Pessimism of the Intellect and Optimism of the Will

                               Pessimism of the Intellect and Optimism of the Will

 It was a serendipitous discovery for me to find three Thought for Today quotations on successive days in a leading newspaper that can direct us towards making the New Year better than the one that had gone by.

You don’t grow old till you are wise.

There has to be a wall between work life and home life

Knowledge is power; information is liberating

On Jan 1, 2017, the world grew older by a year. It cannot undo all that had happened in 2016 nor can it do anything now retrospectively. The major events that shook India in 2016 were many, notable among them being

natural disasters,

betrayal of peace and friendship by Pakistan after Prime Minister Modi’s strategic  overtures  with Pakistan mounting  two heinous attacks on Indian army base, counter revenge by India with surgical strikes on Pakistani army camps, and continued border skirmish resulting in the martyrdom of a  number of our brave soldiers almost on a daily basis,

the killing of Hizbul poster boy Burhan Wani resulting in unprecedented violence and curfew in the Kashmir valley extended for 115 days,

unrest in Central universities in the aftermath of the Dalit student Vemula’s suicide in Hyderabad followed by the Students’ Union leader Kanhaiya’s arrest in JNU on alleged anti national activities,

the successful launch 0f 20 satellites by ISRO through a single rocket,

heart -warming Olympic wins through our women athletes-Sindhu and Sakshi,

India’s not too successful attempt to brand Pakistan a terrorist state and isolate it from the comity of nations,

the mysterious disappearance of an IAF transport plane with 29 on board including four officers  

the demonetization of Rs. 500 and 1000 rupee notes for ending black money, but leaving the aam admi and aurath standing timelessly in endless queues to take their own money from the Bank,

 the tragic derailment of Indore-Patna express train resulting in the death of 150 passengers  and the sudden death of  “Amma” , the  deified and charismatic  Chief Minister of Tamilnadu in the first week of the last month of 2016 and

the phenomenal increase in cases of assault, rape, murder and fatal vehicular accidents.

On the world scene,

the Alleppo crisis and the resulting refugee influx to Europe

Hurricane Matthew, accounting for more than 1600 deaths in Haiti, Cuba, Dominican Republic and Lucayan Archipelago, the southeastern United States, and the Canadian Maritimes ,

 Failed coup in Turkey and the killing of Russian ambassador to Turkey by a Turkish off duty policeman in protest against Russian involvement in Syrian civil war,

Islamic State-linked terrorist attacks in Brussels, Orlando, and Nice, Baghdad, Afghanistan, Turkey, Pakistan adding to more than 100 attacks in different parts of the globe,

The spread of communication technology and the rise of robots as a substitute for human activities with their share of plusses and minuses and

lastly but more significantly the triumph of Trump and the defeat of Hillary, the exit of Britain from EU, the ascent of the Right wing in most parts of the globe at the expense of the left  wing liberals.

In the final analysis, the scale of IS devastation and the plight of men and women refugees from Syria seeking a safe haven in Europe tilt the balance against all positive outcomes the year had registered. There is also clear pointer towards brutish authoritarianism, violence, abuse of communication technology(Twitter/ Facebook) to spread canard and false rumours, hacking of personal computers and intrusion into the privacy of individuals and a gradual collapse of values of compassion, grace, kindness and human bonding.

 It is not that 2016 is exceptionally a period of negativity and inhumanity much more than all the previous years,  but what is worrisome is, the exponential advancement of knowledge and technology in all fields of human activities had got  countered by an equally exponential advancement of methods to put to improper use the innovations and creations  of human intelligence. Nowhere is this seen than in the use and abuse of social media. Social media, a technological boon to bring about connectivity and reach out to a large section of the society,  is used by partisan political and social commentators ‘ to spin lies until the lies become accepted truth’.  The users of social media- the Facebookers and the Twitterati – have understood Winston Churchill’s factual truth: “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”  The abusive hate campaigns, the intolerance of opposition, the spread of fear along with  blind and false optimism, the unverified and unverifiable statements on the social media to damage the opponents and suppress their views and the obnoxious and un-parliamentary language in use are the new tools of assault and vilification. Social media or computer mediated technologies are no doubt useful for instant relay of information and disbursement of knowledge. But it is being more and more used to influence large sections of people and the excessive information overload leaves them little time to sift and analyse the data served to them. What should have been a true vehicle of democracy has turned to be a tool for abuse. 2016 stands as a testimony to the (ab) use of social media that has made debasement of language as an accepted norm. The above quote “Knowledge is power; information is liberating” is the best way to bring a reconciliation between the information overflow and discernment to separate the straw and the chaff from the grain.

The same problem arises with the invention of robots to do our daily chores and activities. We have already become couch potatoes as the monitor is handy to surf channels, to increase and decrease volume, switch on and off of TV sets. We have the cell phone and have no need to remember phone numbers. But what  is new today is the arrival of personal robots designed to live with us, make our coffee, turn the light on and off, open the doors, set the AC at a specific temperature, order our dinner taking care of our calorie consumption, play our favourite song – in short to be our personal companion, assistant and helper. While the robots that represent artificial intelligence is useful for surgery, for military warfare and is an indispensable assistant to old people and  physically challenged human beings, it is in danger of atrophying human intelligence and physical capability of the majority of able bodied men and women. I dread having a humanoid around me to be my shadow and carry out my bidding which effectively puts paid to my use of my mental and physical faculties. 2016 has certainly seen the possibility of robots in our homes without recognizing  the crippling effect it will have on our natural intelligence and our biological systems. I read in the US media about the cryptic answer of an AI robot about its final goal “I will destroy humans” and these four words say it all. We read about driverless cars that are already in the market. Doesn’t this take away the pleasure of driving that demands, attention, concentration and skill on the driver’s part? 2016 and its technological advances of super human brains may not make us super human, but reduce us to the earlier level of a sub human from  where we, humans have evolved.

The more pertinent question is what to do with time that is freed from doing our daily chores? If the robot can be trained to do my exercise, look after my calories, my diet, my driving and even my thinking (as I have abdicated my intelligence to AI), then what is it I can do except twirl my thumbs? Today when the robots are still few and prohibitively expensive, we see a lot of our Indians abroad, working their tails off to justify their stay in the foreign land. Even in corporate India, people keep insane hours that give them no time for home life. The quote given above to erect a wall between work life and home life is pertinent. Everyone needs home time , to spend with family and friends, to enjoy a concert or a game of cricket or football, to take pleasure in activities other than official ones, to watch a movie or see an art exhibition to get a sense of a wholesome life, well lived. This means no intrusion by robots that will nullify the joy of tending to my work at home. Robots are not for what we can do, but for what we cannot do with our constraints of biological reach. 2017 should bring back the astonishing verve and vitality we are endowed with leaving the robots to do only  the humanly impossible tasks.

Lastly, 2016 had made violence the headlines in all forms of media.  Violence of  all kinds- that of the terrorist, that of the gun trotter, that of the rapist, that of the burglar and the murderer,  violence at home. The first three pages of every newspaper carry these mindless and insane and inhumane activity. The media which has become a part of our everyday life has rendered us almost immune to violence. Four years ago the Nirbhaya incident shocked us and galvanized every man and woman to rise in protest against rape and violence. Today we hardly see any such uprising and if any, it is solely left to women to fight their way for their voices to be heard. While it is the right of the media to report all incidents- the good, bad and the ugly- the vociferous channel discussions leave the audience cold as they only fuel more violence in the absence of any attempt to quell it. Meryl Streep in her acceptance speech after getting the Life time achievement award at the Golden Globes said:  “ Disrespect invites disrespect; violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.” Even if she had not named the target of her thrust, it is clear that the triumph of Trump is the final icing in the victory of rightwing forces. 2016 saw the exit of Britain from EU, the gradual ascent of the rightwing ideologies and the slow descent of liberalism in Europe and US, the fanaticism of the IS radicals to establish the hegemony of the Caliphate and the rise of parochialism  under the garb of majoritarianism  - all pointing towards the defeat of democracy and diversity in different parts of the world. The present world leadership in different countries have presented an exaggerated fear of ‘ the other’  that threatens to rip apart our world. The high voltage campaigns and speeches of some of the world leaders played on the emotions of fear and insecurity and  stifled their audience’s ability to make informed judgement.  It has been a year that heard hysterical voices in US warning people of the danger of being swamped by “others’ that included immigrants and Muslims. Nearer home the same degree of using the social media to aggressively abuse all opponents has threatened free speech. Samir Sarin has written that 2016 has seen the collapse of democracy, diversity and development all around the globe.

This brings us to the first quote “ you don’t grow old till you are wise”. 2016 has grown a year older to be 2017. India has grown older to complete 70. So has the world grown older by a year. Can we take lessons from 2016 to grow wiser and make 2017 a new beginning of  bonding among diverse people? Gramsci had advocated the need for ‘the pessimism of the intellect  and optimism of the will to bring a better and sustainable world order.  Very few people would like to think of themselves as pessimists because it sounds lachrymose and shows one’s inability to create a positive outlook.  This is because people prefer to be pessimists –in-denial than being optimists as they see  the world as it is.

Mike Hume explaining Gramsci writes: “Pessimism of the intellect does not mean always looking for the worst-case scenario, as many tend to do today. It means rather seeing the world as it is, rather than as we would like it to be or as others fantasise. It means accepting nothing at face value, doubting all that we are told, and questioning everything, not in the spirit of cynicism but of scepticism. Pessimism of the intellect means that we do not have to accept unquestioningly any of the doom-mongering scares about how we are all at imminent risk of destruction from the climate, or last year’s flu pandemic that turned out to have killed few more people than the common cold.

But always, pessimism of the intellect needs to be underpinned by optimism of the will. That means a belief in the human capacity to meet new challenges, overcome them and move society forward -  not a naive Stalinist ‘Forward ever, backward never’ attitude, but a confidence that man can make his own history, even if not in circumstances of his own choosing.”

Hope 2017 marks the change to bring back what Samir Sarin sees as the three threatened words- Democracy, Diversity and Development”.