimes
receives about one hundred visits a day because there is not an
abundance of articles that take the time to mention all the countries
in the world in Spanish, which is evident on search engine results.
The recently translated version into French is already receiving more
daily web visits than the English version probably for the same
reason. Maybe we are just getting into an age of saturation of
information in English which would lead to a rise of readership in
other major languages, even on the part of native English speakers
who are recently more interested in learning foreign languages. Even
if speaking a language is a left-brain activity, translating nuances
from one language to another seems more related to the right brain as
it involves artistry and a synthetic understanding of the original
idea.
While
the developed world is certainly well-transitioned into the
conceptual age, some least developed areas of the world are stuck in
the agricultural age, and middle-income countries are catching up
with the industrial and information ages as fast as they can. So
globalization is challenging all of us to intertwine the convergence
of the various stages of human development simultaneously.
Globalization requires a massive right-brain approach on expanding
left-brain procedures into the underdeveloped countries that urgently
need the latter to reach abundance. Such convergence includes laxer
procedures for technological transfers of know-how. I do not believe
that the developed world will fully get into the conceptual age until
the underdeveloped world catches up in their mastery of the previous
stages, in part because one crucial concept of globalization is the
goal of a unified Earth. The developed world has been overinvolved
with left-brain activities, it must read the recent survival stories
from right-brain individuals from poorer countries in order to get a
better grasp of the meaning of life it is yearning for. The current
financial crisis is a direct consequence of this transition as lower
equity valuations reflect updated definitions of value.
Money
has a value, both scattered though specific accounts, and as
aggregate equity. But such quantification cannot be adequately
measured in currency units. It is much more subjective. We have the
tools to analyze subsets of the infinite partitions for allocating
money. Organizations must choose how to distribute such money
partitions into given accounts. Which partitions promise a greater
value for clients? Which partitions will enable suppliers to employ
more people? During the recent past, a number of money partitions
were classified as interesting by global organizations but failed to
represent enough value. To envision fresh solutions for the current
challenges, it would be useful if certain bankers or manufacturers
would become philosophers, and certain philosophers would become
manufacturers or bankers.
Whole
new mind approaches require right-brain senses of design, story,
symphony, empathy, play and meaning. These six senses work
beautifully under the assumption of abundance, outsourcing and
automation that is correct in the left-brain developed world. But
much of the underdeveloped world continues to live under scarcity,
outdated political systems that discourage outsourcing in favour of
policies which do reward inefficient local production, and
bureaucratic procedures entrenched in anachronistic legal systems
quite resilient to automation. A challenge that underdeveloped
countries are facing now is how to blend their relative excellence in
the six right-brain approaches with lots of left-brain know-how
transfers that are still pending to take place.
Rubén
Rivero Capriles, Rivero & Cooper, Inc.
Caracas,
September 12, 2009