Information and Opportunity

I'm falling in love with blogging. I've never kept a personal diary, but always wanted to. The opportunity to share my thoughts (even if the line of thinking isn't always 'complete' i.e., there's no clean resolution at the end of each thought) and have others comment, provide feedback, and tell me theirs is invaluable. I can't help but believe that over time, in aggregate, I will find more answers than I would have on my own. Certainly, I have already found a different kind of community.

So back to the theme of this one. I see information and opportunity as two of the key (if not the key) drivers of a lot of what I observe around me.

First, information: control of information is critical in most Indian families - information is power, and those in power limit access to information for those they want to keep less powerful than themselves. This could be husbands keeping wives less informed than themselves (a common occurance), the arab rich keeping information out of the hands of the common arab, the chinese government controlling information access to the common chinese...the list goes on. What we're seeing globally is the loss of control over information. The media are key to this loss of control..the internet, print media, satellites, globalization etc. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm waiting to see what happens as the billions of Indians, Chinese, Africans and Latin Americans who do not have open access to information get it more and more over the coming decades.

Second, opportunity: I think the root cause of a lot of the 'violence' we see in the world is lack of opportunity. And I specifically mean economic opportunity - the opportunity to rid yourself of hunger, thirst, disease and other basic human needs. A person without opportunity has no hope. This is where faith steps in. Because religions brings back some form of hope (the hope of salvation, nirvana, etc). Lack of opportunity combined with lack of information leads to billions of people following the words of those who control them. Typically, this is religious and political leaders who promise some form of 'light at the end of the tunnel' if those listening do what they are told.

So how do we spread opportunity to those that don't have it? And what role can an individual play in this?

Opportunity, to me, is the key to America's dominant global position right now. I came here for it. So did almost everyone I know who wan't born here.

I will be writing more on this topic over time as I think a lot of the public policy and foreign policy 'answers' lie in laws/policies/rules that in some way impact opportunity for the common man.