Human
Wellbeing … A Fresh Viewpoint
This is a
follow-up on the writings I sent you earlier; their central thesis is summarized
at the end.
The piece is based on part of an article I sent to several hundred local professionals and politicians just this week. And it looks at the problem outlined in those writings from a slightly different perspective, given its local context. The change of perspective would shed additional light on what was said in the earlier writings. (This blog contains all those original writings.)
Boxed below is a quote from that article sent to the locals, and the explanation that follows is based on it. (The original article from which the quote was excerpted is also available on my complementary blog: www.rifatafeefmaldives.blogspot.com under the heading "Positive Socio-Political Atmosphere.")
The piece is based on part of an article I sent to several hundred local professionals and politicians just this week. And it looks at the problem outlined in those writings from a slightly different perspective, given its local context. The change of perspective would shed additional light on what was said in the earlier writings. (This blog contains all those original writings.)
Boxed below is a quote from that article sent to the locals, and the explanation that follows is based on it. (The original article from which the quote was excerpted is also available on my complementary blog: www.rifatafeefmaldives.blogspot.com under the heading "Positive Socio-Political Atmosphere.")
Quote:
……………………………………
……………………………………
Three: Basing Public Policy on One’s Limited Knowledge
and Dogged Refusal to Learn
Part of this problem lies in that public or development
policy is broad, multifaceted, and intertwined on the one hand, and on the
other that the specialized education one can obtain through the world education
system is only partial and thus limited. Add to these limitations the intricacies
arising from the local context and the complexity of policy formulation becomes
enormous. (This part of the problem is not limited
to the Maldives
Given the many areas comprising of development
policy, the flawed conclusion most people tend to jump to is this: “If policy
involves so many specialities, we’ll get people knowledgeable in those
areas to discuss the issue among themselves and they’ll come up with the right
policy.” It may sound like systematic thinking,
but the approach will not work (even if adopted, which people usually don’t but
rely on some person’s self-proclaimed pseudo-knowledge). To understand why it will not work, we need some
preliminary background.
We all understand that the ability of a
physician (as medical doctors are called nowadays) to cure an illness depends
on how well he or she had mastered the profession of medicine, besides the
availability of required facilities and medications. Similarly, the ability of a structural
engineer to do a good job depends on his or her mastery of that
profession. The physician understands
his/her profession and the engineer understands his/her profession. We all know that much. Here is the tricky part most people find difficult
to comprehend: neither the physician nor the engineer has any meaningful knowledge
about the other’s specialized area, and as a result, neither can speak meaningfully
with the other about either
medicine or engineering. And it is the same story with, say, an
economist and a sociologist, or a financier and a psychologist, and so on. In short, those specialized in all areas are in the same boat: they don’t have a common language to talk meaningfully with another person of
a different specialization.
Thus getting people of different backgrounds together is a useless endeavour. In fact, it is a misleading endeavour, as we are usually under the mistaken belief that gathering people of different specializations can produce viable development policy and thus go about adopting the outcomes of such processes as valid policy. We are therefore faced with a difficult dilemma: those of different specializations cannot converse meaningfully with others in a different field, while policy making involves many different fields that are entwined in complex ways.
Thus getting people of different backgrounds together is a useless endeavour. In fact, it is a misleading endeavour, as we are usually under the mistaken belief that gathering people of different specializations can produce viable development policy and thus go about adopting the outcomes of such processes as valid policy. We are therefore faced with a difficult dilemma: those of different specializations cannot converse meaningfully with others in a different field, while policy making involves many different fields that are entwined in complex ways.
But the problem can
be overcome if a single individual
has mastered, or at least has acquired the basics of, the central areas of development
planning; this will enable the integration of fragmented and disjointed info into
a coherent and meaningful synthesis. And
that is precisely what I had done over
the past 24 years, by sacrificing, basically, all else. …
……………………………………………………
End Quote
The last paragraph describes a process few can afford to go through in normal life and thus, given the logic of the paragraphs preceding it, societal processes will continue to be ineffective and inefficient. But as advocated in my writings, given that specialization is indispensable for human advancement, the way to improve the situation is by taking effective measures to overcome the downsides mentioned. As explained in the writings, this has two components: i) instilling a more conducive attitude of mind at early stages in life (see “4 – Reason for Sending the Writings”) and ii) equipping them in subsequent years with techniques that would improve interaction among them – ie, teaching them the basics of both communication and related psychology as an integral part of their basic education. This will help them as grown-ups specialized in various fields to be equipped for minimizing, if not totally overcoming, limitations arising from specialization. And as explained in the writings, this would be besides being able to mitigate the downsides arising from human uniqueness to begin with (see “5 – Further Illumination,” last paragraph). It can be clearly seen that this modification to the world education system will bring about positive long-term impacts on both human well-being and human advancement that will be nothing less than spectacular!
And it is not only societal decision-processes that fall victim to the lack of a common language, but all interactive processes at all levels of society – including international relations. And the myriad of current measures to overcome the downsides of interactive processes, including the many books on the subject, fall far, far short of addressing the real issue; they tend to treat symptoms and not the root causes. More importantly, as mentioned in “1 – Introduction,” people are not even aware of the existence of a problem that is beyond the interacting parties; they invariably assume that the problem lies with the other party!! (The complaint "Am I talking to a brick wall?" would be familiar to most readers.) The writings have made it clear that it is not the case, and that the lack of a common language is the culprit! As dwelt in the writings, the problem lies in that, on the one hand, human understanding depends on the information bases in their brains, which are not only different across cultures but vary from person to person, lending to their lack of awareness that a problem even exists, and on the other hand, they are simply not equipped to handle the situation even if they were aware (see "2 - Education & Fundamentalism," paragraph 9). It is therefore a logical conclusion that the two-step process outlined above will go a long way towards minimizing, if not totally overcoming, the downsides arising from our problem.
The ball is now squarely in the court of the educators to whom these writings are addressed. It’s time for decisive action; the time for leisurely intellectual amusements is over … people around the world are suffering because of the inaction of those who should have acted a long time ago!
Central Thesis of
the Writings: The writings have made clear how a downside arising from the nature of
the functioning of the human mind (“5 – Further Illumination,” last paragraph) which is aggravated by the way the world education system is
currently setup, is causing widespread misery on a global scale. The writings also suggested a partial but
pragmatic solution to this problem. And
the last piece (“7 – Two Methods of Science”) had made clear how the indifference
of the world’s educators is responsible for the continuation of this sorry
state of affairs globally; their lack of awareness being responsible in
the first place for the aggravation mentioned (footnote 2i of “1 –
Introduction”).
An Afterthought
This note
is aimed primarily at those who have difficulty in comprehending the message of
my writings and its global impact on humanity at large over time; those who do
understand it can, of course, benefit from it by letting it help them to expand
their thinking to wider horizons and let their imaginations soar.
In my
opinion, the direct benefits that
would be accrued to humanity by the intellectual revolution that will be
unleashed by implementing the two-step process outline above will go someway
towards being comparable to the indirect impacts of the Copernican revolution
in the sixteenth century.
Indirect
because, in my opinion, again, it is not the direct impact of that revolution
that helped humanity to be set on the path of its unprecedented advancement;
for knowing that it was the Earth that revolved around the Sun rather than the
other way around would hardly matter in terms of human wellbeing. But it was the thinking process that revolution helped unleash, which is an indirect outcome of it, that in turn
helped give birth to the scientific method, which was responsible for the huge
strides humanity had made towards bettering its condition. For it was the scientific method (which in fact began with Aristotle) that helped
us to better understand the nature of the world around us, which underlie the
many advances that had helped raise humanity from its pathetic early existence;
this is in addition to the revolution this
thinking had helped to bring about in our understanding of the universe itself. My claim is that the suggestions proposed have the power to better the human condition in a comparable way. I'm not saying
that our better understanding of the Solar System as a direct result of that
revolution is to be ignored; all I am saying is that a better understanding of
which body revolved around which has a rather minimal direct impact on human wellbeing.
Of course,
prior to Copernicus, the Greeks had been on the right path towards a better
understanding of the world around us.
But treading that path demanded mental exertion which, human beings
being rather lazy and thus opting for the easy way out, didn’t sit well with
the masses, which led to those responsible being persecuted – in the form of
Socrates being forced to end his life, or to exile himself. Not too long after, “the easy way out”
triumphed massively, plunging Europe into the
Dark Ages. For few bothered about cause-effect relations of events and assigning that burden to a "higher power" deemed sufficient. George Orwell had it right – in Animal Farm, he saw the masses as sheep whose reasoning ability was limited to "four legs good, too legs bad," much like "the frog in the well," a comparable example from the Maldives. It is a similar mental lethargy and an ensuing indifference that is largely responsible for the current sorry state of humanity in our fast-changing world which calls for urgent adaptation to unprecedented and accelerating change.
I believe it is this human tendency to shun any significant mental exertion in preference for easy answers that is driving those who have a hard time in understanding my thesis; for such understanding would call upon them to face some mental exertion and follow through the logic presented in the writings, stated in most simple language. Of course, this mental laziness merely complements the much bigger impediment to understanding (which is in fact the root cause of the former and inducing the laziness) that is the essence of my thesis: given that people make sense of the world based on what they have in their brains and that their information bases are usually limited, they're unlikely to have an easy grasp of most societal issues. It is here that a little diligence can help – in particular, dialogue with those knowledgeable in the areas where one falls short, instead of attempting to reinvent the wheel. In the case of my thesis, this requires a person in any of the six areas identified (education, philosophy, psychology, sociology, political science, and communication) to engage in dialogue with those in at least some of the remaining five areas. While the suggestions of my writings imply educational action, the essence of our problem is rooted in both psychology and communication, and thus if those in the business of teaching education try to do it alone without the involvement of the professionals in those disciplines, they are likely to jump to erroneous conclusions and lead to ineffective action. Needless to say that cross-discipline dialogue is not an easy task, as can be seen clearly from the boxed quote at the outset; to succeed, one has to work at it, as one necessarily has to work in any relationship. Meaningful dialogue will also be facilitated if one can come to terms with one's own insignificance in the bigger scheme of things – however knowledgeable one may think he or she is. (A little humility would also go a long way to lowering defensive psychological barriers and to fruitful interaction.) It is the failure to engage even modestly (primarily due to the root cause mentioned above) that is the real impediment that stands in the way of understanding.
I believe it is this human tendency to shun any significant mental exertion in preference for easy answers that is driving those who have a hard time in understanding my thesis; for such understanding would call upon them to face some mental exertion and follow through the logic presented in the writings, stated in most simple language. Of course, this mental laziness merely complements the much bigger impediment to understanding (which is in fact the root cause of the former and inducing the laziness) that is the essence of my thesis: given that people make sense of the world based on what they have in their brains and that their information bases are usually limited, they're unlikely to have an easy grasp of most societal issues. It is here that a little diligence can help – in particular, dialogue with those knowledgeable in the areas where one falls short, instead of attempting to reinvent the wheel. In the case of my thesis, this requires a person in any of the six areas identified (education, philosophy, psychology, sociology, political science, and communication) to engage in dialogue with those in at least some of the remaining five areas. While the suggestions of my writings imply educational action, the essence of our problem is rooted in both psychology and communication, and thus if those in the business of teaching education try to do it alone without the involvement of the professionals in those disciplines, they are likely to jump to erroneous conclusions and lead to ineffective action. Needless to say that cross-discipline dialogue is not an easy task, as can be seen clearly from the boxed quote at the outset; to succeed, one has to work at it, as one necessarily has to work in any relationship. Meaningful dialogue will also be facilitated if one can come to terms with one's own insignificance in the bigger scheme of things – however knowledgeable one may think he or she is. (A little humility would also go a long way to lowering defensive psychological barriers and to fruitful interaction.) It is the failure to engage even modestly (primarily due to the root cause mentioned above) that is the real impediment that stands in the way of understanding.
