1 - Introduction

Greetings! 

In these days of global concern about terrorism, fundamentalism, the senseless killing of the innocent, and the revival of deep-seated social conflicts of many stripes, the world academics could play a vital role in making the world a very much better and safer place for everyone.  My writings (the articles on this blog) can help you towards that end via an insight of global importance I arrived at in 1997 and have written about since, although one of its central aspects is not new, as will be clear by the quote from Professor Will Durant’s book The Story of Philosophy incorporated into the two main articles.⁽¹⁾  Significantly, the insight relates to your area of expertise (ie, of those to whom the writings on this blog have been sent by email) and, as reasoned in  footnote 2 below, rectifying the crucial problem underlying that insight is a collective moral responsibility of the world’s academics.  

The insight pertains on the one hand to a downside of the way the human mind works and on the other to the way the world education system steadily, although inadvertently, contributes to the exacerbation of that downside.  The nature of this problem and why and how it comes about is explored in the paper labelled “Education and Fundamentalism,” which was originally written in October 2009 for a somewhat different purpose than global circulation.  The paper also suggests a partial but pragmatic solution to the problem; a more comprehensive solution to this crucial problem being rather unlikely given the innate human nature as well as cultural differences of human societies and specialization requisites of human advancement (added later: see also "9 - Last Explanation," the first four short paragraphs).  

Further, the pervasiveness of the problem and its central role in thwarting human wellbeing and thus the massive damage it inflicts upon individuals and families and communities and nations (while none the wiser) would make it one of the gravest problems faced by humanity; its illusiveness would also make it highly dangerous since it is in fact the root cause and culprit behind a multitude of other societal problems and since it operates without giving its victims even a clue about the existence of a perpetrator! 

Given the broad scope of the problem, the writings necessarily treat it in a rather condensed manner, thus increasing chances for misperceptions in spite of my having made the utmost to write in clear and precise language.  This therefore calls for an open mind and not jumping to unwarranted conclusions.  

I hope you find the articles informative and interesting and that you will reflect on the problem and the (partial) solution I have suggested and discuss them with colleagues, thus help minimize the devastating impact of the problem globally and hence uplift human wellbeing to a hitherto unprecedented level.⁽²⁾ 

Yours faithfully,

Rifat Afeef (from the Maldives) 
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⁽¹⁾  It should be mentioned that I actually read the book some five years after I first wrote about this insight in 1997 in the second main article on this blog labelled “Integrative Planning,” which was circulated widely in the Maldives and to a lesser extent abroad, and thus that the quote was added to the article much later. (But the problem’s multidimensional nature and its complexity had not crystallized in my mind then.) 

⁽²⁾  You may be sceptical as to how individual action on your part can lead to change at a global level.  The answer is simple and based on two realities: i) education systems are shaped primarily by what goes on in the collective heads of the academics, and ii) ideas trickle down and percolate across all sorts of boundaries, particularly in our Internet era.  Two unflattering corollaries also result from them: a) the deplorable aspect of world education system outlined in my papers – its failure to instil a sound foundation for productive interaction among humans and the multitude of societal problems resulting thereof – can be at least partly attributed to the state of collective mind of the world’s academics, since educations systems are shaped primarily by them, and b) the vast majority of them do not have a clue that a problem of such magnitude as described in these writings even exists ⁽ⁱ⁾ – irrespective of how highly knowledgeable they may be in their particular fields of specialization.  In fact, it is precisely because one is highly knowledgeable in one’s own filed that it becomes so difficult psychologically to come to terms with the hard-to-swallow truth: that specialized persons are knowledgeable only in their highly specialized fields and thus, bluntly put, that they are literally ignorant of what is beyond their specific fields,*** hence that there is no common language for high-level dialogue among those of specialized fields (in addition to the lack of a shared language for everyone for interacting effectively with others due to both human uniqueness and differences of their upbringings and cultures).  This is an inevitable outcome of the facts that on the one hand it is through specialization that humanity advances and on the other that it will be impossible for any individual to master every field of human knowledge.  It is this momentous reality and its unfortunate downside that I have dwelt on in my writings – a reality and outcome that humanity must face if we are to avert their devastating ramifications.  A little reflection will reveal that the simple but partial solution suggested has the potential to significantly reduce those devastating outcomes.  And your discussion of this important issue with your colleagues – within and beyond your own department, thus across professional boundaries (our problem is multidisciplinary, as you will no doubt infer from the papers) and also beyond the borders of your own nation – will help propel the process into motion, and the thus accumulated momentum, if sufficient, will home-in on the solution.⁽ⁱⁱ⁾  Before you could get motivated into action, however, you have to be convinced of both the existence of our problem and its destructive nature, and the rest will follow naturally.  To achieve this, keeping an open mind is imperative, given the multidisciplinary nature of the problem and the odds that at least part of what was dwelt on in the writings will fall outside your area of specialization, and as such, you would do well to talk to those knowledgeable in those areas before drawing any conclusions – and that would be central to the process of “keeping an open mind.”  If you’re relatively young (ages of direct recipients of these writings by email would vary from early twenties through mid-sixties and beyond) I urge you to engage in fruitful dialogue with older colleagues, particularly emeriti professors, who would have had wider experience of the spectrum of humanity’s problems and thus opportunity to have had observed with some detachment the workings of our crucial but illusive problem in real life. 

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⁽ⁱ⁾ Any system not satisfactory to a majority cannot last for long in a free (or a quasi-free) society and will be replaced by a more satisfying one.  Had the world’s academics understood the devastation an aspect of the world education system was inflicting on humanity, they would have acted to change the situation, and the problem would likely have been rectified – and at a global level too, being enhanced by the instant access now ubiquitous globally.  (In fact, such global change now occurs routinely – for products and services as well as worthy ideas/concepts.)  Thus given that education systems are shaped by what goes on in the collective mind of academics,  ⁽ⁱⁱ⁾ the momentum generated by an understanding of our problem by you and your colleagues (via dialogue among yourselves both locally and internationally) will home-in on the solution.  And since the problem is largely an attendant outcome of the mindset of the world’s academics and a lack of awareness thereof, they have a moral responsibility to rectify the currently deplorable situation and help raise humanity from its state of widespread misery. 

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*** Of course, there are many with wide backgrounds and thus have a more comprehensive perception of societal affairs – and some recipients of this email would be among them – but the vast majority of the college-educated do not have such backgrounds and thus would have rather limited perceptions.

Summary List of Distribution of Those to Whom the Writings were Originally Sent by Email and of Their Respective Departments and Universities Among Nations

Nation                                     No. of Universities      No. of Departments        No. of Academics

Australia                                  07                                38                                2,718

Austria                                     05                                23                                2,002

Belgium                                    03                                15                                1,244

Canada                                    07                                41                                3,305

Denmark                                  01                                07                                0,615

Egypt                                       01                                06                                0,101

Finland                                     01                                09                                0,525

France                                      06                                23                                0,577

Germany                                  06                                31                                2,295

Hong Kong                              02                                12                                0,519

Ireland                                     02                                11                                0,255

Israel                                        04                                22                                1,288

Italy                                          12                                50                                3,871

Netherlands                              05                                30                                2,953

New Zealand                            05                                28                                1,600

Norway                                    01                                08                                0,698

Singapore                                 01                                01                                0,058

South Africa                             01                                05                                0,080

Sweden                                    04                                25                                2,486

Switzerland                               05                                29                                2,082

United Kingdom                       11                                64                                2,776

United States                            13                                58                                2,728

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22 nations                               103 universities          536 departments        34,776 academics

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[The number of academics exclude those to whom the writings would have been delivered via their departments; although I have no way of ascertaining the exact number – since I could only request – my requests would relate to more than 500. The number of academics also reflect the original list compiled during the 12-15 months or so before I started emailing, but during the process, some emails were returned as undeliverable, a few requested removal of their names from the list, some switched institutions, and others left the academia altogether; the numbers given above do not reflect these changes.] 

List of Universities to Departments of Which the Writings have been Sent: (departments involved, if they exist, are: education, philosophy, psychology, sociology, political science, and communication; sometimes, where they were non-existent, related supplementary departments have been selected) 

Australia: ANU, Macquarie, Melbourne, Queensland, Sydney, UniSA, and UNSW;         Austria: Graz, Innsbruck, Salzburg, and Vienna;             Belgium: Antwerp, Libre Brussels, and Vrije Brussels;         Canada: Alberta, McGill, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec, Toronto, and UBC;                    Denmark: Copenhagen;                     Egypt: AUC;               Finland: Helsinki;      France: AUP; Lyon 2 Lumiere, Lyon 3 Jean Moulin, Pantheon-Sorbonne, Provence, Paris Descartes (Education);               Germany: Free Berlin, Humboldt Berlin,  Bonn, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Munich;           Hong Kong: CUHK and HKU;                     Ireland: Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin;       Israel: Hebrew U,  Tel Aviv,  Haifa,  Open U;                  Italy: Bologna, Florence, Genoa, Milan, Milano-Bicocca, Napoli-Federico, Palermo, UniRomaTre,  Sapienza Rome,  Turin, Napoli SU (Psychology), and Napoli UniSOB;   Netherlands: Amsterdam, Erasmus, Groningen, Leiden, and Utrecht;             New Zealand: Auckland, Canterbury, Massey, Otago, and Victoria;           Norway: Oslo;            Singapore: Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy;        South Africa: Cape Town;         Sweden: Gothenburg, Lund, Stockholm, and Uppsala;        Switzerland: Basel, Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, and Zurich;                UK: Birmingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Open U, Oxford, and Ulster;                         USA: Chicago, Columbia, Georgetown, Harvard, Houston, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UHM, Yale, and Santa Fe Institute

List of recipients mentioned at the outset, although already containing about 35,000 names, is somewhat deficient.  The list I originally intended was much wider in scope (that is, more nations and universities) than it is now, but given the large amount of time taken in downloading email addresses, translating needed info on non-English websites, and other difficulties it has been narrowed down considerably. 

In a sense, the list that resulted also places more emphasis on “world education” vis-à-vis “religious funda-mentalism,” the two topics of the basic paper “Education and Fundamentalism,” since it now excludes, for one reason or another, most populous developing nations currently plagued by Islamic fundamentalism, such as Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Nigeria, and even Russia.  But given that the flaws in the current world education system is “at the root” and fundamentalism largely a branch emanating from it in spite of many other vital factors being involved in the process (see the basic paper, paragraph 15) dealing with the former is the more crucial step forward at present – a step that will serve as the springboard for subsequent tackling of the latter.  Notwithstanding its origins, religious fundamentalism also has a very different set of rules of engagement, thus by necessity, it should be dealt with separately and on its own terms.  But I do not see how this can be practically done without first tackling the flaws in the current world education system and the solution being accepted publicly and globally, as that solution is the starting point and the foundation on which the solution for religious fundamentalism could be based.  Thus expeditious tackling and compensating for the flaws in current world education system is the starting point forward.  And while the benefits of this spread across the globe helping to improve human wellbeing, it will lay the firm ground works for tackling religious fundamentalism.  Moreover, even if it is not dealt with separately, if we have a popular “education solution,” and given the logic of the paragraph referred to above, my prediction is that the intensity of religious fundamentalism rampant currently will diminish on its own.  This makes such a solution, as the partial one suggested in the basic paper initially and dwelt on variously in subsequent writings on this blog, all the more critical. 

2 - Education and Fundamentalism

World Education and Religious Fundamentalism – 

Two Vital Aspects Not Elaborated in the First Article ⁽¹⁾

The following are elaborations on two most important and vital aspects that were referred to in passing in my earlier first article and were never elaborated, as it was the down side of … global policy and factors related to it that were the focus of that article.

In reality, these three topics, namely, the down sides of … policy and of the world education system and religions fundamentalism, are intimately intertwined and are integral subsets of what I call “the way human mind works” at a broader level.  In fact, much of the downsides of human social condition, especially the misunderstandings at family, community, national, and international levels, as well as racial hatred and ethnic violence (not to mention religious fundamentalism) are issues attributable to a critical aspect of the way the human mind works.  Thus it is inevitable that efforts to improve these/other areas will benefit handsomely from a better understanding of this aspect of “the workings of human mind.”  In the many cases that crossed my path, efforts for improving various facets of the human condition have not taken into account this vital aspect of the functioning of the human mind, and the low level of success of such efforts could be partly attributed to the lack of this vital understanding.⁽²⁾ 

To grasp the critical/pivotal role played by this aspect of the functioning of the human mind in human well-being, we have to understand the dual nature of the process involved.  The first side of the process relates to the natural or inborn way in which humans develop perceptions about the world around them and the second side relates to the way modern education system repeatedly, although inadvertently, reinforces shortcomings of this inborn natural perception-forming process and exacerbates the outcomes as a result.  

From the beginning of a child’s life, sensory inputs about both tangible and intangible aspects of the world around him or her are translated into perceptions which become increasingly complex.  Acquisition and development of language by a child greatly improves this process.  Later, through schooling, the child acquires problem-solving capabilities at a very early age, which are then developed systematically and progressively and a high level of competency is acquired by the time the teenager finishes school, subsequently gaining further sophistication in various specialized fields/areas by the time he or she completes a college education. 

The outcomes of the duel aspects of these processes relevant to this article are:

i) individuals’ perceptions are determined by the information bases acquired and conclusions arrived at either subconsciously or by thinking intuitively &/or methodically based on it; and

ii) given that these information bases become progressively narrower in scope as one goes up the education ladder, individuals end up having extremely narrow windows through which he or she can view and understand the world and its issues, thus with rather narrow world views. (See the long quote from Professor Will Durant at the end of this article for more details of this result.) 

Modern education system is thus guilty of reinforcing the downside of our inherent and natural perception process without any compensatory measures – without even being aware of the immensity of the problem it takes part in creating.  The outcome is that in the modern society we do not have a shared language for the much-needed high-level dialogue, and also, contrary to popular belief, that people with specialized educations will have a rather limited ability to grasp many of the societal problems which encompass an extensive range of entwined/complex aspects.⁽³⁾  This in turn means that societies have a rather limited ability to generate viable solutions to those problems – not to mention the multitude of endeavours that have potential to improve human wellbeing.  The outcome of all this (relevant to this article) is that while we recognize that humans are unique (arising from our brains being structurally and interactively different, both aspects progressively reinforcing each other) today’s world  education system, which is supposed to help us understand the world better and prepare us 

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for enhanced roles in society, failed miserably to bridge the inherent gaps among individuals (and thus communities and nations) resulting from our natural uniqueness, and inadvertently helped them to widen to immense chasms.  One can observe that this failure in turn underlies much of human misery – much of the reasons for disrupted families and racial & ethnic hatred and the resulting violence and social unrest within, and also war and turmoil among, nations.  

If this is the case, it will be futile to talk about the betterment of the human condition without developing effective tools for bridging the gaps resulting from the above processes.  Writers mint millions talking about men being from Mars and women from Venus or about how one has not meant one thing or another, without really providing effective tools for addressing the actual problem.  Such talk is in the category of cures for symptoms and not cures for the root causes responsible for those symptoms.  (The “symptomatic” versus “fundamental” dichotomy elaborated in the first article.⁽⁴⁾)  As such, they are among the “end-of-the-pipe solutions,” to borrow a phrase from environmentalists, referring to the provision of catalytic converters at the end of exhaust pipes rather than taking into account what actually goes into the engine in the first place.  In a similar vein, most international conferences on “peace” are in the end-of-the-pipe solutions category – since they are usually measures after-the-fact and not efforts to prevent conflicts that would otherwise become inevitable if their root causes were not dealt with beforehand.  Such measures will be of limited effectiveness at best without addressing the deeper root cause discussed here that underlies much of the human misery. 

At a practical level, this root cause of human misery can be reduced markedly by providing effective tools to individuals for bridging the inherent gaps that inevitably arise from human uniqueness (which are inadvertently reinforced and exacerbated by an education system that is unaware or insensitive of the fiasco to which it is party for creating) by teaching them how to communicate effectively across those gaps with fellow human beings.  For best results, the methodology for effective communication and related psychology should be incorporated in curricula at all levels of the world education system, for the desired competencies cannot be instilled without such education and training from an early age.  (At all levels because on the one hand an “attitude to communicate with empathy,” like other such attitudes, can be formed only while we are small children but at which stage we are not geared to understand theory, and on the other hand, teaching theory when we are older will not be effective since without the correct attitudes instilled in us to begin with, what we study will be compartmentalized in a corner in our brains and will have questionable impact on our behaviour; both approaches in isolation – either to only instil attitude without the scope for theory or to teach theory without instilling the right attitude – will defeat the purpose.)  Luckily our mere awareness that what one says cannot reach others fully due to human uniqueness will go a long way to counter present deficiencies and improve mutual understanding, which will significantly help advance better human relations within and among nations and reduce religious and ethnic hatred and the resulting intolerance and violence that plague much of the world today.  

(Paragraph 9) Currently, is there anything called “communication” at any level of world education system – including in the economically and technologically advanced countries?  An emphatic “No!” is the answer.  In the current system, a child is taught from the early stages to deal with largely an inanimate world, for example, wooden or Lego blocks or clay initially, graduating perhaps to frogs and mice from the world of the living, but no effort whatsoever is made to assist him or her to understand fellow human students, and finally shifting to higher levels of thinking, including the manipulation of symbols.  This of course includes something called “English” or “Maldivian” or whatever but never enabling them to effectively deal with fellow students!  Although we live in human societies, instilling competency in the crucially important and yet extremely difficult task of effectively interacting or communicating with other human beings does not warrant any importance in today’s world education system!    

The result is that we may grow up to be brilliant engineers expert in minutiae of microchips  and intricacies of space flight or scientists competent in dealing with subtleties of the DNA of life, but would such persons be able to communicate meaningfully and without argument with one’s mate or children or colleagues?  Without the right attitude for communicating with empathy (which can be instilled only when we are small children) followed by a good grounding in theoretical basics and supplemented by adequate training, it is only a few who have a natural knack for sympathetic interaction and meaningful communication, who can listen with insight as well as talk; most do a lot of talking or lecturing but little meaningful listening, and add to the dissatisfaction and turmoil we see around the world daily.  Thus if we want to better the human condition, we have to start with the root causes as stepping stones to arrive at the relevant answers, not end-of-the-pipe solutions.  And for best results, this thinking should be adopted globally in our interdependent age in which distance has shrunk unprecedentedly and irrevocably.  

It is clear that adopting the “root-cause view” put forward here and addressing the chasms arising from inherent human uniqueness which are inadvertently reinforced and exacerbated currently by the world’s education system by helping people to communicate better has the potential to uplift human wellbeing to unprecedented heights; it will also enable us to focus our limited energies more productively on pressing issues instead of the vain “debates” now in vogue.  But it should be kept in mind that for this thinking to bear fruit in the near future, the global community at large has to start acting now.  And for that to happen effectively, … … , which in turn means coming to grips with the nature/dimensions of the problem, foremost among which being the recognition that that vital problem actually exists, which in its turn will naturally open the door for practicalities of better understanding and addressing it.  

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It is a short way from here to reach the conclusion that religious fundamentalism is a direct spin-off of the very same phenomenon of “the way the human mind works” as described in the preceding paragraphs and which by its nature creates barriers to consensus progressively. 

To know how this works, we have to understand a basic mechanism through which evolution of human knowledge (which underlies perception) takes place.  In the case of non-religious human knowledge, evolution is characterized by improvement over historical time whereas in the case of religious knowledge, the process involves degeneration.  Let me elaborate/explain.  

Of the body of non-religions knowledge, scientific knowledge best epitomizes this positive improvement phenomenon.  Science has advanced over time by eliminating concepts and/or practices that were not verifiable by yielding positive results, as the ancient practice of drilling holes in the skull to drive out demons or the more recent practice of blood-letting to cleanse the body of whatever that ails it.  It might take time, perhaps a decade or two currently, for viable/proven concepts/techniques to go mainstream.  The body of non-religions knowledge, particularly the sciences, therefore has kept improving over historical time. 

But such is not the case with regard to the body of religious knowledge; in matters religious, there is no viable means to verify the truth or falsity of issues.  Furthermore, matters religious are cloaked with a “divine” protective veneer (similar to a resistant strain of bacteria that has developed a defensive outer layer impene-trable to conventional drugs), thus few in their right minds would want to be subject to the ire of a populace that fervently believes every minor tidbit to be “divine.”  This is one factor.  The other is that all matters religious are subject to “interpretations” by those who claim to have the intellectual wherewithal, that is, the clergy, during which process (stretched over historical time) the full body of religious knowledge gradually but steadily gets tainted with the limited (leading to distorted) perceptions of those who do such “interpretation.”  (See above: perception formation.)  Because of these two vital factors, namely, the path for evaluation of religious issues being blocked for the non-clergy, and simultaneously, due to “interpretations” of those issues by the clergy who claim to know but in reality do not,⁽⁵⁾ the body of religious knowledge has evolved over historical time in the wrong direction, towards distortion and degeneration, away from the original messages of the pioneers responsible for them, be it Moses or Jesus or Mohamed.⁽⁶⁾  It should also be noted that a basic reason underlying this degeneration arose from the lack of ability to separate the “message” from the incident circumstances that surrounded it, ie, the life conditions and mindsets at the time of those pioneers.  Moreover, necessity for the messages frequently arose from dictates of those circumstances themselves.  This makes a significant part of what we inherited from the past as “religion” doubly meaningless in the twenty first century. 

(Paragraph 15) This already confused situation is further exacerbated by engaging children in rote-learning from an early age, which stunts their innate curiosity and ability to think and reason critically.  In addition, given that the specialization focus of world’s education system leaves one with a significantly narrow worldview, the process also leaves many of those who get rote-learned educations as children vulnerable as adults to be swayed by eloquent mischief-makers out to get a compliant following, since they claim answers to many questions their victims ponder but to which the latter’s limited information bases and stunted ability for reasoning cannot generate satisfying answers, especially given their lack of a suitable value system to show the way in our complex life conditions; chances of such victimization being further enhanced by heightened aspirations that cannot be fulfilled to one’s content in today’s competitive world. 

With this backdrop, a helpful way to put religious fundamentalism in perspective is to ponder the implications of the “Social Judgement Theory,” a prominent theory in the field of social psychology, or more specifically, what it says about social perception.  The theory postulates three “latitudes” or parts as constituting the sum total of one’s schema for evaluating others’ viewpoints: latitudes of acceptance (agree), non-commitment (neither agree nor disagree), and rejection (disagree).  (This evaluative process can be expected to likely operate at an unconscious or at best a semiconscious level.)  Thus those whose knowledge is said to be complex (that is, those with a wide variety in their knowledge bases) tend to have relatively wider latitudes of acceptance and non-commitment but narrower latitudes of rejection.  On the other hand, those with simple (or limited) knowledge bases tend to have relatively narrower latitudes of acceptance and non-commitment but wider latitudes of rejection.  As a result, it is relatively easy to talk about issues with those who have complex or extensive knowledge bases without much argument while such conversations are not possible with those who have simple or limited knowledge bases.  And given the way humans make sense of the world based on what they have between their ears, it would not be surprising in the least that those with knowledge limited to religious doctrines will be among the most “narrow-minded” and with whom one cannot have a reasonable conversation about anything without what they consider their deities’ pronouncements getting in the way! 

We can get further insight into how such narrow-mindedness is reinforced daily by realizing that it is due to the outcomes of the thesis of SJT in conjunction with our innermost yearnings to affirm our beliefs and prejudices that “birds of a feather” congregate with their kind – be it those of various denominations of religious faiths or political inclinations.  In such gatherings much of the talk participants hear will fall within their latitudes of either acceptance or non-commitment, and little will venture beyond either into latitudes of rejection.  Thus common beliefs and prejudices are reinforced in individuals and they come out of gatherings elated, with “happiness” neurotransmitters flooding their brains.  Since such gatherings make participants happy/satisfied, they provide powerful motivation to uphold shared beliefs and prejudices but little to question them, since the driving force behind our motives lies in what makes us happy/satisfied/fulfilled.  (Think of Skinner's pigeons or lever-pressing monkeys in psychology experiments to visualize how "reinforcement" works – the forces driving human behaviour may be much more sophisticated but operate on the same basic principles.)  

We can reasonably conclude that religious fundamentalism is a state of mind arising from the indoctrination of people from a young age with religious doctrines that originated in response to circumstances far removed from those of our time and moreover seen extensive distortions over historical time; the transformation of this mental state towards extremism being greatly enhanced by the downsides of both “the way the human mind works” and the way the world  education system is currently set up, and further exacerbated significantly by the exploitation of thus transformed states of mind by some people to attain their own ends – regardless of the nature of those ends or whether underlying motives are labelled “bad” or “good.”  And given its complex nature, it will be prudent for those dealing with religious fundamentalism to take account of the various factors that collectively contribute to that illusive phenomenon.  It will also be clear from preceding accounts of the dynamics of the processes involved that it will be futile to reason with those who are literally brainwashed with narrow belief systems that have seen progressive distortions over historical time and moreover do not have even an inkling that many beliefs they so ardently hold do not have much of a reality to them.  … …

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 ⁽¹⁾ As mentioned in “1 - Introduction,” this article was originally not written for global circulation.  It is in fact the second of two articles that address three topics with global implications – world education and religious fundamentalism being two of them.  For clarity, I have kept the focus here on only these two topics and deleted the few references this article had to the first one, which is largely about international politics.  

⁽²⁾ Such understanding would call upon integrated knowledge, to varying degrees, from the fields of education, philosophy, psychology, sociology, political science, as well as communication – among others.  

⁽³⁾ Arthur Koestler’s novel The Call-Girls: A Tragic Comedy, although a bit dated, convincingly captures many aspects of the controversies and uncertainties associated with this crucial but illusive phenomenon. 

⁽⁴⁾ The labels were adopted from the USA’s MIT Professor Peter Senge’s classic The Fifth Discipline. 
⁽⁵⁾ Examples: The Galileo fiasco centered on the Church's geocentric solar system, inquisition, and witch hunts; current “interpretations” relate to creationism, abortion, stem-cell research, and nuclear physics.  

⁽⁶⁾ Significant insight into this process of historical distortion in the realm of Christendom can be gleaned from Dan Brown’s international bestselling novels The Da Vinci Code and Angles & Demons. 

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Malé, Maldives; October 2009 (original article); significant changes made in August 2010 & March 2011 

3 - Further Elaboration

Further Elaboration on the Logic of the Central/Basic Aspect 

Having widely circulated both an earlier edition of the paper “Education and Fundamentalism” and the older paper “Integrative Planning” locally and to a lesser extent abroad, it is my surmise that some people find it difficult to comprehend the basic aspect of the papers’ thesis despite being easily convertible to a simple if-then type of logical statement such as: if a + b = z and if c + d = z, then a + b = c + d.  Accordingly, the logic of that central aspect can be stated as: if specialized education provides a high level of knowledge within limited narrow bands (like the limited range of visible light within the full electromagnetic spectrum) and if public policy encompasses a wide range of fields which are entwined and complex, then (it follows that) those with specialized educations (without at least a basic knowledge of all relevant main fields involved as well as their overlapping areas) will not be able to formulate sound public policy – although they may think the policy they formulate is sound.  

A simple Venn diagram could clarify this apparently difficult problem.  Imagine the area of a sheet of paper representing the full range of fields constituent of public policy and the areas of a number of circles on the page representing the respective specialized fields.  Almost all circles will overlap some others to varying degrees.  From this we can see that one’s field of specialization, represented by the area of only one circle, cannot be stretched to the full range of fields, represented by area of the page.  Also (while contrary to a Venn diagram’s simple logic) it will not be possible for those in any two fields to understand their overlapping new field unless they have adequate knowledge of it.  For example, both sociologists and psychologists must study the overlapping new field of social psychology, which has characteristics very different from those of either sociology or psychology.  And medical students may initially know biology, chemistry, and physics, but not the overlapping fields of biochemistry, biophysics, and physical chemistry, characteristics of each differing from those of the original disciplines and from those of each other.  Likewise, knowledge of hydrogen and oxygen would not help one to know about water, which has properties very different from those of both oxygen and hydrogen.  Incidentally, both sociologists and psychologists do study their shared field, but those in many other academic fields do not and yet implicitly take it for granted that they are knowledgeable of overlapping fields; worse, they are often unmindful that knowing their own fields would not enable them to know others.  And given that such behaviour arises from distorted perceptions rather than from reality, they can be classified on a par with what social psychologists call “self-serving bias” – given the mental mechanisms involved in both cases are likely to be about the same. (See footnote 5 of “Education & Fundamentalism” for a reminder of the devastation such mindsets can induce.)  

To further illustrate, an example cited in a letter I wrote to members of the Maldives parliament in April 2005 to highlight both the nature of the problem and how it would most likely be the single biggest factor underlying the inappropriate policies by our government (and for that matter by the governments of other less as well as the more advances nations) is as follows:  

A physician and a structural engineer (both highly qualified/experienced in their specialized fields) went to an intensive care unit of a hospital.  The physician took one look at gauge(s) connected to a patient (which provided an adequate picture of the physiological state of his/her body) and instantly grasped the essence of the condition of the patient, whereas the engineer couldn’t make head or tail of it.  Then they went to a large building under construction with the reinforcement in place and ready for concreting, and the reverse happened.  The engineer took one look at the scene and immediately understood the essence of the reinforcement layout, whereas the physician couldn’t make head or tail of it. 

Similar outcomes are likely to result for those with backgrounds in social sciences, as economics and sociology, or with unrelated backgrounds, as psychology and geography.  The conclusion to be drawn (relevant to our problem) is that people with specialized knowledge do not have a common language using which they can converse meaningfully about societal problems at any high level of proficiency.  (We can also say that we are able to understand issues in specialized fields at any high level of proficiency based on the specialized knowledge acquired at institutions of higher education.)  

Given the lack of a common language for meaningful dialogue (due to the lack of knowledge in the overlapping specialized fields) imagine what the outcome will be if a group of people proficient in their specialized fields were gathered at a round table (the process routinely used in institutions of all modern societies) entrusted with finding solutions to societal problems, which are, by their very nature, intertwined and complex, with no clear demarcation among their various entwined fields!!  (For a better grasp of the nature and ramifications of our problem and its devastating impact on societies, please reflect on the quote by Professor Will Durant.)  

5 - From Local to Global Focus ...

 How I Came to Understand the Nature of the Problem

[This piece is based on an article I wrote in 2012.   It will take the reader through a process of systematic reasoning and help him/her to understand the nature of the problem identified in my writings which had created much havoc to humanity while none the wiser and had likely eluded thinkers since as early as the Greeks first started philosophizing two-and-a-half millennia ago about the nature of the world and humanity’s role in it.]  

Ever since I returned home after my first degree and started working in the Maldives government in December 1978, I have been experiencing a growing unease for the lack of meaningful, constructive dialogue among colleagues, myself included, that lead to positive outcomes.  For years, I had no clear idea of the underlying reasons for this failure.  Then, in 1997, I did some systematic thinking, which lifted the fog from my mind.  (Having obtained a Master’s degree in 1992 also helped this thinking.)

I began with a physician – how he/she manages to achieve positive results, ie, cures an ill patient.  Obviously, the answer lies in his/her ability to understand the intricacies of the functioning of the human body and how outside agents intervene to disrupt physiological functions of its systems.  Thus it is the theoretical knowledge and practical experience acquired by the physician through academic education and training that enabled him/her to solve the problem of the patient’s illness.  The same basic logic/reasoning is applicable for professionals in other fields of specialization. 

Given that it is the high-level knowledge we gain that enables us to unravel the complexity of any situation at hand, it follows that a person without the appropriate knowledge will not be able to bring about such positive outcomes.  As a result, persons versed with knowledge in one field also cannot apply it to other fields to bring about positive outcomes.  Stretching this logic further, it should be clear now that there would be significant barriers, at the very least, for people knowledgeable in specialized fields to engage in meaningful/constructive high-level dialogue that are necessary for effective cooperation among themselves to solve complex problems of today’s world, since each person’s knowledge would be limited to his/her specialized area and since their overlapping areas would be hazy for most of them – as they are usually unlikely to have knowledge of those areas. 

This thinking is dwelt-on in my 1997 paper labelled “Integrative Planning” (article #6 on the blog)   in which I likened the behaviour of specialized people trying to unravel a complex problem (in that paper, “planning”) to that of seven blind men trying to describe an elephant after each one touches only one part of it.  This is a global problem in today’s world in which education transcends national / geographical boundaries, and has roots in world education which currently lacks the awareness that such a problem even exists, let alone its devastating impacts. 

How world education is partially linked to this problem is spelt-out in that paper.  Notwithstanding this awareness, and in spite of the awareness of the psychological connotations involved (explicitly dwelt-on in that paper) in the earlier years following the paper, my efforts were limited to the local context, in trying to convince local political cadre that included an increasing number of people with college degrees from abroad of the nature of the problem we have at hand.  An assumption implicit in that effort was that when the nature of the problem was spelt-out explicitly and in irrefutable terms, people would begin to see the light of the day.  Not so, definitely!  Further, despite the psychological and sociopsychological nature of the problem, both the psychologists and sociologists with whom I talked were not cognizant of the fact that a significant part of the problem falls into their domain, thus that it is their responsibility as well to find a solution to the problem. This failure in turn led me to delve into psychology, and also sociology, which effort paid handsome dividends.

It began to be clear that our problem has much deeper roots than it appears.  More specifically, it became clear that the problem, although much aggravated by specialized education, is fundamentally rooted in the way the human mind works.  Given that what is in the 3rd & 4th paragraphs above can be generalized further to state that humans make sense of the world based on the information bases in their brains (and how that information is conceptualized) the implications at the societal/global level became staggering.  Not only are we born into very different cultures and sub/microcultures with wide variations among them and thus with different information bases due to them alone, each of us is also different by virtue of our brains being structurally unique in spite of many broad similarities.

These structural differences in turn lead to truly unique experiences; no two person’s subjective experiences of a given event are thus likely to be the same.  All human experiences and subjective, in turn becoming an integral part of one’s information base, and so on ...  Variations in the information bases arising from these processes lead to unique human beings, thus to unbridgeable mental gaps among people.  I can think of no way (in 2012, when this article was written, but was later expanded to include what is below) than to at least partly counter the downsides arising from these mental gaps than to equip people with the tools for narrowing those gaps in their encounters with fellow humans.  

The account below is an extension to the above article based on an email I sent in May 2024 to an associate professor of education at a US university with 14 years of experience and an EdD to her name.  This extension elaborates and sheds further light on the nature of our problem.  

Attached at the end of this post is also yet another piece based on an email I sent to the senior academic staff to the Maldives National University in November 2024 that will shed still more light on the elusive nature our topic . 

It could be concluded from the account given in the above article that we understand the world based on what we have in our knowledge bases.  And the higher the level and quality of knowledge bases in specialized areas, the higher the outputs become.  This is the foundation of what we call progress.  

Unfortunately, the higher the level of people’s knowledge bases the hazier gets their understanding of what is beyond their narrow specializations – see quote from Professor Will Durant’s book The Story of Philosophy attached at the end.  Their mindsets become, to evoke an adage from local Maldives context, like that of “the frog in the well.”  Frogs (that spawn and die in a well) would understand a lot about the state in their own wells, as would specialized people about their own specialized areas. 

This is the malaise that afflicts the modern world which in large part exacerbates our problem since it compounds the barriers to communication that are the outcomes of our natural disposition (see fourth and fifth paragraphs of the last/top-most article on my blog, labelled “Helpful Suggestion”  beginning with “The Problem in a Nutshell”).

This is by no means a criticism of specialization, but only to highlight the downsides that arise when the members of specialized groups have to deal with each other – not that there are no disagreements about issues among those specialized in the same field, but that is not the focus of our discussion.  In a world that is becoming more complex by the day, interaction among those in different professions is inevitable and has become the norm.  The advanced conveniences of the modern world are based both on increasingly higher levels of specialization and interactions among diverse disciplines; they are also the basis of the evolution of life on Earth – it is, for example, by the unerring functioning 24/7 of the thus evolved vital organs of the human body that an individual can continue to be alive. 

A critical consideration to keep in mind is that our material progress is based mostly on precision/ mathematics-based natural sciences while addressing societal issues is based on imprecise/murky human languages.  Thus while interactions among those with natural science backgrounds will be relatively easy, interactions among those with social science backgrounds are severely handicapped.  This is besides the lack of a common effective language for communicating among all professions. 

Communication downsides are found not only among the highly specialized fields; they are the norm among the ordinary folk as well.  As elaborated in the last paragraph of the original article above, the uniqueness of the information bases in our brains with which we all make sense of the world is the basic/central source of our problem and is the root cause responsible for creating the plethora of the barriers to communication, in turn making it the source of multitude of human misunderstandings, which in their turn lead to much of the societal ills that we witness daily – ranging from disintegrated families to intergroup, ethnic, religious, intra-national, and international conflicts.

To make matters worse, most people are not endowed with, or more precisely, they have not learned, much logical / rational thinking; their minds being clouded with beliefs of one kind or another, be they sociopsychological-political or “spiritual” in nature, lending to biases/prejudices that we encounter daily in societal interactions.  And these in their turn make us susceptible to and easy prey of every charlatan in the book – be they commercial peddlers or sociopolitical manipulators or evangelists.  In the past, people’s more-or-less stable life-conditions compelled them to get habituated to the kind of thinking / behaviour they found useful/adequate to get by and there was no need for them to seek any “objective truths.”  Most likely, they were not even aware that there is such a thing called “objective truth.”  All these puts people on “autopilot,” making them unable to go beyond their limited mindsets to anything new.  As our habits / behaviour are formed mainly unconsciously since we are children and are based largely on societal thinking we had inherited from the past and cannot be changed on a whim, these realities become a barricade in the modern world in which we are overwhelmed with information that requires precisely that very skill, namely, a capacity for deciphering the onslaught to arrive at objective truths. 

Given these deficiencies, it is only natural that societies do not function the way they ought to.  Also, they function in an increasingly complex world and no individual can master all aspects of a complex set of problems, however knowledgeable he/she can be.  Moreover, people do not work alone; they work in interaction with others in the same and/or several other organizations.  To further complicate matters, societal decision-making settings consist of people with highly diverse backgrounds.  From all these variations we can conclude that complexity resulting in interactions in such settings virtually guarantees that their outcomes will be anything but viable, let alone optimal. 

The statements in the above paragraph could be better understood if we look into their “probabilistic” aspect.  That is if, for example, one has 20% of knowledge about what constitutes a problem, chances are, or the probability is, that he/she would likely know only 20% of that problem.  The same applies to others involved in the process.  As a result, if there are, say, five individuals involved in solving a given problem and each has 20% of the knowledge about that problem that the others don’t have, and given that none of them has the telepathic powers to impart what each knows to the others, resulting interactions among them could generate only “half-baked” knowledge and would therefore lead to only ineffective and thus unfeasible outcomes. 

Then there is the psychological aspect.  As a specialized person, be it in an institution or academia, climbs the “social ladder” and attains the limelight, a barrage of psychological “blinders” materialize, the outcome of which being that such persons get removed from the reality of the world in numerous ways, the outcome of which in its turn is that an aura of infallibility sets in, giving rise to an “I know it best” mindset – although in reality, one cannot actually “know” all aspects of a given problem as per the account mentioned above.  Thus any other option/opinion however good or feasible gets side-tracked and ignored.  Such people unconsciously put themselves on such high pedestals that they are unaware of the reality beneath on the ground; “success has gone to their heads,” as the saying goes. 

Of course, there are many other psychological aspects to such interactional settings, including those arising from psychological defence mechanisms in particular, not to mention ingrained biases and prejudices as well as downsides arising from the lack of a shared (technical) language. 

The above are all various aspects of human interaction, by no means comprehensive/exhaustive, and downsides thereof that make societal functioning so very ineffective.  All is not lost, however.  While we cannot change human nature that resulted from our biological evolution over millennia, and how we make sense of the world that sprang from those processes, we do have realistic measures that can effectively counter and minimize much of those crippling downsides.  Outlines of the specifics (the whys and the hows) of what we can realistically do to put things on the right track are explored in some detail in the writings on my blog www.rifatafeef.blogspot.com.

I hope that the above accounts provide “food for thought” and help you to enact a mindset that will enable you to face your moral responsibility as an educator – making a concerted effort to become aware of the situation being the first meaningful step in the right direction.  As outlined at the outset, the world’s educators are, even if unwittingly, the single biggest stumbling block to rectifying the deplorable condition of the humankind – I said “unwittingly” because they are in the same boat as those in other specialized fields.  But the difference is that it is only educators who can change the situation by changing current curricula that better reflect today’s human needs instead of blindly following centuries-old and ineffective formulae. 

Two More Cases Additional to the Above Downsides to Further Clarify the Dynamics Involved

One is about how our ingrained attitudes and habits are formed and lead to single-tracked mindsets.  This could perhaps be best seen by visualizing how spring snowmelt meanders down mountainsides taking the path of the least-resistance to form minor streams converging into bigger streams and minor rivers and ultimately into raging rivers that carve deep and wide into earth.  The neural signals in our brains underlying destructive attitudes/habits function in a similar way – the more and longer a certain way of thinking is engaged in, the lesser becomes the resistance to signals in that pathway and the easier that way of thinking becomes.  And in the same way that snowmelt follows the path of the least-resistance down mountain slopes to carve the earth, so does an initially innocent line of thinking becomes an ingrained/fossilized habit, so to speak, and changing the course of either a deep-dug river or ingrained attitudes/habits becomes virtually impossible – that is, without enormous effort and expense.  In fact, it seems to me through long observation and experience that while changing the course of a raging river is practically possible, altering one’s ingrained attitudes/habits does not lend easily to that possibility.   And this has far-reaching consequences in the realm of societal interactions. 

A second related example is about the way decisions get made by elected bodies of representatives.  My own observation/experience is, once again, that the realpolitik of today’s world is, more often than not, heavily biased towards the self-interest of the ruling elite to the detriment of the electorate who voted for those representatives and thus that of the greater good of the society.  In addition to behaviour driven by insatiable greed, such outcomes are also due to the reasons described above – due to the lack of a proper understanding of the complexity of how the world really works.  Apart from the limited understanding, the decisions that get made are often reactionary, and have rather short-term horizons.  And contrary to popular belief, this is true in the US in particular and in the West in general and other democracies – as well as the vast majority of other nations.  While the freedom to elect public officials gives one a feeling of empowerment, the electorates are more often than not indoctrinated by the media that are usually controlled by powerful interests of one shade or another that are not aligned with the greater good of the society, and thus the perceived “freedom” is, in reality, no more than an illusion, a mirage.  I would not be the first person to punch holes in the concept of “democracy” idolized by the masses.  The famous philosopher of ancient city-state Athens (where democracy was “born” but where women had no voting rights and, as per Professor Will Durant’s book The Story of Philosophy, of 400 thousand inhabitants in its heyday, 250 thousand were slaves) Plato, for example, described democracy as “the rule of the mob.”  He may have had his reasons for that harsh judgement, but while in his day two-and-a-half millennia ago, it was only the fluent orators who led the masses astray with their hollow eloquence that did not amount to much, today’s powerful elites have a firm grip on the mass media that distort public opinion, oftentimes in surreptitious ways, to whatever ends they desired – for example, by omitting truths that are contrary to their interests or even right-out lies, thus misleading the public.  In this regard, I believe that of the Western nations, the US especially, is at an extreme, due largely to the dynamics arising from an unhealthy belief in an all-encompassing benevolence of “free-markets” where “money is king” and “anything goes.” (Those interested in my foray into the downsides of the way decisions get made in the US government along with the toxic sociopsychological milieu that currently underlies its detrimental functioning, which in turn arose from pervasive public ignorance that is exploited by the ruling elite – who are not versed either with how the world actually works – for their own ends, and how the resulting momentum can be transformed and diverted into a more positive direction for the betterment of both the US and the world at large given its global impact, both positive and negative, may want to refer to my sister blog www.rifatafeefuspolicy.blogspot.com.)

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Summary:  It is the dissonance embedded in the human condition described above that is the source of our troubles: on the one hand we humans are individuals in interaction with the outside world and such interactions make us unique individuals, and on the other hand it is that very uniqueness itself that acts as a wedge/barrier to smooth interaction between other equally unique individuals – whether such interaction is between two individuals, or at inter-group or intra-national or inter-national levels.  This is the problem.  The solution is to dissolve that wedge/barrier and facilitate smoother interaction – at least to the extent humanly possible.  The mechanism for achieving this is outlined in the articles on my blog, particularly in article #13 labelled “World Basic Education System.”  That mechanism, however, is targeted at the younger generation, and the reason for that choice is outlined in numerous articles: that adult mindsets are inflexible, or “fossilized,” as I call it, and given that the phenomenon cannot be easily changed, that focusing on adults would not facilitate smoother human interaction. 

 

A Prominent Reference in Support of the Argument Presented Above

 

 Some Theoretical Aspects That Lend Our Problem Its Elusive Nature

[Based on an email I sent to the senior academic staff of the Maldives National University in November 2024.]

Towards introducing the topic, I would request the reader to Google the phrase “genome comparison, human vs chimpanzee” and the answer you’ll get would indicate that humans share 98.9% of their genes with chimpanzees.  And yet, given the vast difference in appearance between humans and chimpanzees, hardly any of us would think that we humans have much in common with the chimps.  

To understand this, we have to conceptually reverse above example.  Given the commonalities that we apparently share, as our nationality, language, religion, customs, etc, not to mention appearance, we would think that individuals of the same people are largely the same.  Unfortunately, we are not. 

Since our birth (in fact, since the final weeks in our mothers’ wombs) we start making sense of the world based on what we experience through our senses; we attribute a meaning to each sound, event, etc, that we encounter.  Even if we later came to share a common language, the nuances we attribute to every word, event, etc. will be different for each individual; they get “individualized,” so to speak.  As a result, even if we live in the same society, apparently speaking the same language, believing in the same religion, etc, the nuances in our minds or the attributions we attach to each of these aspects, and thus our perceptions of them, will be quite different, making us unique individuals.  Indisputably, there would be commonalities: a book is a book, hot is hot, but such aspects would likely represent a minority of cases, given a lifetime of our attributing/conceptualizing; perhaps only about 15% of our perceptions can be common?  Thus while we may think that we speak the same language, we actually have a very inadequate language to communicate among ourselves.  This is notwithstanding any of the technical languages we need to engage in in specialized areas such as medicine or engineering, or even in public policy formulation, which encompasses a plethora of specialized areas as economics, finance, management, not to mention sociology or psychology, etc, etc.  If this is the state in a given society, then there cannot be any effective language for interacting among diverse peoples, since the attributions/conceptualizations that have taken place would be vastly different among those groups.  And it won’t require a fertile imagination to figure out that these processes heavily contribute to the societal and racial prejudices that underlie much of global strife and disastrous consequences thereof. 

Thus in the same way that we humans share 98.9% of our genes with chimpanzees but the 1.1% that we do not share makes us so different, differences in our attributions/conceptualizations would make us different/unique individuals, although we take it for granted that people in the same society speak the “same” language, believe in the “same” religion, have the “same” customs.  We do not.  There are nuances of meanings in every word we utter, every belief and custom we think we share, etc. And specializations necessitated by our modern way of life take us a notch apart, in the wrong direction.

This is the root cause of much of humanity’s problems.  There are also innumerable other factors that contribute to the chasm, such as the pressures arising from the incompatibility of the way of life that we inherited from the past with current realities.  It is on the one hand the outcomes of these and a host of other factors and on the other hand a lack of awareness of societal policy makers about those realities and their resulting impotence to take effective remedial action that is responsible for societal fragmentation and disintegration.  Viewed from a broader perspective, it is such sorry state of affairs at the national levels that paves the way for global conflicts.  Given the increasingly effective means of killing each other that we ceaselessly invent, the spectre of annihilation of the entire human race is very real indeed!!  And the world’s educational setup has a lot to do with that unfortunate outcome. 

While there is not much we can do about the innate factors that arose from our biological nature and lead to the deplorable state described above, there is much we can do to minimize their downsides.  And the world’s basic education that is attuned to humanity’s actual needs is the means to that end.  Articles on my blog www.rifatafeef.blogspot.com, particularly the broader picture provided in article #13, along with the first paragraph of article #12 on methodology and last paragraph of #9 on values, further analyze the problem and suggest practical ways for achieving this seemingly impossible goal.