KNOWLEDGE WHICH SAVES

A WIDE CANVAS

 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!