Ignited Minds - States of a Nation

Time and again, I have brought up in this space, excerpts of some books, that I found interesting to chew upon and digest. This time, I bring to you a paragraph about 'States of a Nation' from the APJ Abdul Kalam's Ignited Minds. He says and I quote -
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“A man is said to pass through different stages in his lifetime. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, in his book Manifest Your Destiny, makes an interesting categorization of them as athlete stage, warrior stage, statesperson stage and spirit stage. It occurred to me that nations too make a similar transition and in extending this analogy to them I have termed the last two stages big brother and self-realization stages respectively. The stages do not follow in sequence necessarily; they can be coexistent, with one aspect dominant.

In the first, athlete stage, a nation fresh from an independence struggle, or some other transition, embarks on an energetic pursuit of performance and achievement. This has happened to Japan, Singapore and Malaysia.

When a nation leaves this stage behind, it generally enters the warrior stage. Proud of its achievements, it finds ways to demonstrate its superiority over others, perhaps through conquest. Ego is the driving force. During this stage people are busy with goals and achievements in competition with others and this, as Dyer points out for the individual, generates anxiety. Convincing others of its superiority becomes the theme.

In the next, big brother stage, the ego has been tamed somewhat and with its newfound maturity awareness shifts to what is important to other nations and societies. In the big brother stage the nation is still an achiever but it is not so obsessed with proving its strength. The idea is to help others become better. The erstwhile Soviet Union by its developmental role in some countries had adopted this role. As with the individual, so too with the nation, the transition from the warrior stage to the big brother stage is a rewarding but difficult exercise.

There is one stage even higher than this big brother stage. In this, a nation recognizes its truest essence. It comes out of the wisdom that the earth is no single nation’s inheritance but of all, and its people are aware of the responsibility of the individual towards his fellow human beings. This can be called the realization stage…”
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As I was writing this post, I was reminded of a 'Team building and leadership' training that I had attended in Wipro. There we were shown that any team passes through four stages - Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing.
a. Forming is when the team is just formed .
b. Storming is when each person in the team wants to show his prowess and superiority over others.
c. Norming is when some clear leaders emerge for the various areas in which the team operates. These leaders are accepted by one and all in the team.
d. Performing - Now that the leadership is clear - the team works together , supporting each other and giving a high quality performance.

Interesting isnt it :) I guess the parallels between the team stages and the human being stages as mentioned in the Manifest your Destiny is clear for all of us to see.

Well, politics is not exactly my subject. But for the purpose of the post, I did some thinking :) If you look at India, in the areas of industrial growth, art and culture, we would be still at the athlete stage - maybe bordering on warrior stage. With regards to our education system, I would say we are in the Warrior Stage. Today our education systems and engineers are being highly lauded for and in demand world wide. As regards to Spirituality, I would say we are in the big brother or even self realization stage - what with, yoga, pranayama and courses like 'art of living', spiritual leaders like Ramdev baba, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar , Rishi Prabhakar making a huge impact the society in general.

Interesting topic right ? What are your thoughts on this ?