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The responsibility of the intelligentsia

(Convocation address by late Prof. Ediriwira Sarachchandra at the university of Sri Jayawardanapura 1992) (Extracted from the book 'Tradition, values and modernization: an Asian perspective' collected papers of Ediriwira Sarachchandra; Edited by P.B. Galahitiyawa and K.N.O. Dharmadasa)

Venerable Maha Sangha, Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Deans, Professors, Heads of Departments, Members of the Academic Staff, Graduands, Ladies and Gentlemen, On an occasion like this our minds naturally turn towards the young people who have completed a period of tutelage in an institution of higher learning, namely the University of Sri Jayawardanapura, where they were sequestered for some years and are now entering the large world in order to become its responsible citizens.

The first thing I want to say, and this is the basic theme of my address today, is that they are entering a world that has changed rapidly in the intervening years, and has become very complex and difficult to understand. Nevertheless they should view it as a challenge to them, a challenge to their intelligence and to the wisdom they have acquired during their period of apprenticeship, and it will be a reassuring thought that this world has need of them, and of more and more of their likes.

It is a world that needs people who have been disciplined to think rationally, to divest their minds of prejudices and not allow irrelevant emotions to befuddle their judgement. There are many theories put forward about the world of today and its future. You have the capacity to sort these out and help to resolve the confusion that exists in people's minds.

In the past years we have been subjected to a barrage of influences from outside, mostly from the west, and in most instances we have been unable to exercise our judgement as to what we should have accepted and what we should have rejected. In the period I am referring to, development on the western model was thrust on us, with deleterious consequences. It has resulted in the rich becoming richer and the poor poorer, leading to the increase of social disparities and the intensification of class antagonism.

There was also a facade of general affluence in the country at large as a result of the new rich indulging in conspicuous consumption, flaunting imported furniture and other gadjets in their homes and luxury cars on the road. More damaging than all this, however, is the dissemination of a materialistic and hedonistic philosophy of life, and the decline of moral and aesthetic values as a result.

It will be the duty of the new intelligentsia to examine carefully the theory that the technological culture of the industrialised countries of the west will be the global culture of the future. For this to happen it is necessary that the indigenous cultures in the various countries of the world go out of existence in order to make room for the technological culture of the west.

Is it at all conceivable that each and every nation that has nurtured its own culture through the ages, handing it down from generation to generation, will exchange this legacy for a soulless technological culture? After all a culture is not something that is thrust on a people or falls on them from the skies, it is created by them over the ages to satisfy their material and spiritual needs.

The tendencies witnessed all round the world today do not indicate any likelihood of such a thing happening, that while nations may adopt technological inventions for their uses, they will reject the core values of their culture. Take for instance the resuscitation of Islam fundamentalism, and the search of the nations emancipated from the bonds of colonialism, for a national identity.

Thinkers in western countries are beginning to be critical of the technological culture and to see its shortcomings as well as its inability to satisfy basic human needs. professor Henryk Skolimowski of the University of Michigan, says "The social legacy of technological change is something that we should really ponder over. I am talking about those social inventions that came in the wake of technological change or were induced by it in recent times.... Technological change has produced undesirable social mutants: the atomised family and the isolated individual who is in touch with the world by touching buttons but cannot be touched by his neighbours or be in touch with himself..... There is a great deal of loose talk and often plain rubbish going on about the greatness of the coming age of the computer.... In what sense and to what degree can computers make up free? The possession of information does not make you free.

Do we communicate better with each other when we have computers at our disposal? Hardly. The essence of human exchange is the capacity to empathise with the innermost states of other beings, as well as an exchange of emotions, visions, things that make us uniquely human, the kind of things that cannot be easily, if at all, translated into bits of information".

Professor Skolimowski says, further, "It seems that there is a law that governs technological change: The more complicated technological change becomes the more it disengages us from life".

In short what the professor says is that technological culture makes us slaves of machines. Hence we lose our sense of responsibility. To quote him once again, he says, "In the consumer society we want to escape from responsibility, assuming that without it our lives will be easier and better, whereas in fact our lives become shallower and cheaper... Responsibility enhances the variety of our existence when we possess it, or diminishes us when we lack it.

What blood is to the body responsibility is to the spirit. to be a human being is to live in the state of responsibility. When we are unable to be responsible, we are, in a sense, annihilating our status as human beings".

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