I feel there is lot of
wisdom in the following piece which Phenella writes in “The Unwritten Comedy”.
“To be ignorant of many things is expected
To
know you are ignorant of many things is the beginning of wisdom.
To
know a category of things of which you are ignorant is the beginning of learning.
To
know the details of that category of things of which you are ignorant is to no longer be ignorant.”
1. Inevitable laws
Life’s
evolutionary aspirations are tossed between repetitions and changes.
“In the end
nothing less than the whole of everything can be the truth of
anything at all”- William James
A great quote
by H.P. Lovecraft, in The Call of Cthulhu “The most merciful thing in the
world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its
contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of
infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each
straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day
the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying
vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either
go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and
safety of a new dark age.”
“Across planes
of consciousness, we have to live with the paradox that opposite things can be
simultaneously true.” ― Ram Dass.
Life is an
unmapped atlas which gets its maps based on our choices, beliefs, actions,
reactions, thoughts, attitudes etc and it is our hands to make each one of
these continents as great and as good as possible.
2. Bad,
worse and worst
So, any
mental fixation in any domain is bad; status quo addiction to such fixations is
worse and worst is to extrapolate anything and everything with such fixations
is worst.
“We live in a
changing universe, and few things are changing faster than our conception of
it”-Timothy Ferris
“There is no
tomorrow. There is only a planet turning on its axis, and a creature given to
optimistic fancies”-Robert Brault
William Lyon
Phelps puts it, “One of our secrets of life is to keep our
intellectual curiosity acute”.
Or
as Thomas H. Huxley says, “Sit down before fact as a little child, be
prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and
whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.”
3.We cannot deny or defy the importance of anything
We cannot predict all emerging trends and therefore much less
prepare for any change with a bunch of known factors as trend predictions is
yet to evolve with scientific precision
The
great visionaries and votaries of change who form an important part of
evolution’s inevitable stride with its inherent necessity for change have
been effecting changes very carefully as a neurosurgeon would handle his
surgical knife.
They acknowledge first that in any domain stereotyped, trite,
redundant aspects cannot be allowed to be fossilized or ossified but they have
to evolve, like everything else, by wading through the tides of trends –which
could be contributory, complementary, contrasting, conflicting, contaminating
etc- with the oars of compulsions and compromises and sail smoothly and safely
to ensure the fundamental and basic principles or inherent aspects are kept
intact and appropriate doses of innovations or improvements or changes
are introduced to ensure that there is a subtle transformation through
a smooth transition from status quo but not away from or apart from it.
Because in every domain of life the status quo addicts wield
a great influence so whatever change is effected must be presented as an
important part of life and ensure it create a very powerful impact to
intoxicate the status quo lovers to forget their past addiction for at least
brief moments through various forms of expressions, enticing and emotionally
appealing activities, infusion of intellectual ideas to unravel the
multiple meanings of life as journey of life’s experiencing, acting and
interacting with all its tools like body, mind, emotions etc.
“Everything
changes as you move through three stages of awareness:
first, that beliefs are the result of
conditions;
second, that beliefs are the cause of
conditions;
and third, that beliefs are themselves
conditions.”― Eric Micha'el Leventhal
To me economics, like
many things in life, is all about unbiased observations, unprejudiced
perceptions, doing away with defensive statistical justifications, cutting off
camouflaging irrelevant logical fallacies, chaffing off bombastic jargons,
curtailing the instinct to churn out untested or untestable theories and
instead engage in interpretations of all the observed facts uninfluenced
by any ideological affiliations taking into consideration various factors that
impact and/or involved in these facts appropriate to the context and relevant
to the region.
4. Evolution is the
final judge and it is a process
Whatever terminology
we may adopt or whatever vocabulary we use to define any emerging phenomenon or
trend it is ultimately the play of evolution in the domain of organizational or
administrative structure.
Life
in its entirety in general is a mere train in the grand unending and unknown
track of evolution. This process of
evolutionary trend is obvious and it throws up various options.
Among them what survives,
what disappears or what emerges anew are all, again, dependent on various
factors which defy over simplification or over generalization or homogenization
to facilitate human understanding. This is precisely what the first great biologist Darwin,
had the honesty and humility to declare, “Variation
proposes and selection disposes.”
Steven Pinker on Evolution of the mind explains better than
anyone the process involved in evolutionary trends:-
“Certainly
humans didn't evolve to their present state in one instant, in one fell swoop,
because we know that our ancestors, the species like Homo erectus and Homo habilis already had a
pretty big brain for a primate of that size. They were already using tools.
They were almost certainly cooperating with one another. So it's not as if our
species was the first to do it; it was building on some earlier stepping
stones.
And it's unlikely that it happened all at once. You have to
remember that not every creature that was evolving left behind its skull or its
tools for our convenience tens of thousands of years later. Most bones or most
tools rot or get buried and are never found again. So the earliest date at
which we find some fossil or artifact is not the point at which the species
first appeared; it was probably doing its thing for many tens of thousands of
years before we were lucky enough to find something that it left behind that
lasted to the present day.”
Steven Pinker “describes
the self-described field of evolutionary psychology as a stepping stone toward
this end. He calls for more integration with evolutionary genetics and more
generally the fully rounded approach associated with Nobel Laureate Niko
Tinbergen, who stressed that all evolved traits should be studied from
functional, mechanistic, developmental and phylogenetic perspectives. He also
shares his own best idea that has not yet received the attention that it
deserves.”
5. Contexts created by change change the characteristics of the contexts
The most important wisdom is to make the necessary adjustments
to emerging changes and contexts.
There
are certain universal mantras from which no one can veer away humanity’s
preference they are change and the constantly changing context created by that
change along with its many concomitant characters like comforts, convenience,
benefits, utility, profit, happiness, pleasure etc.
All
wisdom and value systems must be woven around these universal mantras or at
least relevant to these. Otherwise something else will replace all values,
wisdom, principles, practices etc.
Time
and change have become inevitable part of our life because through them, either
as measuring tools or as describing our observations, we grasp or try to
express and explain the inevitable metamorphosis of life.
And
the only easily cognizable reality is life unfolding itself constantly through various manifestations of its magnificent metamorphosis.
‘The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it,
move with it, and join the dance.’ — Alan Watts
“There is nothing more
important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind
you are the one who hears it”- M.Singer
“You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in
the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing”.―A.
Watts
“I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one
closed by belief.” - Gerry Spence.
6. Civilization in its totality is nothing but
evolving trends and trending changes
No individual life is
permanent and nothing is a panacea for any aspect of living
In
very simplistic terms the earliest known periods of civilization human beings
had less communication, less information, less knowledge, more brutality, more
animalistic life style with little to care about the requirements of
resources for usage and survival;
Slowly
and steadily life on this planet earth [wrong term though seventy percent -70%
is water] started becoming more and more human centric, sometimes at the cost
of life of other species and the environment.
This
excessive and exclusive focus on human life neglecting other life forms made
human beings to device tools, equipments and technologies to make life more
comfortable in multiple ways and threw up many pleasant support systems to
render living smoother.
Initially
they started as greedy instincts to have and posses more resources and areas
leading to too many silly wars;
Followed
by collective emotional entertainments leading to many traditional and cultural
art forms;
Followed
by urge to communicate to generate common utilities leading to reduction in
number of languages so that more people could be communicated to;
Followed
by fear of the unknown aspects of life leading to creation of many gods, gods
out of heroic and exemplary figures, religions and rituals;
Followed
by age of reason to rationalize beyond belief systems to enable collective living
and enhanced understanding unhindered by any ideological identity based
restrictions;
Followed
by parleys into experimenting with different social systems/political systems
to live together with justifiable contribution to and share from the resources;
Followed
by scientific discoveries to enhance understanding and help living and life,
away from and besides the clutches of religions and traditions;
Followed
by in the recent centuries, dominance based on initially economic and
commercial prosperity and multiple means to achieve them;
Followed by
various means at national levels through discoveries of more resources and raw
materials useful for human life, through real industrialization, improved and
increased agricultural production;
Followed
by inevitable adaptation of advanced technologies;
Followed
by dominance through military power trying to loot readymade where these things
are available and so on;
Following
all these developments will make us realize that there are wide varieties of
options to lift human race up with all their pleasant complexities;
But
then in each of these there are multiple steps which must not be confused as
stops.
7. Value of vocabulary or words
At any cost no one can afford to discount the value of
vocabulary then it may cost a lot because words used in any context or domain
are important as they set the narrative
and even influence thinking but we also need to look beyond and behind the
connotations of the words.
Ansel
Adams says, “There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept” and
I would like to add there is nothing worse than masking a stark reality with
vague concepts.
Words may
emerge without any frills and with
clarity to enhance our understanding or may be encircled with protective cover
to ensure that they do not go out and change their meaning or may still get
corroded and eroded in due course and look changed from their original meaning
or may try to hold the original meaning/s in all its dimensions with its own
walls of protective dynamics or may have their inner dynamics, at times
unexplainable, of many blocks of connotations or may have their own ways,
irrespective of whatever we may or may not do. And at times newer, different
and multiple meanings pop up outside all walls and out of all blocks;
If we study them and their
evolution in terms of usage in different contexts and the meaning in which they
are used they help us learn many other sciences of human race.
A Word also
Sometimes carries within it
some affinity to its etymological root;
Sometimes it gets exalted due to the deft handling of it by great writers,
philosophers, linguists and others;
Sometimes it gets struck up
in a vital context;
Sometimes it also acts as the
very fulcrum of certain contexts;
Sometimes it unfolds hitherto
unraveled dimensions of its original meaning;
Sometimes it exquisitely
spreads its wings to fly and catch the subtle nuances which bring out the
various facets of its overall splendor;
Sometimes it embellishes and
establishes through experiences newer meanings;
Sometimes a newer connotation
gets added to the word in its journey through how it is perceived by socio-
cultural acceptance and assimilation;
Sometimes it establishes its
life because of its relationship to some other words or as a part of a popular
idiom or phrase;
Sometimes it keeps modifying
itself aesthetically to survive or supplement some specific situation;
Sometimes it unshackles its
fetters and acquires several new meanings totally disconnected from its
original DNA to sustain the life of something else.
Sometimes , in this process,
it not only blurs its own identity as well as that of what it wanted to sustain
beyond recognition but also gets totally
delinked from its very root [ as in the case of the word ‘religion’];
Sometimes its plasticity is
optimally used to refer to a multitude of emotions, feelings, situations,
thoughts and ideas some of which could be totally contradictory;
Sometimes it elastically
expands to give space in its womb to give birth to new jargon or new
idioms or phrases;
Sometimes it gets married to
some other words and in its proliferation of love, lives to copulate and
cohabit with a stranger, quiet oblivious of its own identity in that romantic
movement.
8. The beauty of life consists in the unknowns and the unending searches
and researches –the unending process of evolutionary trends in everything.
We must remember that we owe to so many
souls that have made our evolution to enhance from Kuru disease generators
[this disease happens because of cannibalism] to cyber Guru Venerators.
So, it would be better even academic scholarship follows certain well
chartered paths understanding these and tunes to frequencies with more
adaptability, prioritizing empirical evidences, rationally
justifiable and practically applicable/ implementable /useful proposals.
It
is preferable to immerse any topic or subject matter, primarily and basically
with its intrinsic elements/components/aspects/attributes intact, into a cauldron
which has a mixture of all these:-
knowledge based
analysis,limited perception based on frames of reference and
scales of observation, skepticism , criticism, intellectual
scrutiny, compassionate emotionalism, humane socialism, rational
thinking, contextual relevance [ which includes too many components] traditions, practical viability, psychological
comfort, aesthetic sensitivity, scientific scrutiny backed by
empirical evidence, in certain cases universal applicability and so on.
Then,
with these we must churn the cauldron without clinging on to any particular
restrictive bias based on any identity emanating from social, cultural or
political or religious or ideological preferences.
This process inevitably will
bring out lot of outputs. We can exercise our freedom and sometimes select and
choose some of the outputs.
Sometimes the outputs will draw us. Sometimes away
from all or any of our intended searches and seeking, outside the circle
of these known paradigms, almost tangentially serendipity will drag
us to an oasis of serene clarity.
At all costs the intrinsic attributes
must be the predominant factor so that whatever is thrown into the cauldron and
however it is churned, the ultimate output must include those attributes
so that evaluation is not distorted or desperately doctored to fit into
any predefined and expected outcome.
So, what pans out ultimately depends on
various factors and aspects some of which are explainable within the ken
of logical and rational thinking but some things can also linger sometimes
into territories beyond these.
However, we must scrupulously avoid these
pitfalls namely:-
Mutilating the facts, analyzing them with preconceived
notions or prejudices, generalizing the particular and particularizing the
general, approaching facts with unloving criticism or uncritical love, evaluating
facts with our pet isms or philosophies, resorting to irrelevant statistical
justifications, unleashing unworkable utopia, mask them with logical fallacies,
mute them in pleasant jargons, give historical or scriptural justifications
blindly, comprehend with confirmation bias or pre-conceived conclusions, trying
to over simplify the complicated and over complicate the simple
factors/aspects, relying on conjectures, gambling without any rules, plans,
perspectives, methods, measures etc
