I think, therefore I am

Continuing on from the theme of my last blog, I feel that one of the growing threats of our society is our determination to impose our views on others. And even more dangerously, the tendency of most to accept that and let others tell them what is right. The explosion of self-help books in the last few years testifies to this. So do the hundreds, if not thousands, of “gurus” with millions of followers hanging on to their every word.

And in the end, it is these followers who go and try to impose their(or rather, their guru’s) ideas on everyone else. It is actually the fact that they are not their ideas that creates in them the insecurity that leads to such behavior. Because they only have the guru/preacher/teacher/leader’s word for it, they cannot justify the ideas in their own head and hence see a different view as a threat and set out to demolish it. If they would have really come up with these views on their own, they would be quietly confident of them and not care whether others agree with them or not.

I am sure that Ram Sena activitists are not just afraid that they are wrong. People who are unsure about something argue with others about it. These people are sure, absolutely certain that they are wrong which is why they attack those who disagree with them. This is the trait of someone who has lost an argument and knows it.

And I would say that this is true for any religion going around these days. People accept religion out of fear, out of lack of confidence in themselves. This is why kids in POK, who have led lives of fear, easily fall prey to the talk of extremists posing as religious speakers. They are looking for answers and religion provides them with easy ones. Doesn’t really matter that they are wrong ones.

If I start a rant on religion, I won’t end anytime soon. Rather than that, I will come back to the original topic of why people accept another person’s views rather than their own. I wonder why they think that that person can tell them how to lead their lives any better than themselves.

I think one big reason is that it is just easier to park the responsibility of telling you what is right on somebody else. Day-to-day life is too complicated and busy as it is without having to answer the “What is the meaning of life?”, “Why am I here?” questions. Therefore people let others answer these ones for them.

A second possible reason is just the societal structure kids grow up in, I think. Till when into their teens they are told what is right and wrong by their teachers and elders. And a lot of times debates on why these things are right or wrong are not encouraged and sometimes are expressly forbidden. By the time teenagers finally get the right to decide what is right and wrong, they have lost the ability to think for themselves. Therefore they run to the nearest person who is answering the questions that are now sprouting up in their mind, which might be a guru or an inspirational speaker or whoever.

Sadly, this problem is much worse in countries like India with their social and educational structure. In social terms, this respect for elders stuff, for all its merits, does serious damage in this regard. Kids are expressly told- “Do not question your elders” and that’s that. In Western countries people have begun to realize the pitfalls of this attitude and actively encourage their children questioning them. Once a question has been asked by a child, the onus is on the parents to answer it the best they can. And this problem is even worse in our educational system. Most of our education is “this answer is wrong, this answer is right” type. They brook no argument. I cannot recall a single examination which asked me open-ended questions with no right or wrong answers. As I write this, it becomes more and more startling to me how almost no attempt was made to encourage independent thinking. Again, Western schools are far better in this regard. They make a very serious effort to encourage children thinking for themselves. And it seems to pay off in the end, doesn’t it? For all our science and Maths based education, we don’t seem to get any Nobels, do we? And I know that there are a lot of other reasons for that, but I am sure that this suppression of independent thought is a major one.

Since it is always easy to point out problems, I should also suggest solutions then. Well, I can only state the obvious- we need to think more for ourselves and have more confidence in ourselves. That is the only way we will be able to be tolerant of opposing thoughts. Lastly, and most importantly, we need to realize that–“There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”- Shakespeare