Parents, teachers, bosses, spouses… are all advising us, all the time, on the importance of order, discipline, tidiness, neatness to make the best out of our lives. Clean up, plan, organise… these are some of many gems that are strewn before us by control freaks on the promised path to success.
CHETAN KRISHNASWAMY forwards an “absolutely fascinating” piece from the latest issue of Newsweek on stochastic resonance, a phenomenon by which adding disorder to a system makes it work better.
“It may seem counterintuitive, but the human mind—and a lot of other things, as it turns out—often work better not when they’re neat and highly ordered, but rather when they operate in a messier fashion. That principle may apply not only to how we live and work, but also to how people around the world deal with regional instability, terrorism and natural disasters.”
Put another way, is the genius of the Indian mind what it is because of the mess, dirt, filth and squalor we grow up and seemingly revel in?
Read the full story here: The pursuit of order is making a mess
churumuri 
Depends on how you define India’s ‘success’.
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India Success ?? What have u guys been smokin lately ?
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@emailxyz , its Mysore ganesha beedis
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Amen! :)
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From an economic prespective, Prof CK Prahalad makes a similar point in this excerpt below ……
“Take a cab ride through Bombay, and these are the scenes that will likely strike you first: raggedly dressed homeless families sprawled on blankets amid shacks. Traffic hopelessly clogged with every manner of soot-belching vehicle and wooden cart. Gaunt hawkers and beggars tapping on your window at red lights. For foreign visitors, such jarring images of poverty and desperation are hard to shake.
View those same streets through the eyes of C.K. Prahalad, however, and they become a beehive of entrepreneurialism and creativity. “I see the positives inside the muck,” says Prahalad as he settles his stocky frame into the back of a hired Tata Indica sedan to conduct a quick tour of Bombay. As the car crawls through congested Mohamed Ali Road, he notes that virtually every individual is engaged in a business of some kind — whether it is selling single cloves of garlic, squeezing sugar cane juice for pennies a glass, or hauling TVs.”
Something similar is happening in IT with software development moving towards the messier “Agile” development and away from the traditional method which was heavily regulated, regimented, micro-managed etc.
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While on disorder may be following may nterest:
1. We may feel bad about mess, desk and dining table awash with paper, closets full of soiled clotes,our basements full of junks, children rooms are ina state of disarray aand withall this the mess ahs its benefits.
2.Itis a myth to think that any family or a corporate office can be completely in order.
3. Total organisation is a futile attempt to deny and control the unpredictablity of life. More over order must be so boring, a sort of sanitised living.
4.Order can be profane aand life-diminishing as per a book
written by Irwin Kula a rabi based in MANHATTAN.
5. iIf you never had a nessy kitchen you’ve probably
never had a satisfying home meal.
6.It is said that mess resonance which means it can
vibrate beyond its own confines and connect to the
larger world
7. Discovery of pencilin emerged from mess.
8. Acording to one study mesy desks are linked to
higher salaries
9. Einstein oft quoted remark, ‘ If cluttered desk is s
sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then is an empty
desk
We men are in a good company and hence when your
wife says I can not see the mess on the dining table, tell her you are in the good company of Einstein. Say yess to mess everytime and always
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Don’t you see what mess I have made of spellingpuctuation and waht not?
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“Acording to one study mesy desks are linked to
higher salaries ”
My desk is always messy @ home and @ office and the linking…… :)
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Maybe I will never clean my desks in life
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