Dear readers! We are starting series of articles about the impact of bureaucracy and market on our lives, about their continuous cooperation and fight, about how creatively solve tasks of conquering bureaucracy in general in the country and in your personal life and workplace. We will try not to get you bored, so you can acquire maximum advantage from our papers. Wish you all the best!
Article 1. Huge secret for a small, small company…
The biggest secret of the whole history of civilization is that for the last 10 000 years we have been living in a slave-owing society where the top class is bureaucratic elite (in administration, in finances, in ideology, in information, in entertainment, in education, in science etc.). It appears to be a collective master, owner and manipulator over the lower class – laborers and elite’s order performers.
We would like you, dear readers, not only to get horrified by the reality but also to be taught the understanding of the source where most of daily problems come from. Therefore, we would like you to use this awareness for improving your own life and the life of your country. We will give you tools to manage this mess!
How was the world bureaucracy born
Around 20 000 – 25 000 years ago the last glaciation reached its maximum. Separate tribes and groups of people, divided by zones of pathless ice, had been actively developing their intellect in fight for surveillance in quite hostile conditions with minimum affordable resources. Their language, ability to predict, planning and implementing group actions, altruism and mutual support were improving. In addition, such skills like finding new, creative life hacks from technologies to art were appearing and enhancing their existence. People were learning how to use fire, separate components of agriculture effectively, how to produce more advanced instruments and armor.
Approximately 12 000 years ago Ice Age ended. Forests and steppelands were quickly growing and filling with huge amount of edible herbs and animals. People freed themselves from their “ice isolates” and began broad expansion in all the routs. Rapidly grew the number of people, tribes of hunters-gatherers rose, divided, migrated, and conquered more and more space… Food gathering was taking only 3 – 5 hours a day and it was more for pleasure than for work. The rest of the time could be spent entertaining oneself… Birth was overcoming death and human population was growing. Life was amazing!
Unfortunately, nothing beautiful lasts forever. In 1 000 – 2 000 years’ time people faced completely new situation – human population grew so much that they started to lack natural resources of food for tribes of hunters and there were shortage of gatherers. Severest wars, with genocides at times started. Tribes were fighting for “living space”.
Management in tribes was informal, performed by people whose authority was demonstrated by physical power, witty mind, cunning etc. Although there were no formal election procedures, still there was something slightly similar to democracy. Apart from chiefs, there were “wise people” absorbing information and experience, teaching children, predicting up to the limits events – shamans. Tragically, it was not enough for tribe to survive in condition of excess birthrate.
Only those tribes survived in which talented leaders understood that the condition for saving life laid not in a single victory over neighbors but implementation of “war state” – situation when army (even which only counts 20 warriors) controls the activity of every person in a tribe. They (most probably in the union with smart shamans) turned their troops into the instrument of “social management” in other words – tribal bureaucracy.
Everyone in a tribe is given the exact task – this family is to give five pigs a year for feeding military unit, this one – 10 sacks of grain or dried mushrooms etc. Among other duties, there were to form and guard food supplies, dig mud huts, build fortresses, collect stones for throwing, make bows, clubs and knives of wood, bone or stone… It was a continuous labor with a sweat on people’s faces, with no liberty, with minimum entertainment and free time. Cruel punishments for disobedience were used.
The price of tribal life was freedom loss of every member. At some moment in history the tribe was rescued, but with the victory upon enemies naturally war state did not disappear – it became permanent. Free people turned into slaves, into the property of their bureaucracy. The greatest turning point in history happened, historically unavoidable and ethically disgusting revolution – transition from free development of people to total control of elite over them, managing only in its (elite) interests.
From authors:
Few words about Soviet Union and us
Let us introduce ourselves:
We are Boris Zlotin and Alla Zusman, not very young but we perfectly remember our childhood:
“Thank you my country and also my people,
All thanks to Stalin in Kremlin with stars,
Thank you for tenderness, care and love
From the happiest children on earth!”
All of us always knew that we were the happiest although not all of us and not always were well fed. We also knew that of course, sometimes we could mischief a bit but we always had to obey superior because it was a prodigy. Then suddenly Stalin stopped being a genius, he became a bad person, and time to obey Khrushchev came. After that, he as well “went bad” and burry Brezhnev appeared to be “the Great Chief”. In spite of this, we remained the happiest and the freest because our liberty was that conscious necessary bureaucracy. Russian people and intelligence got used to live in socialistic slavery, entertaining one another with anecdotes, avoiding contacts with stinky representatives of the most progressive ideology, deceiving bosses where appropriate and stealing: “You are the master not the guest, grab every nail – be the best!”
We put Soviet Union afar
We, Zlotin and Zusman, got extremely lucky as we accidentally met with new science – Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ or TIPS – eng.) and its founder Henry S. Altshuller who became our teacher and a true friend. We had a job we admired – we had been solving real, inventive tasks, implementing our discoveries, teaching art to children and adults, writing books and articles… We were earning quite good money, travelling a lot, living in our own “happy world”, paying little attention to marasmus of our elderly leaders, insane deficits, production and transport collapse, constantly mounting accidents and errors, idiotic gambles like war in Afghanistan or vineyard burning etc.
Science has many geeks
At the beginning of the 80s we continued to work upon developments of Henry Altshuller and found out how to implement TRIZ or TIPS into constructing scientific ideas, hypothesis, theories. After first successful solutions, mostly connected with detecting reasons of unwanted phenomenon in various productions, a desire to handle own method in detail emerged. For that survey we chose few “guinea pigs”.
It appeared that Boris’ father was an engineer-mechanic and he was a very productive inventor, his mother was a historian. The house was full with technical literature and history books. Boris’ illiterate granny taught him to read when he was 5 years old but neither correctly, nor slow by syllables but fast in his mind remembering whole words and phrases. That is why 5-6 year old Boris was reading 100 – 200 hundred pages, starting from his favorite technical encyclopedia with marvelous pictures to volumes of Tarle, Soloviyov, Kliuchevskiy and other historians.
One of our first scientific method was constructing methodology of forming scientific models based on historic material, which we called “Historical Mechanic” or “HistMech”. All the materials on bureaucratic development we demonstrate in these articles are a small part of our researches which have been conducting for more than 35 years.
End of part 1 – to be continued
Warning: authors Boris Zlotin and Alla Zusman fundamentally reject any censorship and self-censorship by pretending “politically correct”, violating the freedom of speech guaranteed by the American Constitution.
