Food for Thought

Theory of Limits

Many of us in the corporate world are used to top line and growth. In the world of business and commerce, an organization is judged by how much the company's revenues have increased compared to the past period. Growth is measured by the number of people added, the profit margin etc. This is the MATERIAL world. In real life, we chase growth, which is actually RELATIVE. Growth is always with respect to something - prior standards or others. Growth encompasses everything from income to profit to career growth. It is considered a measure of failure, if we have not grown, promoted etc. Profit is no longer a dirty word. Ambition, Career growth  etc. are virtues in the current world.

Let’s take the case of any organism - even the human body. We continue to grow till we reach adulthood, after which physical growth is not a sign of good health. When the body cells multiply and grow beyond the natural limits, it is nothing but, cancer!

Law of Conservation

Every student of Thermodynamics knows that there is something called as Carnot efficiency. This is the limit, which nature had put on efficiency of any natural process. There is also a law of Conservation of Mass & Energy, but there is no such law of Conservation of Profit & Loss in commerce! In fact, one man’s gain is other man’s loss. Accountants may not agree, but then, when there is situation of all around profit or gain, it is the universe which is at a loss. This is because the use of natural resource to have the profit has not been accounted in the input side of the equation.

Concept of Contentment

Let us understand what contentment is, by way of a simple arithmetic equation:

It will not be wrong to define contentment as follows:

                            Happiness

Contentment = ----------------

                             Growth

Now let us analyse this equation.  We say, once I build a house, my children are settled in life, after I retire, ad infinitum...... I will be happy and contended, as we would have achieved whatever we wanted from life. Thus Happiness & Contentment are directly proportional.

Let's understand the implication of denominator of the above equation.  Growth is, increase in demand, size, desires and needs. This growth is against the law of nature, as we have seen what an unlimited growth of an organ means - it is cancer, Also we need to understand that increase in cost, profit , revenues are all relative, anytime where money is used as a unit of measure. A liter of oil has the same calorific value, whether it is today or tomorrow, but it's cost & price would have changed. In reality nothing has changed. The change is virtual or Maya. So when we talk of growth, we are talking of Maya and as growth increases, contentment decreases.

We have all along talked about material growth & not spiritual growth. Spiritual growth does not follow the laws of Mathematics and Sciences.