If we suffer today, it is because of our priorities. The teaching of mankind across generations has suffered from a malefic vision, to keep the society wallowing in pain and suffering, and never to let it rise to greatness and goodness.
Dr. Jernail S Anand
In a constant and consistent effort to better things, men have gone from philosopher to philosopher and innovation to innovation, only trying to restate in understandable words, the mysteries which confuse our mortal understanding. Ages have changed, epochs have changed, but there is a shocking continuing in human suffering born of recklessness of human thought and behavior. Man’s extreme understanding of a phenomenon turns irrelevant in the next century, and we glide into another great theory which we understand better. But the end result is the same: suffering.
Why our understanding and our actions do not change?
We know history repeats itself. Why? Because men do not change. Every generation reads the same history, and therefore remains the same. If we want change, or expect a transformation in human perception and conduct, we will have to stop reading the history which has resulted in continuity. We have to break away from the evil that has been a part of human perception, and our action in the past. If our young men go on reading the same, reveling in the same paste of the past, the taste will not change. So, we have no right to complain that there is no change for the better. When we study the worst, the fruit of this wasted labor will be nothing but the worst.
Are we born to suffer?
Yes. The reason is obvious. Our knowledge systems block our vision and disable our thinking apparatus. The changes that we bring to our lives, in the form of AI or higher techniques of human comfort and joy, touch our lives externally. AI while giving us access to great intellectual feast, also serves to dull our thinking apparatus, the fear looming large that it might bring us down to zombies. If machines start thinking for us, [even now only they remember our contact numbers], we will lose our memory. Becoming an amnesiac cannot be a great destiny for mankind. Machines have made man more powerful, and power without wisdom is a dangerous acquisition. We need a better understanding of our systems and our condition. Because, we do not live only at one plane. Power, wealth, money, facilities bring joy to mankind. But not happiness. Because, there is another deeper layer of human existence. It is the soulful arena, where we have to distinguish between right and wrong. Where we have to go beyond getting and begetting, and think of giving back to nature, and squaring the account of life. Here, science has utterly failed to infuse a sense of belonging and a sense of responsibility among humans. And this is the reason why we suffer, even while we enjoy bounties of nature and machine.
How to stop this suffering?
I think we become what we see and we are what we are fed on. It is all a game of historical perception. We are a part of the running procession of time and if a man cannot get rid of his past actions, how can humanity as a whole be free from the reflexes of its deadly past? We can mix past and history here, and think of the past history as an edifice of cruelty, wars, massacres, and bloodshed, which underline how wolfish had been the man who stands in our shadow. And we teach everything very religiously to our young minds. Our folly is we want change, from an exercise, which is rooted in status quo.
Re-architecting a Positive History of Mankind
Man, in the past, has shown his guile and vile, but this is not the ultimate truth about him. If the leaders of men, who moved the civilization forward, believed in aggression, killings, and every type of foul activity, there were men also who did good to this society. I wish we re-architect history from the ashes of guile and vile, and build an edifice of goodness, and fairness, and teach that to our young kids. We should visit our past, and find our examples of people who did good to society. Raja Harish Chander is one example. Ashoka the Great is another. But how many we come across? So few. We need to focus on people who gave away their best to this society. History focuses on the evil of mankind, let us build a parallel superstructure of goodness. And this will be the right thing to teach our young kids. Do you know Bhama Shah? We corporate world must have Bhama Shah Chair in the Departments of Commerce. Can’t we have a Diwan Todar Mal chair in the Departments of Economics? There is good in our past, but we try to focus only on the evil that was enacted.
If we suffer today, it is because of our priorities. The teaching of mankind across generations has suffered from a malefic vision, to keep the society wallowing in pain and suffering, and never to let it rise to greatness and goodness.
Note:
[Bhama Shah was a rich merchant who offered his wealth to great Shiva Ji, to re-organize his armies and fight the Mughals. And Diwan Todar Mal was a rich merchant who offered gold mohurs to purchase a piece of land where the two younger Sahibzada’s of Guru Gobind Singh, who were bricked alive, could be cremated].
Read: Before the Truth Strikes Back…
________________
Hailing from Chandigarh, India, the author is Laureate of Seneca Award, Charter of Morava, Franz Kafka and Maxim Gorky Awards, and President, International Academy of Ethics
