When we drive on a road, where at any moment somebody may come from the opposite side in a tractor or bullock cart at very high speed; what safety precautions can one really take except singing Hanuman Chalisa? When we are living among friends and colleagues who can stab in our back, what safety precautions can somebody take? When someone is walking on the road, and a teenager or untrained driver hits them while driving at very high speed, what precautions can they take? Where trains and metros are full of snatchers, what safety precautions will somebody take?
Living in such a spoiled system has a great cost on our mental health because we have to undergo stress almost the whole day. Often, worries do not leave us even at night. Even when we visit the hospital, we are not sure whether the tests the doctor prescribes are meant to maximise the hospital's profit or to diagnose the disease. You are not sure whether the medicines you buy at a high price are genuine. You are not sure whether the fresh-looking vegetables are actually fresh or have been treated with chemicals. When we live in a society with such low integrity, survival itself becomes a big challenge. When we focus all our energy on survival, it becomes almost impossible to focus on exploration.
But at the same time, think of societies where systems are perfect. Are people happy there? Why do those societies have so many mental disorders? Why does such a large percentage of the population in those countries need psychiatric help? In fact, on the contrary, why is the number of psychiatric patients quite low in countries where systems are chaotic? I can tell from my experience. In the building where I work, the fire alarm rings almost every day, once or twice. Strangely, nobody panics since everybody has reset their expectations. By contrast, in societies where systems are in place, the fire alarm ringing is a big event and also causes panic.
When we have larger problems in hand, we don't get bogged down by smaller ones. That's the mindset that works for people living in societies with spoiled systems. Yet spoiled systems come at a high cost in efficiency. People are so busy with jugaad since childhood that they never think of setting up systems. That's why spoiled societies are difficult to turn into systemic ones. The jugaad mindset is one of the biggest barriers to setting up systems. The jugaad mindset is basically a survival-driven mindset that tries to find a workable solution one way or another. It focuses on immediate solutions and survival rather than long-term sustainability. On the other hand, the systemic mindset focuses on the joy of the process. The systemic mindset tries to develop systems that can sustain, so it requires more thought when designing processes. That's why everybody takes joy in the process. System designers also take joy in designing the systems. These systems make users' lives easier, which is why users enjoy the process they carry out. This creates a chain reaction, and society as a whole learns to take joy in the process. This type of society isn't meant for people fixated on a narrow framework for life; it is meant for exploration. That's why people with a fixed mindset, who are not open to constant growth, often develop anxiety and psychological issues in these societies.
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