We have lost perhaps once and for all, whatever slack and buffering we had built into our system. When we had huge, unsaturated domestic markets that were hungry for anything we could throw at them and hence did not give much of a damn for goods and products that were different from what the Joneses next door wanted, we could get away with equally huge, bureaucratic organizations and production lines that were sloppy or inefficient. We could tolerate friction and hostility between labor, management, government, and stockholders. The problem today is that we cannot get by any longer with this kind of behavior.   #RyanPhillippe 1 of 11

We are competing with countries that make quality goods because they have forged close alliances among their employees, managers, governments, shareholders. They may not be perfect alliances, but they stand in sharp contrast to our adversarial relationships. We were shielded from the rest of the World by temporary advantages which have now passed on to others. The World has changed. It has to do with the fact Worldwide travel industry really took suffered the last couple of years. The obvious reasons have to do with the threat of terrorism and the fear that this has raised in travelers that they are not so desirous of visiting abroad.   #RyanPhillippe 2 of 11

The travel industry can really understand why people are fearful to venture overseas with what happened in December of 2015, when Syed Rizwan Farook and Tshfeen Malik opened fire at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California USA, killing 14 people and injuring 17 others and the 22 March 2016 terror attacks at the Brussels Airport and Metro station were brothers Khalid and Ibrahim El Barkraoul acted as suicide boomers and killed 35 people and injured more than 300.  That part of the reason for the trouble of the travel industry one can readily understand. And fears of the Zika virus could costs $63.9 billion in lost tourism revenues. That really drove home once again how and why our World has changed so dramatically.   #RyanPhillippe 3 of 11

The World is now governed by a condition of weird connections! Any two of the most improbable events anyone can think of can now criss cross and connect up in weird and unpredictable ways that almost defy any person’s imagination. There is no separation anymore between any parts of the globe. Everything everywhere is now in effect local news. The disaster that happened in Brussels and San Bernardino, California USA shows how totally interconnected we have become. For example, these things used to only happen in the Middle East, now they are taking place in Europe and America, and frequently. Events like these are capable of not only physically affecting the whole planet, but also electronically and financially as well.   #RyanPhillippe 4 of 11

This is a whole new level of affecting human events that we have never experienced before. We are not more coupled to distant forces beyond our complete control than we have ever been. The ante not only keeps going up, i.e., the disasters we are witnessing are not only bigger in scope, but the time between them is shrinking precipitously. Worse yet, each type of disaster keeps breaking the records for its class. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011 is the biggest incident of its kind to date, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill 20 April 2010, the Zika virus, and the Boston Bombing on 15 April 2013, are the biggest of their kind.   #RyanPhillippe 5 of 11

The whole structure of our World has changed fundamentally. We doubt that something like the Zika virus or Boston Bombing would have happened some 60 years ago. The kind of accidents we had then were no less devastating to a particular community, but they were mainly confined to a particular region. A disaster like a mine explosion for instance could wipe out and be catastrophic to a particular community, but it would not have affected a whole nation or a whole region. The reason why a product tampering, for instance, can happen today is that we have the mixed blessing of modern communications and travel technology.  Nothing confounds like to sudden terror, it thrusts every sense out of the office.  #RyanPhillippe 6 of 11

With mass communication and mass transportation, a single psychopath can get on a plane and, unfortunately, visit five cities in a day. Hence, when somebody calls in to a company with a product tampering threat, we really have no choice, but to take the idea of a nationwide product recall very seriously, unless we can determine that the so-called tampering threat, if indeed it is real to begin with, was confined to a particular locale or a particular batch or products, a task that is increasingly difficult, in a complex system. How does one locate the particular bottle of poisoned products out of hundreds of thousands of containers (or grapes) scattered across the continent?   #RyanPhillippe 7 of 11

No wonder paradox operates in today’s World. No one can foresee all the complex interconnectedness of everything, that everything is both weakly and strongly interconnected at the same time. The weakness is that there are many potential connection between things that few are permanently or directly connected all the time. At the same time, the strength is that if any two things do connect up, then the effect is often instantaneous and dramatic. Thus, even though one starts out assuming that what one is doing is good, it can have adverse effects. Things are now so complex that actions that seem good can lead to complete opposite of what one had intended.   #RyanPhillippe 8 of 11

For example, on my son’s birthday a few years ago, his friends invited him out to lunch, and I had an elaborate dinner planned. He thought it would be rude to decline the invite and that he would be back in time for dinner. However, his friend deliberately took him out of town to a casino, they did not even eat, and they delayed leaving the casino until 5pm, they got stuck in traffic on the way back and did not make it home until 9pm. Needless to say they ruined my dinner plans. My son intended to be nice, but it really hurt my feelings because he did not make me a priority on his big day.   #RyanPhillippe 9 of 11

New technologies create new freedoms and new dependencies. The freedoms are more evident at first. The dependencies may never become evident, which makes them all the worse, because then it takes a crisis to discover them. If the system has not had time to mature a lot of checks and balances, crises of large complex systems can be nasty. Appreciation for complexity has always been regarded as a sign of weakness by the masses who have no taste whatsoever for it. Which is now to say that reality itself must be regarded as the official sign of weakness by the masses, for reality has become virtually synonymous with complexity. Fear brings one into more dangers than the caution that goes along with it delivers one from.  #RyanPhillippe 10 of 11

Little wonder then why as a result many should have become preoccupied with a Flight From Reality through the creation of multiple forms of unreality. It is to a more detailed look at the mechanisms that underlie the production and creation of unreality to which many now turn. Some people are born stupid; some achieve stupidity; and some have stupidity thrust upon them. Ignorance and folly breed the phantoms by which ignorance and folly are perplexed and terrified. A base and dastard fear is the sole principle of human nature to which the slaveholder appeals. There is nothing more depressing than wanting to live, but feeling alone and constantly fearing for your life, safety, and future. It is not from death I request thee to deliver me, but from this terror of torment’s eternity.  #RyanPhillippe 11 of 11