Learning to unlearn

The week that was, was seemingly very busy all around. This is what I gather from watching a wide-selection of television channels, reading the news-wires and keeping my eyes and ears wide open. As I have shared with you on a previous occasion, I have what it takes now to gather much of what is happening around me and in the wide 'big' world of the 'global village' out there.

Assimilate all

A broadband Internet connection, a Satellite TV link, social networks of Face Book, Twitter, Skype, Linkedin, Wayn and access to some publications; among them e-books are some of the 'productive tools' I have with me. I also have the privilege of being able to literally 'touch the ground' and make eye-ball-to-eye-ball contact with people in the village where I live. Among them are farmers, fishermen, three-wheeler operators, those who toil each day to scrape out a living from the 'sippi' (shell) beds; digging and sieving it to sell to the chicken-feed makers in the big city, courageous mothers determined to make a better life for their children, the mudalali's (traders) who make 'cool' middleman's profits off all of them.

I observe the feats of the drunks, local mavericks, regular state sector teachers who also become fee levying-tuition-teachers, government doctors-in-private practise for fees and others who 'live off' the suffering of others, those who choose to beg or take on never-to-return borrowing. And then, to assimilate all of this and make sense of much of it, sitting here in what my friends call, hiding in the wilderness, I have the important non-renewable resource that most I know claim they don't have; i.e. time.

I am now 'retired', meaning that I do not do anything to suit the agenda of another. I may do that sometime; only because I want to, by choice, not because I have to. A plan I designed for myself when I was 40 is now put into action. I always wanted to retire early. My target was to begin at age 60. But it took me a few years more, and I am well onto it now.

For free

I always wanted to have time for myself. To do the things I wished I could do, but could not. Not anybody's fault but mine, for I let greed drive me most of the time. I stopped 'earning' about three years ago, with a 'nest egg' to draw interest income to support me. That sometime dwindles when the Central Bank wishes to regulate the economy to encourage 'investment'. I do not play the share-market or the lotteries, for I always believed in the ethic of hard-clean-work, not on gaining or living-off forced or unexpected windfalls.

Mahatma Gandhi

Julian Assange

I had access to 'free education' from Grade One to the end of my university learning. When I was a cub-university teacher I was awarded a scholarship to study abroad, courtesy of the government of Sri Lanka and that of the USA. To me, the scholarship I had was one I got, depriving another Sri Lankan of it. The 'free education' was supported by the taxpayers and many other toiling millions of Sri Lankans. They will always remain embedded as my benefactor-donors in my mind's eye; though faceless, duly revered and much respected.

Dogmatic nonsense

It is also payback time. For what other's gave me and for what I owe them. It is also time to reflect, on the many mistakes I made along the way and learn from them. And it is time to learn to unlearn the dogmatic nonsense, much of which I gathered along the way, for I believed then, that much of which I had access to; to be education and learning.

Back on to the busy week and the lessons unlearnt. The United Nations was busy making "Access to Internet by citizens of nations" a basic human right. My 'learning' told me that it was to bridge the digital divide between those who have and do not have access to Internet connectivity. The unlearning I do, point me to the fact that the digital divide was a topic of discussion since the mid 1990s but the UN system was not too concerned about making it a basic human right then. But today, when Syria bans the Internet and that restricts access of the Western world to the Syrians and China sometimes chooses restrict access and there are so called 'democracy movements' being built-up in some 'renegade' Arab nations and North-African countries, using the Internet as the main source of dissemination of 'ideas', the timing of this addition to the list of 'basic human rights' makes me wonder. A cynic type comment on the Internet on UN Report read "Will the next UN basic human right be for equal access to an i-phone or Cable TV?"

Other divides

I also wonder where this new declaration of a basic human right will place the Wikileaks initiator Julian Assange in the scheme of things. It is interesting to note that he was not taken into custody in the UK for releasing secret or classified documents, but for alleged charges of sexual assault based on an arrest warrant issued in Sweden.

Furthermore, we (human race) are a long way from satisfactorily guaranteeing other basic human rights such as access to food, water, shelter, sanitation, health care and education. With poverty still raging, adding yet another basic human right perhaps may only make the list longer. These other divides today are even greater than that of the digital divide and preaching 'human rights' and 'democracy', in a world where access to resources is so based on greed, power and might and not on need, humility and humaneness, is almost laughable.

Soccer match

Sunday last was the United Nations Environment Programme's 'World Environment Day'. For many years in the past, this day was a very special day for me. I attended or even spoke at events to celebrate the day. We 'Marched for Conservation', raised flags and took oaths vowing to care for Mother Nature, preached to schoolchildren, planted trees and created new organizations. That was the learning I had. In the unlearning mode, I see the hypocrisy of some of that. On a single day and for another week the focus remains on the environment, just like the world's leaders do when they meet at a UN Climate Change Summit in some world capitol or in the cosy Swiss hill resort of Davos and then go on forgetting to act on the promises made and the resolutions adopted until the next conference or summit approaches. My unlearning tells me that we treat Mother Nature and the wellness of the only plant we have to live on, like we do, a soccer match. Kick the ball for a few hours to and fro, score a few goals, declare winners or call it a tie and then move on to other tasks, as if it is now business as usual.

In India, the News TV Channel NDTV together with its sister entertainment channel 'NDTV Good Times' called for 'Greenathon 3' on Sunday to 'celebrate' World Environment Day, for third successive year. My learning of marketing dogma, would tell me that it was an excellent initiative that can bring huge brand-value-addition to the channel and move some to even change their mindsets on being caring Earth-beings. Yet, my unlearning make me agree more with a blogger on the Internet, who called such "nothing but gimmicky stunts to attract attention with 'do good' tags". Another called it "do good on a single day of the year, while ruining the planet's health, all year round... just another way of massaging one's own guilt".

Focus on corruption

While the preparations were on for the 'Greenathon' on Saturday last a big story broke in India of Baba Ramdev, a Yogi Swami, with a significant following who wowed to carry out a Sathyagraha or a peaceful protest of a fast unto death calling for a clean up of the Indian body-polity of widespread corruption. Among his calls were to return the amassed wealth abroad by the powerful, for the government to be completely transparent in all its dealings and bring to book the corrupt at all levels of society.

He called his a non-communal, a-political and non-violent movement launched to ensure that nation India is protected from the evil of corruption and absence of good governance. On Saturday night, the Delhi Police used force to break-up his preparations for the Sathyagraha the next day and the Swami was taken out of the city and returned to his ashram in Uttar Pradesh. My learning would tell me that his was a great feat that must be cheered, yet the unlearning I take on leads me to question, where the likes of this Swami and many other 'good' men and women were when India was drifting along this path, to see a culmination of unbearable corruption was entering the system.

Why was not the Indian psyche taking heed of the wisdom of her great son Mahatma Gandhi for all this while? This query is not only directed to India but also to our own land and the rest of the wide big world of ours. My unlearning ways point towards some basic systemic failures and flaws of the very models we have chosen to follow to achieve our 'growth' and 'progress'.

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