when a country builds a system where education is no longer considered to be important, when books are seen as entertainment or frivolities and the deep meanings of philosophers are discarded for trends and banters, what we have left is the shallow society where everything is about the ability of a member to consume, to afford more, to do anything possible to live a life of material abundance.
Is this the essence of capitalism or just people becoming too distracted with the next fad to ask the consequential questions like what does this all mean? How are my actions affecting me and the people around me? This ball of rock and water that carries all, what is its purpose beyond birth and death? There is more to this life than a new car or more money in the bank but this is what the lack and disinterest in education has brought us to. Why waste time in studying when you are studying to make money and money, according to varied sources, can be made without education?
The myth of the child genius who launched a financial empire at the age of eighteen has revealed its dark side. Ignorance is being left to flourish in the name of to each its own. Without learning, what is the society leaving behind for posterity? Plastic waste and the carcass of bombed buildings? polluted seas and infertile land? In our pursuit of pleasure, deceptively couched as a pursuit of happiness, pain has been revealed as the devil. Drugs are now the solution to every problem. But what is pain if not the end result of pleasure? What is pleasure if not pain in little doses?
With knowledge, comes power, or so the sages say but we live in a society where the ignorant have been given power over the wise. People who should not stand close to places of power now hold the staff of office and decree their ignorance into perpetuity. Why? because there is a shortage of knowledge. because no one is learning from previous mistakes. It is this same ignorance that has built a world of intolerance for race, creed, class, or language. It is this ignorance that has given rise to war, genocide and all kinds of atrocities that has become the norm for a normal tuesday evening news.
Education, no matter how castigated, still remains the panacea to development. It is in knowing ourselves as well as our society, that we can begin the task of repairing what is damaged and letting alone what is fixed. We cannot continue to see teachers as the lowest of the low, or continue to see the things that we do not understand as evil. We must begin to learn so as to be available as a safe space for others. We need to read and educate ourselves so we can give as much compassion and empathy to the person standing next to us, no matter who or what they are.
