When I was a school boy I read somewhere “ Education is a way of life. Not a preparation for life.” And listening to some of the elders speak all these years I have come to the conclusion that education breeds ignorance. What education teaches us is nothing but how to disguise our real thoughts. It teaches us to conceal rather than to reveal ourselves. There is a significant difference in being educated and in being learned.
Unfortunately, there have been only a handful of men in the history of mankind whom we could really call learned. The fundamental organ for real learning is not the head but “a heart”. A big heart. A heart that beats the loudest. A heart that sings. A heart that suffers and cries. Not for oneself but for the whole of mankind.
But most times when we hear our elders speak, I feel as if they still psychologically belong to the animal kingdom but instead of barking or howling use language/words to communicate. How often are we true to our words? Does words really communicate what exists in our mind?
We use words as a weapon because as a race we are cowards. And our ego is born out of this cowardice. Like a little boy who sings loudly while walking through an empty dark alley.
Schools condition us. Socially. And this comes at an expense no parent ever calculates. It comes at the cost of the innocence of childhood. It comes at the cost of replacing imagination with intellect.
Now what is an intellect? Its nothing more than an accumulation of fixed thoughts, ideas, rules,regulations founded and derived to control an individual. It’s a hub of data. Nothing more. One can be in awe of the intellect but can’t be moved by it.
And what about individuality? The individual is forever lost. Like “dodos”. Killed yet there is not a drop of tear in anyone’s eye. We no more believe in ourselves. And there in lies the source of our misery. We believe our parents, our relatives, our teachers , our friends…all except ourselves. How is it possible that two human beings can have the same experience? Yet we are taught life as per the experience of others. And like a retard, we follow everything taught to us. Its only a few realized souls who understand life per se. Most do nothing but mimic their parent. And they call that life! In the world of technology, it would be called “photocopying.”
Our lives are nothing more than a photocopy. We are born. We get educated. We fornicate. We marry. We fornicate. We work. We fornicate. We eat. We fornicate. We sleep. We fornicate. We shit. We fornicate. We breed. We fornicate. And yet…sex is a sin.
The other day I witnessed a couple of women in my colony throwing stones at a pair of dogs who were copulating in the middle of the road as these friendly animals often do. Their children were with them. But how can one justify these women’s fear of answering to their kids giggling questions about a biological phenomenon with this act of violence? Isn’t that what is being taught here?
The breeding ground for present day terrorism is not the “ madrassas” or fundamentalist islam, it is the fundamental/genetic flaw in all of us. Its merely that the terrorists are men of action. How may of us have not thought about killing or blowing off someone in our thoughts? The degree of cowardice vary. That’s all.
Nobody is taught to love.
Everything else is taught. A sense of belonging to a family. To a community. To a caste. To a religion. To a state. Self centeredness. Greed. Ambition. The significance of money. The significance of power that comes through money. Everything is taught.
Except how to love. Conventionally, love is but a need in today’s times. I remember a girl to whom I was attracted to once telling me that she would prefer a guy who would need her than love her. I still remember her for her honesty.
And I still love her.
This lack of love is because of the rising popularity of reason. Love is beyond the realm of reason and hence not understandable. One can reasonably philosophize logic, mathematics, language but love???
To understand love one needs the grace of divinity. And that divinity is to be found in a child. A child that we kill in our quest for bondage.
How absurd are we humans? We have freedom within our grasp and yet….
Long live tradition! Long live ignorance! Long live cowardice!
No comments:
Post a Comment