An Urge to Communicate

At times you just want to rant about how you'd make the world if given a chance!  This piece is one of those.  I have a go at just about every institution and no one is spared.  Ah well it is good to get it out of your system.  Better than developing an ulcer.

An Urge to Communicate

The speaker cleared his throat and then continued, “if we then consider the relevance of early Victorian poetry to present day urbanization…” The lecture room had around eighty chairs and only four were occupied.  The speaker went on and I wondered if all over the world there are good minds analyzing absolute irrelevance to almost empty rooms.  All the papers presented would be published, I was told, and so reach a wider audience.  But what wider audience?  Who else but other preoccupied thinkers in this field would bother to read this epistle?  Who else would be interested?  It seems to me we have good brains revving away up dead alleys and the mainstream traffic is ploughing through the seedier parts of Soho.

Those you cannot distract with shopping, brain killing TV or the daily blurge of disasters, crime and exposés, get them studying the intricacies of embossed wallpaper and its influence on early reading skills.  Have them write papers that have to be read and studied and responded to.  Create such a mire of detailed analysis no one will ever pause to realize the futility of the whole exercise.  Has our academic world become a kind of King without robes, so that none of us can build up enough nerve to point out the inadequacies? 

Of course everything can be justified as a search for truth but with the world facing problems of immense proportions, should we be wasting our best minds on anything else?  Corporations can afford to scoop up the best of our graduates and fast track them to a life of acquiring material benefits in return for generating money for the company.  Anyone who drops out of this conveyor belt to self-gratification is viewed as a leftist agitator or a religious fanatic or by that general heading ‘loser’.  My question is where are the role models to lead this generation?  Who is there to admire?  Closet academics in their ivory towers, rich tycoons, bitter discontents who never made good, dictators, Joe Bloggs, the workingman?  Our difficulty now is whether we look up or down, to the left or right, we see nothing to inspire us.  Even worse, those who traditionally urge us to be better human beings (church leaders, philosophers, leaders of thought) are found to be sex perverts or flawed characters.  So we create antiheroes in the hope that at last we’ll have something to look up to.  Even these have lost their allure and we turn to what?

Sports. There’s something clean and noble and Olympian about those who engage in the noble arts.  But since winning has become the number one goal even sports has lost its luster.  Drug taking, back stabbing, nationalism, commercialism, a lack of team spirit seem to once again encapsulate all that is wrong with our culture.

Politics have become a farce.  Those who want positions of power are generally found to be the least suited.  So we have gravitation to the top of those who are there not because they can do the best for society but because they are experts in getting the best for themselves out of society.  Shit seems to float to the top.

Science, the new God of the modern age, has demonstrated the importance of motive behind all endeavors.  If I am innocently gardening but secretly loath and despise my neighbours, then I should not be surprised if my shovel gradually grows to resemble a club.  For if we shape our own destiny our motives give living colour to the final outcome.  Whereas before, science was driven by our desire to defend ourselves at all costs, nowadays it is motivated by a desire to have economic dominance by whatever means.  Both have an end game that will either be constant war between nations or terrorism on a scale we cannot as yet comprehend.  If we were to look to the end of things, would we not make science a tool for the betterment of a just human society?

Education has long been held up as the last arena of hope.  Whatever the problems facing society, surely education must be the key.  In whose hand is this key?  What should be the goal of education?  To create an educational elite, to provide a basic measure of literacy, to give the populace a means of earning a living, to produce decent citizens?  There seems to be no general consensus but things are going seriously wrong in our educational establishments and all the bright minds and all the best intentions cannot seem to put Humpty Dumpty together again.

Communication has transformed our lives.  Years ago at a conference I remember being told that the microelectronic revolution was now a thing of the past.  Looking to the future it is the field of communication that will take over the reins of progress.  Tragedies, wars, disease can be flashed around the world in seconds, even live.  We are confronted with all our defects and find it depressing beyond belief.  Our seeming helplessness is only compounded by the fact that media lets us see only what it wants.  Instead of faithfully reflecting what goes on in our world we see instead a version chosen for us by vested interests.  Truth has taken a back seat and entertainment is far more important.  What should serve to inform, uplift, correct has become an opportunity to degrade, pervert, distract and titillate.  

So given that all these institutions are failing us what should we do?  Years ago while at university, our small newly formed International society was allocated a small office on campus.  This was to be shared with one other university society, the Anarchist society.  It did not come as any surprise that their first decision was to steal the shared typewriter (it was a few years ago) and set fire to the office.  Ever since then I have had an aversion to those who seek to pull down existing institutions, social order etc.  All their energies are in destruct mode and despite all the rhetoric, you get the feeling that even if suddenly the new world order arrived - just, balanced and fair - they would be still exploding bombs and setting fire to things.  Whether this present day order is falling apart or being actively rolled up, our energies are surely better spent in construction rather than in demolishing or arson.  Finding a positive role to play empowers and encourages.  I must choose to hope for a better future and do all I can to further that goal.  So having dissected many of our institutions, let me finish by re-building them, as I would have them.

Academics would excel and create centers of learning that develop the individual’s capacity and inspire and equip students with the tools to help humanity.

Sports would be about fair and just competition, where sportsmanship would be celebrated as much as winning.

Politics would be an arena of service, not self-aggrandizement, and politicians chosen because of their ability to do the job, not their desire to have it.

Science would be a tool for an ever-advancing civilization, responsible for a World Community, a global treasure and a precious environment.

Education should be about ‘bringing out’ the real capacity of each individual.  It must help create healthy citizens in mind and body.  In a family it would be sick to have one child educated to university level and allow the other to starve to death yet, we do this on a global level and expect a healthy society?  Mankind is a single body and true education would embrace this truth and build upon it, not allow mutilation or gangrene of any part.

Communication is today’s revolution.  We have no idea where this wave will eventually take us.  I choose to hope that with honesty, truthfulness, consultation and, most important, unity in our diversity, we can do more than right wrongs.  We are a world community and when we choose to act as one we will have undreamed of victories.  I hear a voice calling to me of hope, great endeavours and mighty deeds.  At present this world is on its knees but it is going to find its way soon and I want to be one of many urging it upward and onward.