|
|
|
 |
Started: 19th June, 2020.
Finished: 21st June, 2020.
People both delight and dread the coming to pass of that Old Chinese proverb, 'may you live in interesting times'. We delight because interesting times bring forth excitement, change and movement -- many a times for their own sake -- all tethered by trappings of future hope and present discontentment. Quite logically, then, we dread sameness, dullness, stability, and continuity as it makes tomorrow look very much like today.
The reality, as usual, lies somewhere in between: things change all the time as they continue to remain steadfastly the same. Or, as that not-so-old adage goes: History may not repeat, but it surely rhymes. It is but a natural law for mankind to repeat the mistakes of its ancestors, each time in an ingeniously and mischieviously different way. To soundly surmise: we have collectively mastered the art of fooling ourselves with charming endurance.
How then to avoid the trappings of our species? By observing and learning from the collective failings of others of our kind. It is terribly easy to do so because each of us, by choice, or by the workings of an invisible hand, are always part of various kinds of collectives. Within the stultifying confines of the modern academia, they are baptised as organisations, and their study attracts the zeal of a Darwinian curiosity.
It needs, however, no erudition to grasp the essence of what is a social fact: men come together to serve their self-interest. Much like our daily actions, a collective too is throttled by three facets: its arrangement (design), its financing (resourcing), and its governing (method of making decisions). The more skilled men become at these, the more effective their joint endeavours.
But who and what determines the aim and purpose to which a collective should strive for? The mind can run riot when posed this question, and sadly, it often does. That too, in a mechanically sterile manner through expanding the notions of space and time. It (the mind) pretends to see farther into the future than is humanly possible, or advisable; and inevitably seeks to enlarge the field of possible human action. Whether it be a local collective, or that beast of burden called a nation, the method behind the mandess remains intact.
That madness at times produces wonderful results. So much so, it makes it easy to fall prey to that fallacy that men are in control of things. Rest assured, the reminder from the Real Order of things comes soon enough, and it never is a pleasant experience. This is what creates interesting times.
The alternative is of course to disavow the temptations of a vision, and settle instead for those most elemental of desires that animate every thing alive: vitality, fluidity and endurance.
Vitality signifies fullness and sound health, something that is un-diseased. Fluidity points to the ability to adapt, evolve and remain, at all times, in harmony with surroundings. Endurance reveals the deepest longing of man-kind: the quest for permanence, finding something that outlives and outlasts us. Surely, a collective and its every member has much to gain from keeping their minds tethered to this trinity.
None of the three demand replicating a misty-eyed past, or erecting an elegant future. Apply the requisite skills of design, finance and governance to things mundane, routine, pedestrian and commonplace, and the inevitable result is something of lively disposition. An ecological crisis is important to address for all, its essence in its entirety understandable by a handful, but its solution possible only through actions of the majority through their regular routines.
Collectivisation is not equal to the formalisation of many under a singular structure. It is simply the actions of everyone in a manner that seem reasonably coordinated. Men coming together to build a bridge is an entirely different mental construct then they coming together to solve existential problems. Ability to accept that these paradigms are remarkably different is an important start.
So what is this paradigm comprised of and how to build it? To answer that one must ask: what do men really do when they opt to engage with their fellow-men? The simple, and the correct, answer is: they choose to talk, part emotion, part intellect and part vanity.
For men to thus perfect their exertions requires them to focus simply on how to converse better. Any organisation, to use that glossy term, is a sum-product of its conversations. Institutionalisation of a culture of certain kind of conversations yields the Holy Trinity. Now conversations, as apart from chatter, are an outgrowth of reflective experiences. There are minds that delight in being given others' reflections in form of direct instructions and injunctions; some minds, on the other hand, prefer to exercise their right to deduce their conclusions from self-evident truths; and yet others, gifted with a keen sense of discernment, glean in a moment what others take ages to make meaning of.
This then is a curated space of reflective experiences. It appeals not to thinkers but to craftsmen of collectives. Academic disciplines are one way to catalogue knowledge, but a craftsmen might prefer something more open, more flexible and directly relatable to his own sensorial experience. The framework of skills (design, finance, governance) and resultant qualities (vitality, fluidity and endurance) provides a workman's's matrix. That particular piece of conversation is fit for this space which teaches directly a skill and cultivates indirectly a quality of mind.
Each article posted here, a treatise shared, a mystical conundrum presented, a rule-book laid down, they all invite the reader to simply remember: knowledge is never created, it is always discovered or revealed. By definition, only that is revealed which is hidden from plain sight. The reason for its hiding has little to do with itself but all to do with the trials, tribulations and titillations of our own minds. Ultimately, a reflective space of this sort, is a clearing house. A clearing house for building collectives so that we occassionally smile with our family, nod to our neighbour, and befriend our fellow citizens though they disagree with us on the line of actual political control.
The 140 character version could be: samvad (dialogue) leads to samaj (understanding/society) leaving behind a sanskriti (civilisation). It all however begins with paying due care when exercising our vocal cords, or nowadays, finger-muscle memory on a 6 inch screen, combined of course with the ability to laugh at ourselves. If laughinginsults our sense of social-distancing decency, then, perhaps, at the very least smiling for a start.
| |
|