ACADEMIC ADVANCE AND CREATIVE DECLINE

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ACADEMIC ADVANCE AND CREATIVE DECLINE

Karunanidhi, the Tamil Dravidian advocate and Hindu baiter, used to ask "From which  engineering college did Rama obtain his degree that he constructed the bridge to Lanka?". And the "pit" used to applaud him. Which engineers constructed the hundreds of majestic temples that still stand in the South, thanks to the protection of Vijaynagar rulers? Which college did the builders of the Grand Anicut get their degrees from? 

The Grand Anicut- built in the 2nd Century- the oldest  water regulating structure in the world, still in use!
Certainly no IIT engineer built it!
Beckamrajeev.Own work. CC BY SA-3.0 Wikimedia Commons.

On the other hand, what is the quality of the roads laid by the modern civil engineers, with all their degrees? See the buildings erected by the British, even simple things like court buildings, and what have our modern engineers to show, except match boxes and pigeon holes?

Meenakshi Temple, Madurai.
Jorge Royan/http//www.royan.com.ar.via Wikimedia commons.CC BY SA-3.0

Temple at Gangaikonda Cholapuram. Built in the 11th century.
By KARTY JazZ (Own Work) CC BY- SA 4.0 Wikimedia Commons.

In every sphere, there has been a steady decline in quality, with every technical advance. Nowhere is this seen more glaringly than in the academic field.Colleges and universities  have proliferated, but the graduates are becoming 'unemployable'. In the professions, doctors, lawyers and accountants still have to undergo long apprenticeship under good practitioners to attain proficiency. Mere academic degree does not help.

Certified professional qualification is required for teachers; certificates are awarded routinely, but teaching has not improved. Ph.D is insisted upon for college teachers, as if this will make everyone a good teacher. In fact, many good scholars cannot express themselves, either in speech or in writing.. This I noticed clearly in books published in the  series ' Very Short Introductions' by Oxford University Press. Each one is written by a scholar and acknowledged authority on the subject, but while some write delightfully, and make even a difficult subject light and interesting, others struggle to make themselves clear. Good teachers and writers are born (though good editors are behind many famous authors). 

It is what we see in the field of classical music. There are now many schools and colleges teaching music and awarding certificates. But how many of them become performing musicians? Only those who undergo personal training for long under a good performing musician flower into performing artists themselves. College degree counts for nothing.

Govt. Music College, Madurai.
How many performing artistes has it produced?

The academic disciplines have become so narrow that most scholars are boring to read or listen to. There is so much of speculative theorising even in humanities and social sciences that the pleasure of reading good literature is fast disappearing.

Take for instance Shakespeare. We know that Shakespeare wrote 'plays' to be enacted. But can they be enjoyed as plays by all? Even in England? Now? The whole world has been enjoying Shakespeare as literature for over three centuries, savouring its poetry and philosophy. A character like Shylock has been part of the total human experience for the last 400 hundred years. Hamlet has intrigued us, defying all attempts at classification. When seen as play, the interest is on the plot, action- the entertainment element. When Macbeth is enacted as stage play, the focus is on the sets, period costume, the performance of the actors, the light arrangements etc- all technicalities. And we tend to compare performances by different actors. The focus is entirely on the 'drama' element, how the story progresses on stage. And it can be appreciated only by audiences familiar with the Anglo-Saxon-Scottish background. However, when studied as literature, it engages the mind, and the universal human element comes out. Local history is forgotten. That is why it is said that when we "read" Shakespeare, we become "greater, wiser, purer". This can be applied to other great masterpieces too which  represent " the best which  has been thought and said in the world", as Matthew Arnold said. Can any movie ever bring to life 'A Tale of Two Cities' or 'Great Expectations'? When we read the latter, we grow and stay with Pip. We live a lifetime with him. The movie experience lasts but a couple of hundred minutes. No movie screen can match the mental screen.

A century ago, A.C. Bradley, that fine Victorian scholar raised a substantial question about reading Shakespearean tragedies, in his famous lectures on that subject.

What is the substance of a Shakespearean tragedy, taken in abstraction both from its form and from differences in point of substance between one tragedy and another? Or, what is the nature of the tragic aspect of life as represented by Shakespeare?

This question implies only that, as a matter of fact, Shakespeare in writing tragedy did represent a certain aspect of life in a certain way, and that through examination of his writings we ought to be able...to describe this aspect and way in terms addressed to the understanding.

 Andrew Cecil Bradley. From Wikimedia Commons.
Bradley was such a formidable authority on Shakespeare that the following anonymous poem used to circulate:

I dreamt last night that Shakespeare's Ghost
Sat for a civil service post.
The English paper for that year
Had several questions on King Lear
Which Shakespeare answered very badly
Because he hadn't read Bradley.



Children watch the play for enjoyment. Mature persons read the play for an understanding - not just of the mind of Shakespeare, but of aspects of life represented by a fine and lofty mind. And Shakespeare is great, greater than any other English writer because unlike a Milton or Wordsworth, Coleridge or Keats or Shelley, all great in themselves, Shakespeare presented varied aspects and characters of life through the prism of his mind, and river of his thought. Appreciation of such aspects is possible only through reading and study, though the stage play or movie may have its own limited aesthetic aspects. The movie or play is a passing show; the effect of reading lasts a lifetime.

Procession of characters from Shakespeare's plays.Only the mind's eye can behold them all!


Unfortunately, with the rise of the industry of awarding degrees by universities, such finer aspects are being discarded. The latest revised editions of Shakespeare's plays by the Oxford University Press are oriented towards presenting them mainly as meant for acting- special efforts being made to assist "actors and directors of the play", as some editor puts it. A play like Coriolanus is subject to :

• Ideological approaches
• Right-wing interpretation
• Anti-heroic interpretation
• Left-wing interpretation
• Historical relativity
• Post-modernist interpretation

This is beside the political, psychological and existential interpretation, apart from the Feminist and Freudian! We are bound to ask: Can Coriolanus or even Shakespeare survive such an assault? Is this the way to treat great literature? We are counting the trees, and failing to appreciate the beauty of the wood.  Well, our academics are licensed to maul any author or character in the name of 'research' and for a degree. The days of regarding literature as a guide to understanding life are gone. It is now one more way to make money. This is the impact of modernism.

No later epic poet has surpassed Homer; no dramatist (not even Shakespeare) has eclipsed Aeschylus and Sophocles; no historian has bettered Herodotus and Thucydides; and no philosopher has come close to matching Plato and Aristotle in the depth,breadth, and subtlety of their thought.

From: The Greek Search For Wisdom by Michael K. Kellogg. Prometheus Books, 2012.

KNOWLEDGE WHICH SAVES

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 KNOWLEDGE WHICH SAVES

There has been an explosion of  information, and knowledge in all fields, and it is daily growing. It is so unimaginably vast and uncontrollably fast, no one can make  any meaning out of it. Buckminster Fuller estimated that human knowledge doubled every century, up to 1900. By the Second World War, the period had shrunk to 25 years. Now, it is said to double every 12 months. This has simply numbed us.We have lost our ability to assimilate, interpret and make use of it.. Some fragments are used by vested interests for profit, but this involves hiding the more harmful aspects- such as in nuclear industry, or even the mobile phone. Take a simple instance of the bore well. While science and the technology based on it have enabled us to tap ground water, the other aspect of the science- the knowledge that this will lead to exploitation of groundwater faster than it can be replenished, and it has serious consequences for the future is totally ignored. Every scientific practice adopted in the past such as chlorination of water, use of DDT, pesticides etc has proved to be harmful by the march of the same science. But the old practices are not given up 

Buckminster Fuller. American architest and Systems Theorist. He always thought of the welfare of the world.

Picture taken from www.theutopian.net.

copyright position not stated. Acknowledged with thanks.

Rachel Carson, American marine biologist whose 1962 book The Silent Spring revealed the bad effects of DDT and created enironmental awareness on a worldwide scale. The book was opposed by the chemical companies, but eventually led to DDT being banned.

T.S.Eliot wrote in 1934:

Where is the Life we have lost  in living?

Where is the Wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the Knowledge we have lost in information?

T.S.Eliot.

The academic system adds its own distortions. The highest mark of academic distinction is PhD.. One has to write a new 'thesis' to earn it. In the hard sciences, you can do it. But how do you do in the humanities or social sciences? You have to debunk the old authorities, attack the old standards. Hitherto, people read Hamlet as a play- for its story, development of plot, portrayal of character, the quality of the writing, its poetry, its philosophy, etc. Thousands of scholars have written about them. what will a new PhD aspirant do? Well, he can go attack Shakespeare himself. One can take a character and analyse it from the Feminist, Marxist, Freudian, Historical, existential, deconstruction, modernist, post-modernist etc angles and show how Shakespeare was deficient in each of these areas. Ultimately, Hamlet is forgotten, some new theory is established, and one gets his PhD He doesn't have to deal with any fact or truth; he only has to be logical in what he says. And what he says must be 'new'. 

With such standards and practices, there is no more consensus on any subject. Today, so called scholars do not even agree on what constitutes 'classics' or that we should have a 'canon' in literature studies- a set of core books which represent the intellectual  inclinations and development  of the society. Either one need not agree, or may prescribe something according to one's ideology. Thus today, people ask why literature students should study Shakespeare or Milton, or even Dickens or Hardy to get their degree! Obviously, you can stage Hamlet without the prince of Denmark himself, if you hold a PhD!

Extend this to social theory. One doesn't have to accept anything as sacred, or even as standard. Matthew Arnold wrote in 1869:

National Portraits Gallery,London.

There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable, not a received tradition which does not threaten to dissolve.

Arnold expressed it in his poetry too.

Wandering between two worlds, one dead,
 The other powerless to be born, 
 With nowhere yet to rest

                              ( Grande Chartreuse)

(Life)
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude,nor peace, nor help for pain.

(People in modern times )

are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

It is known that he wrote it in the Victorian era when Christian dogma and philosophy were increasingly rejected by the educated classes. But there has been a general decline of faith or certitude in anything in life.

The sea of faith
Was once,too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd;
But I now only hear 
Its melancholy, long,withdrawing roar.

                                    (Dover Beach)

Amid the daily clash of a thousand philosophies, claims, opinions and views, what does man rely on? What does he take to be correct?

If we examine the social philosophies and cults which have risen in the last 300 years, including the French Revolution, and the Russian Revolution, every one of them had failed; and the revolutionaries and reformers who replaced the old order proved to be bloodier and worse than those they replaced. At the beginning of the 20th century, the West had lost its faith in its religious heritage, and lost its hold on its civilisation- with every idea and institution that created, nurtured and sustained it having been repudiated and undermined. "God is dead; we have killed him" declared Nietzsche. And from every philosopher, poet , artist , academic the echo returned, magnified. We do not know about the death of God, but old Europe was dead. Modernism had risen.

"When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing- they believe in anything", said G.K.Chesterton. People are today swayed by just any theory or ideology, in any field. In an educated country like the US, just about anything has followers by the million- from evangelical Christianity to anti-Semitism to apocalypse, liberalism, conservatism, neoconservatism, multiculturalism, feminism, minority ism, Paganism, spiritism, belief in angels, science,creationism, evolution, independent design, etc. In fields like politics or economics there is no end to theorising. Through all this, most people do not know what they believe in , or what that belief means. They like a leader, believe in what he says, and the rest follows- usually delusion and disappointment. How to judge an idea or theory?

Sri Ramakrishna gave us a rule. He related an observation. In the flowing waters of a river, we find small pieces of wood or barks drifting. They float all right. But when a crow or other bird lands on it, it sinks! But we also see boats made of the same wood carrying many people, and huge ships carrying thousands. So the test is not whether it can float-but whether it can save!

In the modern age, since the Age of Enlightenment began, hundreds of new ideas have been proposed; reforms have been undertaken; revolutions have taken place. New political ideologies and arrangements have held sway. But the basic human problems have remained. In some respects, and in some countries, the situation has turned worse. Owen Chadwick, once history professor at Cambridge,  said that two types of unsettlement had occurred throughout 19th century:

"unsettlement in society, mainly due to new machines, growth of big cities, the massive transfer of populations ; and the unsettlement in minds, rising out of a heap of new knowledge in science and history, and out of the consequent argument."

 (From: The Secularization of Europe  In The Nineteenth Century by Owen Chadwick,1975.Cambridge University Press)

Owen Chadwick, National Portraits Gallery, London.


Any thoughtful observer will see that exactly the same developments are taking place in India today. And all our political leaders and economic pundits are doling out the same old ideas which did not work in Europe!

DANCING TO NEW TUNES

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DANCING TO NEW TUNES

Painting, sculpture, poetry,drama, music- these have been the traditional arts of mankind down the ages. These have served as the vehicles of self-expression, and also as medium through which society transmitted its culture to the secceeding generations. Poetry- almost all ancient literature of all cultures is in this form- is the largest source from which we learn about the course of human life on earth, more ancient, and more reliable than even archaeology, though it is also subjected to varied interpretations.

Literary tradition was almost entirely oral. It meant that people were mostly unlettered, though they could understand and appreciate poetry. There were people to write down the literature, and they were limited in number. Most people were content with hearing, and eager to do so. We learn that Ramcharit Manas of Tulsidas was read in public places like road junctions, and those who could, wrote it down as it was being recited. This could account for the differences in the versions of some stanzas.Even in the 19th century, we learn that inslaments of the novels of Charles Dickens were read in pubs and taverns by literate persons, and were eagerly listened to by the illiterate admirers. Literacy was no guarantee of interest in the subject, and illiteracy did not mean indifference to a fine story or song- it was no barrier to learning. It is the modern age which has mistaken  literacy for education.

With the invention of printing, and the spread of literacy through mass education, and the medium of newspapers and periodical magazines, the reading habit spread through the 19th and 20th centuries. But this has now been overtaken by the visual media. However, the quality of what is printed and circulated has steadily fallen. Lewis Mumford pointed out one glaring feature of the reign of technology: while printing technology has advanced far, most of our press coverage and writing is "lurid". He said:

On the one side there is the gigantic printing press, a miracle of fine articulation... on the other the contents of the papers themselves recording the most vulgar and elementary emotional states.....There the impersonal, the cooperative, the objective; here the limited, the subjective, the recalcitrant, the ego, violent and full of hatred and fear,etc.

Lewis Mumford, with a quatation from one of his famous books.
By R.W.Kenny (Own Work) CC BY SA.4 Creative commons. Wikimedia.org.html

This was written more than 40 years ago. Now, the situation is much worse. Just today (25 May 2015) the Times of India, Bangalore reports on the front page the news of the death of John Nash, the Nobel Laureate mathematician in a car crash; the deails are provided on page 12. But on both pages, there appear  stamp-sized pictures of Nash. But go to the last pages of the paper, you have big pictures of some sports persons, in cluding one of a bloke opening a champagne bottle!. And an advertisement for some fashion item,showing a woman, displaying something about the 'Blenders Pride' brand of liquor by Seagram- a neat way to cicumvent the rule that liquor advertisements should not be carried! And we are told there:"taste life in style"! (Of the total 20 pages of the main section, 6 carry advertisements. The 6 page supplement carries mainly information about  filmdom, pictures of some stars and starlets, and advertisements.)In Bharat, a Nobel Laureate is nobody before a filmstar, or cricketer, or local politician. That is the scale of values of....well, the learned editor!

John Forbes Nash Jr.
Received the Nobel memorial prize ,1994 in Economics.
By Peter Badge/Typo/ (OTRS submission by way of Jimmy Wales.
CC BY-SA 3.0 Creative commons via Wikimedia Commons.

But the newspaper has been overtaken by the visual media.I have not watched TV or any of the Channels for 20 years and so, cannot comment on their coverage or contents, except saying that it is even more lurid than the newspaper.

The mother (or father) of all visual media is the cinema. Even in this age of home theatre, Blue Ray, etc, people say the thrill of watching a movie like Deewar,Sholay, Sarkar or Chandramukhi in a theatre is unmatched.

The Lumiere Brothers who invented the motion picture.

There is no doubt that cinema started out as a cultural medium of our age. It afforded unmatched opportunities for fusing several other art forms- dramatics, music, poetry, literature in the form of dialogues, etc. It could bring to life historical eras or personalities through period costume, language and sets. It could take the audience to historic and beautiful locales. The directors were artistic, employed other artists, developed techniques of visual presentation and dramatisation. But like the print media, it has also lost its way and landed in a world of 'what will sell'.So, it focuses on woman and violence.

Cinema in its development has been influenced by growth of technology, and the innate grammar or 'fix' that has grown with it.On one side are purely technical things like the wide screen, Dolby sound, colour, camera, etc. On the other are the  factors which silently influence and seriously alter our sense of morality and even decency. Showing nudity, public kissing, scenes of intimacy, use of words with double meanings, obscene gestures and expressions, wanton violence,etc have become the norm. 

Three of  our greatest film makers and directors. They were idealistic,artistic and never vulgar or cheap. They chose great stories and presented them with fine music and artistic embellishment.
I resort to the postage stamps, as other fine pictures involve copyright hassles.

Even so, there have been individual artistes who refuse to compromise with moral standards. A star like Gregory Peck would not accept a role that violated conventional morality- a feature that made his role as Atticus Finch so perfect. A singer like Talat Mahmood would not sing  unless he felt the lyrics to be inoffensive. And public too would not accept compromise with morality, or a hero being shown as morally questionable. In all the so called Westerns in Hollywood, a bad man is never shown as winning, in the end. Clint Eastwood who figured in so many Spaghetti Westerns celebrating violence, produced a movie 'Unforgiven' showing that violence does not win or pay. 

In the 50s, Alfred Hitchcock produced a movie 'Rear Window.' The hero is a press photographer, who is injured and incapacitated for some time, confined to his wheelchair.With his camera, he scans the neighbours' apartments in his complex, and unearths a murder. It was a thrilling movie. But the audience did not accept it. They asked how a director like Hitchcock could indulge in or extol invasion of privacy- a cardinal western value. And they asked the star- James Stewart, who again had a reputation for playing straight characters- how he could agree to act such a role. Those were the fifties, of course, and now no such questions would be asked.

But even now, some actors are particular. Before agreeing to star in 'Road to Perdition' (2002), Tom Hanks demanded that violence  should be cut to the minimum. And this movie is a modern gem- it essays the nature of gang violence, with the message that violence does not pay. But more than that, it deals delicately with the subject of father-son relationship, and shows the anxiety of the father to prevent his son from taking to violence. The film is developed by visuals, more than dialogue.

Tom Hanks.

 Years earlier, John Wayne had likewise insisted on altering the story to ensure that  he would not be shown shooting someone in the back; nor would he consent to a young boy, his admirer, indulging in shooting. He in fact makes the boy toss away the gun. And he showed his love for his horse,which he had had for ten years, by bringing it into the film in a memorable way.  This was in his last appearance in the movies- " The Shootist" (1976). Well, with all the muck in the industry, individual artists can be great people.

John Wayne- the Duke, always appeared larger than life!

We also see such greatness in Indian film personalities, especially singers. Mohammad Rafi would  not seek royalty, once he was paid for singing. And he would sing for free for indigent producers. Talat Mahmood once found Mukesh without work- and he told the Music directors to give the songs meant for him to Mukesh. That was in Madhumati (1958). Mukesh's fortunes rose with it. Once, Mukesh was to record a song  but he could not, due to indisposition. Not wanting to wait, the producers made  dummy recording in the voice of Manhar Udhas, brother of Pankaj Udhas. When Mukesh turned up for the final recording,and listened to this version, he found it to be quite nice and asked that it be retained! When Roshan adapted a tune from S.D.Burman, he openly told him he had done so!

But such things are exceptional.Every industry, every art form, every technology brings with it its own logic, grammar and norms. And only those who succumb to or master them can ride the wave. Today the film industry, like the print media, represents the basest instincts of the most depraved kind. No force on earth can change it for the better. Official censorship only sharpens the offenders. Money is the language that unites all arts and artists today.All else is show, and  excuse.

But let us not close this with sad thoughts. Even the dark cloud has a silver lining. The movie Deewar is about two brothers. One becomes a goon and rich. The other becomes a (straight) police official. Once the goon brother confronts the younger one and reels off all that he has acquired by joining the underworld and asks the younger one what he has got by being honest. He simply replies: "I have got my mother with me" -mere paas Ma hai.This must be considered the greatest of all dialogues in our Hindi film history.

Mere paas Maa hai!
What magic words in a counry which regards mother as God and worships God as mother!
Picture taken from Filmfare. Thanks.


 Likewise, in the movie "The Road To Perdition" the boy is asked whether Sullivan (his father) was good or bad. The boy simply replies: "He was my father".

  

• I saw then that my father's only fear was that his son would follow the same road. And that was the last time I ever held a gun. People always thought I grew up on a farm. And I guess, in a way, I did. But I lived a lifetime before that, in those six weeks on the road in the winter of 1931. When people ask me if Michael Sullivan was a good man, or if there was just no good in him at all, I always give the same answer. I just tell them... he was my father.

Like the lotus blooming in muddy waters, we have such gems even in the film world!

ARE WE BECOMING PHILISTINES?

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ARE WE BECOMING PHILISTINES?

Almost every aspect of Indian public life and thought is deeply influenced by foreign ideas. Our Constitution, govt. based on the executive, legislature and judiciary, the system of administration based on a permanent cadre of (notoriously unhelpful but miscalled) civil service, our education system right from the pre-primary level, our economic arrangement, our media and entertainment- everything is run on foreign ideas. And many of them serve foreign interests.

While our academic institutions purvey foreign thoughts among our youngsters, our newspapers and electronic media disseminate such trends among the public at large with tremendous zeal. The reach of the media is so enormous through 24x7 satellite TV, that no corner of the country is free from it. 

The main aim and effect of such efforts is to make our people mindless consumers of the products of the greedy market manipulators. The products in the educational system dull the mind, and the products on the markets and the malls drain the money.. Now, you don't even have to go out to have your pocket picked: on line marketers target your very bank account, making you sit comfortably in front  of your PC. Oh, it is so easy to be persuaded to buy a needless product, and to pay for it on line! You may buy it at a discount, and pay by EMI! Sahir Ludhianvi wrote beautifully over 60 years ago:

Bhaav agar badha bhi daale sethji  yaar  gam na kar, khaaye ja majhe ke saath jab talak udhar de.

Kishore Kumar sang it so hilariously in Taxi Driver! (1954)

There was a time when we were told that our people had become 'mere hewers of wood and drawers of water' and some leaders made efforts to spread mass education, so that they could be culturally uplifted. Education has become mass now- and has made us all mass consumers of mass products on a massive scale,  as Ivan Illich explained,failing which our GDP-based economy will collapse! But such mass education is also in a mess- right from admissions, testing, evaluating the performance,announcing results and awarding the blessed certificate, everything is in a mess, as the newspapers report daily!

Our age is the age of mass consumption. In his 1960 book " The Stages of Economic Growth", economist W.W.Rostow proposed a non-communist model of development in which he called the last stage of growth as the age of 'high mass consumption'. But those were the days when man had no idea of or concern for environment. But high mass consumption has come to rule us. Consumption - shopping is such a compulsive part of our life. 

W.W.Rostow.


In his 1968 play, 'The Price', American writer Arthur Miller has one of his characters say:

"Because you see the main thing today is- shopping. Years ago a person, he was unhappy, didn't know what to do with himself- he'd go to church, start a revolution- something. Today you're unhappy? Can't figure it out? What is the salvation? Go shopping."

Arthur Miller. Public domain.Wikimedia commons.

American historian Daniel Boorstin wrote in 1973:

"GOODS SUITABLE for the millionaire", R.H.Macey's advertised in 1887, "at prices in reach of the millions." The fixed price had helped democratise the marketplace....Consumers with money to spend were eager to find something to buy. But they were more uncertain than ever about what they "needed", what was really essential...

New classes of merchandise came into being, characterized not by their quality or function, but by their price.

From: The Americans : The Democratic Experience, Part Two, chap.12.Vintage Books,1973.

 Daniel J.Boorstin. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

To day, consumers need not be with money! They should have the Credit Card!

(But let us also note that poverty was not always associated with  lack of honesty or character. Indeed, in his fine novel Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens makes his hero Nicholas say this:

 "Poverty should engender an honest pride, that it may not lead and tempt us to unworthy actions, and we may preserve that self-respect which a hewer of wood and drawer of water may maintain, and does better in maintaining that than a monarch in preserving his...."

It may safely be said that today in our 'developed' economies, those who are tempted and indulge in "unworthy acts" are all the elite products of mass education!  Higher the education, higher the temptation, and graver the unworthy act.

Charles Dickens

The point is, mass education has dried up the very roots of culture. Education is identified with literacy, schooling, jobs, ( we cannot speak of a career proper as most techies- the most visible part of the educated elite- hop jobs regularly), remuneration package, etc. Where does poor culture figure in here- except it be the culture of consumption?

The very idea of culture is anathema to our new elites and opinion-makers. The word is seen by them as a sign of stagnation if not backwardness. But this very stance is indicative of their own backwardness.

National Portraits Gallery, London.
 


Matthew Arnold begins his fine book Culture And Anarchy (1869) with the stance of two 'liberal' ( the equivalent of the present 'left, liberal, progressives) advocates, who took a fling at "the friends and preachers of culture" thus:

People who talk about what they call culture!- by which they mean a smattering of the two dead languages of Greek and Latin. (John Bright, liberal politician and MP from 1847 to 1889)

Perhaps the very silliest of the cant of the day is the cant about culture....The man of culture is in politics one of the poorest mortals alive.(Frederic Harrison, English barrister and critic.)

This was in the middle of the 19th century. Now, after 150 years, our leftist friends are expressing similar thoughts about Indian culture- calling Sanskrit a dead language, in the place of Greek and Latin. That is how progressive they are! And politics has become such a dirty pool that no decent man of culture would like to dip in it.

All this has been brought about mainly by the spread of mass education. It has spread literacy, but no love for or interest in intellectual pursuits. The so called brightest of our youngsters take to technical education, not intellectual pursuits- we still import our intellectual suits from abroad. The spread of income and wealth in society- it cannot be denied, though poverty too is spreading- has resulted in high consumption of mass produced goods and services. The current forms of entertainment are devoid of cultural content- ie not related to or sourced from our national roots. Even our film music is copied from western tunes, as also the costume.  And this has adversely affected every form of our national cultural activities- from our natural dress , costume and cosmetics, to our arts.

This is what is called Philistinism- an attitude that despises or undervalues culture, spirituality, art, beauty, the intellect, and promotes attachment to immediate satisfaction and material interests. This word has Biblical connotations, but is now derived from German sources. In the 18th Century, German poet and statesman Goethe said that-

the philistine not only ignores all conditions of life which are not his own, but also demands that the rest of mankind should fashion its mode of existence after his own.

 

Goethe. Public domain. Wikimedia commons.


This word was brought into public discussions on culture by Matthew Arnold in England in the 19th century and he said:

Philistine must have originally meant a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the children of the light...who believes that most of our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich.

In the last century, the Russian-American writer Vladimir Nabokov explained the word Philistine thus:

A full grown person whose interests are of a material and common place nature and whose mentality is formed of the stock of ideas and conditional ideals of his or her group at the time....."Vulgarian" is more or less synonymous with "philistine.....I may also use the term "genteel" and "bourgeois".Genteel implies the lace-curtain refined vulgarity, which is worse than simple coarseness....The term bourgeois I use following Flaubert, not Marx. Bourgeois in Flaubert's sense is a state of mind, not a state of pocket. A bourgeois is a smug philistine, dignified vulgarian.

Vladimir Nabokov.

From: www.vadams-eng102.blogspot.in/2011/08/good-readers-and-good-writers.html

Acknowledged with thanks.

This is one of those words which cannot be defined sharply, but has to be understood .Think of the lakhs of youngsters who pass through our education mill with views and opinions firmly implanted by the system under the authority of the State, to a uniform standard, and the kind of lifestyle it results in. The system totally lacks any idea of culture or refinement or spirituality. The youngsters are solely endowed with material aspirations and some technical means and devices to seek their fulfilment through. 

We see this happening in India, especially since Independence.But this is the universal trend. The situation in the US-to which our own youngsters flock, first for higher education and then for employment- is so serious that Thomas Sowell, one of the leading professors with over 40 years of teaching experience says candidly:

All across this country, the school curriculum has been invaded by psychological-conditioning programs which not only take up time sorely needed for intellectual development, but also promote an emotionalized  and anti-intellectual way of responding to the challenges facing every individual and every society. Worst of all, the psychotherapeutic curriculum systematically undermines the parent-child relationship and the shared values which make a society possible....

....too many American schools are turning out students who are not only intellectually incompetent but also morally confused, emotionally alienated, and socially maladjusted.

 At the college and university level, the intrusion of non-intellectual and anti-intellectual material into the curriculum takes more of an ideological, rather than a psychological, form. New courses, new departments, and whole new programs concentrate on leading students to preconceived ideological conclusions, rather than developing the student's ability to analyze issues so as to reach independent conclusions....the general approach is the same, not only in its fundamental anti-intellectualism, but also in its hostility to American society and Western civilization, and the tendentiousness or even dishonesty with which it attempts to indoctrinate.

From :Inside American Education by Prof.Thomas Sowell.Preface. The Free Press, 1993.

Thomas Sowell.

From: www.tsowell,com.

Copyright position not known. Used here for purely non-commercial educational purpose.

We can clearly see that this is exactly what is being done in India too through the educational system- denigrate India, deny the Hindu cultural and civilisational heritage, praise the invaders,and colonisers, cut at the roots of society!

 And this is where modernity is reversing the whole historical trend of entire humanity. Every civilisation on earth so far, has tried-with varying degrees of success- to overcome the animality of man, to counter the external activity , caused by the necessities of external nature,  by cultivating the inner nature , resulting in some peace of soul or poise of the spirit. At one level, there is the attempt to overcome the sheer animality-through morality and ethics- commonly called religion;this results in some "inward peace and satisfaction"; but there is a still higher endeavour, trying to reach spiritual perfection, not just moral perfection, which results in the "peace that passeth understanding". But the material civilisation that is caused by the spread of philistinism is destroying all that the highest minds in all civilisations so far in human history held as sacred or valuable or worthwhile! We are again reduced to the level of hewers of wood and drawers of water. But alas! even this is not going to be possible in a few years: the woods are disappearing , and the water we draw is increasingly polluted. Victory to modern civilisation and all its advocates! 

 Remnants of the famed Nalanda University after it was finally destroyed by Turkish Muslim invaders in the 12th century.
By Arunava de Sarkar (Own work) CC BY-SA 3.0
Creative commons via Wikimedia commons.

Muslim Invaders destroyed our temples and educational structures.Macaulay destroyed the very Hindu mind. After Independence, leftists captured the 'commanding heights' of our educational system and institutions such as ICHR and foisted on the country the Marxist interpretation of history- the chief aim of which is to alienate young Indians from our own cultural heritage. Thus what happened in the US is happening in India too! So, we are also 'developing'.