To be or Not to be Mediocre

               To be or not to be Mediocre

                 An honest and refreshingly explicit centre page article ‘The Age of Mediocrity’ (Times of India,25 March,2014) by Ghasala Wahab obliquely reflects the dilemma of the educated class of voters to exercise their choice in the forthcoming elections. She has been ruthlessly honest in her appraisal of political, bureaucratic and professional leadership in the country that has been hijacked by mediocre persons with limited thinking faculties. No need for crystal gazing about what holds for the nation in the future if mediocrity continues to rule the roost.

The Age of Mediocrity brings to mind the prognosis of Giambattista Vico, the 18^th century Italian political philosopher in his magnum opus, the Scienza Nuova where he had stated that civilization develops in a recurring cycle of three Ages- the divine, the heroic and the human. These three ages correspond to the Theocratic, the Aristocratic and the Democratic phases of civilization. The last mentioned- the Democratic age -according to Vico will morph into an age of Chaos as a result of the anarchic tyranny of individual freedom and liberty, the founding pillars that hoist democracy. Since human civilization is cyclic, Vico had prophesied the emergence of a new Theocratic age at the end of the Chaotic age. This corresponds to the Hindu cosmology of cyclic classification  of Krita or Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dwapara Yuga and Kali Yuga. A complete Yuga cycle from a high Golden Age, called the Satya Yuga to a Dark Age, Kali Yuga and back again is described in Hindu philosophy. Hindu texts refer to successive ages (yuga), designated respectively as golden, silver, copper and iron. Satya Age or the golden age followed the path of Dharma (law, duty and truth) when people were pious but during the age when Dharma gradually declined, it was restored through divine intervention. With each successive age, there has been a steady decline of Dharma and the present age is known as the Kali Yuga( the Dark age) marked by cruelty, falsity, lawlessness, hypocrisy, materialism and so on. Kali Yuga started soon after the end of Dwapara Yuga, 5130 years ago. Hindu philosophy of the ancient times (i.e., before 2000BCE) well in advance of Western civilization of the classical antiquity (i.e., before 500 AD) had affirmed the cyclical recurrence of civilization that is contrary to the current widespread, linear view that humans are inevitably progressing.

 It is not a rocket science to discover that we are now in an age of mediocrity. While Ghazala’s article is specific to India, the Age of Mediocrity is a global phenomenon. In the West, the current age is defined as the post-Idea age as the present times do not throw up new ideas and worse, it has no time even to think them out. The micro percentage of thinkers does all the thinking for the vast majority. The early 20^th century slogan of making everything new –in art and architecture, literature and sculpture, music and dance had brought out revolutionary and far-reaching transformations in creative expressions. But the invention of electronic computers in the second half of the 20^th century has given rise to the Age of Internet to make the availability of information instant and in superabundance. In fact, we now have an overload of information that bombards us all through our waking hours and leaves us no time to sift it through. Information has erroneously become synonymous with erudition, knowledge and scholarship. The present age, set on accumulating information is not able to distinguish between access to information and the acquirement of knowledge. Since information is available at the touch of a key, there is hardly any time to interpret information and turn it into knowledge. This process requires mental training in analysis, evaluation, judgement and clear understanding of the facts that are easily available and that too in plenty. Today’s world has thus acquired the sobriquet ‘the post-Idea world’ in which thought provoking ideas do not emerge. In the past information had to be painstakingly collected and that was converted into ideas. Neal Gabler writes : ‘ If information was once grist to ideas, it has now become competition for them. We prefer knowing to thinking. It keeps us in the loop, keeps us connected to our friends but few talk ideas.’  All the popular websites such as Facebook, Twitter and E-mails function as information exchanges and these are hardly the kind of information to generate ideas. To quote Neal Gabler again, ‘What the future portends is more and more information. Everests of it. There won’t be anything that we won’t know. But there will be no one thinking about it.’

That is why all the debates on our media channels do not exchange ideas and at the end of watching them we hardly get any new idea or message. Professor Krishna Kumar laments about Indian voters that they ‘get used to the idea that they are dealing with faces and gestures, not ideas and issues.’

Is there a way out of the Age of mediocrity? Can this age throw up leaders with ideas and vision? All the political manifestoes are words and words. In Samuel Beckett’s view, words are all we have. ’Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness’. None of these manifestoes tells us how the ideas are to be implemented. It is easy for every political party to pledge to anti-corruption but how - a question that has no answers from any quarter. Corruption is endemic to human beings. Every arms deal taking place in any part of the world has middle men who siphon off large sums. This is not true only of India. Wherever there is a big deal, corruption is proportionate to the sum involved in the purchase. Corruption starts at the nascent stage of admitting a child to a school. It spirals along with the child’s growth encompassing his/her entry into college, job, and all personal benefits. Has any political outfit come up with solutions to root out corruption? To talk of jailing corrupt people or any other rigorous punitive measure will only lead to greater degree of corruption. Corruption and punishment is not such a simple equation. The fertile human brain will find many loops in the juxtaposition of the two. The Age of mediocrity has shut all inventive ideas for the progress and development of human civilization and we are not blind to the rapid descent into an age of Chaos.

Is there a way out of this mess without waiting for the deluge to put an end to the Chaotic Age with the slender hope of returning  to a new theocratic age- or in our Hindu cosmology to a new  Satya age where Dharma will be in force through adherence to law, truth and humaneness? There is still one possible course open to us. It is education that can save humanity- not the education that perpetuates the fraud of substituting information for knowledge. Today the introduction of RTE has been shown as an enabling measure to educate large numbers of children. But does it contend with the Right to purposeful and humanitarian education? Where are the teachers to teach and how well are they educated and trained to impart knowledge? Can they be the catalysts to transform information into ideas? Considering the diverse population and diverse regions in the country, how can we ensure uniform education to help young minds to connect learning to everyday life lived in consonance with law, duty and truth? We have urban schools that cater to the rich and we are witness to the political chicanery of enforcing compulsory intake of 20% from the economically weaker sections. This has only increased the rich-poor divide. Even in colleges, students who come under the reservation quota huddle together while the rest from affluent background hog the college life to the full. Disparity cannot be eradicated by mandatory imposition of equality and equity.

The simple suggestion that is offered here may sound naïve, if not utopian though it is not so. All schools- both old and the new ones that should be set up in large numbers (to implement the RTE) should be made residential schools where students from all backgrounds come together, live together, eat together and learn together. Those who belong to the EWS category should be provided with school uniforms and all children should have uniform wear outside of the school. In fact the current trend in schools when children sport new dress and offer sweets and chocolates on their birthdays should be given up because those who are not from affluent homes despair when such expenditure becomes unaffordable for them. Let us not shed tears that children of 5+ will be deprived of parental love and care. The lesson of sharing and caring that children will imbibe in these residential schools and the joy of living together with their peer group will be a rich compensation (I do not say ‘substitution’) for missing out on parental dotage. It is from the beginning that children should be taught to accept and not discriminate one against the other, based on his/her economic and social background. All the money allotted to education should now be utilized only for residential schools where admission is open to all. Human values cannot be taught. They have to be lived through and schools alone can educate the young minds to cultivate humanity. The opportunity given to all children will provide them with equal   intellectual and moral growth and they will not need further reservations in the future to enter colleges or seek employment. Navodaya schools are classic examples of bringing together children from different backgrounds and helping them cultivate discipline and a sense of togetherness. If schools follow the concept of egalitarianism and discipline from early childhood as was practiced in the Gurukuls, the hope of affirming and promoting  equal political, economic, social, and civil rights for all people will not be a fantasy or an idle dream.( Gurukul  was  a type of school in ancient India, residential in nature where shishyas  lived together as equals irrespective of their social standing,  learnt from the guru and helped the guru in his day-to-day life, including the carrying out of mundane chores. While living in a Gurukul the students had to be away from their house and family completely.)Parents should not feel anxious about sending their wards to residential schools if the end product is to bring up a well educated human being trained to care for an extended family of fellow human beings. It is a Tamil proverb that says what does not grow in five years will nto grow even after fifty years. Children coming out of school, well disciplined in mind and conduct, will have the value system embedded within. When they move to colleges and universities, their outlook, attitude and understanding of people and society will get further enhanced by higher intellectual pursuits.

There have to be colleges of excellence where young men and women  with merit irrespective of caste and class and economic division get wholesome training  to generate ideas that would serve well their society. These are the institutions that should provide leadership training where young graduate students  learn to think out of the box and think inclusively. All that we bleat about corruption is because present day education at higher levels turn young persons to be competitive race horses and to relentlessly pursue personal, selfish interests, often compromising ethical values.

We need intellectual leaders who have ideas that are implementable and have far reaching benefits to a large majority. We need leaders who can implement those ideas causing the least distress to others. We need leaders who can think with their hearts and feel with their minds. We need leaders whose ideas are not empty words but practically feasible, who have a unique acceptance of the diverse humanity they live with and provide for the greatest happiness to the largest number. We need leaders who can above everything else stem the age of Mediocrity from sinking into an age of Chaos.

Let us not hasten the cosmological prophecy of the age of Chaos to set in as a prelude to the emergence of a new Theocratic age. As Shakespeare says ‘the fault… is not in our stars/ But in ourselves that we are underlings’. The civilizational revolution is inevitable, but we can choose to arrest it or to slow down its movement. There is no need to despair.  We have to draw strength from the very despair into which the age of Mediocrity has pushed us into. One has to be courageous with an awareness that this   ‘courage is not the absence of despair, rather the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair. ‘(Rollo May, the American existential psychologist). In this effort we should enlist educational providers in schools, colleges and universities to provide a new thrust. A seed cannot be allowed to remain a seed forever. It has to sprout, grow and become a tree before it starts yielding flowers and fruits. A seed carries all possibilities if it is allowed to sprout. It is time for our teachers to nurture the seed and teach young people early on that there is diversity among the seeds , and that diversity has to be accommodated  with compassion and care because in that diversity lies the strength of humanity.