Happy “sthan” — a Utopian Xanadu that is well within our reach, if only we can put our minds to it !
Amidst all the turmoil in the world today such as the Trump impeachment, Trudeau’s brown face fiascos, the Brexit brouhaha and the Kashmir crisis it just dawned on me that the time couldn’t be riper to make our lives perfect. If only we can see through what is irrelevant and put our minds to the things that really matter. What can we common people do to make our lives worthwhile? Why do we lend our ears to the paranoia that is thrust upon us by our politicians and our paparazzi? Why do we let others incite us by playing to our biases? Whilst growing up, I was introduced to such an Utopia through a poem written by a Noble Laureate and one of India’s greatest poets, Rabindranath Tagore. His vision of this Xanadu is still fresh in my mind. Let’s examine his vision in detail and see how as citizens of this world we can create this world for ourselves where we live, today.
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high?”. If we turn on any television channel or open any newspaper or even tune into a radio station on our commute all we hear is negativism. We hear of global warming, of shootings, political strife, corruption, how Amazonization and Uberification are destroying our livelihoods. All these things inculcate fear in our minds of how the world is changing and how unsettling our tomorrows could be. It’s not the factual basis that I am questioning it is the mindset that I would like to challenge. From prehistoric times, challenges have always been there, but humans have always found a way forward. Survival of the fittest is what Darwinism tells us. But I would argue it was the fearless, or the ones who conquered their fears that survived; and not just survived, but progressed. In today’s world with fake news and scamsters and data breaches it is easy to get discouraged and get overcome with fear. But we need to all have faith in our abilities and prepare to face those challenges head on, for therein lies our strength. Our freedom will come from conquering our fears, by being sensible and having faith in our abilities to surmount obstacles. It’s only when we give up, and lose confidence that fear overcomes us. Clearly a world without fear is within our realm of possibilities. We just need to collectively will it, to make it happen. When that happens we can not only be fearless but we can also be proud of our diversities.
“Where knowledge is free”. I am sure you will all agree that there could be no better time in the history of humankind where knowledge has been so easily accessible. With Wikipedia and Google and Coursera and EdX and Udemy it is hard not to accept that knowledge is ubiquitous and free. Thanks to Salman Khan, a K-12 education is now possible with just access to the Internet. We all live in a world today where knowledge has been democratized and is no longer the prerogative of only the rich and the famous. Yes, there might be some challenges in acquiring knowledge but mostly those are social ( lack of food, clothing or shelter ) or technology (access to technology and Internet bandwidth) and not really the lack of access to knowledge. Our charitable contributions can definitely benefit the social cause and it’s something that we can each do today. 4G and 5G technology and the cloud are rapidly breaking down barriers of getting information into our hands.
“Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls”. This surprisingly is probably the toughest to overcome. We can all probably talk more eloquently about what divides us, rather than what unites us. Here in America, the Republicans and Democrats berate themselves on TV everyday exaggerating subtle differences of opinion. We all work and live amongst Democrats and Republicans and don’t see that much difference between them. As people we have a common purpose of living our lives fully. This purpose trumps our ideologies which at best are temporary as they change as we age. Islamophobia is at its heights and yet we have no issues with our Muslim neighbors or our co-workers. The Indians and Pakistanis are culturally united having similar food, enjoying similar sports and music and sitcoms but succumb to rhetoric from their respective politicians and media that is designed to inflame. We lose sight of the broad minded world we live in and succumb to the hate mongering that is thrust on to us. If only we can be brave to discern the difference — “Deep in my heart, I do believe, that we shall overcome, someday …”.
“Where the words come out from the depths of truth”, clearly very relevant in this day and age, where fake news is rampant. Factual basis is hard to establish and large media outlets are all looking to up their ratings . Old fashioned reporting is a dying breed and it’s hard to believe what you see or read or hear. It’s easy for us to change this. We have to collectively refuse to support dishonest journalism. In the connected world let’s leverage technology to corroborate and confirm what is being reported. Maybe news needs to be blockchained, so we can verify it to the source. Once you can track and verify news it will eliminate untruths and shame the repeat offenders into correcting their ways or going out of business. Maybe we all need to play our roles in documenting untruths and verifying news. Whilst social media and technology allows the ease of spreading fake news, by the same token it should be easy to spread factual news.
“Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection”. Incompetence abounds in the world around us and I wrote about this in an earlier blog post. If each of us can commit to doing what we do to the best of our abilities we can contribute to improving the status quo. If we can help people realize their potential then we can motivate them to give their best. A lot of the issues stem from respecting the individuals and empowering them with information that creates a sense of ownership. For e.g all of us live to a budget and are prudent with how we spend when we are at home. But it is common when we go to work we don’t care much for our employers money. Why is that? Is it indifference or is it based on how our work is defined? Often times, bureaucracy and archaic systems prevent a worker from even knowing how much something costs whilst they are at work. The lack of information sometimes drives us to define our work narrowly. If the worker bee things his job is to replace a defective part and not to save costs, then what he/she does reflects that. Once we broaden that perspective the results also get normalized. By endeavoring to excel in what we do we can help drive the change that will help motivate our coworkers not only to work hard but also better. Most of us already care for our own lives and that if our kith and kin. All we require now is just a subtle change in how we work. We just need to create the work ethics to care about what we do, just doing so can work wonders for everyone whose lives we touch.
“Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit”. There is a clear need for things to continue to improve and not stagnate. In fact it seems that our rate of change seems to be increasing every decade or so. So we all need to become change agents in what we do, for how else can we have continuous improvement. The younger generation is active and hungry and questioning why we do things the way we do. In fact bringing diversity to our team, age, sex, race, background, etc enables new perspectives to be considered and fosters innovation. We all need to be open to change and welcome it. Opening our minds and listening intently opens new pathways that were hard to imagine before. Whether it is a social, industrial or international issue we can devise new ways to circumvent the inherent challenges. Doing the same thing over and over again is not likely to yield different results. So lets endeavor to have an open mind and open our ears to new ideas so we can solve our difficult problems through our collective discourse and intelligence.
“Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action.” Our world or portions of it at least today are havens for ever widening thought and action. Clearly creating this Utopia of Tagore will help spread this across the world into every nook and corner. Grameen bank and micro finance have enabled many to come out of poverty and have provided a means for them to become self sufficient. Universal Id or Aadhar is in the midst of revolutionizing government to people transactions in India and empowering many in remote villages to have modern amenities. It’s only a matter of time before this propagates to other poorer nations. These sort of changes along with the easy availability of education are helping people grow out of poverty and driving rapid growth in poorer economies. The opportunities clearly are endless and it is up to us rise above the noise in our societies and focus on the one thing that we can influence or change. If we can do that maybe we can foster the creation of a world that Tagore so eloquently wrote of in his lovely poem. In the words of John Lennon— “ Imagine all the people, Sharing all the world. You may say that I’m a dreamer; But I’m not the only one; I hope someday you’ll join us; And the world will live as one. “
