death of education
Nietzsche said that god
is dead[i],
what we witness is even worse, the death
of education. Rilke in one of his fantastic stories writes about God’s
hands. God, when making human, was interrupted by a bird, which brought the
news of cyclone, following trauma. Extremely upset, as He had made a perfect
world, God decided it was his duty to keep an eye on it always, and thus vividly
watching, he sent his hands to complete the remaining job of making the human. But
the hands though skilled, were without the mind and the human before completion
moved down to earth and God could never see what the human looked like. Being the
human himself, Rilke does not know what was left incomplete, neither might we
ever know. While God watches over the world, He does not know what the man
looks like and thus cannot govern him, and still is in efforts to control the
natural causes; while the man cloaks himself in varied disguises, of religion,
culture, state, respective knowledge and camouflages himself all the more.
In recent times, I
feel, the disguise begun as knowledge has turned more into literacy, and the
death of god to man becoming superman himself, is nothing but ignorance. The quest of philosophy, finding the missing utopian link has been
replaced by a heteropia[ii].
The heteropia of parallel world which
is hardly perfect, but which believes what exists to be just flawless. The biggest
hyperreality of this heteropia is that literacy (considered
synonymous to education in heteropia)
is the ultimate solution to all inequalities. Worst in our part of the world,
they make- presume that education would equalize the caste differences and economical
ones too somehow, which has led to vast misinterpretation of education as
literacy. Thus comes suddenly the boom of colleges, making literate as
expensively as possible, while still having maximum reservations for backwards
(?). Thus these institutes are no more for learning, but have become battle
grounds for proving your mantle, showing your existence and not under any
circumstance imparting knowledge, as that would make the intelligent superior. How
can one person be more intelligent than the other? That’s inequality in the heteropia. Encashing the gain comes in
the politics, the money game, and the conquest of survival, survival of name
and fame, as in here, superiority complex comes natural as breath, and equality means being at the level with the other, even if one would have to pull down masses.
The worst part, heteropia, antonym to utopia, does not
believe that man could reach completion, as he is perfect, he is God himself. So
now not only is god dead, we have killed him, we have killed the hope and faith
of becoming better and ever acquiring the incompleteness in making. And thus
have killed the hunger for knowledge and comes the Death of Education. Since god
does not know what man looks like, he destroys him while protecting his perfect
world, man being the sole imperfection.
Vyasa,
the great sage, had predicted that the coming kaliyuga would be cursed by the silence of the thoughtful. Unfortunately,
have to experience it every day, as we stand on the edge of utopia and heteropia. Never to be attained never knowing what was attainment
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