The individual is always the vanguard of future collective action

Toward a Comprehensive Theory By Garry Jacobs and N. Asokan

Our view of development has to encompass a wider whole that includes the potential impact of war or the perceived threat of war, civil unrest, political instability, rapid improvements in health, induction of advanced technology, rising standards of education, rising expectations of the electorate, a sense of social competition with other societies, increasing individual freedom, and greater access to information...

The human being is not one more vital or extraneous factor in the impersonal equation of social development. People are the foundation, the heart and the driving force of the process. Societies are not impersonal systems. They consist of people. The development of political and legal institutions, advances of science and applications of technology, acquisition of productive and organizational capabilities, and evolution of commercial systems depend fundamentally on human awareness, aspirations, energy, attitudes and skills...

Money is a social system and convention based on social trust, confidence in government, political institutions for stability, law and order, and administrative policy. Resources are the product of human imagination applied to discover new applications for naturally occurring and human-made materials. None of these instruments is inherently limited. The productivity and generation of money is enhanced by increasing the speed of transactions and the efficiency of productive systems. The productivity of resources is enhanced by increasing technology and organizational efficiency. Social institutions such as markets are human inventions and conventions capable of potentially unlimited improvement and refinement...

Our premise is that the process governing development of the individual and the collective is the same process and that the two are intricately intertwined. The preparedness, aspirations and awareness of the collective form the backdrop and launching pad for the emergence of new development initiatives. When the society has achieved sufficient stability and productivity at one level of development, it accumulates surplus energy and spawns initiatives by pioneering individuals who throw up new forms of adaptive behavior. The individual is always the vanguard of future collective action. The pioneers’ successes—whether the result of private initiative or public programs—serve as demonstrations that educate and motivate others to act. The imitation of successful pioneers leads to gradual acceptance by the collective. Often this acceptance leads to organized efforts by society to disseminate, promote and support diffusion of successful adaptive behaviors through legal, organizational or educational mechanisms...

We refer to the conscious application of complete, conceptual knowledge as “conscious” development. Mentally self-conscious development can be a much more rapid, efficient and stable process. Because it knows the wider whole in which specific instances occur, it can derive knowledge from a single experience rather than depending on countless repetitions of error to fill in gaps in its understanding. It can avoid the excesses and imbalances commonly resulting from partial knowledge, because it takes cognizance of the wider context and circumstances in which developmental initiatives are carried out...

Historical evidence overwhelmingly indicates that development is a creative process which is not inherently limited by past experience, present levels of accomplishment or any fixed forms of expression. Yet so long as our knowledge about development is colored by premises that were long ago rejected in physics, we vastly underestimate the opportunities and satisfy ourselves with minimal achievements. garryjacobs@worldnet.att.net Garry Jacobs is a Director of the International Center for Peace and Development and partner in a California management consulting firm. He was formerly Member Secretary of the International Commission on Peace and Food...N. Asokan is a research fellow at The Mother’s Service Society, a social science research institute in Pondicherry, India motherss@vsnl.com