VAGABONDAGE

Einstein’s undergraduate teacher Minkowski once said “…I really would not have thought him capable of it”. He was talking about Einstein’s paper on Special Relativity. Throughout his schooling days, Einstein was thought to be “a dreamer, lazy and insubordinate”. What they did not know was that he was bored of bookish education. Or that he was pondering questions such as what it would be to travel at the speed of light!The problem was his school was not equipped to nurture his creativity and “dreaming”.

Though more than a century has passed, things haven’t changed much, in our country, at least. This education system which thrives on commercialization and academic success alone cannot nurture creativity. Maybe it was because of his unparalleled genius, but Einstein managed to come out if it intact. Not a lot of people are this lucky. Many a genius would have fallen prey to it.

Education is meant to equip a child for life, not for college. Schools lure parents with the promise that they will get their kids into college (IIT seems to be the bait of choice). Some people who have natural talents for art, music or what-not are caught in this mad frenzy and end up as engineers. What this has led to is a huge number of unfit engineers. What else can you expect when you force someone into a field they have no aptitude for? Imagine what would have happened if Mozart’s parents forced him to become an engineer? Or if Newton was a dancer?

Each child is different and has specific needs. Each child has certain talents, and only when you are willing to look at him/her as an individual can you recognize those talents. Parents need to get this as much as teachers do. What we need is an education system based on all round development of a child. It is in school that we form foundations that last for life, if these foundations don’t include creativity, art, music, freedom of thought and sports, there is a good chance the child may grow up to be a machine.

The state of schooling is heading for worse rather than better, what with all these new schools that claim to start IIT training from 5th class or less! These institutes are neither fit nor worthy of educating our young. However, these are the schools that thrive today, the reason being that parents are too scared to wander from the herd. If everyone’s doing it, it’s got to be right, right?

All hope is not lost though. There are some schools which do understand what a child really is. They find it hard to survive, however, considering the commercial state of schooling nowadays. At this point in the article I am not really sure who this is directed at. I guess I’m just trying to tickle your thinking bone. Anyway, here’s wishing the death of all the schools that drill 14 year old kids for 12 hours a day.

Men have fought each other since time immemorial. Some wars are fought for power, some for freedom, some for revenge and some for women. Whatever the reason, one thing has been common; people get killed! Man has this animalistic tendency to resolve conflict with violence rather than with reason.

Jonathan Swift, in his book Gulliver’s Travels takes a satirical dig at the wars of his time; Traditionally, Lilliputians broke boiled eggs on the larger end. An Emperor comes along and decrees that all eggs be broken on the smaller end. The differences between Big-Endians and Little-Endians give rise to "six rebellions wherein one Emperor lost his life, and another his crown".

Usually neither of the two sides in a war is right all the way. Take the war on terror for instance; killing innocents is never justified, but these terrorists didn’t do it because they liked screaming “Jihad!” and blowing themselves up. They did it because they were pushed to the point of desperation (this is what American author and journalist William Blum has to say http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/WhyThateUS.html).

I am not taking any sides here, just trying to present the facts. The terror attacks led to the deaths of thousands of innocents, and so did the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. Each side believes these killings were unavoidable, and each side has its own accounts of the “truth”. A Hero of a nation is the villain of the other.  

Let me give you an example to show how even the law can be bent; The Bush administration got away with torture of inmates at Guantanamo Bay detention camp. They claimed that “Protections of the Third Geneva Convention do not apply to al-Qaeda or Taliban fighters, Article III of the Geneva convention only applies to uniformed soldiers and guerrillas who wear distinctive insignia, bear arms openly, and abide by the rules of war.” That sounds like some smart manipulation of words to me. By the way, The Third Geneva Convention, first adopted in 1929, defines humanitarian protections for prisoners of war.

So, what can be done, in the modern day, to avoid wars? I can’t give you any secret formula that we have been ignoring all along. The answer is the obvious one. There is only one path I see, we need to stop being so selfish. Human beings need to start acting human and be willing to share. Most of the wars are a result of man’s greed for more than his share. Examples are plenty; European colonization of various lands and the subsequent fights for freedom, The oil factor behind America’s war on Iraq, The Hundred Years’ War between England and France, among others.

What we need is a wiser human society that does not consider war an option. We need a United Nations where every member has equal say (Yes, even the insignificant ones), unlike the present one where a few powerful nations bully the others. And when a nation commits aggressive action against one of the members, all of the other members should be united in support of that member. This will, hopefully, scare off the bully. As the future leaders of mankind, we are the ones responsible for this shift.

This is easier said than done, because it involves the powerful nations relinquishing their power. But what the leaders should realize is that the present system is not working, to attain peace the power needs to be distributed. The present system leaves the weak with nothing and inevitably leads to war, and war is definitely not the answer. When you think about it, it sounds stupid to say “when we have a conflict, we decide who wins by killing each other”.

Need more convincing that we are being stupid? Then we need to consider the world food crisis; the world produces enough food to feed everyone. But the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says that 925 million people were undernourished in 2010. That is one in about 7 people in the world! The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food. The real shocking thing is that close to half of all food produced worldwide is wasted. (Source:  worldhunger.org).

So the problem is not production, it is just that some people are getting almost nothing while some are getting more than they need. I am not a communist, but the way I see it, food, water and shelter are every man’s birth right.

In any society differences are inevitable, but a more evolved species would resolve them with reason and with mutual interests in mind. Human beings will not survive another World War, but unless there is a massive shift in our handling of conflicts and our treatment of the weaker nations, that is where we are headed.

I would like to finish by quoting Odysseus from the movie Troy; “War is young men dying and old men talking.”

When my friends told me they were planning a trip to Leh, Ladakh I was so excited I learnt everything there was to know about the place in a few days. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, here’s a small introduction; Leh, Ladakh is in the middle of Kashmir and is surrounded by the Himalayas. It is at an altitude of 11,500 ft. and is home to a few beautiful lakes, a high altitude desert, lots of monasteries and the very hospitable Ladakhi people.

Lots of factors were working against us going on this trip, like; high possibility of AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness), possible closing down of roads due to snow fall and we had just three days to spend in Leh. At one point we even came close to calling it off, but thanks to some of my more resolute friends, we didn’t. Now, having been left spellbound by Leh, I realize how close we got to committing the biggest mistake of our lives.