As we think so we become

This may sound too religious! Yet the objective is to show the attitude and the direction needed in our words and deeds today in terms aligning ourselves to national economic development.

The essence of the statement is that thoughts manifest as words and words manifest as deeds and so on. The onus is on ensuring that right words are uttered and deeds are focused for the right purpose.

However, nations to grow do need some positive thinking and leaders to utter the right set of words, which in turn may create lots of right deeds happening across society.

Imagine the power of 20 million people each doing an extra thing right every day, which previously they have chosen to ignore or may not have been aware of. The deeds then may go on to develop as habits and habits can harden into character.

The deeds of 20 million aligned citizens to one extra thing right every passing day can lend to nation’s character – it can be as simple as learning a useful word or two, switching off an unwanted light, buying a book instead of a bottle to crossing the road in the right way.

The power of the right-minded individual was summed up by Margret Mead who has stated: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”

Waste disposal

Consider the simple task of disposing of one’s solid waste. Today we take pride in stating that Colombo is clean – indeed it looks better and clean but we have not yet provided the total management solution up to the last stage as there are piles of garbage out of most of our sight!

We know that cities in developed economies are quite clean and that is what strikes a visitor first. Recently a staff member who landed in Canada sent a mail and the opening remark was how clean and disciplined the place was!

In maintaining cleanliness, it is the discipline of their citizens. It is from individual households and small economic units such as shops and institutes that solid waste gets generated and the sum total once collected become a huge task for waste managers and city planners.

The task is always made easier and planet friendly when people engage in some basic separation into biodegradable (easily degradable) to recyclables. This actually is not a complicated process.

If each household consider having two basic containers under these two streams and city masters support them with some uniform vessels (need to ensure that the economic benefit of stealing and selling should not be a possibility as it is happening with manhole covers in our cities) and each of us in a predetermined manner supports collection and removal in segregated form, the major problem facing solid waste management in our cities to a larger extent would disappear.

Power of the individual

Note the pictures presented taken from a street in a Canadian city, how households separate into two separate vessels and how all of them keep the waste at one given time for the city to collect. This is the power of the individual. It is simple thinking of a process step and accepting them and following them to the betterment of everybody.

Yes, we do find situations where the menace of chewing gum is managed by either banning (Singapore) or by diligent cleaning using high power cleaning systems. The latter economies such as UK are actively seeking technology to design better chewing gums so that it imparts to the customer what they want but neutralises the sticky burden from city walls and chairs.

We must seriously come to understand in Sri Lanka that it is this segregation at source that is making it difficult for many of the solid waste management schemes to be really effective. We must understand that we just cannot expect a fellow human being to do the segregation of our waste.

Little time and energy spent on that operation will give us a better return on our investment of our time over time for sure. Cleanliness should not be realised by partly hiding the issue but by ensuring the due process is implemented and the first step of that process is with us.

Opportunity for transformation

What was stated earlier was a simple example for a complex situation that exists which can be resolved through thinking and following up with right deeds. We do have more complex examples which need much more understanding.

We do have an opportunity today in seeking real transformation of our economy and is important if we are to consolidate the peace gained. The thinking can be diverse on how we make use of the opportunity.

Thinking may be diverse, but we must ensure critical thinking and analysis. It is then only that policy bytes should be articulated and never without analysis. Even constant revisiting of progress must be made to ensure real growth and corrections if necessary.

The Erwin Kauffman Foundation’s President Dr. Carl Scharmm has stated quite simply in their 2011 ‘Kauffman Thoughtbook’ that a country can have peace and prosperity when its people truly own the economy. What a powerful concept coming from writing in the land of opportunity!

Power of thinking

Even in power of thinking and articulation this is important. As stated earlier, the stated word will lead to what follows. It was Andrew Behring Breivik who wrote in his Twitter post that one person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests. What a powerful sentence. The thought process led to his being the now infamous Oslo murderer. His thoughts manifested in deeds, plunging a society and a nation into despair.

Reactive approach

As we get more and more information and sink into data the use of all our resources at our disposal, deciphering the contents and meaning is becoming quite important. As otherwise we will be merely swinging to and fro due to content and life is going to be extremely complicated.

This may have happened to us with wheat flour and rice. As we warmed up to the idea of saving foreign exchange and serving our noble farmer community, we were shocked by the arsenic in paddy. Saving your own skin then may have far outweighed saving another profession. Rice to wheat flour would have been a reaction.

Are we being rational human beings in this 21st century amidst so many developments and knowledge? Our discussions, suggestions and counter suggestions unfortunately point out to using less of our grey matter and more of emotions.

We have been taken for a good long distance drive with water as the fuel and the story is no more. Due to retention times for information being low, another dramatic entry may happen any time soon. It could well be the same story again!

Food for thought

It is interesting to understand our brain – the organ behind thinking. Today we know more about it and definitely we believe we know more about it. We can take images and tell what is happening and where and why.

We have developed excellent imaging techniques to extract data. Some interpretations have been quite revealing. We now also state that brain size is shrinking. It is to this organ in our body that we attribute our intelligence, IQ, etc.

We also state that the higher the IQ, the lower the fertility, which comes from published empirical findings. In a world with a rapidly escalating population – and we are passing the seven billion mark this year – this indeed is food for thought.

It is time for us to put our thinking hats on. Engage in this activity in a productive manner. Many lessons are available to us. A dark period has passed us and the dawn of a new era can only be achieved by changing the nation’s character and as shown individually and collectively this can be done.

(Professor Ajith de Alwis is Professor of Chemical and Process Engineering at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. With an initial BSc Chemical engineering Honours degree from Moratuwa, he proceeded to the University of Cambridge for his PhD. He is a Science Team Leader at the Sri Lanka Nanotechnology Institute. He can be reached via email on [email protected])