Over Thinking and Profiteering

Life Writes This Blog For Me


There was once a tribe of small African Bushmen. We used to call them Pygmies, but that has fallen out of fashion as being politically incorrect. So now they are vertically challenged indigenous peoples (VCIPs). The VCIP had a problem. They needed to cross a flowing river and since they are not tall enough to wade across it, and to unskilled in the art of swimming to swim across it, they sought assistance from outside sources.

So they sent out scouts to try and find others that could solve their problem for them. After several days, the scouts brought back an Over-Educated Profit Seeking Capitalist (OEPSC) from the land of concrete and steel, far, far away. The OEPSC looked over the VCIP's problem and came up with the perfect solution.

"What you boys need is the Saturn V Rocket Ship. It will lift you and your entire tribe high above the raging dangerous waters and parachute you safely to the other side. It will only take about 3 years to build and the cost to you can be spread out in installments over the next several generations.

This sounded wondrous and awe-inspiring to the under-educated VCIPs so they gladly signed over the mineral rights to their land and mortgaged the future of their children to construct the 50 story gleaming white tower that would lift then into the heavens and deposit them safely in the land across the river. After all, the land across the river looked much better than the land they had lived on for centuries.

Weeks, turned into months, and months into years. The rocket ship was delayed and restarted and changed over and over again. The dream of crossing the river became lost and the tribe foundered in debt and gave way to the commercialism, traffic, taxes and dissatisfaction that came with the industrialization around the launch site. The OEPSCs became rich from the VCIP labor and resources and had no motivation to finish the project anytime soon. The longer it took the more secure were their profits and success.

Several decades later, a young VCIP was chopping a tree next to the river bank with a sharp tool that has been discarded from the Saturn V project. He misjudged the cutting of the tall tree and much to his horror, it fell into the river. Well, actually, it fell across the river with the top on the other side. Stunned at what he had done, the young VCIP climbed on the tree, walked across the river and hoped down onto the other side. He ran down the bank to where they were building the Saturn V and yelled to his tribe across the river.

The rest of the VCIPs were stunned. They had never seen one of their kind on the opposite side of the river, and the Saturn V had not taken off yet. How could this be?

The young boy yelled...push it over, push it over....and pointed to the rocket ship. In a frenzy the tribe surged toward the Saturn V, much to the horror of the OEPSCs that were overseeing the project. As the rocket toppled over and spanned the river, the tribe went wild and ran over the stream into the fabled land of milk and honey.

---------------

This may all seem a bit of a farce, but this story came to me today while I was sitting in an hour long meeting at my office. The debate back and forth concerned what would be the best way to pigeon hole the collection of new data into our antiquated database system that was supposed to be scrapped five years ago. The easiest way would be to do the simplest thing to collect the data. But instead, they chose to build the rocket-ship.

It would appear that our ability as a society to see past all the technology that swirls around us has been lost and we now only search for more and more complex ways to do the simplest tasks. Once again, our technology has leaped-froged over the heads of most peoples' ability to comprehend it.