Global bureaucracy, or why I dislike Nobel prize

This is an English translation of a potpourri of a number of recent papers and reports by one of the most interesting modern Russian journalists, Julia Latynina. I have just added a number of related thoughts.

I dislike the Nobel Prize. Yes, dear readers, you have read this correctly. Why ? We know that the finest, outstanding, excellent, brilliant representatives of the whole mankind – or commonly recognized organizations – belong to the club of the Nobel Prize Winners. Albert Einstein, Pierre and Marie Curie, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Niels Bohr, Fridtjof Nansen, Carl von Ossietzky, Ernest Rutherford, Linus Pauling, Willi Brandt, Lev Dmitrievich Landau, Max Ferdinand Perutz, Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, Mother Teresa, Yasunari Kawabata, Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, Médecins Sans Frontières, … – just to name a few of them.

The point is that nowadays the Nobel Prize has largely lost its value and prestige. Indeed, the tradition is that once a year, without fail, one has to find suitable candidacies in physics, chemistry, life sciences, economics, literature and peace. Of course, it is an extremely difficult task, especially if you have many dozens of people before you, who are more or less equally excellent, with all of them being but by far not the true, undisputable stars like those named above.

The whole story (except for the Nobel Prizes in economy and peace, where reasonable breaks are sometimes taken) is strongly resemblant of “perpetuum mobile” on a conveyor at some manufacture.

By the way, do you know how Swedes betoken the Nobel Prize Committee members ? They use for them the word “Nobelprisutdelare”, which can literally be translated into English as “one who delivers/serves out/distributes the Nobel Prizes”. I admit that, may perhaps, this notion is a kind of Swedish idiomatic expression, which should not be taken so literally. Still, as for me, when I hear this term, some ordinary, mundane and purely gastronomic analogy comes immediately to my mind: as if I am standing a long queue in a plain canteen and waiting for my portion of a hot soup with sausages. I am sorry, but somehow there is no trace of the ponderousness and solemnity usually surrounding the Nobel Prize awards …

Meanwhile, “serving out” Nobel Prize is a much more cruel process: there are huge crowds of keen and eager people in the queue, but only the smallest pick of them gets the “hot soup”. And the question arises, if all these honorable professors are simply “waiters serving out the dish” in a mechanical way, who is then the “cook” in this “canteen”, who is shaking the things up ? And the “dish” is not just a soup – it is nothing else but a recognition for the outstanding achievements in the human endeavours. This is why there ought to be somebody, who is exclusively knowledgeable of the respective fields, who is capable of unbiased choosing the best of the best, the “crème de la crème”, who ought to be absolutely godlike … So who, for the Goodness sake, is this ???

The unexpected, but definite answers to this question have come recently.

Specifically, the manager organization administering everything around the Nobel Prize is well known – it is the “Nobelstiftelse”, the Nobel Foundation, which is a private institution established in 1900, based on the will of Alfred Nobel. He was a very rich guy who left all his belongings to the mentioned foundation. But, obviously, even all the money of Alfred Nobel would not suffice to defray the 110 years of the Nobelstiftelse glorious activity. This is why, investments, sponsors – and all the related humdrum economical stuff – are extremely necessary and absolutely indispensable in such a case.

As concerns sponsors, the principle “pecunia non olet” must definitely be ruled out in the Nobel Prize awards. Nevertheless, the Swedish Radio has located “Honeywell”, a blacklisted producer of war materials (with control systems for nuclear weaponry among them), as well as the multinational pharmaceutical giant “Astra Zeneca”, on the Nobelstiftelse sponsors’ list.

According to the Swedish Radio, the problem whether the Honeywell’s money should be used to buoy up the Nobelstiftelse is hotly debated. To my mind, there is no space for any debate, because of an obviously serious moral contradiction: indeed, you take money from someone who is producing dangerous weapons and award it to someone who is directly or indirectly working for peace or health. Not only Honeywell money, but also those from any other company at least to some extent involved in a military production, should not be acceptable in the Nobel Foundation.

The “Astra Zeneca” story is even more delicate. The problem here consisted in that two of the “Nobelprisutdelare” were simultaneously members of the Astra Zeneca’s board of directors. At the same time, one of the recent Nobel Prize winners was recognized for his work on the human papilloma virus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer, whereas Astra Zeneca has a stake in two lucrative vaccines against this virus.

Along with all this, there was recently another sleazy story in connection with the Nobel Prize. Several other “Nobelprisutdelare” have enjoyed a number of trips to China just “to tell Chinese officials how candidates are selected for prizes”. Along with this, virtually all their expenses (including business class flights) were to 100% covered by the Chinese government.

Whereas the first case introduces only some fine (though essential) moral issues, the latter two are already reeking of bribery. Indeed, there was some investigation into these cases triggered by Swedish special anti-corruption prosecutors, who have at last downed and shelved their efforts.

I am absolutely sure there was indeed no direct bribery in the both latter cases. Anyway, some disagreeable residue still remains, for all this clearly demonstrates that the previously honorable Nobel Foundation tends to devolve into a bunch of global bureaucrats. The above three stories are very characteristic and symptomatic of the global bureaucracy’s fatal obsession to bring everything around the world under the control – but, along with this, to be beyond the reachability of any national legislation.

Bearing all this in mind – what is my attitude towards honoring President Obama with the Nobel Prize for Peace last year ? Well, I am not a USA citizen/inhabitant and thus have only right to consider the story solely from the outside. On the one hand, I guess, the very electing Barak Obama as the USA President is already in itself a terrific political and social experiment United States ever dared to conduct, which demonstrates that this country is a living, pulsating society definitely heading toward its bright future, notwithstanding the most recent powerful crisis. On the other hand, due to the extremely short time spent at the height of his power, President Obama could nolens-volens only manage to declare his plans, but it is by far not taken for granted how (and whether) his ideas would work at all. Under the circumstances, such a premature Nobel Prize award strongly downplays, to my mind, the great USA endeavor followed by the whole world with immense interest and wide-reaching hopes. One strange thing in my view is that Barak Obama has promptly accepted this award. I would steadfastly reject it in his place.

Whom else do I dislike ? Well, I dislike activists of nature and human rights protection, as well as adepts of the global warming theory. Why ? They are known to be nice and kind people who are struggling not for their own profiteering, but for the peace and well-being of the whole mankind.

It is just for the above reason that I dislike them. I had grown up in the country which was struggling for the global well-being long before “The Green Alternative” appeared. That is why, I am pretty suspicious as concerns all those who are struggling for the global well-being. I’d rather prefer all those who are honestly drawing their profits – provided the state organization of the country favors profit-earners in their working for the common well-being, like the famous “butcher, brewer, or baker” by Adam Smith: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love”.

Now let’s consider such a noble-minded activity as helping refugees. There is an organization dealing with this, it is called UNRWA – United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. It was established in 1949 after the Arab-Israeli war, which produced 400 thousands Arab and the same amount of Jewish refugees. Now, some 60 years have elapsed. One may think that during these 60 years all the problems of the Arab refugees have been successfully solved, whereas all the Jewish refugees have long “kicked the bucket” without the invaluable UNO support.

But we witness just the opposite trend ! With the well-developed state of Israel there are no more Jewish refugees, whereas the number of Palestinian ones amounts nowadays to approximately 4 million people. These are living in an abject poverty, whereas the UNO makes free-of-charge dentist help available to them. They are governed by terrorists, and the UNO readily finds a common language with these terrorists. “I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don’t see that as a crime”, communicated the former UNRWA head, Peter Hansen, in 2004.

Even the style of the Palestinian terrorism has radically changed. With its earlier aim being to terrorize the state of Israel, presently it is just an appeal to those who are professionally protecting human rights. Israeli army would never come to an idea of hiding their commandos in buses full of children and this way sending them to carry an assault. Instead, Hamas is using the UNO schools and hospitals in the hope that their own women and children, which play a role of “living shields”, would either preserve the terrorists or die during the bombings. In the latter case, their corpses could be widely demonstrated as a proof of the Israeli army’s sheer brutality. All the Hamas tactics is designed to brisk up the compassion of the global humanitary bureaucracy, whereas in fact this “compassion of the bureaucracy” consists in sharing all the refugees-protection funding with Hamas.

Anyone who’d visit Geneve and just have a look at the building where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) resides, might immediately realize that the UNO will help refugees forever. As far as this building stands, there will be lots of refugees. A propos, it is possibly not a coincidence that the Office of the UNHCR was twice the winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, namely in 1954 and 1981.

A closely related example is the most recent earthquake on Haiti. What is Haiti ? It is one of the poorest countries with the highest levels of children mortality and malnutrition in the whole Western hemisphere, it is the first country where AIDS epidemy has started. At the same time, Haiti is a country with the ultimately favorable climate.

All the world was sending humanitarian aid to Haiti. But this is useless. If the president of Haiti, Preval, will remain at power, he will definitely misuse all this aid for his own purposes. If there would be clashes, violences, and the voodooist/cannibalistic mutineers would as a result eat up (literally) the Haitian president, then all this aid will be snatched by the former.

There is in principle only one organisation which is capable of effectively helping the earthquake victims with all its resources and logistics – the US Army. But it is clear that the latter will not participate in this. Because, after some American sergeant will shoot dead the first voodooist who starts to build up barricades out of corpses, or the first cannibal who intends to eat up these barricades, everybody – president Preval, all the voodooists, all the cannibals – and especially the international humanitarian organizations (who are in effect swooping for the humanitarian aid together with organizations like Hamas or within the framework of programmes like “Oil for Food”) – will shout in choir: “Down with the US Army !”.

There are no more natural disasters in the world. Instead, nowadays we are living in societies, where disasters occur only when hazards meet vulnerability (the most recent 8.8 quake in Chile and the deadly floods on Haiti completely support this viewpoint).

And now let us consider such a marvellous thing as nature protection. Isn’t our planet grime-stained with plumbum, dioxine, sulphur and alkalis ? Isn’t it necessary to help it, like we help Palestinian refugees ?

But if you cast a look into the Kyoto protocoll, you’ll see that it is not restricting emissions of plumbum, mercury or sulphur. It is restricting only the CO2 gas emission which is just a part of the natural cycle, harmless – and the concentration of which during the Devon or Ordovick periods was 7 to 12 times as high as nowadays. As CO2 is a part of the natural cycle, and one cannot completely withdraw it from the circulation, it is possible this way to take direct control of all the world’s economies and create a multi-billion market of mineral oil quotes.

The ancestor of the Kyoto protocoll was the Montreal protocoll, which restricted the freon emission due to the fact that chlorine molecules ought to contribute to the ozon layer depletion. In 1996 Mary D. Nichols, the then EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation, has let the Congress know that measures to prevent the ozon layer depletion would save 32 trillions (!) of dollars for the USA economy. But in reality there is no clear evidence that chlorofluorocarbons are especially dangerous for the ozon layer, so that all this tittle-tattle has set the USA economy back 100 billions of dollars.

Besides, I dislike Olympic Games as well. You’d definitely say – strange enough, for every Olympiad is usually represented as a Feast of Peace, Friendship and Human Achievements.

However, let us honestly ask ourselves: There are lots of people upon Earth who earn money with their bodies’ capabilities. These are professional sportsmen of all possible kinds, circus artists etc. But all of them are banned from taking part in the Olympiads, because – they say – Olympic Games are solely for the “amateurs”. Are all the Olympic sportsmen really the “amateurs” ?

For example, is Evgeni Plushenko an “amateur” ? Is he just a plain bank employee who uses his lunch time for figure skating ? Are boys and girls, who spend their whole lives for doing sports from their early childhood on, busy with anything else than just doing sports ?

If so, what does it mean to be a “sports amateur” ? The answer is as follows. These boys and girls, unlike the professionals, have no means and ways to earn their own money. The only possibility they really have is to get money from the “sports bureaucracy”. All the Olympic sportsmen, apart from some rare exceptions, are in effect the slaves of the bureaucrats. They have to endure enormous stresses, they are living under miserable conditions, their organisms are lumbered with frequent dopings – and all this is just to let the olympic bureaucrats live as emperors and distribute millions. The very word “amateur” is simply a grievous delusion which is concealing the fact that if the sportsmen are not earning money, than this money is earned by somebody else.

What are the most frequently mentioned dangers for the open democratic societies ? These are Iran, North Korea, terrorism, Russia, etc. Well, I guess, the dangerous signals sent by the pariah states and their allies are massively exaggerated. Indeed, it is the organic incapability of the USSR to rival open democratic societies that caused the collapse of the former, and it is surely doubtful that Venezuela would manage to achieve what the USSR could not. But the point is that after the death of the USSR, the western bureaucracy – which is now missing its real and natural enemy and hence encounters no more competitors – has entered the period of drastic proliferation.

Nowadays, the only serious thing that really endangers the open democratic societies is in fact the over-all globalisation. The national bureaucracy in any well-developed country is at least responsible to the respective voters or to the corresponding competitor countries. The global bureaucracy is but responsible to nobody and tries to regulate everything. In fact, global bureaucrats are just miming the old USSR cow, in trying to protect poor people and harness rich ones, exactly like the USSR – by regulating and distributing, regulating and distributing, regulating and distributing, … and not forgetting about their own pockets, of course !

The very same Grisha Perelman – about Masha Gessen’s book “Perfect Rigor”

Grisha Perelman continues to make huge headlines – several days ago he has reportedly turned down the official proposal to participate in the so-called “Russian Silicon Valley” project. The reason he has given for his refusal is that he has “long nothing more to do with the science”. Even after the reminder, that one of the scientific leaders of the “Russian Silicon Valley” project will be the Winner of Nobel Prize in Physics 2000, Prof. Zhores Alferov, Grisha has not changed his mind.

The reaction in Russian-speaking Internet to Grisha’s decision is predominantly very positive – the vast majority of Russians have expressed their deepest respect to Dr. Perelman “who has really proven that he is not just a brand, he is the True Human indeed” (I am translating one of the typical comments). To this end, a German marketing and management expert Jon Christoph Berndt has clearly indicated what exactly attracts all “cockroaches” and “rats” when they see and hear about Grigori Perelman: “He would never like to be a top brand. But now he is the one. Simply brilliant.” (my translation from German).

And this is clear ! Now his earlier refusals to accept the two most prestigious mathematical prizes are not more looking like a “funny little mischief” or “nice and bizarre bagatelle” of a genius – even for the most disbelieving people, I guess. Undoubtedly, in Grisha’s case we have to do with a special, systematic “Weltanschauung”, with the very definite philosophy of life.

Such persons are amazing, “AWESOMELY insane”, but seem to be so extremely rare – apart from Grisha, the best known examples of them are Zhuangzi, Diogenes, Jean-Paul Sartre, Le Duc Tho … Are they known only by chance ? Hopefully, the most comforting and rewarding idea would be that they, though really existing, do not surface AT WILL – so that nobody (before and after Diogenes) tries to systematically inquire into their whereabouts … Everything in the whole world seems to be anyway properly working without them – but is this a correct conclusion ?

Many answers to all those and likewise posers could be found after reading (and carefully thinking over) Masha Gessen’s terrific book “Perfect rigor”, which is a thorough, highly professional investigation into how it was possible that there were so many math prodigies in the former USSR. Masha also manages to explain just in a nutshell, what exactly is Grisha’s math achievement. Besides, this book is a touching, nostalgic, “spot-on” description of Grisha’s, Masha’s (and, of course, my own !) childhood and adolescent years. Moreover, the three of us went willy-nilly through emigration, whereas I had never come back (or even paid a visit) and am not willing to do so …

To my mind, the true headline of Masha’s book ought to be “Woe From Wit”, with the direct reminiscence going back to the famous Russian diplomat, playwright and composer, Aleksandr Sergeyevich Griboyedov. However, what Masha’s book presents is by far not “comedy” …

Indeed, from his childhood on, Grisha was systematically prepared to be nothing but a “racing rat/cockroach” to participate in international math Olympiads – “ad majorem USSR gloriam”, if you allow me such a paraphrase.

As Masha correctly underlines, Grisha was extremely lucky that the USSR had opportunely ceased to exist …

But the greatest, utterly unspeakable tragedy of Grisha’s whole life is that he was introduced into the modern scientific community. Surely, his teachers and mentors had the best of the best intentions, when striving for this ! But this should be exactly the case when “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” …

I guess, the several pages where Masha tries to (non-professionally, she recognizes that) deliberate on the kind of Grisha’s psychical disorder are totally misleading. It is well known that to define what is “psychical health” is extremely difficult. Some of Grisha’s reactions really look like pathologic. So what ? Are they really organic ? Weren’t they rather induced by the picayune, arrogant and cruel athmosphere around him ?

Well, in effect, apart from his exclusive maths work, Grisha has clearly demostrated the striking paradox: The so-called ‘modern scientific community’ doesn’t require the “Professional Named Grisha Perelman”. Only the “Top Brand Named Grisha Perelman” is required !!! Please, feel the difference !

Interestingly, Masha tells in her book about Natalia Grinberg, one of the numerous math prodigies from the former USSR, and introduces her as “maths professor at Karlsruhe University in Germany”, and her son Darij, also a maths prodigy. But in reality, Natalia had never reached the tenure at the Karlsruhe University (which was recently re-dubbed into the ‘Elite University KIT’ = ‘Karlsruhe Institute of Technology’), although she was teaching maths there for many years. Natalia had instead to enter a re-education course for school teachers in maths … Her son Darij was never honored in his school for his several winnings on the international maths Olympiads … Surprisingly – but fact: It turns out that there is no place for the True Maths Elite at the ‘Elite University’ in Germany …

… In my own experience, to be fully incorporated into the “modern academia” you need to be one of the following three types:

1. Having this or that kind of close relationship (family ties, direct business interests etc.) to the “powerful ones” in the “modern academia”.

2. Being a “convenient person” (just a piece of dreck, which might be let in its original “small heap” form – or just “smeared over the plate” at will).

3. Being a “Top Brand” (for example, a Nobel Prise Winner or likewise). But to reach this Top Brand level, you normally need to fulfil one of the above two points – or be a phenomenon like Albert Einstein or Grisha Perelman.

… To sum up, this is just exactly why Grisha has “rejected science” …

“A Plague o’both of your houses”, dear honorable activists of the “official academia”, with all of your nobel and millenium prizes, field medals etc !

Long live Grisha Perelman !

Globalization and Scientific Research: Trying to Catch Black Cats in Dark Rooms ?

This is an authorized English translation of the paper by an outstanding Russian economist Mikhail Gennadievich Delyagin, as appeared in the Russian-speaking Internet on 19.03.2009 under the following URL address:

http://www.ej.ru/?a=note&id=8902

The translation has been carried out by Evgeni B. Starikov, ex-Soviet biophysicist working since about 20 years in Germany and a number of other countries, who added to the original paper a number of congenial thoughts based upon the own everyday experience. This paper deals with the critical and ambiguous situation in the modern official science, tries to uncover the fundamental roots of this situation and invites all those who feel themselves committed and involved to think about possible ways to escape a serious collapse of scientific research all over the world.

During the last centuries (at least since the beginning of the Renaissance era) the profession of a ”knowledge miner” – the one who obtains new information about the world surrounding us – was, if not the necessary condition for, then at least one of the key and most reliable ways of increasing one’s social status.

Astonishingly, but it looks like we haven’t noticed that already about two decades ago the globalization has abolished this rule. So that nowadays any possibility of social promotion for those involved into the knowledge mining and processing – though being clearly dependent on the society’s organisational level – turns out to be rather restricted.

Such people aren’t now able to reach the levels of Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov or Lev Davidovich Landau, whose personal opinion was respected even by the Soviet Communist Party leaders. Nor is it possible for them to become someone like Alexander Graham Bell or Thomas Alva Edison, the prominent symbols of their respective time. The human activity is now specialized to the extent that gaining social success requires enormous efforts, takes up a lot of time and has gradually turned into a separate, self-consistent kind of business which is practically not more compatible with the cognition, knowledge mining/processing per se.

The fundamental reason for this is a sharp intensification of the communications due to the globalization: either you are totally involved into the Search for Truth, or you are solely processing, using and perusing the knowledge obtained by somebody else, converting it into material or social valuables solely for your own consumption. The former and the latter are two quite different types of activity, rendering any successful combination of them extremely difficult – some rare exceptions here only highlight the general rule.

As a result, a full-fledged segregation takes place: some people are specialized in the knowledge mining, whereas others – in gaining the social success. Presently, the latter doesn’t require even a primitive, parasitical digestion of the knowledge obtained by others, but exclusively a correct social communication, an ability to consistently penetrate and populate some properly chosen communities. The latter type of specialisation has very serious, far-reaching consequences for those who willingly participate in it: it deprives a person of his/her important human qualities, of his/her intrinsic human universality. The whole personality structure is visibly transformed – we shall discuss below how ugly are the forms such a transformation adopts and induces.

We would like to stress herewith that all the above pertains to the whole world. Still, in what follows we are keeping Russia in mind, because our society expresses all the world’s development trends in an utterly sharp form. If the world is smiling, then we, Russians, are most probably laughing hard. And where the world just catches cold – we, Russians, are most probably coughing blood.

Restriction of the field of vision and ideologisation

To begin with, elites of the well-developed countries are seem to be suffering from the heavy drunkard’s syndrome of “tunnel vision”: when someone is “drunk as a skunk”, the surrounding he/she is able to perceive starts to be extremely narrow, so that his/her peripheral field of vision is practically lost. At the same time drunkards become exceedingly over-reactive even when contacted just superficially.

This results not only from a crisis of the administrative systems in particular and of the democracy as a whole (in the Western understanding of the latter notion), but, regretfully, from essential displacement of cognition, knowledge mining/processing in the modern society as well.

The knowledge mining as it is has become so complicated and specialized, that the very process of it – and even sole processing of its results – requires Herculean efforts of many engaged people. Consequently, when dealing with the scientific research, you are always faced with the harsh choice: either you spend your time to gain success in the society, or you are involved into the true cognitive efforts. In the academic field a palpable differentiation has taken place between the administrative officials who preserve the carte blanche to steer all the resources and investigation topics – and the researchers proper, who are directly dealing with the very knowledge mining/processing.

As a result, the science/research proper, the true cognition processes become more and more socially negligible, whereas all the types of decision making – and the most important decisions at the state/country level being among them – are tending to be based upon emotions, prejudices, whatever – but not upon the matter of fact.  If you wish to have more examples on this theme, please follow the homepage of Cato Institute.

Not only crisis of administration, but also crisis of cognition

In the whole world, the official science has become an intricate administrative organism – one might even say – a new social formation, which is not less important for the national self-identification than, for example, the social formation of French peasants in the 50-70-ies of the XX-th century, but obviously also not much more useful. Superficially, this is manifested in that the grant system became nowadays the dominant way of supporting scientific projects financially, in the gradual decay of the fundamental scientific research, as well as in the overwhelming diversity of pseudoscientific hoaxes (like “torsional fields”, “global warming” etc.).

Meanwhile, when considered in more detail from its inside, the above-mentioned social formation may be described as a kind of invisible barricade. On the one side of it – a landlord, a plantation/latifundium owner or something alike, who prefers to be addressed as “professor” or “scientific group leader”. On the other side – a number of volunteering plantation slaves (drudges/plodders/toilers), who are officially dubbed “doctoral students” or “postdocs”. These slaves are absolute volunteers, because nobody forces them at gunpoint to slog for the landlord. The latter ones consider and treat the former ones just as “chess pieces”, each of which has to obey a certain finite number of primitive game rules. Depending on the personality of the landlord, the analogy between the “scientific laboratory” and plantation slavery may be more or less sharp, but the basic features are practically the same in all the countries from USA – through Western Europe and Russia – till the Far East.

Sometimes the “official science” may acquire extremely ugly shapes which at the first glance seem to be absolutely paradoxical within the framework of the well-developed democratic countries. One characteristic example is a plantation in Germany where the vast majority of the drudges are Chinese, Thai and Russian-speaking people. The power of the local landlord is based upon the sole fact that the drudges who would not like to return to their respective countries have a right to get only temporary permissions to stay and work in Germany. And only a letter from their landlord may help officially prolong their permissions. Another typical example is a plantation in Italy, where many Russian-speaking plodders and their families are detained on an island. They have got a Russian invigilator who speaks Italian as well and is in charge of distributing the “expense allowances” (with no social security at all) among the slaves. In these both cases the toilers are not cheated or misled anyhow. They definitely know that they are slaves and they are reminded about this fact every day several times a day, for the attitude of the respective landlords and their helpers towards the slaves is unequivocal. Furthermore, such landlords usually enjoy multi-branched connections with the “underdeveloped” countries to traffic more and more new slaves from over there, keeping the latifundium alive.

Still, the fate of the young native USA, European, Japanese & so on citizens wishing to pursue scientific research is not too much different from that described above. If you do not belong to the “narrow circle”, you have no chance to properly penetrate the “academic society”: the maximum you may get there is a temporary position with a very moderate salary, hopefully with the social security, and may perhaps even without the latter. But Woe Betide anyone who dares to somehow provoke the His/Her Majesty Landlord, the “Big Brother” !!! You would then be standing to lose your whole existence, because when you are looking for a new job, you are always asked to show the reference from your former employer, that is, your former landlord. In Germany, for instance, it is formally prohibited by the law to write expressly bad employer’s references. Still, there are silent conventions defining how to write bad references in conformity with the law (for example, simply not using superlatives in your writing). Moreover, there are phones, E-mails, SMS-messages and many other ways of confidential communication between the employers.

Bearing all this in mind, a justified question may be asked, so what could be the moral atmosphere near such an invisible barricade ? Grudge, glee and bullying will as a rule surround and accompany you there. If you are a young woman and interested in scientific research, you might even learn in practice what “the right of the first night” means. The usual administrative approach used by the landlords is the old and good one: “divide et impera” – or in plaintext, everybody has to peach against his/her colleagues: this is the only way for the slaves to be commensurate with the rest of the plantation. Moreover, temporary working agreements of the slaves and, as a consequence, their chronic inability to reach decent living standards, to start and maintain their families etc. renders them a set of lone “mankurts”, “desperados”, incapable of doing anything without an order from their landlord.

The only “bounty” the slaves might hope for is a vague possibility to occupy a place on the other side of the barricade some day, that is, to become a landlord him/herself. Still, if your parents or relatives are not somehow connected to this system, or if they are not an integral part of it, you have almost no chance to become a landlord. Otherwise, the landlord will round up a group of toilers to prepare your PhD thesis, after getting your PhD you will be sent to abroad as an “assistant professor” at some renowned university like Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, Oxford etc. And in a couple of years you may wish to come back and organize your own plantation in your home country … The very landlords’ community resembles rather a violent gang of racketeers (when they reek their own interests are endangered) than any normal society. Hence, if you are a “drudgeon” and just occasionally have approached the “Holy Grail”, the “Divine Fire” will burn you to ashes … Are the most perverse antiutopies by George Orwell coming true now and then within the leading democratic countries ???

Someone of you might, of course, say: “Well, but research activity as it stands would be so fascinating for me, that maybe I could nevertheless go for paying this dreadful price to reach the only aim – being involved into some exciting scientific research”. Then, our next questions to you are: Do you really think, any substantial and important research is being conducted by such “official scientists” ? Is there any socially conspicuous outcome of all these plantations described above ? The answers are definite: NO and NO. The only master and profiteer in the whole plantation is the respective landlord – his/her direct profit is the social success exclusively for him/her – he/she will never share it with anybody. There is practically no scientific research in the plantations, no clear-cut programme, no knowledge mining, no sensible, useful results – there is only a desperate hunt for increasing values of some purely formal parameters: the number of scientific grants the landlord gets hold of, the number of papers published in “renowned” journals with the highest “impact indices”, the number of citations, the number of invitations to hold keypoint talks at international conferences, the number of memberships in the editiorial boards of scientific journals, the number of doctoral students defended their PhD theses under the landlord’s “leadership” (in other words, how big is your “group” or, better to say, how many plodders you are maintaining at your plantation) … Rather boring, isn’t it ?

… To sum up, the final (rhetoric) question comes: do such landlords really deserve any social success they are striving for and enjoying so much ? …

Well, nowadays only three countries upon Earth are lively interested in promoting scientific research owing to its global prestigious significance: USA, Japan and Germany (the fourth one was the former USSR maintaining its powerful scientific infrastructure for quite different reasons). Most recently, China, India and Saudi Arabia have joined the “science benefactors” club. These countries solemnly spend huge amounts of money for scientific research. Other well-developed countries do basically the same way, but with much less financial efforts. However, the main actual global outcome of this tremendous activity seems to be a steep increase in the number of the landlords and drudgeons as described above. Is this kind of money investment a really good idea ??? Does the number of the landlords somehow contribute to the country’s prestige ??? And what about the enormous number of the drudgeons ??? All the world’s “steering committees” who are possessed of the monopoly to make vital decisions about scientific resources distribution are populated by the landlords only. All the “national scientific advisors” around the world are always the same landlords. But the latter are in fact not professionals in the scientific branches they claim to represent, they are solely “home-made PR-professionals” aiming at their own, exclusive, personal social success, they are really interested in nothing more than that. Is it responsible to commit serious, essential decision making tasks to such people ???

Looking at all this, the only medical analogy which immediately comes to mind is “proliferation of cancer cells” … Do our societies suffer from a sort of “social cancer” ??? If so, is it already a deadlock or there are still some ways to regeneration ???

Any proper scientific research requires a voluntary agreement among free people who would like to solve some actual, interesting, important scientific problem. Such people ought to come together and try to organize a harmonic team based upon the well-known democratic principles. Everyone is free to quit or change the team if he/she is not more persuaded by the significance of the scientific problem or by the performance of his/her colleagues. No one will have any bad social consequences, if he/she suddenly quits or changes the initially chosen team for some sound reason. At this point you will say – well, such a picture is throughout idealistic, something like this is sheer impossible. And we regret to agree with you … But then all of us have to forget about such things as fundamental scientific research, aren’t we ???.

To this end, it should be noted that the fundamental science most probably cannot recover after being drowned or vulgarized. For example, the fundamental science asphyxiated by Hitler for its slowness and unpredictability could not experience rebirth in the post-war Germany. After a small number of the leftover Soviet scientific research workers (not to confuse them with the scientific administrators !) will physically die out, the Russian science, which is now living solely from its rich traditions of the Soviet time, will also cease to exist. What would remain is the fundamental science in the USA and several scientific schools in Great Britain (if indeed !?!) – which is by far not enough for any real progress of the mankind. Moreover, global monopolies, who are not always interested in technological advances, can also easily block the development of the fundamental science.

The crisis in the science is in effect masking a terrible reality: The cognition as it is has ceased to be the main productive force.

This is shocking but, seemingly, one cannot avoid this.

The reason is simple and fundamental at the same time: with the advent of globalization, the mankind has rather concentrated its concerted efforts on changing itself (first of all, changing its own consciousness) – and not more on changing its environment. It is the latter aspect that represents an actual historical hallmark of the globalization, and by far not SMS-messages or pornosites.

The less the world surrounding us is an object of directed cognition, the more the human consciousness takes over the latter role. Consequently, the industry becomes less and less concentrated on producing some material goods or – as an intermediate stage – some services, but it is rather interested in creating and maintaining some definite, more or less pre-determined states of the human consciousness.

To change the world (along with its social component) we had to discern it first – and the science which helped us to accomplish this task was one of the most important instruments of the mankind.

However, what is being changed nowadays is not more the whole world, but its relatively small and by far not universal part – the human being itself. Furthermore, the changes are not even concerning the human being as a whole, but only its consciousness. Accordingly, one of the most important categories of the human activity, earlier devoted to studying literally everything what surrounds us, has now been occupied by a rather small group of people who are studying human consciousness and the methods to work with the latter. It should be noted here that due to the specificity of the topic (the object of study is now the very instrument of this study – the human consciousness), the scientists are not so numerous among those working with the human consciousness: such people are mostly narrow practitioners aimed at achieving some particular and specific results.

By and large, this probably constitutes the end of the scientific-technical revolution which has radically changed our world in the 50-ies of the last century – and, moreover, this marks an abrupt deceleration of the progress in the human capabilites.

May perhaps, this is just a manifestation of the human collective self-protection: the capabilities of the mankind to change the world have thus far overtaken its capability to fathom the consequences of its activities, and it is now really necessary to “have a break, have a Kit Kat”.

There is no doubt that the mankind will refurbish its cognitive instruments in some future. But this would not be a linear, painless process, as it looks like nowadays – so we may perhaps have to withstand a while, as long as this tendency really unfurls.

Although the new technologies of knowledge mining and processing will surely improve the situation in the due time, presently we seem to be heading into the new Mediaeval era, new Barbarian age, when the social success – and therefore the omnipotence of power – will belong to mediocrities who consequently neglect any knowledge.