From a Local Focus to a Global
One
Recapping the main
points of the transformation of my focus from a local one to a global one, particularly
the last paragraph, would shed significant light on the nature of the problem explored
in the writings on the blog.
Ever since I returned
home after my first degree and started working in the Maldives
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 via academic
education that enabled him/her to solve the problem of the patient’s
illness. The same logic is
applicable for professionals in other fields.
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 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 unlikely to have knowledge of
those areas.
This thinking is dwelt-on
in my 1997 paper labelled “Integrative Planning” in which I likened the behaviour
of specialized people trying to unravel a complex problem 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 and geographical boundaries; the
problem having roots in world education, which currently lacks awareness that such
a problem even exists, let alone its devastating impacts.
How world education
is at least 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 (also 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 the local political cadre who include 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, in spite of the psychological and
socio-psychological nature of the problem, both 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 societal/global level become 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 one 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 exactly the same. And such subjective
experiences in their turn become an integral part of one’s information base, and so
on ... The variations among 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 to at least partly counter the downsides arising from these mental
gaps (dwelt-on in the writings I sent you earlier) than to equip people with tools
for narrowing those gaps in their daily encounters with fellow humans – that
is, to teach them the basics of communication and associated psychology. (These are two sides of the same coin.)
