"The Things That Matter"

Fahim T. Imam

[Part - I]

We Don’t Need No Education, We Don’t

Need No Thought Control

This section is NOT so much about ‘another’ interpretation, theory, or analysis on the legendary Pink Floyd song “Another brick in the wall”. However, I do greatly acknowledge the fact that the opening line of the song has an enormous influence to the overall post.

I have long been frustrated about the way the idea of ‘education’ is being delivered by our formal education systems. Ever since my unfortunate acquaintance with the world as it is today, I started wondering about two simple questions: despite the existence of so many 'formally' educated people in the world, how is it possible that humanity and humankind is increasingly suffering in so many ways? Why would most people think of formal education as an enormous burden and hassles during and after their school years? Also, it seems rather dubious as to, why and how the majority of the people are so conformed to these ill approaches to education and continuing to rely on these fearful approaches for their children and future generations? It is not that I am complaining about the systems in a country like Bangladesh, my beloved motherland, as one might think; I am very suspicious about the systems practiced in North America, as well. I have finally come to the point where I started questioning about the whole foundation of the concept 'education' itself – what is or is not the right purpose of education and learning?

The education systems today reminds me of Pink Floyd's famous song called “Another brick in the wall”. The opening line of the song is exceptionally striking and highly relevant to the context of the modern systems of education and the society we live in. Now, there are many theories as to how to interpret the famous lyrics of the Pink Floyd song. I think wikipedia could be a good source to start with about those theories. However, I am not so much concerned about those multiple views and theories about the song itself other than the obvious one. Also, I am not so much concerned about the linguistic and grammatical aspects of the opening line either. As being a nonnative English speaker, I am always skeptical to use the informal English sentences where the effect of the logical double-negations are not meant to propagate to the actual meaning of the sentence.

Any ways, to continue with my current concerns, we really do not need any education that leads us to systematically impair our distinctive, potentially authentic thinking process, and ultimately destroy our identity. Based on the way the education systems are being practiced today, I seriously think that there is a potential danger, if not already, the existing systems of education would create more problems to the humanity than they can solve!

My frustrations regarding the failure of modern education systems led me to the root of the concept 'education'. I just wanted to verify my understanding of the core meaning of the term. As it turns out, the semantics of the term are exactly what's almost missing in the current systems. Along with many other words in English, the term 'education' is rooted back to the combination of two Latin words 'educere' and 'ducare' (refer to wikipedia for 'Education'). The term 'educare' translates into "bring forth what is within", or "bring out the potential". The term 'ducare' means "to lead". This Latin origin of the term entails the closest things that convinces me when I think about the idealistic concept of education. I'm not going to argue so much about the transformative meaning of the term itself over the years; I am more concerned about how the original virtuous aspects of the term has been so much distorted, abused, or restrained in so many ways.

Before I proceed any further to criticize or attack any education theory, I must remind you that there should be no obscurity, or lack of realization that the the governments, the education systems, socioeconomic systems, and the social justice systems within any contemporary societies are all massively influenced by one another. Although there are some instances of efforts towards the creation of ‘truly’ independent justice systems in some developed countries, the same argument is not so much in practice for education systems.

Observing the world as it is today, I think, people are receiving education with real wrong assumptions and terribly wrong purposes. For the most part, formal education has become a contrivance to learn some techniques and strategies that serves nothing more than about gaining some trivial chances to survive the competitive world, and, obviously, to move towards the so called "better" life for the vast majority of people. I think the danger of these kinds of education is that, there is always a fair chance to attribute them as almost useless to humanity.We cannot expect the ordinary people, especially the young kids, teenagers, and young adults to hold any higher means of understanding of what education is suppose to do. I do not think people in general have much option to think carefully or neutrally explore their ideas, either; their own thoughts and thinking processes are so much controlled by the dogmatic authority and the education systems. The education systems today, is so much structured, so much about a specific set of knowledge, so much uninteresting, so much about trivial rules and regulations, so much about quantitative measures of knowledge, so much about evil competitions; ultimately, it is mostly about constantly suppressing the authentic creativity and the identity of the eager minds by imposing a massive amount of "thought controls" ever since their childhood.

On the other hand, the idea of education, learning, or studying have always been so much of a burden for most of the people. This is especially true for students. As soon as they complete their high school diploma, or college degrees, most of them feel such an 'ecstatic relief' that a long and wearisome phase of mental torture, frustrations, and stressful phase of their life is finally over. Most of them develop a kind of panic disorder, as soon as they encounter any book, journal, anything intellectual, or about anything that has to do with education, learning, or studying. This is due to the magnitude of useless stress that they had to face to become 'educated' through formal schooling. I know many people who developed enormous disrespects for books and ‘studying’ in general during and after their university life. Most importantly, these panics and negative attitudes toward learning and studying may last for the rest of their lives. The core aspect of education to develop the ability to carry out lifelong learning is so much dismissed for the most of the people that way. I think the modern education systems have totally failed to convey any virtuous aspects of education and obviously failed to promote anything interesting (other than about better prospect in terms of money) about education for the vast majority of the population. The actual beauty and elegance of education seems to be so lost and dismissed.

[Part - II]

Do You Hear The Sound of Hysteria?

Acknowledgment: The title is taken from a line of a Green Day song

The explicit idea of 'abusive teachers' and 'thought controls' from the original plot of the Pink Floyd song is obviously analogous to the very nature of the higher authorities of our society, and the dogmatic systems of economy and formal education. There are two kinds of abuse that we must consider in this respect. The first kind is the 'active' abuse by means of instant physical and mental torture within our society and education systems. Fortunately for the modern society, I think enough people have become aware about these active abuses. I believe this kind of abuse is being diminished in a hopeful direction. The second kinds of abuse, let us call them the 'passive' abuses, are the ones I am mostly concerned about. I am referring to them as 'passive' abuses, as the majority of the people are unaware about them. As we will see, these abuses are practiced so obscurely within our modern systems that they seem to be physically 'nonexistent' in front of our naked eyes. In terms of their overall magnitude, I would argue that these passive abuses are the most threatening and fatal to humanity and humankind, in any qualitative or quantitative measures.

The most bothersome aspect of our modern society and the education systems is that we mostly perceive a realization of a very structured and controlled picture of life, with very concrete and well marked phases. We are imposed to believe that missing a single phase within this depiction of life without the right achievements must lead us to be the ultimate failures in modern standard. The most generic natures of these phases are as follows: you go to primary school to learn the basic standards of communication and basic arithmetic, you go to high school to learn the possible ‘logistics’ for the future survival in the competitive world , you try your best to go to the best college or university with a discipline (even if you don’t like that discipline to be yours) that has the best potential to earn better money in the future (i.e., you are taking away somebody else's opportunity and thinking that it's just OK as you worked hard and you deserved it), you get a terrific ‘prestigious’ job or pursue a business career (i.e., you are taking away somebody else's job and living, and yet thinking that it's just OK as you think you have deserved it) , you get married, you get a nicer car and a nicer house (as you would think that you worked hard and you deserve them as well), you send your kids to the best private schools (you don't genuinely care that so many kids don't even have an option to go to the school), you go for vacations in Hawaii, you have a enjoyable time traveling the world and playing golf, you give some money to the charity since you have earned enough money (just to avoid the moral obligations). If you observe carefully you were sort of given this mere 'black and white' realization of life in a gradual basis (without having much sense of the things that I mentioned in the brackets), ever since you started wondering about life and reality.

You were conditioned to the realization of this 'must to do and follow' tasks of coloring the black and white picture of life as nicely as possible without any visible gaps. You are pretty much obliged to keep coloring it up until the end of your life. The most dangerous aspect of this depiction is that, we keep losing our identity, morality and distinct value as a human, gradually since our childhood, just to be conformed to the system that only cares about the 'fittest survivors' of the competitions. Eventually, we get so used to the system that we literally forget about the 'other' people who were not so fortunate to survive the competitions. They were either  from the less privileged families, or they were not "smart enough" to understand the life in a usual way the higher authorities and the society wanted them to understand.

This structured depiction of life is pretty convenient for the higher authorities and the people who control the money and the government. In fact, they are the avid lovers of this layout of life for their people. I would say with the utmost confidence that they are pretty successful in conveying their demands for this step-by-step depiction of life from the ordinary population. The linear nature of this depiction of life with highly predictive next steps, enables them to have more than enough ways, to obscurely exploit the ordinary people. These people, people with authority and money, always have their fantastic ideas to keep the conformist group of people busy to keep struggling towards the pursuit for their next step towards a 'dream life'. In one way or another, the ordinary group of people are also kept conformed and occupied with so many other trivial things and businesses (compare to the nontrivial counterparts) , so that they don't find enough time and the option to think rationally and interfere with the issues of massive injustice by governments and the higher authorities. 

They (i.e., the people with authority and money) will always keep your drives alive for the next 'cool' things that you can use your money for – be it a new model of a luxury sports car, new version of iPhone, new ways of decorating your home, enjoyable vacation places, nice bars, nice restaurants, new mind blowing movies, gambling in Atlantic City, astonishing shows that you can only enjoy in Las Vegas and so on. They will keep you entertained by the artists (by abusing the actual concept of art), by the movie stars, by the rock n' roll bands, by the massive amount of porn over the web (I have heard that 67% of the internet based business depends on porn industries), and literally by any means of media. You did not have anything to do with Tiger Woods, or did not need to know anything about his private life, yet you are consuming the attractive useless information covered right on your MSN or Yahoo homepage and all the leading news media. You are not too much concerned (or, at least, you were not taught to have enough courage to upset yourself after a long day of work) about what's happening around the world and the severe sufferings that most of the people are going through within our own planet.

You are just fine with the entertainment channels that are constantly covering the 'most comprehensive', the 'most up to date' coverage of Tiger Wood's recent scandal with two minutes long commercials in every five minutes. You are just fine with the massive amount of propaganda by the channels like CNN, MSNBC or FOX News as you were not taught how to see things from your own rational perspectives. You were not taught to use your brain other than the things that entertain you, or to the things that may gain material goods for yourself, or to the matters that make immediate money for your most comfortable living. I do acknowledge that there are some decent media that are still surviving. However, having so many options for cheap entertainments, it's not rational to think that those good channels and media have much significance to your luxurious leisure.

I do acknowledge the fact that the money spent for your entertainment (even if you are gambling), or for anything else for that matter, are actually keeping the economy running, as you are sort of creating employments and contributing yourself to the earning and living of other people that way. However, the idea of dogmatic capitalism is so obscured about the fact that a tiny group of rich authoritative figures are the ones who are actually getting benefited by this latter process. They are literally taking advantage of you and controlling your thinking process so that they could be in power forever. Rest of the people are just participating in keeping their money flowing without much concern that they are making the rich people richer (okay) and poor people poorer (not okay at all). You are 'unconsciously' imposed to be worried about keeping your job, or to support your family, or to make your living more and more comfortable because you are needed that drive to keep the capitalism entertain you. Even if you have some pity for the suffering people around the world, you would most likely choose your money, weekends, vacations or any possible leisure to entertain yourself for the 'civility' of capitalism.

[Part - III]

Whatever You Call It, It's Bad!

Our depiction of life and future, as innate as it is for the 'modern' world, is almost entirely drawn by a real intimate relationship with money, one way or another, to survive the expected competitions. Not to mention, these competitions are mostly 'evil' in a sense that a group of people, who are privileged or well educated in terms of so called 'modern' standard, become so much disabled, both ethically and morally, by the overwhelming appeal of money, that they are simply considering the rest of the portion of the population to be the money making robotic machines of some sort for them. I would seriously blame the idea of 'attractive' capitalist dogma being 'unconditionally' involved within every aspect of our modern systems.

Some of you might argue that the competitive features of our modern life within the capitalist society are good practice and should not be avoided. I do acknowledge the significance of the notion of competition, for it could serve as an obvious effective reinforcement to do the best at what you do. However, the idea should not be exploited, i.e., we should not be led to think of competitions by means of any involvement of money or any such preeminence. Also, competitions must require a very careful supervision, for they can trivially promote unusual pride to some, intensely negative sense of underestimation to others, and other confusing egoistic issues to the young kids and young adults. Also, the glorifying aspects of competitions should not lead people to any 'idolism'. I hope to write a blog on this issue in the future. There are many people in active entertainment business who are mostly 'idolized' by the popular culture and media. The most severe effect of this kind of idolism is that, the ordinary people, especially the young kids, and young adults, constantly lose their authentic identity as their identity becomes severely impaired by the 'idols' that they are following. They try to look like their idols, appear like their idols, act like their idols, think like their idols, and even lose their rational thinking process due to their 'unconditional' love, respect and emotional attachments to their idols. Also, promoting somebody as an idol makes people seriously impaired in terms of their fair judgments about the iconic person. Idolism inclines people to think that their idols are not suppose to be normal human beings with all the essential qualities (good or bad) of a human.

The other kinds of idolism are the ones that are usually attributed to many religious and inspirational figures who are promoted like being ‘divine’, ‘untouchable’, or almost ‘unreachable’ by the popular culture and media. They are the great influential figures in history with no doubt. However, people are more tempted towards their popularity by the media rather than understanding or verifying about what they actually did. The distinct appeal of their names, quotes, and there depictions have just become a mere matter of ‘idolization’ for the virtuous things like humanity, human rights, morality, wisdom and intellects. Most people, especially the young generations, are just fine with wearing the t-shirts, hanging a poster that depicts their idol's pictures along with few appealing quotes, or having a book or two in their possession about those great figures. They seem to have no time or patience to have an honest realization about the actual message and vision for life and humanity by their ‘idols’. Also, the worst of all, they would not bother to pursue any violent approaches to any tiny controversial issues regarding their own idols by the opposition (because of the understanding that an idol can not do anything wrong) as they are not taught about the actual messages by those great nonviolent 'idolized' individuals.

Our modern education systems do not care much about morality, do not care much about ethics, and do not care much about the actual meaning of life. The idea of morality and ethics are barely introduced as if they are all well understood, and not to be practiced in real life. They don't want to teach or acknowledge the fact that the core idea of education and knowledge comes with enormous responsibility. It can be used as a tool to make the actual difference in human life, or it could be abused by using them to exploit other human lives. The modern system is more inclined towards the latter use and systematically impairing our moral values and ethics to think that we are in a right track. People are merely taught a biased history of humankind where the rulers are glorified and the invaded or the oppressed ordinary people are almost ignored just to promote the mere idea of nationalism. It's almost taken for granted that the "history" is written by the winners, and there seem to have no obvious initiative to change this bothersome view by our most modern 'educated' world. There seem to have little or no efforts to find and verify the other part of history, the history of the ‘defeated’ by the 'winners' of today. For the most part, civilizations and nations are depicted to be 'civilized' and 'glorified' due to their remaining evidence of wealth, luxury, the pyramids, the fortresses, beautiful eye-catching castles and churches, monuments, arts, sculptures and so on. There is remarkably little, or no significance of the severe sufferings that the ordinary people had to go through, or how much violent oppression took place by those 'great' emperors, kings, and nobles to expand their territory, or to support their luxurious life. Due to the massive amount of propaganda by the most 'civilized' irresponsible media of the modern world, one way or another, until today, people are taught to be proud and appreciative to the 'winners' of their own ethnicity, race, and nation without any fair justification about those 'winnings'. In other words, they are also taught and conditioned to hate other nations and other ethnic groups that way.

The university systems in North America, and most part of the western world, are becoming more commercial than ever before. I don’t think there is any fine line to distinguish the nature of their operation with that of any successful commercial industries. University grants and stipends are all inclined towards 'attractive' research with visible outcome in terms of money. If you are interested to do a research in philosophy or epistemology, humanity, or even in pure mathematics, which doesn't have much prospect in the immediate future in terms of money, there is a less chance for you to get new grants compare to other 'attractive' technology oriented disciplines. The expectation of “significant and authentic contribution to the world of human wisdom and knowledge” is no longer seems to be the obvious case for the doctoral degrees. While a massive portion of the overall budget goes for the defense and military expeditions, the US government, for example, has been shameless about cutting the budgets for education and universities. Ideally, it should require no explanation that the universities and the other educational institutions are suppose to identify the most problematic issues (humanity and human rights should ethically come as the first priority) of the world and guide the ordinary people towards a feasible solution. Education systems and universities should not rely on any higher authorities of governments and politics for advocacy; it should be the other way around. However, a fair view at the modern universities doesn’t seem to have much indication towards that direction. It seems like they are almost forced not to dig too further about real problematic issues of humanities.

Western universities are doing pretty well in terms of advancing sciences and technologies. This progress has been possible as there are enough financial investments for these kinds of research, through the government grants and other means of support by private organizations with commercial interests. The same kinds of support and practice is fairly limited when it comes to the issues of humanity, human rights, or philosophy, as there is no promising commercial achievements through these kinds of career and research for the poor and the oppressed population. I think the technological advancement for the modern world should be considered enormously enough, and there has to have a set of limpid balancing principles for the distribution of grants and other investments on academic research. Also, In this regard, we must consider the fact that a very small portion of the overall population, who possess enough ‘education’, money, and luxury, are the only obvious ones who are getting benefited from the most of the advanced technologies from the scientific research and advancements, including the technologies for military intelligence, arsenals, and other destructive military expeditions. The amount of suppression and sufferings of humanity and the humankind, on the other hand, is conspicuously more profound, but the issue is so neglected by the higher authorities, especially by the ‘educated’ western world. It is an unfortunate reality for the developing ‘third world’ countries and their ignorant higher authorities, that they are all immensely following the identical footsteps set by the western university systems, as they are probably 'advised' to look up to those systems as 'ideal' to become 'developed'. There is remarkably little, or no honest efforts to come up with an effective education system that could be most compatible to their overall socioeconomic and cultural standpoint.

Although, the technological development for new machines, tools, and the things of that sort are reducing human labor, they are also reducing the number of employment opportunities, especially in the developing countries. There seems to have no balancing principles that are visible to create new opportunities for people who are losing their jobs, or may lose their way of living due to the employment of some ‘smart’ machines. People are expected to spend a massive amount of money, time, and energy for their education with terribly wrong assumptions and purposes which are almost contradictory to the actual virtue of 'education'. Most people would think of the money spent in colleges as a sort of investment, just like any other business. Even if they have some realization of the virtuous aspects of education, due to the obscured strains by our socioeconomic systems, they are unintentionally inclined towards earning more money and material goods as soon as they graduate, rather than practicing the morality, good ethics, or any such aspects of humanity. Things get worse when they get married or start their family life.

While millions of people are still starving with no shelter or healthcare within our own planet, investing money on space expeditions, or any such ambitious research should not be justified or promoted. Many ‘cerebral’ would argue that these luxurious researches can be justified as ‘less of an evil’ investment, as the government would spend more money on developing destructive weapons and military expeditions any ways! Evidently from the known history of humankind, all the destroyed civilizations had the same approach of supporting military expeditions by abusing people’s possessions and freedom. The most modern governments in the western world are nothing different in that respect. Most of the money that people invest for their government organizations, or the taxes that they are paying, are actually abused, either for covering the expenses for some previous military expeditions, or to plot the next warfare. Every one of these investors and tax payers from the ordinary group of people are 'unintentionally' contributing themselves to the war, i.e., massive killing, looting, and severe sufferings of so many ordinary people around the globe by their so called 'civilized' government and higher authorities. How is it possible that the majority of the people in the 'educated' western world are approving all the hideous policies of their government and higher authorities? Well, I think the core problem is - they are taught how to be 'ignorant'.

As I mentioned before, the 'passive' kinds of abuse that are seemingly obscured within our day-to-day life, is even more dangerous than 'active' abuses that used to take place before. Despite having so many ethical theories of equality and justice, the core idea of communism and socialism could not practically survive as they were mostly contradictory to the innate nature of humans, who would always want to be distinguished and superior to the other humans. Rather than constraining this innate hideous nature of humans, they are actually promoted in a massive way by our modern systems. The ‘unconditional’ practice of democratic freedom and dogmatic capitalism led us to be almost conditioned not to recognize our moral and ethical obligations any more. The idea of 'freedom of speech' is also abused and distorted by the media and irresponsible journalists to promote propaganda. Our authentic thoughts, thinking processes, and the overall choice of life are all massively controlled and impaired by the ‘attractive’ appeal of material goods and money by our surrounding social systems, and media propaganda by a small group of higher authorities. These authoritative figures with money are trying their best to promote all of our negative human instincts and obscurely exploiting us just to remain in power.

The idea is almost like killing the authenticity, moral values, and sound ethics of the ordinary conformist group of people, by secretly mixing some toxic arsenic elements within their food in a regular basis since their childhood. This 'smooth' approach involves a period of sufferings before they actually die silently. Instead of killing the humanity right away using the noisy guns (as the obvious alternative), the authorities have become smarter to achieve their goals without much worries about being accused of killing. The ordinary people, including the poor kids, the young eager minds, and their surroundings have almost no idea about how and when they got such a massive amount of arsenic in their body which is sturdy enough to kill and destroy the whole idea of humanity and humankind. Although, there are so many ‘educated’ people in the world (increasing in number as well!), especially in the western world, the core idea of humanity and humankind is suffering in so many ways behind the ‘unconditional’ acceptance of dogmatic capitalism and 'controlled and impaired' idea of freedom. Each and every one of us is 'unintentionally' contributing ourselves to the severe sufferings of the humanity; however, the blames should be considered much higher for the irresponsible 'educated' people within ourselves.

To be continued...

Fahim Imam,
August 22, 2010
San Diego, California

Note: I do acknowledge various wonderful efforts around the world to bring back the humanities in life. I also acknowledge the efforts by various government officials to make things better as well. However, I think, there is still a constant need to voice our rage against the injustice and lacking of moral principles within our contemporary systems. We need to reach out to the people to make them aware that they are actually the victims of so many ‘passive’ abuses in a day-to-day basis.

These posts may seem overly packed with complains, rages, frustrations, and cliches. The readers will have the absolute right to think of them as being pretty pessimistic in nature. In my defense, I need to tell to those readers, I had to rely on some sensible theory that seems suitable to the context of these issues. The theory suggests: 'We have to be careful about the scopes where the optimism can help. Optimists get their job done fairly quickly, but mostly in a sloppy way; it is the 'well-hated' pessimists who would do the RIGHT thing, even if eventually'.