What makes a great society?

Today I would like to write about my perceptions on Science, Business & Art. To me, they form the three most important pillars of the cultural acropolis. I’ve always had this belief that science & business are the vanguards of mankind. They take the entire mankind a step ahead every single day. Art, on the other hand, provides pleasure necessary to keep our senses stimulated for any form of significant accomplishment. After all being human entails a heightened emotional existence.

Science envisions & unravels the future through technology, which I regard as its applied arm. By exploring the uncharted realms, it not only adds significant value to our existing way of life but also nurtures our understanding of our very existence. I really have a very strong belief that humans carve the very landscape of this planet, and science has been our toolbox. Science continuously defies the basic tenet of economics that “resources are scarce” by coming with innovative ideas to generate more wealth & prosperity.

Business on the other hand is the true wealth (value) creation mechanism and harnesses available resources in imaginative ways make a prosperous world. And this wealth in turn fosters further research & scientific pursuits. Throughout history, men of nerve and vision have revolutionized our lives and them simpler and better. Some people challenge this perception, but just peek into history and ask, “When did we have an ear of such welfare when we could earn our livelihood through mere mental work?”

Art is mere concretization of one’s beliefs, value systems and perceptions on a canvas. Art directly provides respite, pleasure & stimulation to our senses by pampering to our emotional state. And so I feel it symbolizes the depth of any culture or a society.

Together they form the three critical triads of the society. And any society which ignores any one of these cannot expect an eternal or holistic development. That’s one of the reasons you’ll witness maximum scientific enquiries & works of art during times of great prosperity. Prosperity alleviates man of his basic needs to indulge into the luxuries of his desires.

Oooph… That was deep. Who has time for all this crap? But I just wanted to write about it all. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Do add anything you feel I've missed in my simplistic picture. Have a good day.

The whole universe is in a glass of wine

A poet once said "The whole universe is in a glass of wine". We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imaginations adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the Earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secret of the universe's age, and the evolution of the stars. What strange array of chemicals is there in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments, the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts - physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on - remember that Nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!

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I just came across this beautiful piece of work & felt like sharing. Enjoy the stimulus...