The Dichotomy

Starting in the early 1970s, I worked as a management consultant specializing in joint ventures between American and overseas firms. This work took me around the world, and I was paid handsomely for it. Once, in a three-week period, I literally went around the world twice. I calculated that, in an 11-year period, I traveled around the world, in mileage, about 45 times.  I was constantly experiencing jet lag. 

During that time, I started to realize I was not only traveling through space, but also traveling through time. On any given day, I would be in the U.S. talking to some of the top business people in the country and, within 24 hours, I would be in a remote part of Afghanistan or some other country where things had changed little during the past 2,000 years.  

All of the travel in a short period of time helped me to gain perspective about where we, as a people, had come from, where we were, and where we might be headed. And in that universe, how I fit in. This perspective was both enthralling and unnerving.

I had grown up in India during an agricultural age with practically no industry. People were mostly illiterate and poor. We were a colony of the British, and they held all the power. My people were without much hope.

As a child I wanted to know why the white man on horseback, carrying a gun, had all the power and we had none. What gave him the power? Why was he the occupier and we the occupied? I wanted to find the secret to the power.

At the age of 18, I gained an understanding that the secret to that power was industrialization.

In 1958, I felt as if destiny picked me up like a pawn and moved me to the United States. Here I was to learn the secret of industrialization from the maestros. I had a role to play. I felt my mission was big and my time was short. A sense of urgency enveloped me.

Now in the 70’s, I was being paid by the maestros to help them set up industries in developing countries. There was both a sense of accomplishment and yet a sense of emptiness.

I share a dream to describe that dichotomy:

One night I had a dream in which I saw a giant with its head touching the stars. I felt like a bug in comparison. With every step the giant took, the earth shook like an earthquake, denoting the power of this mighty giant. I had an urge to climb up the giant and to find the secret to its power. I had no idea how I would climb that great height, with danger at every step, but I started to climb anyway. Next thing I knew, I was standing on the giant’s left shoulder and looking into its eye. What I saw startled me and woke me out of the dream.

The giant was blind. It was made of iron and had no awareness.

Waking up, I realized I was working for a blind giant … a giant that was unaware and unconcerned who it crushed under its feet. People, groups, nations looked on helplessly, hopelessly, as it made a grist of them in the name of raw materials and markets. 

It was like I was standing on the shore of a mighty sea. I wanted to leave this shore, but I did not know what was on the other side of the gulf or how to get there. I was torn.