By Paramjit Bakhshi
Every fan of Shakespeare, knows the following lines from Julius Caesar: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” Having read such dazzling passages, poems and quotes, we normally never forget them and can recite them at will. Since we recall them on occasions and not ad nauseam, there is no harm in learning such passages.
It is a little different with ideas- because they become supplanted in our minds. They then colour our attitude to life and like coloured glasses influence the way we see the world. Most of us are unable to see reality without the lenses of some powerful beliefs or social or religious myths. The trouble is that reality is of many hues and exists independent of our pre conceived judgements. Tailoring reality to suit our perception, is like spending a lifetime, painting everything with one colour; an impossible task.
Today I want to talk about a few such dangerous ideas which like Caesar, having lived their day, need to be buried and not praised and reincarnated.
The first of course is the notion that our community or our religion is the best. The idea that our society and our beliefs are the best is the hallmark of all ancient cultures. In ancient times they were not inappropriate. Mankind then was in its infancy- like a child growing up only inside his home. It was the age of rivalry and competition-tribe versus tribe, community versus community, country versus country, and man vs nature. To survive in such a hostile environment it became necessary to invent gratifying myths about our traditions, and about the superiority of our way of life. And in the absence of any counterview such myths penetrated our psyche where they reside quietly surfacing in times of conflict. All guardians of such societies were also the perpetuators of such myths. Thus outsiders bearing different myths and tales were mostly made unwelcome. In fact most of the stories revolved around the heroism and wisdom of our own communities. Into this was interwoven explicitly or implicitly the evil in other societies. A number of religions too insisted that their revelations were the only true teachings and other religions were false. Even our gods were portrayed as jealous gods.
However even in the most primitive stage we used ideas from other cultures. Can you imagine our primitive ancestor just throwing away an arrow which was shot at him but missed? If the technology of an enemies’ arrow was superior it is more than likely that he would have encouraged an effort within his tribe to copy it.
The idea of our racial or religious superiority weakened with industrialisation when the printing press and better transportation brought us new ideas and also into contact with other people. We realised that every community and religion had some good and some bad practises. However the infantile notion that our tribe, community, country and religion are the best still survives in people’s minds. This in spite of the fact that we all carelessly, and on a regular basis, use non ethnic technology, language and fashion, and enjoy: foreign cuisine, movies and music. If anything the modern age should teach us the value of global co operation and not of isolation. May we say RIP to such outdated ideas now? This is not to say that religion and culture do not have a place today but we do need to open our minds and our hearts to all that is good in the world. The desire to put on blinkers, such as that come with the Inner Line Permit, is not going to help anybody.
The second such idea which needs to be buried is that the majority is always right. All our prophets from Jesus to Buddha, all our inventors, all our social and religious reformers and entrepreneurs have been people who have had to swim against the current of mediocre and common thought. In fact vision is a gift developed by some remarkable people and not by a screeching mob on the street. If majority was always right would we not be having ideal public representatives and perfect governance? Do we have such luxury? In this connection it is pertinent to quote Margaret Mead who says, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Every democracy needs some conscience keepers to stop it from becoming a mobocracy.
The third misplaced idea we cling to is that we live in a democracy. Governments today are influenced more by lobbies and less by the electorate. While we may go out and vote once in five years, lobbies, with vested interests, are at work every day. Unless we elect people of impeccable integrity, our representatives will end up working for the lobbies at our expense. For democracy to work it needs voters who are educated and not ones which can be bought at election time for a few rupees. Of course we do not sell our privileges for money alone. Sometimes we, educated as we are, squander them on misplaced notions of friendship, family, creed and community.
The other notion which we cling to is to expect that education is being doled out our schools and other educational institutions. According to The Collins English Gem dictionary to educate means to “train morally and mentally’ while The Webster’s dictionary defines it as “to develop the knowledge, skill, or character”. In its preoccupation with making us fit to run the rat race the emphasis of education today lies in helping us acquire marketable skills. The aim of education is to enable us to get a job. Period. There is very little or almost no emphasis on, moral training and character building. Not only is moral science given perfunctory attention and the study of ethics none at all, but even essential character building activities such as sports are frowned upon, by teachers and parents alike.
Is it any surprise then, that we have a plethora of highly skilled professionals but lack people with integrity? Don’t we with increasing regularity, bear witness to an almost shameless flirtation of the educated with corruption, stock markets scams, and other crimes against fellow human beings? We are seeing an era where the human being in spite of becoming technologically proficient, is becoming culturally and morally bankrupt.
True education should teach us to think and not feed us ideas. Socrates said, I cannot teach anybody anything; I can only make them think. ” . Rather than accept everything at face value isn’t it time that we that we learnt to think.
(The writer is a life skills trainer and can be contacted at [email protected])