No Reason for Any More Articles
It seems to
me that some readers of this blog have expectations for more elaboration than I
had been able to provide to-date, but in reality, I have hardly anything else new
that is significant to add. (Of course,
I could keep writing on related but peripheral issues, but then, that won’t be
very productive.)
True,
earlier articles were largely conceptual and thus highly abstract; they also captured
only limited aspects of our complex problem.
Further, since the problem was clear to me, I had implicitly assumed
that I had communicated to readers all that was there to be communicated. But later interactions with some recipients
of my direct emails, coupled with a growing insight into the nature of
understanding, gave me pause, and I came to realize that without the
appropriate backgrounds and experiences, many readers, while competent in their
own fields, may find it difficult to grasp the full ramifications of the
problem at a broader level – which in fact underlies the central message of this blog. And this in turn led to the elaborative articles following the
first two pieces, namely, “1 – Introduction” and “2 – Education and Fundamentalism.”
But I
believe that the last article, “13 – World Basic Education,” had effectively
redressed those shortcomings (which arose from both semantics and coverage),
for it had articulated the nature of the problem in a most down-to-earth and
practical way, and its references to specific aspects in the earlier writings
had added to the comprehensiveness of treatment of the topic’s various dimensions. This was besides its having outlined the
elements of a practical and effective solution, although by necessity, partial.
Thus, as had been pointed out in blog articles
repeatedly, the ball is now in the court of the educators, especially those who
had grasped the full dimensions of the problem and their ramifications, and it is
up to them to get the vision realized – through the mechanisms suggest by me or
otherwise – and help humanity to rise from its currently miserable existence to
hitherto unprecedented heights.
And as had
been pointed out variously in the articles, I believe that realizing that vision
is practically possible by reforming the world’s basic education system, which
in its turn is realizable by interactions of the relevant educators; the
fastest and most effective way to achieve the latter being via collaboration of
educators in all the six disciplines relevant to our topic (see
paragraph 9 of “9 – Last Explanation”) and on
a global scale, given the multidisciplinary/entwined nature of both the
problem and the solution (the logic of
this is outlined in footnote #2 of “1 – Introduction”; see also the second part
of “9 – Last Explanation” and last four paragraphs of the last article, #13). But I am fully aware that such an undertaking
would be most likely
preceded by much more limited endeavours and over a lengthier time frame.
Needless to
say that I shall be available to clarify any ambiguities and/or elaborate on
any aspects as deemed necessary, as mentioned in the last paragraph of the last
article. Not only that; I shall also be
available for coordinating and bridge-building among the professionals of the six
basic disciplines (see the second part of “9 – Last Explanation”) – in spite of
the fact that I do not have expert knowledge of any of the six disciplines
involved.*** I believe that such an effort would be called
for, given the usual fragmentation of knowledge pertaining to any given topic and
also given that I do have a good realistic grasp of the big picture and hence a
modest ability to help reconcile competing perspectives. It was in fact my becoming aware of the topic’s
complexity that led me to the insightful understanding of the most vital/critical
factor underlying the pathetic state of human existence that I had dwelt on
this blog, which in turn provided the impetus for the insights sketched out here
(for an overview of the process, see "5 – From a Local Focus to a Global One").
_________________________________________________________________________________
*** My involvement, as readers of this blog would
be aware, is from a development standpoint – that is, about improving human
wellbeing to a state better than the current status. And as we saw, delving into the state of humanity
(notably through examples sprinkled in the blog articles such as the one dwelt-on
in footnote #2 of the last article, and the nature of the problem that led to
it) had revealed its pathetic state and also that policy makers, by and large, don’t
know what-the-hell they are doing, along with the primary reason underlying that
devastating failure of unimaginable proportions, and hence consequences, on a
global scale, which in turn pointed to the effective and practical, albeit necessarily
partial, solution suggested in the writings.
(See also article #10, “A Summary …,” and “About Me” at the end of the
blog.)
***************************************************************
A Word on Direct Mail: I had emailed all the earlier writings to the
35,000 or so educators listed on www.rifatafeefthelist.blogspot.com. But beginning early 2016, Google had imposed
severe restrictions on emailing (it turned out that other service providers
also have similar restrictions), and I had not been able to send the most recent articles
to a large portion of those on the list.
Before that, however, I had fully covered all recipients in some
nations, including the US, UK, Germany, France, Sweden, Austria, and Belgium, which
still amounts to only about 40% of those on the list. I shall try to cover the rest as soon as I
can. [Given the difficulties just mentioned,
the PDF version of this piece (# 14) will not be emailed to anyone (as I have done earlier) and will be made available only as this blog-post. I
apologize for any inconvenience.]
