--- Chad Cooper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This paper was written 5 years ago.... > > The Seven Factors > These key "failure factors" are: > Restrictions on the free flow of information. > The subjugation of women. > Inability to accept responsibility for individual or > collective failure. > The extended family or clan as the basic unit of > social organization. > Domination by a restrictive religion. > A low valuation of education. > Low prestige assigned to work. > > http://denbeste.nu/external/Peters01.html > > > The best quote IMHO: > > "The failure is greater where the avoidance of > responsibility is greater. In > the Middle East and Southwest Asia, oil money has > masked cultural, social, > technical, and structural failure for decades. While > the military failure of > the regional states has been obvious, consistent, > and undeniable, the locals > sense--even when they do not fully understand--their > noncompetitive status > in other spheres as well. It is hateful and > disorienting to them. Only the > twin blessings of Israel and the United States, upon > whom Arabs and Persians > can blame even their most egregious ineptitudes, > enable a fly-specked pretense of cultural viability."
Agreed with many points, disagreed with several -- good read. I especially agreed with: "The more dogmatic and exclusive the religion, the less it is able to deal with the information age, in which multiple "truths" may exist simultaneously, and in which all that cannot be proven empirically is inherently under assault. We live in a time of immense psychological dislocation--when man craves spiritual certainty even more than usual. Yet our age is also one in which the sheltering dogma cripples individuals and states alike. The price of competitiveness is the courage to be uncertain--not an absence of belief, but a synthetic capability that can at once accommodate belief and its contradictions..." Debbi VFP Flexibility __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
