My Two Cents on Society______ In a locally televised program focusing on 'The Perak Man', a woman was interviewed on the lack of funding for archaeology in 'Learning about one's origin and past is commendable, but I think that more money, effort and time Propagators of these sentiments seem to disregard the fact that a developed nation would be vapidly inconsequential if based singularly on economic success. A booming economy should have in-concert a matured, well-informed and literate society, in the absence of which, such a society would be child-like in its intellectual capabilities and would have limited clout even with its new-found luxuries. The pragmatic allure of material wealth is that it affords us choices. I do not deny nor do I intend to take issue with that dictum. What I am bringing to the fore instead, is that the money-race should be tempered with education and knowledge in fields independent of the province of work. This must be, if we are to brandish a kind of introverted intellectualism, capable of relegating and identifying with unrestrained candour, the actions and feelings of extremity that plague us all. Extremities in emotions forces us to commit to actions that would otherwise be unreasonable, and this is the crux of the matter. Undeservedly as it may seem, humans are inherently bent towards an archetypal dystopia, content to be partitioned off with their ritualistic penile-play of work and the illusory need for social-status symbols. When the mind is so suffocated with the need to improve life, when does the need arise for the improvement of self, the arbiter elegantiarum of ethical-moralistic sensibilities? A want to remove ourselves from the finite stilted world of this economic-fascism is needed. That want should be harnessed and strapped to the backs of the plebeian, whipped into shape as minds are conditioned to the point of perceiving each query and criticism as constructive. All facets of a problem, however removed from the original, must necessarily be taken into context, so as to be considered, scrutinized and followed through to its many tributaries before opinions are formed. That an uninformed, ignorant and biased opinion is a distinct flaw of character should be a corollary of critical thought, and the need to commit to an effective resolution should be inculcated. Innumerable excuses can lumber us with the inability to fully consider problems in its myriad of forms - laziness, tiredness, thus allowing emotions to decide. Those are all sophistry at its basest, an unintelligible mess of mediocrity. How can the words of that woman be justified? The criterion of insightfulness requires a sufficiently learned arbiter, able to digest reams of seemingly unrelated yet not unimportant data before concluding on an objective truth. Why mention ‘seemingly unrelated'? Problems are grounded in the stem of a common few, and if the essence instead of the specifics can be ascertained, then a remedy for its cause will have been found and its application to other problems will be principally similar. What is meant by delineated from a common few problems? Most are man-created. Chiefly, our inability to rationalize lucidly for the greater good of others. A sordid need to fill the individual's stomach before others are called in to partake in the feast, so to speak. Our inherent desire to be the Alpha of our pack, while some others fall with degenerate spontaneity, to a sort of idolatry of such a one. To look at the comments of the woman from another perspective, are we not by-products of our past? There are lessons that need be learned from what has preceded us, mistakes not to be repeated although this has been shunned. If we hold a ball-and-chain commitment to our need to accumulate wealth, to be mired in our own self-appeasing denial, we would be blind to the lessons so blatantly obvious in the folds of experience. The very word is definitive in that it implies learnt knowledge through the adjunction of past situations. Does that not in itself, merit the need for self-reflection on actions, attitudes, on stances we adopt? Once we embrace an unquestioning attitude to our actions, the fallacious assumption that fault is beyond us will reek of arrogance, a trait markedly disparate from self-confidence, although most cross from one to the other without even a cursory glance to any form of awareness. Yet there are those, fully cognizant and confident that every self-originating action and reaction has been diligently deliberated and thus, the best out of a horde. Left unregulated, the possibility of it degenerating into self-referential rants of a Hermetic monk high on his own righteous onanism, isn't that far-fetched. For them, arrogance seeps in their own rightness, unable to admit to the ‘could have been better' if alternate methods were employed. If their mind's view has been obstructed in its line of sight, how can the larger whole be seen? Answers are being found only in the places that they're comfortable with and been, ruling out lines of thought that they've been unexposed to.
Luqman Lee |