Education as a ritual

 

Education is meant to understand. To bring in full estimation of you as an individual placed in time and context, and the implication of it. It is to equip you to wrench your indelible impression from billions of lives, linking vibrant minds of past with evolving present, and to weigh in on ideas to weave a vibrant world. Education extends the link of humanity towards possibilities. Education is the vibrant sense of presence. It is an awareness on what is to be a human, the precious individuality and freedom. A good education grants freedom.

Good education though is rare, and is impossible in the ecosystem of market driven needs and when valued with certainties of religion. Education therefore becomes a ritual, and is stuck in the basics of literacy without any potential or hope. Learning becomes a ritual. The ritual of feeding and regurgitating, which then is evaluated for merit and use. Literacy is a ritual of learning the rules, prevailing facts and empirical evidences. Literacy equips us to be educated. When literacy fails to assimilate education is reduced to ritual. In the process the human is reduced and becomes scheme to work on the ritual for the systems that benefits. It is weaponized to meet the aspirations of middle-class insecurities. It creates thriving beggar’s mindset.

Middle class here is not entirely an economic classification based on income so on. It is a mindset. A mindset that has overwhelming presence in society hence majoritarian thus deciding tenor of given society. Lacking deeper understanding or thinking, carried by exigencies of situation, they are mired in insecurities and battered by tribulations of life. They desperately seek security and stability. Hence, they amass (many billionaires and millionaires are beggar minded rich people. They just worked the system to amass money or power or luxuries but their mind is still middle class, trapped in insatiable middle class needs). They strive as pallbearers of dying inconsequential traditions and degrading culture of sentiments attached to inherited -atavistic residue that they carry to deal with ever changing world. They shape the world in this conservative restricted ways lacking sensibilities to value progress or capacity for nuance. Lacking reflective thinking or self awareness they are incapable to evaluate meanings or egalitarian options. Ill-equipped for long-term awareness they look for quick fixes and easy solutions. So, when abstract or existential presents itself it scares them into the lap of sureties offered by juvenile faiths and nostalgic warmth of inane. Instead of education equipped steps towards egalitarian self-awareness they seek simplistic versions to satisfy their primal needs. The human is reduced in the ritual to maximize for the system. Middle class needs are easily dealt within the matrix of the self-consuming system. Art, literature and commerce attunes to satisfy and gain from them. Middle class hence becomes the standard bearers. Thus, the overwhelming mediocrity in every field that strives on middle class aspirations, from entertainment to literature to technology. The space for excellence shrinks as middle class expands. They create their own heroes in their own image, aspirations, and celebrate. Entertainment creates narration that eulogizes their staid ways as virtue, religion adds morals to this morass of prefabricated world.

They create myths of stability immune to chaos of life. They thrive in hierarchal systems and ritualistic repetition hence seek surety of authority, if not an all dictating god -and their agents, then atleast a leader exhibiting sure footed tendencies. The pleased and pleasing are in a loop. Middle class therefore degrade democracy and egalitarian ideals by encouraging authoritarian tendencies. The reason why J.Krishnamurthi -philosopher educationist, worked education to remove all forms of authority. He was concerned about Indian tradition that allowed for ritual, belief and unquestioning devotion. His idea of education was ‘critical looking’ -much immediate than critical thinking, and a step towards ‘choiceless awareness’ that harbingers inquisitive ways. He valued holistic education as essential for an “inner renewal that can effect social transformation and indeed lead to societal change”. Before I continue on this let me add when I was in my late 20s I took out some time to try to understand the whole idea of education and search innovative means of pedagogy (I was into bit of teaching so thought of exploring it in depth). I read few thinkers as also visited few places across the country which explored these ideas. I did read Montessori, and found influence in Indian thinkers like Aurobindo (did take few classes at Mirambika in Delhi), Tagore (visited Shantiniketan in Bengal few times, he was quite influenced by Renaissance and the Age of Reason as also best of Indian thoughts), Krishnamurthi (spent few days at Rishivally, Andhra) as also Vivekananda, Osho, Russell (Education and Good Life) and Rousseau. Rousseau’s Emile is quite influential and foundational in many ways. His concern of education was not to create “magistrate, nor soldier, nor priest” but “primarily, a man’, or shall we say a human. Tagore too concerned education with humanism “freedom and creativity are linked in Tagore’s thought, one conditioning the other. The more people go beyond the limitations of their animal nature, the closer they come to humanism, freedom and unity and are then able to develop their creativity”. He valued education as “clear stream of reason” that “has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habits”. It is quite clear that insecurities of middle class have lost the potential of education and inherent values of humanity into “dreary desert sand of dead habits”. Valued books are being banned in spaces that once gave hope. Vibrant ideas censored by religion and market. Human being are loosing connection with their reality and are dehumanized into systems.  

The only redeeming factor in a self-obsessed middle class world reeking in righteousness is that they provide stability and relative peace in society though in an overwhelming regressive framework. Depending on nature of society these therefore provide space for individuals to strive out of beggar’s mindset and middle-class self-defeating ways. Quality of education and ecosystem that sustains intellectual vibrancy matters. Some societies have more space for these hence have made greater contribution to humanity by valuing ecosystem of unbridled inquisitiveness and nurturing precious individuality that brings meaningful collectivism. But in many societies, and it has become much pernicious in recent times, staid sure ways and mediocrities of middle class, their insecurities, have acted as potent vehicle for religious revivalism and a grander retrofitted history. We are living in a strange world where potential of education is being persistently diminished and critical thinking faculties blunted while humanity is being depleted from humans. Tiny ants offer some lessons. Ants are intelligent social insects but sometimes things go wrong. They get into death spiral wherein ants follow each other in endless circle. This happens when they loop back to their own pheromone scent trail while leading those behind them. They eventually die of exhaustion. Human beings are in a death spiral of make believe unless education asserts its potential we are doomed.  

Credible performance

 Indian men's 4x100m relay at World Athletics Championship was a credible performance. Considering tremendous odds against them as also mediocre nature of society that appropriates sports into some staid game initiated by lazy colonials as timepass that besotted scyophantic nincompoops trying to impress colonial masters while they facilitated exploitation. Over the decades feudals nurtured this game of wastrels through state control onto herd, later market took it into spectacle of absurdities that one wonders: can we not train monkeys instead for wholesome entertainment?! These market players earn more from ads than anything else -herd is squeezed at every available opportunity as they are pavlovian triggered to be happy to be happy! Most of these "iconic" players could not run a straight 100m even at the peak of their career (as a co-passenger long time back mentioned; it's a game of halwai -halwaiyon ka khel hai). Kerala has tradition for high caliber sports ecosystem and talented players, unfortunately in the recent times cricket is cannibalizing these into waste. 

More than game it is also fertile construction of raconteur (ace word defecators) -just as market prescribed ie more about the person than the skills (indeed the game is like Indian movies that needs minimum skills and maximum branding). This society will go to the depth of depravities to cover up lack of any discerning talent. Vibrant social media and new tech gadgets are severely undermining narration control by few, and have least value for posers as fourth estate -clinging desperately for control. Technology has become an effective instrument in democratization of society, and has potential for far reaching social change. It has potential to bring reality closer to reckoning and push out posers and manipulators. Athletics is about reality of sports. There is nothing to manipulate. There is no space for trash talk. You just run faster. It's about skill, talent, and essence of possibility of human body.             

Colonising Space and Tragedy of Commons

 When Apollo 11 landed on moon in 1969 Neil Armstrong was the first astronaut to disembark, he said these memorable line "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". That truly was a giant step for humankind, so is the recent installation of Webb telescope or CERN experiments -though some disappointment for particle/experimental physics. Sputnik in 1957 and Vostok with Yuri Gagarin in 1961 though clouded under cold war animosity these too were giant step for humankind. These achievements are common heritage for humanity. Things have changed in recent times. Most recent attentions towards space are not benign nor for the benefit of humanity -although the euphemism is compelling. Market capitalism has churned out regrettable billionaires with severely limited intellect or responsible ways while they vandalized earth. The spectacle is choregraphed for the spectacular effect. Branding itself is a justification for higher intent. Market has projected these as smart solutions with obvious reference for billionaires as saviors. In this ecosystem of self-obsessive valuation of world everything is tagged and resourced to be exploited. Meanwhile severe climate breakdown and catastrophic effect on people and biodiversity is channelized as viral videos or mother nature’s wrath so on without any context or horrendous reality that humanity is being exposed. Market capitalism, religions and politicians have deep investment to keep the herd distracted as long as they can. Severity of climate breakdown though is causing consternation among increasing populace, they are jostled out of market goodies filled dreamworld choices into flash flood, heat waves, forest fire, very soon spiraling food prices. They see temples, mosques, churches, so on wash away, faith in material not holding, cozy negotiated sureties disappear, while politicians stutter. They are scampering for new narration to contain the herd. Incapable to factor reality herd will seek redemption in myth and fantasies, this momentary distractive respite is the peace that faith mongers offer.  

In 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty (OST) was signed, under this all countries have right to access space for peaceful scientific purpose while prohibiting sovereign appropriation of outer space. After depleting resources on earth there is a stampede by rich towards space, all packed in spectacular spectacle of distraction. In 2015 US enacted a new law (commercial space launch competitiveness law, whatever) that circumvents good intentions of OST and allows US companies the right to own and sell all that is resourced from space. A clear violation of international agreement to appease US billionaires. Terrestrial mining is the new threat that is facing us (as also deep sea floor mining). There is need to channelize terrestrial resources and not left to be plundered by anybody who can access. We are already witnessing tragedy of commons in accumulating space debris. There is an urgent need for new effective international legislation to protect space as our heritage. Moon as human heritage.

Two hundred years back naval and navigation technology became more sophisticated. Some countries were able to reach far off places and use advanced armaments to capture land and people to exploit for resources. Sophistication of technology did not advance humanity. It led to slavery and wanton exploitation. It led to colonization. Technological sophistication is not same as scientific achievement. Scientific achievements necessarily advance humanity. Science by its very framework is humanist. Technology meanwhile is a tool. It is limited by the humans that use it.   

Exciting night at World Athletics Championship

 It was quite an exciting night at World Athletics Championship at Budapest Hungary on the banks of river Danube (yes they do play Strauss' Blue Danube and it reminds me of iconic scene from Kubrick's Space Odyssey 2001. Recently I also happen to watch a rare Hitchcock black and white comedy on Strauss II and how he created this music -not sure whether it's historically accurate depiction nevertheless it was really not the kind of movie in Hitchcock genre). So, the longest men's event 10,000m and shortest, or shall we say fastest, event 100m were at display. Running is sports at its best. 

 

Entering dangerous unchartered El Nino weather

 

Climate change is sharply spiking temperature across the globe in the last few years -despite cooling La Nina, the situation is spiraling at an alarming rate with El Nino consolidation. With ocean absorbing additional heat from global warming El Nino is becoming intense. As you can see suddenly monsoon rains have vanished, and if ever erratic, intense, lasting for short period, and then the sky is clear as ever. Rain these days carry ominous threat of deluge. Rain no longer is languorous drizzle that invites for a long walk among the rain soaked trees, cycling along brimming rain carpeted oceans, boating in the backwater…rain these days are dreadful possibilities of floods and landslides. Rain is harbinger of tragedies. Summer is heat wave.    

There is El Nino consolidation happening which is never good for Indian monsoon system (despite much complicated and complex play of Indian Ocean Dipole IOD and Madden-Julian Oscillation MJO). With climate change already heating the planet at unprecedented levels we are really entering scary unchartered weather. Monsoon is expected to weaken over much of Indian subcontinent which is going to have a serious impact on food security as also water table. Summer, i.e. months of March to June 2024, is expected to have significant heat waves (note even without El Nino impact this February was hottest -imagine what is in store). Already Indian government have stopped rice export –this is cascading rice price in international market; China is stockpiling rice while Russians have collapsed grain basket Ukraine. So, El Nino will bring drought condition to much of Indian subcontinent, some region will also see heavy rains -and as you can observe from the map herein -the south tip of India specifically western ghats, Kerala, from October to December. During last El Nino period (2015) Chennai witnessed deluge of the century. I am sure Union as well as the State governments are aware of the unprecedented weather changes in the coming months as also socio-economic impact. Scientists and activist youngsters (and those connected to cradle of life) are warning us for some time now. Religion and Market have kept us distracted in fantastical illusions and spurious entertainment, very soon they will turn fatalist to keep herd riveted, while market will carry on with grand narration to anesthetize common people meanwhile barricade moneybags. 

There is something sinister looming in the horizon. The wicked side of mother nature is waking up after hundreds and thousands of years of peaceful nurture. Whatever that ever mattered is at stake. There are no second chances. There is no Planet B. Ocean is warming. Biodiversity is collapsing. Species are vanishing. This is an existential emergency. WAKE UP.               

Religiophilia is a threat to humanity

 

There is a character in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (by Milan Kundera) Mirek who remarks that “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”. One of the pernicious attempts of herd controlling systems is to make people forget. Controlling and manipulating memory is an assault on being a human. Species evolve to survive by awareness of surroundings, lack of awareness and incapacity to sense evolving habitat will make them vulnerable hence extinct. Memory is significant aspect of consciousness and helps to evolve new thoughts and ideas hence limited awareness and flawed sensing leads to controlled. Lacking discerning skills sycophancy acquires survival template. Individuals many times try to forget injustice to seek solace. Forced to forget -by herd controlling totalitarian forces -whether State, Religion or Market, through control of state institutions or deep entrenched systems, redacted history, supplanted myths of glory, narrative will to power and entitled worldview, redundant degrading choices, is to deceive basic sensibilities that define being a human and is to deny diversity of human experience.

As the world gets connected and individuals get atomized through technologies, ideas and aspirations as also social conditions, we find that humans are also inexperienced in this emerging, seemingly alienating, context of life they find themselves in. This moment is what we got. This human condition is explored by prescient minds, and will have to be experienced to value life, its meaning and meaninglessness, possibilities and impossibilities. We will have to shed primal practices and medieval securities that have lulled us to uncertainties of life and omnipresent chaos in the horizon. Ensuing arrogance and entitled place in the life scheme is challenged and falls short of every scrutiny reality presents. Irony -of existence, is what is experienced, and very soon we realize that this is the defining human condition. The improbable irony of being alive.

Irony irritates certainties -that define herd controlling systems. So instead of creating awareness, exploring ideas and frameworks of aesthetics to explore and evolve with amazing opportunity presented, what we get is insidious attempts to manipulate and control by nurturing herd valuing systems. Instead of aesthetics of diversity and myriad expressions that coalesce into collective synergy what we get is grotesque fantasies to ensnare and dehumanize -to impose systems on others and silence them into submission. It is an attempt to provide easy solutions to existential uncertainties of contemporary world and eternal absurdity. It is an attempt at pandering egos of herd controllers and the worst of humanity at the expense of common people. It is a vulgar imposition of herd will on common people.

Some extremely devious people are working to normalize herd controlling systems specifically religion -which works in tandem with power (State) and money (Market). Also, communism (referred to as Left) has the habit of identifying with herd (in the garb of minority) -in an enlightened society religion cannot be defining factor at all since it rarely evaluate human being as human. Minority voices are undermined when religion usurp this space. In the dialectical materialistic version of history humans are just pawn. In this scheme eventual emancipation is that of humanity lacking humans but comrades. This reductive obscene version of human is not unsimilar to what religion or market proposes. These are fake binaries to control for power. It also needs to be pointed out that not all religions are same. This semantic generalization is flawed. It doesn’t really factor in important aspects of journey and contexts of each religion and their impact on the individual and the world. You cannot codify each religion into same scale. Ofcourse this isn’t about showcasing superiority and exceptionalism but to bring out critical aspect of understanding. What need to be made clear though is that whatever the context of each religion in the evidence of contemporary world it has more nuisance value than anything else and is a persistent threat to humanity. This anachronistic pestilence has been segregating, dehumanizing and degrading, and over the centuries and decades some religions were challenged and hence evolved, or interpreted to update, with the need of the time. While some have stuck in space time warp to ensnare common people into ever widening medieval mindset immune to contemporary reality hence present a constant threat. The progress we have made has much to do with ecosystem that some religions have provided or tolerated or help ignore. Christianity, has seen criticism, reformations and debate -working on rationalism and reason, hence relatively tolerant space, as also protest and assertion of common people to support the best among them against the onslaught of juvenile premise that they started to ridicule. Sacred was also profane. These ecosystems have elemental impact on the way people pursue their thoughts, deliberated and decided. Likes of Francis Bacon was impossible in any other ecosystem hence rapid progress of human civilization. Judaism too provided an ecosystem that nurtured best of humans as is evident from contribution to humanity. Let’s be clear these scientists or philosophers were not practicing religion, nor did gave a damn about religion, but they benefited from the ecosystem which quite clearly many religions were incapable to provide. Buddhism invested in humans to provide subtle expressions and peaceful meaningful life for centuries. Zen is pinnacle of possibilities of human mind. This is not about Christianity or Judaism or indeed Buddhism -to take few examples, what is clear from the contemporary evaluation of religions is that they are firmly rivetted in juvenile premise -that surely is dehumanizing and degrading, and capitalize on insecurities of people. Buddhism is as violent and viciously herd churning as any other including Hinduism -brutalities against which it was proposed (if temples were destroyed by Muslim invaders -nothing wrong in the context of the time indeed welcomed, then study must be conducted regarding Buddhist temples destroyed and appropriated by Hindus). In the contemporary evaluation, by the very definition and premise, all religions without exceptions are dehumanizing and prey on human insecurities and uncertainties of life. They have no value for human being, and seek to control and propagate. They hold nothing for humanity to face the challenges of future nor add any value to progressive thoughts. Faith as it exists in religion -anchored in miracles and instructive ideas of many centuries back, is not compatible with critical thinking gained from contemporary understanding. Modern mind and social relations cannot be trapped in juvenile conceptions and regressive value systems that it perpetuates. Herds live in glory of past and have fantastical fatalist view of future, an outcome of lack of application of mind. They are provided all the answers. This surety adds to the danger. They are no longer human but herd waiting to be instructed, and at the most they can contribute is by innovating within status quo needs, some incremental money savers or staid creative expression to be good herd members and reaffirm herd values. Sometimes we do come across surprisingly subtle and elevated creative expressions attributed to religion (in the contemporary world, not what happened few centuries back which is entirely different context) that one doubts can really emerge from juvenile controlling narrow premise of religion. These elevated experiences are spiritual that precedes religion. These yearnings are part of human consciousness hence cannot be appropriated by religion as religious experience. What is not confined cannot be part of narrow systems and its simple elaborations and prescriptions written when people lived in caves. Religion is too small a space for immensity of life.

Religiophilia, particularly Islamophilia, of the West has become serious threat, and has potential to undermine all the amazing progresses made by humanity over the centuries. Appropriating progressive semantics to nurture religion is a new low. They have used UN to institutionalize degrading values (UN has become sideshow for redemption while they exaggerate cold war relic NATO). Burning specific book may not be an aesthetic expression of protest nevertheless it is an indelible part of freedom and what it is to be a human. OIC inciting violence is a serious breach and characteristic pattern that should be worrying, and they should have been warned -it fulfills definition of inciting terrorism. A book or any fantastical myth or ritual or cow cannot be under any circumstance valued over human life. These primitive brutal ways have no place in civilized settings. It is a blatant use of religion to bludgeon and blackmail. It can be said with much certainty that contemporary Islam, specifically sunni version, has created an ecosystem that pose as a threat with least of contribution to humanity. Not that other religions are not a threat. Religious nutcases in every religion and region have created barren pockets of depravities across the world. They demand exceptionalism and consider themselves as superior as if god is on direct call with them. While some carry gun in the name of god to kill people others carry caste to eviscerate soul. It’s a severe mental crisis that instead of being pointed out as absurd is being validated as freedom. Attack on Iraq -leading to killing and maiming of millions of innocent people, complicity of media in ‘sexing up’, greed for fossil fuel, inability to prosecute Blair, has made monarchist Christian feudal compromised Britain particularly vulnerable. Pretentious western elite are using common people across the world as fodder. West is seeking redemption through islamophilia. It’s a serious breach. Spread, reach, money, as also lack of meaningful revolt or protest within the religion -trapped in brutal medieval setting, makes Islam -specifically the sunni version, a serious threat to idea of progressive world. It has emboldened regressive violent forces in other religions, cults, as well as the state. You cannot hide behind Islamophobia -it can only be dealt case by case basis; no religion can be given carte blanche against criticism or scrutiny. We are not fodder for religious supremacist nutcases nor are we ready to sacrifice democracy and liberty -hard earned values that defines each human on this planet, and all the possibilities of future, for regressive values posing as diversity. No religion is sacrosanct nor sacred. What impacts humanity is open for questioning. All the technologies that empower me, and common people around the world, right from internet to each and every part of laptop or mobile phone I use- the electrons to satellite, the ideas and thoughts behind it, has not come from Saudi -despite the fact that it’s one of the richest societies (its contribution to humanity woefully lacking nor do we expect anything much in future, and there is a reason. It’s quite likely they are investing hugely in western media to work the narration), it has come from open societies that nurtured inquisitive values and potential in human beings through critical thinking, reasoning, debate and differences. All the ideas and systems that nurture me, and common people across the world, like democracy, liberty, valuing contrary ideas and egalitarian thoughts, asking every possible question that arise in mind, reading wide range of books -and not to follow any one book or scripture or idea but to understand, seeking answers and accepting with scrutiny, respecting human irrespective of gender or region or race, being empathetic and be aware of human frailties and contemporary realities, has not come from any Mosque (or Temple or Church or any herd churning pit and its pedantic sickening morals). That doesn’t mean everything about religion is crap some mentions are poetic, amusing, and interesting insights. Nothing more can be granted to it. Period. Religion by its very premise is a threat to humanity. Be very wary of herd controllers who use benign ideas and progressive semantics to degrade the world. There is money, control and power riding on posturing. A society that protects most vulnerable thoughts, contrarian ideas, and nurture weakest person to his/her fullest potential, is deemed advanced and progressive, is richer to contemporary realities and equipped to face future complexities. Most importantly we must not forget, they will make every attempt to make us forget -that is first step towards being controlled. We must read, objectively verify, critically scrutinize, and understand. We are mere mortal to seek truth we can only try to understand and value as much this miracle of life.