Greatness

What makes any thing or any one great? A society, a country, a civilization. Since man began counting time and recording history it is evident that there have been many a tale of rise and fall of entire civilizations over short and long periods. As I recently watched a film about what the Ancient Indians knew, hosted by an Australian and produced by the help of English and Americans and broadcast on a US cable channel I was struck by the disconnects at many levels. It is plentifully clear that the ancients (in the Indus valley) and what is now called India were a learned bunch to the point that the nucleation of complex mathematical and scientific thought occurred here. That subsequently translated into a plentiful state of being and a truly/holistically wealthy society. Take that visionary thinking then and fast forward to 2012 and you see large scale variance in almost any metric you could care to measure in 'modern India' (another oxymoron for the books). Greed and above all laziness/complacency to a large degree are perhaps root cause that have swung the pendulum too far to the right. Complacency in immediately palpable terms is found in the level of education of the common man, which to their own detriment (and advantage of the babu) has deteriorated the quality of life for scores. This formula is perhaps not unique to the Indian civilization with the fall of the Greeks, Romans and others bearing witness to what happens when avarice (sounds highly erudite eh?) and corruption take over the willingness to do hard work and earning the keep. I wonder if it is a gravitational pull type of arrangement where the more wealthy you get the more lazy you become. The United States after dominating the world stage for a 100 or so years stands at that cross roads (personal opinion). With the current headlines from wall street to main street and state of education and the debt burdens etc it is becoming clearer that the tipping point may not be far off. The saving grace if any, might be the willingness to allow foreign talent to enter through liberal immigration policy - a cornerstone of American vision and prosperity (in spite of the political rhetoric around the subject).