Families from the ksatriya and vaisya sections of society would send their male children to live in their youth for some time as part of a brahmana family. This is referred to as gurukula, the family of the guru (kula means family).

It wasn’t like today’s industrialized mass-production education system. The basic building block of society was the family. It was the unit of socialization for young people, and the social welfare system for the invalid and the elderly.

This is an organic, decentralized system.

The brahmacari ashram refers to that period of life where the person acts as a brahmana, practicing a lifestyle of simple living focused on character development and cultivation of spiritual practices, even if later on they go to a career as an executive or business leader.

Those children who have the nature to continue with such a simple, spiritually-focused lifestyle become brahmanas, or the formal thought leaders of society. When they marry they are called grhasta-brahmacaris. A small percentage of these people may never marry, but may live as celibate monks.

Others, whose nature has a greater bias toward action, go on to directly exercise the knowledge of executive and business leadership that they are taught, whereas the brahmanas primarily teach it. These persons all get married and live in family life, called grhasta, householder life.

In this way the society has a solid spiritual basis. The executive and business leaders have all spent some time in their youth living in a spiritual environment. They continue to practice spiritual disciplines, and they are awarded the sacred thread in a special ceremony by their brahmana guru (upanayana) before embarking on their career.

Thus we find the description of Krishna’s gurukula life, living with his guru Sandipani Muni and Sandipani Muni’s son Sudama. There is not so much specific mention of Sudama’s mother, the wife of Sandipani Muni, but we can understand that she is present, and that she is a mother to Krishna.

It is described that there are seven mothers, and among them is the wife of the guru. In the Manu Samhita there are a number of instructions on the etiquette of the interaction between the disciple and the wife of the guru, including the injunction that the disciple should not allow her to braid his hair or massage his body with oil, especially if she is young and good-looking.

Life is a complex affair.

So that’s what the past looks like. No industrial paradigm of mass production. No overarching impersonal institutions. The family is the basic building block - it performs the tasks of socialization, education, and social welfare.

And that’s what the future will look like too.

Networked - decentralized, distributed responsibility, infinitely scalable.

Coming up: Some considerations on getting from here to there…