Ignorance: The Greatest Virtue

"Ignorance - The lack of knowledge or education." That is how WordWeb Dictionary puts it. Its a noun according to the dictionary. I feel its a verb. Something that people do. While the word may be refering to not doing something, I strongly feel that this is actually doing something.

What

Well, ignoring!

 

"Ye Dekho SRF ke log, yahan bache kaam kar rahe hain aur ye baith ke khaana kha rahe hain. Kuch karte kyun nahi?", I asked.

SRF stand for Social Responsibility Forum, the community service cell of our B-School. One of its members(AS), a fellow hostelite, was having dinner. There are a lot of kids working in Mumbai who are underage. Those working in the hostel mess look like they belong to this category.(Though its difficult to guess what the age of a person is by just looking at him/her.)

"Wo 14 saal se upar ka hai. Ye bahut chotte chotte lagte hain, par 16-17 saal ke hote hain", VT said.

"Bula ke pooch to kitne saal ka hai", I said.

"Accha abhi bulate hain", AS said.

They called the kid and asked him his age. "Satrah", he said. Seventeen!

 

A few years back the court had passed some ruling, after which there was this ho-hallah by the media and the government bodies against child labour. A movement is what it was called. But that movement like most other movements lost momentum and everyone got back to some new issue or the other and forgot about this cause. The glamour wasn't there anymore, it wasn't the 'in thing' for the media anymore.

Anyway, during those days, one of the houses in my neighbourhood was raided. The police asked the children what their age was. They replied 14, 15, 16,.... The chap who complained, his obligation towards the society had been completed. The job of the police, to react to the complaint, was done. The children, who everyone could clearly see were no older than 13, got back to their lives as domestic helps. The owner of the house got back to his life, the 500 odd bucks that he had given to the police could always be recovered by getting the children to do overtime.

If you are not aware of the scenario that exists in the Indian society, you must be wondering why the children said their age was above 14. Well, figure out the answer to this question - What would they do if they told their real ages and, thus, lost their jobs?

 

"Accha ek baat bata mujhe bhai. Maan le ki wo chote hain umar mein. Agar un logon ko yahaan se kaam se hatva doon toh kahan jayenge woh, socha hai kabhi?", AS asked me. The same question that I've asked you.

I could see that he had his mind closed, he was in a mood only to score some points in the conversation. I decided to end the conversation with a smile, a wry one.

 

That child might have been above 14, it is possible. However, that is not the point over here.

The biggest problem that I can see with most of the NGOs etc is that they are run by people who are working for their satisfaction and not to eradicate poverty, or AIDS, or Polio, or Malaria or whatever it is that they are working against or for. The people there are not working towards the goal to be achieved. they are working for their satisfaction.

I see people giving money to beggars everyday. You can see the satisfaction that they get. Many of them have asked me why I don't give money to them. I almost never give the honest reply. Because my honest reply is a question, "Have you ever thought what would happen if you stop giving money to beggars and everyone else also follows suit?"

I've never got an answer from their mouths, it is their faces which reply, "No". They've never thought about it.

The fact is people are ignorant, they are ignorant about the consequences of their actions. They don't think what is right. They just do what they've been programmed to believe is right by the society, the environment around them.

 

In this particular case of child labour, if the NGOs start spending money and other resources on the problem area which is not the child labour but instead poverty and lack of education, it would be much better for the society. The NGOs are working to heal the wounds that have been inflicted upon the society, not trying to prevent the society from getting hurt. That is the same as what the government is doing. They just sit and analyse what has happened and after that do what they want to. There are floods every year. Why don't the NGOs and the government get together and analyse what are the flood prone areas, analyse the causes for damage, then relocate people accordingly? Or even better why not employ people(1) to develop canals to route the water to drought prone areas(2) and in the process avoiding floods (3). The above sentence comprises the solution to three major problems - it requires just one act, but the people concerned are not willing to do the same.

Why don't the NGOs sit and think what is the cause of child labour(you already know it, don't even need to think) and work on that aspect? Why don't people look at the root cause of the problem and eradicate it?

The answer is simple - Ignorance. It is a virtue for people. They would sit and think only about those aspects which affect them.

Why don't we have as many NGOs working for the welfare of the tribals (not the ones who come in direct contact with the 'civilised society' but the ones who are living in the jungles totally cut off from civilisation? Because helping them would not help them in minting money, or because it wouldn't give them satisfaction since they don't quite come in direct contact with the society or because of some other reason. Actually, in this case the problem is quite opposite - since they are able to get all these and much more - all the fame internationally- they are 'helping out' the tribals, yes, they are. What they don't realise is that they are not the ones who require help. The way they are living is their 'lifestyle', their culture, their society. They are only disrupting the normal lives of the tribals by trying to help them. Again, they are simple being ignorant of the facts!

Who has the time to think about those problems which don't affect them? So, everyone chooses to ignore.

Ignorance is, thus,  the greatest virtue.

Am I next? Or, are you?

The police has hunted down the terrorists behind the recent bomb blasts in New Delhi. Everyone who knows those 'terrorists' is shocked. After all they were just normal people living their normal lives. How could he be a terrorist?

One of them was giving his exams when his fellow 'terrorists' were being encountered a few kilometers away. Were they really terrorists? That's the question.

In the past, the police had often ended up encountering normal people. And a few days after the encounter they were left with red faces, when the innocence of the encountered 'terrorists' were proven.

So it isn't too hard to assume that the police might well have found an easy way to get out of the mess, or well, not get into the mess. Simply put forward the theory of normal men-terrorists. What does that mean? Well simply put, before someone points out that the dead or arrested were normal people. The police itself puts forward the theory that these were people who did everything that normal people did and lived like them, but along with that they participated in terrorist activities.

Well the next thing that you know... well you or I may be rounded up while giving one of our exams and charged with something similar.

Let's just imagine this scenario, I am giving my next trimester exams- specifically, Strategy Implementation. All of a sudden the media and Anti-Terrorist Squad gherao the college. The next thing that you and I know, I am charged with Strategising and Planning some bomb blast(ironically, after (almost) sleeping through two trimesters of Strategy classes). Everyone who knows me is saying that it is not true. The police says that I am a terrorist and I till date was living like a normal guy, but side by side was also doing the Strategic planning and Implementation of the bomb blasts.

Now just re-read the above stanza aloud, the I this time is you. What do you say? How does it feel???

Note: I do not intend to state that the people arrested in this case were militants or innocent. I do not have enough information to comment. Nor do you. I just intend to say that it is so difficult to know what the truth is for laymen like us...

Between... just heard there was another bomb blast in Delhi today! Am I next? Or, are you?

A Figment of Imagination? Oh, Really!!!

I was just watching Da Vinci's Code. It was lying with me since ages but somehow I just never got the time to watch it. Now that I did, I loved it. I haven't read the novel, if I were to believe what my friends say, the movie would have disappointed me if I had seen it after reading the novel.

Anyway this post is not about that. It's about what this blog is about, the random stuff that keeps coming to my mind.

Everyone laughed at Newton when he theorised about Gravity. They didn't believe in him and what he said. Suppose he also didn't, then there would have been no scientific discoveries using Gravity, Gravity might have never been found. This is not a lone example, there are plenty. It happens everyday, all around us. What is true, is what people believe to be true, not the absolute truth. Even people who have been falsely implicated, sometimes reach a psychological state where they start believing that they commited the act. It is all about the believing.

Faith - it is also about believing.

You love a person because you believe, many times subconsciously, that the person adds onto you. Good is Good and Bad is Bad because you believe them to be. Maybe that is not the way it is.

Maybe some of those fiction stories that we read, they were also true. Not a figment of the author's imagination but a fact that was visible to only the author of the work due to his/her supreme level of awareness of the surroundings and the decent intelligence level.

How easy is it to make a person believe in what you have to say? Well assuming the person is of average level of intelligence and awareness(which I can quite safely assume is very poor as compared to the intelligentsia) it is rather easy. Just follow the following steps:
1. You present to the person some fact that he/she also knows to be a fact.
2. Next, present facts which the person is unaware of.(Trust me you'll find aplenty)
3. Interpret all the facts in whatever way you want to, just maintain a (seemingly) logical flow.
4. Next, start contorting the facts the way you desire the person to believe them.
...and You're on.

Now that you know this simple and truthful fact, if you have the basic necessary skills(oratory etc), you can become the next Spiritual Leader or a Business Guru or the most accliamed documentarist or whatever.

Well... maybe Da Vinci's Code is not fiction, it is not a figment of Dan Brown's imagination, maybe it's true. And what the Christian's the world over have faith in and humans the world over believe to be the truth isn't the truth.