Group Directed Quest For Knowledge

“Japan as Number One: Lessons For America” - a 7,275 word abridgment of a book of the same name - became available from the May 1981 issue of the now-discontinued U.S. magazine BOOK DIGEST. The author is Harvard University Professor of Sociology, Ezra F. Vogel. At the time he wrote the book in 1979, he was Director of the U.S.-Japan Program at Harvard.

At a time when people in the U.S.A. were “…peculiarly receptive to any explanation of Japan’s economic performance which avoid(ed) acknowledging Japan’s superior competitiveness“, Professor Vogel’s remarkable book offered a thorough and detailed comparative analysis of the the two countries, United States and Japan.



Professor Vogel, who had been annually visiting Japan during the previous two decades, found his investigations made him conclude, “Japanese success had less to do with traditional character traits, than with specific organizational structures, policy programs, and conscious planning“. He is sure and forthright when he says, “If any single factor explains Japanese success, it is their GROUP DIRECTED QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE“.

As an example, Professor Vogel points at the awesome translation-effort in post-war Japan. He says, “Since World War II, approximately one hundred fifty thousand books have been translated in Japanese. Not all of these are for conveying information, but the amount of information flowing into English is minuscule compared to that translated in Japanese“. For a relatively small country, often beset by quakes and storms, that is an astounding “batting average” of 4,000+ book-translations per year for thirty years!

Contrrast this with, say, several-times-larger India where, exceptions aside, the quest for knowledge/wisdom/realization/moksha/etc. by its arrogant Hindu elite groups, has been, contrary to the Védic tradition, ätmanômôkshärtha jagadhitäya cha - largely individualized. The number of translations even from their mother-language, Sanskrit, or, for that matter, from English, which they believe is the “international” language, is minscule. Often bound in tattered manuscripts, their efforts have been of negligible assistance to the socio-economic transformation needed even for an honest and dignified survival in harmony with their time and place on this planet.

Amongst them, those who have an understanding of Védic Gûrûkûl-Brahmacharya practices may rightfully claim a measure of pride and solace that the ‘Samasti Siddhänta’ (Vogel’s “group directed principle” taken a theoretical step further to correctly assume, as the late R. Buckminster Fuller did, that even the minimally conceivable point is always a cluster of unresolved events) had originated amongst their ancients.

This, of course, does not much alter the post-Vedic situation during which the roots of bhramañä, vikrati, shôçaña, ûtpeedaña, anasthä, and däatva went deeper and deeper to become acceptable parts of the collective social psyche, the best minds were trying to preserve the ancient wisdom by withdrawing into themselves, or, those that couldn’t do so, to the Himalayas.

A cynical observer might notice the Samasti Principle in India today operating only in group directed indolence, corruption, and a lack of social commitment to take the initiative to reverse developmental disparities in the emotional and corporeal mind-body of India.