Wednesday, October 13, 2010

The Morris Theorem, Hard Ceilings and the Dead Cat Bounce

Ian Morris, a Stanford University professor of classics and history, in his path breaking book “Why the West Rules- For Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future”, postulates what he, rather immodestly calls the Morris Theorem: “Change is caused by lazy, greedy, frightened people looking for easier, more profitable and safer way of doing things. And they rarely know what they are doing”
Morris also postulates that every civilization climbs the ladder of progress until it hits a “hard ceiling” of social development. The units of time that underpin Morris’s analysis of the relative rise and fall of the East and the West are in hundreds and thousands of years. Morris’s analysis is in the same league as that put forward by Arnold Toynbee in his “A Study of History” and Paul Kennedy in his more recent book “The Rise and Fall of Great Powers”.
When I think about what Morris is saying I find myself mulling over a couple of points.
The first point is in the context of what regular readers of this blog would have noticed: my disgust at the current state of the Indian establishment and my avid, if armchair bound, search for means to change it.
Does the Morris Theorem provide insights in this regard? Does the establishment continue to flourish because us the “greedy and lazy” people find it easier, more profitable and safer to not just overlook the faults of the establishment but, in most cases, strive to be accepted as a part of it? Are violent revolutions successful when they create conditions when it is no longer safe to be part of the establishment? Is there any other way?
The second point is where in the cycle of ascent and descent is the Indian civilization. Did we hit the hard ceiling around the times the Vedas were created? Is the past century showing signs of an upturn?
Or are we just experiencing a “Dead Cat Bounce”? The “Dead Cat Bounce” is a stock market term. When a share falls precipitously it experiences a tiny resurgence at the bottom of its fall, a resurgence that is known as a “Dead Cat Bounce”. Many a clever stock market operator has profited from a Dead Cat Bounce by recognizing it for what it is. However disaster awaits those who, out of Irrational Exuberance, mistake a Dead Cat Bounce for something else. Irrational Exuberance? That is another story.

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