Creators of the World

By: Bikal Dhungel

Most of us who are below 30 or 35 were born in a world of plenty. Many devices we have today, we take for granted. For us, thats the way it is. Ask the children of cities where the milk comes from, they might answer ' From the Refrigerator '. Actually, they dont need to know, things are just available to them. Similarly, children of today also cannot think that all the devices we have at home, from television to computers to mobile phones, micro-oven and many others made a long way to arrive in the present. When we go out of the kitchen, we are filled with technology. We see that when we travel in buses, trains, aeroplanes, when we go to the doctor, there are X-ray machines, devices that check the status of human body and the super markets that are full with machines, the electricity, and many many things we see. Only few take time to think the evolution of these devices and technologies. What is true is, they have made our life easier. They have also challenged the traditions. My grandmother used to be angry when we didnt eat all foods because then she had to throw away as it was not good to store. Today we can keep the foods in refrigerator. Thanks to such technologies, our life is easier, we live longer, we live healthier and we live in a more productive way. There is not only technological progress but also in social sciences or arts. We have better ways to raise kids, we have better ways to govern and in every other fields, thanks to research and technology, things are much better than in the past. To this phenomenon, we call progress.

So, how was this progress possible ? It is because of the ideas of people. It was the idea that created the world. However, it was not the idea of everybody. Nearly all of human beings do not involve in the creation of ideas but the very few who do, shaped the world we live in. This idea may be in the form of Philosophy, Arts, Science or anything else. The number of people who shaped the world, or the great thinkers, doers, can be counted. For example, the person or people who discovered fire, who discovered agriculture and wheel diverted the way humans have lived for thousands of years. The great philosophers like Buddha, Jesus Christ or Mohammad organised people and took them to a certain direction. After the 15^th century, the people who had enlightening ideas shaped the world in a new way. Then the early giants of industrialisation yet changed the world again. Since then, it is continually being changed. Recently, this change is so rapid that if you sleep for 20 years, you will be lost when you wake up. Still, this change was shaped by handfull of people whom we can count. Other billions of humans are busy in basic thing, to lead life and depart. While they live, they are interested in two things, bread and sex. But it is the creative inventions that first came out as ideas, that made our world as it is today.

Ideas are necessary for economic growth which in turn improves life standard. Ideas are also non rivalrous, which means that, it cannot be excluded for somebody. Everybody are better off from this. For example the discovery of Smartphones. Everyone who can afford, can buy it. Similarly, the ones who discovered Refrigirator, Printing Press, Television, Radio, Telephone, Computer, Steam Engine, Polio Vaccine, Rice Cooker, Bicycle, Helicopter, Anasthesia, Traffic Lights, Medicine, Calculus, MP3 player, Food packaging, Air Conditioning, Electricity, Vaccume Cleaner and many many others and yet other discoveries and contribution to the discoveries are the people who shaped our world, who created our world. Every year, the Nobel Committee honours such creative minds in six main sectors, Physics, Chemistry, Physiology, Literature, Economics and Peace. These people have created the world. Their creation might be either material or non-material but both of them make our life better. This story can go one but here I would like to put a full stop. The idea behind is, there are creative minds who have helped the world to prosper. It is their ideas we have to honour. Still, we should also agree that despite such a great leap towards progress, almost half of the world is still far from technology. So, the challenge is to find out how can we make the technologies global ? How can we make sure that lives of everybody is better due to creative ideas ? Here are some recommendations that is based on evidences. If governments embrace these ideas, they are likely to take the fruits of better technology.

The first is openness. As a country, you have to be open to the good ideas from abroad. This should be in the form of Free Trade and liberal economic policy which include liberal investment policy. With liberal investment policy, you are allowing foreign countries to invest in your country. They bring technology, then your citizens should acquire know-how. See China, once it opened the border for trade, foreign companies like Mercedes, Volkswagon and many others rushed to invest in China. They built production lines and factories. The Chinese learnt from this, and now they are building their own car industries. Second is a global orientation in education system. There are vast research going on in educational sector. How to teach better, how to create a better learning environment, how to make efficient teaching and learning etc. It is important that countries should learn from lessons from abroad. Not only in school and university education system, the culture of learning should be adopted. One factor which shows this is the total number of books that were translated in the local language. This shows the openness to foreign ideas. In the Arab world, very few books will be translated every year. In Europe for example, although there are tiny countries with a language spoken by only few million people, far more books will be translated into local language than in the whole Arab world. Along with books, also the articles in scientific journals are a source of ideas from foreign countries. The government has a big role to play in this matter. Instead of preaching narrow minded nationalistic views, it is important to take a global stance. One prominent example is Singapore. The man who made singapore , Lee Kuan Yew, a British educated politician who is regarded as the father of Singapore adopted a global education system. He had politicians who had more nationalistic stances but he angered such people and implemented an international system which proved to be a big success.

Third, there are things that countries can do domestically. For example, a society that is not entrepreneurial will never achieve economic growth. Life is a business. It is buying and selling things. We buy what we need, like foods, cloths, devices, education we need and we sell what we have. It can be our skill as a doctor or lawyer, or if we are a pure business person, we might sell things like vegetables we grow or any other thing. If every person in the society is in business, that means buying things they want and selling things they have, there will be no unemployment. Everybody will create wealth and this is called growth or progress. But if some of us just wait at home looking for somebody who will give us a job, we might end up doing nothing in whole life. Then we also dont progress. Entrepreneurial spirit is very important. Why the Jews are so successful is because they are traders. They dont look for opportunities, they create opportunities. Fourth, the role of government is to create an environment where trade is possible in a fair way. Government should also give incentive to people to create and discover. One tool for this is Intellectual Property Rights, in the form of Copyright or Patent. It simply means securing the rights of a person who discovered something. When you discover something, you should be able to make profit out of it. And to secure your invention, the rule of patent restricts someone else to copy your idea. If it would be possible to copy your idea, then why would you invest so much time in researching and discovering ? That is why, the role of a government is to secure your rights to make profit by your invention. It should also protect your physical property. The final point I would mention is large population. With a population of 10 million, there is a chance of having few more Einstein than with a population of 1 million. So, concerning ideas and discoveries, having a greater population is positive. More people more ideas, fewer people fewer ideas. However, it should also be considered that higher population is connected to other aspects like the negative impact on environment etc. Secondly, higher population is only good for creating ideas if they are educated and do not have a dire life conditions. If a country is too poor where there is massive poverty, hunger, lack of education, lack of freedom, having more people can be devastating.

To conclude everything. We are enjoying the highest living standard today among all our ancestors. It was made possible by the ideas of creative people in all areas, science or social science or something else. The idea was not necessarily a big idea but was also an accumulation of small ideas that created big result at last. Ideas also create more ideas and we rely on older ideas to create new ideas. So does science. Newton once said, ' I could only invent with my good ideas because I was sitting on the shoulders of giants '. Not all these giants invented something personally, but they contributed to other discoveries. Not all invention is a result of a lone freak who spent his life in a room thinking of better ways. Most inventions were a result of team work, some at once and some in the course of hundreds of years. Leibniz gave us Calculus and calculus is used in variety of subjects today. Similar example could be seen elsewhere. But the point is, where YOU want to belong, either in a group of people who are just interested in bread and sex or the person who sacrifices worldly enjoyments to discover something and contribute to make the world a little bit better or you would find a middle way in between.