Heard of Dark Continent?

The little girl looked carefully at me. Had I ever heard of Dark Continent, she asked softly. I was surprised that she knew enough to quiz about it, considering her background. She was a child of the slums, and hardly ten years old, her clothes worn, frayed at the edges. Perhaps this is the habitual mistake the “educated” make. We look upon the poor as an undifferentiated mass of entrenched illiteracy, impediments to the nation’s economic progress. 

This country does its best to eradicate poverty, but with the population burgeoning, it is difficult to make much headway. I believe a Japan adds on in people numbers each year or so! Illiteracy is the other face of poverty; hence education for all is a part of social development in the socialist, democratic republic of India of the present.  Education is heavily subsidized to make it within the reach of the economically disadvantaged. 

In a bygone era of numerous monarchies, organized community living in the Indian sub-continent had strict social segregations based on birth. These divisions of society were hierarchical. The Brahmins were the academicians, teachers, custodians of the scriptures; the Kshatriyas were the royalty, the warriors; the Vaishyas were the business group; the Shudras were the menial labour, the untouchables. Social discrimination was rife. Males born into a particular family were forced to follow the trade of their fathers. There was no escape; caste was hereditary.  The “upper” castes hoarded wealth and privileges, and imposed upon those “lower”. 

The right to education was restricted to the top of the social ladder, and those born to families low on the totem pole were barred from it. The epic Mahabharata recounts the story of Ekalavya, the talented son of an untouchable. Unable to attend the martial arts academy run by the renowned Dronacharya, guru to the princes, Ekalavya practiced archery on his own before a statue of the teacher he revered. He caused consternation when he dared compete against Prince Arjuna, the guru’s favourite student. Teachers, during that period, were not paid salary, but received guru dakshina (returns in cash or kind) from the students or their families. Although not directly responsible for Ekalavya’s prowess, Dronacharya nevertheless claimed dakshina from him, and demanded his archer’s thumb in reward! 

Women of course, were entitled to a caste only after marriage. Thus the point of their education really did not arise outside of chores learned at home from childhood - cooking, cleaning and rearing children. Although social reformers fought long and hard through the colonization of India to remove the social discriminations, the perception of women being secondary to men continued far into the twentieth century. All that the marriage market required was the minimal ability to read and write; girls hardly needed to become pundits! In fact, the elders feared that prospective grooms would turn away from over-qualified brides, who would never get married and thus dishonour the family name. Even today many believe that investment in the education of boys bring returns in future, but girls are paraya (outsiders), soon to belong to another family. 

In the ‘sixties, my father broke family tradition, as it were, by sending daughters to English-medium schools to get what was then the best education. I remember that during university days, a classmate and I were in heated discussion of a certain project on the tram ride back home. While we argued our points, other passengers were listening in. After I got off the tram, the man that took my seat turned to my companion and inquired where I came from. His eyes popped when he heard that I was a local. Huh, he exclaimed in astonishment, Speaking English! Educated!

At the time, the tuition fees everybody paid were about two hundred rupees a year, that is, less than five dollars annually, even in the science subjects. This was because the political intent post-Partition was to rebuild the dismembered nation. They assumed that the intellectual crop so nurtured would take the country forward. But that idea backfired in the ‘seventies and ‘eighties. Unlike many other nations, India did not have a compulsory service scheme for its citizens. Thousands of top graduates and post-graduates winged their way to the West, lured into serving in the more lucrative workplaces overseas. The expendable patriotism of the already privileged sunk the nation deeper into debt, because there were no legal bonds to hold them back. With the actual cost of the university education for each a few hundred thousand rupees at least, the eventual loss to the national exchequer with the brain drain must have been in the billions. Without the IT boom and the outsourcing industry, the Indian economy might have still wallowed in the doledrums. 

Although scores of private autonomous universities have since mushroomed charging exorbitant amounts for better teaching facilities, the educational subsidy continues in governmental institutions, the university fees being raised minimally over decades.  Furthermore, in and around Kolkata, primary and secondary governmental schools waive tuition fees for the economically disadvantaged sections. After generations of illiteracy on the backs of social segregation and poverty, their offspring are exposed to the R’s, and graduate degrees. One parent told me that they would have been satisfied with their children being allowed to touch the benches of high school; to have a graduate in the family was beyond imagination. 

I visited the students of a governmental primary school recently to get a sense of their ability in the English language. Both boys and girls present were the first school-goers in their family. I looked at one young boy’s exercise book. He had made many mistakes in an earlier spelling test, and in one word, written “dee” instead of “deer”. Just carelessness, I presumed. I pointed to the word, and asked him what it was meant to be. He blinked at it a moment and then whispered to me that it was a very hard word. What is it, I insisted. Elephant, he replied glibly. Clearly the wiggles on the page made no sense to him at all! 

It seems to me that, with the decision to eliminate examinations in the school system, the point of education is being lost. The light of knowledge being spread is dim because the children are not pushed to rehearse, remember, think complex and compete intellectually. They are being uniformly promoted with no quality control of capability, simply pushed up to a new level of incompetence each year. Education to them thus becomes a meaningless trudging back and forth each day, uncomprehending. 

An interesting TV reality show is titled Are you smarter than a fifth-grader? Questions from science, math, history, geography, grammar, etc., are asked of adults locking horns with the academic level of the average American ten-year-old. It proves that the children really do have to study a lot, because most adults trip up in the programme. But sadly, amongst the economically disadvantaged groups in this state today, many children of the same age are stumped by anything to do with academics. 

Education for all is a commendable idea in democracy, but is the process in use the best for the country? The educators might boast of rising literacy numbers, but the quality of education differs widely between the social sections. Eliminating competition in schools for the disadvantaged encourages their students to avoid critical thinking, to seek the easy ways out. Where ability counts most, in the work world, they fail to impress employers.  The degrees they possess may not be worth the paper they are printed on. The joke is, toss a pebble on the street and you might hit such an “educated” unemployed. 

The little girl clued into the Dark Continent is one bright spot of intelligence amongst the general clueless. Surely, there are many more talents like her touched with the light of knowledge, passionate about learning, and waiting for the opportunity to excel.  Education is meant to enlighten minds, to create awareness of the environment for adaptability, and to dispel the darkness of ignorance, superstition and discrimination. The socially disadvantaged groups need out of dole dependency to develop as people. Else, lamp-lighting ceremonies in the educational institutions become mere rituals, while the dark continent of mindsets are preserved across society.

 

Flower in the muck

The boy on the bus sat hunched in his seat. He was about ten years of age, but the posture, hiding his face behind the bag of books on his lap, made him appear small and lost. He seemed shy and withdrawn, squashed between buxom passengers on seats reserved for ladies. His uniform, faded from many washes, had an indeterminable emblem embroidered on the breast of the shirt. It may have been a lotus - the flower that blooms alone in muck, its innate splendour unsullied by its environment.

It was clear he travelled unattended. The dusty socks and shoes on his feet testified to rundown conditions. I imagined the family was hard pressed to make ends meet. His father was probably the only earning member, burdened by the costs of supporting an extended family, his mother young and harried. Household chores would take up all her time – cooking, cleaning, washing, hauling water and tending to the elderly in the family as well as the children. In sending to school, the child’s parents must visualize a brighter future for their generation next, as well they should. If the free mid-day meal at school was attraction, so be it. But definitely, escorting them to and from school was out of the question; neither would they have the wherewithal to hire school-bus services for their safety.

The ordinary buses here, both public and private, carry far more passengers than they should. At peak time overcrowding, there is hardly any personal space, as people pack in like sardines. These buses, my sister living in America believes, are a hotbed of deviant behaviour, a living hell for children. She shudders at the mere thought of one. Convinced that predators abound, she has banned her offspring from boarding them. Apparently this thought never occurred to her in our younger proletariat days when she herded us onto them!

It is true that back in the day, far fewer women were out and about pursuing education or employment. Most mothers were too shy to speak about sex, and children, especially girls, were left their clueless about this reality. Public awareness was poor as well, and the young victims either too uncomprehending to protest, or too ashamed to draw attention to themselves. But much has changed since then, mainly in the passenger numbers. With greater social awareness, the bus interiors have clear gender demarcations – women and children on one side, men on the other. Over the intervening years, girls learned to confront, to even hit back at attempts to take undue advantage. As mothers themselves thereafter, many have taught daughters to be assertive. Often other passengers join in to deter unsavory behaviours.

In a country as large as India, with at least a quarter of the billion plus population located below the economic cut-off line, poverty is the affliction. Exposed as they are to the environment with nobody to shield them from harm, children born into this disadvantage have to learn early to fend for themselves. Harsh circumstances force their growing up fast - or perishing.

On this day, the bus conductor ruffled his pack of tickets with his thumb, the sound a distinct reminder of the rite of passage – one had to buy one’s stay on the bus. The boy pressed back as if trying to disappear from view. He could not however, avoid the experienced eye of the conductor. Every now and then the man would look around at him and flick his pack in warning. The boy would feebly feel in his pockets in response. Ticket, ticket, urged the man with his persistent thumb sounding his impatience, his stare unsympathetic. Watching the tension build up, I was touched by the boy’s woeful look. The point to disembark was approaching for me, so I decided to intervene in their byplay and help the child. As I moved forward to resolve the issue, to buy the ticket for him myself, the boy stood up and dug deep into his pockets. He brought out a coin that he placed in the man’s palm, and shrugged his shoulders to imply he had no more. The man glared at him, but turned away. He did not offer a ticket stub, nor was he asked for one. The boy hopped off the bus when it stopped, and behind him, I did too.

He seemed to gain energy as the bus trundled away. As I watched, he casually slung the bag across his shoulder. Then suddenly, he sprinted across the road beating the oncoming traffic. He seemed to be heading in the same direction that I was. I followed at a more sedate pace. On the other side on the road, he skipped along ahead on the sidewalk. I saw him pause a moment before darting in towards a roadside stall.  These are makeshift wooden structures where knickknacks are sold – chocolates, lozenges, potato chips, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and so on. Their owners set up for business every day, keeping a weather eye open for the police. Because, whenever there is a clean-up drive, they must pack up and leave. 

The boy leaned on the counter, pointing at something in the stall, while holding out something he had clutched in his hand. As I came alongside, the stall-keeper took it and opened out the tight folds of paper money! I could see that the note would easily have covered the actual price of the boy’s bus ride. I shook my head and smiled wryly to myself as I walked on. So much for my expectations of childlike innocence, I thought! Indeed, this child has already learned to fend for himself in an unkind world.  Left to their own devices and exposed to a devious environment, children of disadvantage may practice the art of con, long before mastering the R’s.  The need for survival forces their early adaptation to harsh reality. Can we really fault the lonely flower for being touched by the surrounding muck?

Worthy of the gods

The other day, I noticed a long queue of young men outside the doctor’s chamber. I wondered what could make so many youths collectively sick. It turned out to be a recruitment drive and they awaited medical reviews. I imagined they were in the city chasing their dream job. They seemed to hail from rural areas, a little out of comfort zones in the urban surroundings. One by one they they were called into the room; some stayed there, but more returned outside. The ones returning were the ‘unfit’ group, and disappointment writ large on their faces. In their sheepish looks around, their continuity with tradition seemed imminent – that is, to abandon dreams in the face of failure. 

Indians invest huge effort in pursuing goals. The practice of rituals and identification with mythological characters is quite pronounced in this region, and so is the belief in fate. We presume to be descendants of the gods. Although lacking the requisite supernatural powers of the epic characters, we expect to be like Prince Arjuna, the archer extraordinaire of the epic Mahabharata who never missed a shot. Even through a reflection, he could pierce the eye of the fish revolving high above. Because Arjuna thus won the princess, we expect to be similarly blessed.  

We forget that as mundane humans, we have to contend with the interfering variables that mythology does not. Our talents also are not equivalent, and wins therefore, are dicey. But failure does not sit well with the heritage we claim. And when we do not succeed at the first try, we take it personal. We are shamed by failure, and do not invest in second chances. Should the one try we make hit target, we can continue to greater exploits. Should it not, we give up entirely. It is all or nothing, with no middle path. This is our morphogenetic learning, the song of culture, as it were. 

I remember being fascinated by rhymes in childhood. The cadence of similar sounding words allured me into ambitiously trying my hand at it. Like:

Donkeys can bray

Some houses are gray

Lions can roar

My pretty dress tore

Birds can fly

And I can cry.

Now, considering that English was then learned only in school, it may have been an achievement for a 5-year-old. But as ‘verse’ was probably little more than a few similar-sounding phrases strung together.  Perhaps with a few decades of honing, something impressive might have resulted. But while I quietly admired my handiwork, an English teacher of the school, noticed my childish scrawl. She was a tall, dark, severe-looking woman and we were all afraid of her. She took my little creativity and frowned at it. I awaited her response with trepidation, expecting punishment or at least a public dressing down for my temerity. Instead, she praised my penmanship as worthy of publishing in the school paper. Her intent, I am sure, was only to offer encouragement, and she probably put it out of her mind soon after. But I assumed she would make it soon happen. For days and weeks and months I waited for the word or sign of making the hit. When it never came to pass I my self-esteem so plummeted I never rhymed again.

We are not taught to handle defeat, hence the fear of public humiliation is consuming. In the school I went to as a child, getting exam results was like visiting the dentist. We could not just pick up our scores and leave – pain was inevitable! The entire class assembled, names were called one by one and performances announced. We learned early that being bottom of the class would earn sustained ridicule from peers. Chants of failure, failure would follow the unlucky everywhere, even amongst children that could hardly spell the word. I actually thought the term was ‘fail-year’, to signify unworthiness throughout the year. My anxiety was double because, at home, it was relative to the monies spent. The standard was set at first in class, and no result below that pleased the elders. So, each time, I died many deaths before I learned my fate!

Respect for elders is a strong thread of the Indian/Bengali cultural fabric. Authority figures are viewed too intimidating to question, and we tend to read divinity into their manner. Even half a century later, I recall the unwittingly effect of the Mss Broughton of the sixties that put paid to my poetic proclivity! Similarly, the group of ‘unfit’ young men would probably read one disappointing medical review as absolute rejection of worth. These Arjunas of the twenty-first century would soon pack up their dreams and fade into oblivion.  Do not give up, I exhorted forcefully in the vernacular. The bowed heads jerked up in surprise at my sudden interjection. ‘Unfit’ today does not make you unfit for life, I said. Ask to understand exactly why you fail the test today. Correct it, and make sure nobody finds you unfit the next time. I waggled a forefinger at them to emphasize the role of the social elder I was appropriating. The country wins if you win, I added, which brought reluctant smiles to their faces.

Engrossed in the mythological fantasy, the tendency with every bump on the road, is to quickly sideline opportunity as not fated for us. We need to respect our own efforts enough to change the dismissive social attitude that relegates to nothingness, genuine efforts on the learning path. To enable adaptability to a changing world, our stories must include personal experiences of failure to highlight the resilience we lack. As a people we now need to invest in new human stories from diversity to help us accept failure without shame. The historical tale of King Robert Bruce, for instance, who, inspired by the tenacity of the lowly spider, found the courage to fight again after six crushing defeats, to finally win his throne. The eye of the fish should be a guideline to focusing mind on task. We should not belittle ourselves by taking it as the only acceptable standard of achievement worthy of the gods.

Disappointing the future

In childhood, the future holds great promise. Images of things perceived novel around us crowd our brains. At one time or other, and with the discovery of new, exciting roles in life, we emulate train-drivers, firemen, stuntmen, superheroes, writers, musicians, dancers, and so on, as our models for life. The want to be is fleeting, to vanish when some other novelty grabs attention. But adults often are impatient with these daydreams taking away from actual goals. With intent to protect them from themselves, they assume control of and direct their children’s lives, in their own image.

It seems to me that the modern habit of sticking children in walkers to ‘protect’ them from injury contributes to dependency - and the fear of falling. Many sheltered young people I hear about voluntarily transfer their life-choice decision-making, almost in throwback to the joint family process of yesteryears wherein the head of the family ruled over all aspects of the extended family members lives. Although families in India had since transformed to nuclear, becoming smaller and independent of traditions, in some areas, the social dynamic appears unchanging.

For instance, the allure of ‘love marriages’ (choosing one's own partner) diminishes, perhaps because divorce rates have climbed four thousand percent in India in recent times. In a growing trend, these children look to having their life-partners secured for them by parents instead. Technology has become a hugely useful tool in the burgeoning market of marriage ads. There are specific websites to meet the demands for community, caste, status, looks, ad infinitum. I see the parents of grown sons and daughters avidly trawl Internet to find suitable matches from around the world. As in the corporate industry, SWOT analyses are conducted of individual and family and, in concessions to democracy, a final ‘shortlist’ of candidates made and presented to generation next.

Following the parental spadework, the prospective brides and grooms then venture out dating down the list to discover mutual chemistry. When The One is found, the parents from both sides then meet to hammer out the nitty-gritty between them - including the covert gives-and-takes of dowry - so that marriage along traditional lines might occur with full pomp and pageantry. In the process, the parents and other authority figures find relevance in their own existence.  Otherwise smart and intelligent young people also cultivate the expedience of this generational symbiosis extending continuity with the past. It is perceived a useful allocation of family resources, to collectively prevent mistakes from happening.

My question is whether the continual spoon-feeding allows the children to grow up at all capable of assuming their adult responsibilities, especially to think outside the box in situations unexpected. The children are taught to avoid making mistakes in life, and learn to have little faith in their own choices. The point missing in the remote control is the practice of falling and getting up again. Neither as parents nor as teachers do the elders pass on this crucial art to those in their charge.

An opinion I found on the ’Net says:

To gain admission or be hired at top-tier universities, we have been on a winning streak, earning awards and top grades with ease. We follow the rules to get ahead. We have often forgotten how to fall, much less how to teach others to fall. If we do fall, we carefully hide those failures from students and colleagues to preserve our reputations. As classroom experts, we rarely venture afield to remember what learning by trial and error feels like. …Much of the time we have become entranced with being experts rather than learners—and thus have distanced ourselves from the students we hope to teach.

 

We assume that disappointments with the adult world were more rife in our time, because in those decades, technology did not wipe away boundaries between people or open global avenues of opportunity. I remember that as the youngest member of a joint family, my reality was constantly looking up to others, wanting to follow in their footsteps. For instance, the dance school where older girls went became my goal in life. I dreamed of becoming light as a fairy, graceful as a swan, just like them. The family elders, on the other hand, were obviously counting the monies; their resources stretching thin. They had no incentive to invest in further training that would probably lead nowhere, since, at that time, there were no reality shows to play out competitions on television, hawking lucrative deals to motivate contestants’ guardians. Education, and only education was then the thing, especially for girls! It was left to my mother to break the news to me. Rather than admit the truth, she opted instead to say that it (dance) would lead to ugly fat in later life! That crashing comedown for me, probably affected my perceptions of self and elders thereafter. I always wanted to be a dancer, but somehow felt constrained. 

The mindsets of parental control have changed little even today, and parental aspirations may replace the children’s aptitudes. Because the social environment continues to support total obedience and respect for elders, the younger members feel powerless to rebel against the family authority. They begin to believe it too much to combat attitudes and customs to charter the new course they want in life. Those that cannot conform, learn to be disappointed with the adult world, and suffer low self-esteem on pathways that little interest them. 

In a bus the other day, sudden raised voices attracted attention. I looked over at the commotion to see a young girl, obviously on her way home from school with school-bag and wearing school uniform, standing quietly by an empty seat while a couple of women on either side of her screamed at each other over her. Because both women wanted the seat for themselves, they were each bent on preventing the other from taking it. The teenager caught in between was clearly unimpressed by their antics, and ignored all calls for ‘the poor child’ to take the seat and settle the matter! I found her impassivity curious and got talking to her. She was sixteen and already believed adults, including parents and teachers, were hypocritical. Here was a person in a hurry to grow up and out of their control. 

In real life, she was a high school student living out her parents’ desires of a doctor or engineer in the family, struggling with physics and math, while her heart was in literature and she dreamed of being a writer. She was the budding poet that nobody around her knew about, and sometimes she wrote under a pseudonym to preserve her identity. Her parents, she said, neither knew nor cared about her aspirations. I asked why she didn’t sit down with the adults and talk out what she really wanted to do. No point, she said, they never listen. My father only gets angry and starts shouting.The strain showing on her face expressed far more of her isolation than her words did. She told me she hated going to school, because the teachers spent more time promoting their after-hours tutorials than disseminating knowledge in school. She felt she would probably learn far more from the ’Net than she did by attending their classes. 

Many students say their school counselors are uninterested in their growing pains and merely advise focus on studies, avoiding distractions. It is a sad commentary of our times that despite the new global openness, the choices open to new generations is to either live in dependent relationships or in alienation. Any psychology-based outside help carries social stigma that families avoid like the plague, thus perpetuating the disappointments. The children of today need astute guidance to growing up as levelheaded adults capable of independent decision-making in a rapidly changing world. More than them, it is the parents and teachers that urgently require counseling on the necessity to adapt to the environment. 

The elder generations need to remember their own ordeals of the earlier times, and enable youth of today to negotiate the travails and crises they must encounter in life. Young people must be allowed to explore the environment around them, to make mistakes and to learn from them. They are entitled to truth from the elders, sharing of experience, and independence. It would help them interact freely, and without misconceptions, with the changing global scenario and demographics of diverse groups. Else, they harbour in the corners of their minds unprocessed fears, angers and disappointments that poison perceptions, stunting their development as the people of our future.

Under the cover of lies

I heard the other day that a young man of my acquaintance fibs. He is now adult and working with a multinational concern in his campus-recruited first job. Educated at a reputed institution, he is the former frat boy who survived gruelling initiation rites to learn the ropes of organized living. The family is immigrant, which makes the achievements more impressive. Yet, He lies, says his father, matter-of-factly. I question a person's deceiving where he need not and even fabricating rationales to compound the lies - more from curiosity about the motivation behind the pastime, than from a moral high ground.

The saying is: You can fool all people some of the time, you can fool some people all the time, but you cannot fool all people all the time. But these old adages are hardly a deterrent! Lies have become an accepted form of social communication. Its practice is active across all of humanity, and knows no social barriers, age, education and gender. Although the purpose behind the action may vary in each case, do it enough times and lying becomes an end in itself.

For little children, their little untruths are a defence against a world where everybody towers over them. The motivation is fear, of being punished or deprived of rewards, mainly in physiological terms. They may give in easily to the joy of scribbling on walls or table tops, but the spirit is unwilling to take on adverse adult responses. Denial – even with the tell-tale crayon dust under the finger-nails, shows up their powerlessness. The same may be said for the poverty-stricken, the illiterate, the very elderly, and women that have no control over their lives. The lies are their survival technique before intimidating authority. The young man I mention is hardly in the same boat; he is of age, his destiny is in his own hands. Perhaps he has just not been weaned off the childish habit of fibbing.

It may also be that deception is the game he is now hooked on playing. In the age of information, new generations grow more accustomed to shades of grey than to the moralistic black and white of yesteryears. In the childhood of our time, the emphasis at home and in school is on honour, sacrifice and other virtues of righteous living – extensions of social collectivism in part, in part catechism. The story books we love to read transport us to the fantasy world of magical creatures, and each carries a lesson to learn. In school, to pass the class, we have to pass the moral science test. Right and wrong becomes clearly demarcated in the mind. Indeed, pithy proverbs pop out of long term memory at inopportune moments, to create doubt, dilemma, discomfort and the omnipresent burden of guilt. The moral science subject is now obsolete in schools, perhaps to reduce pressures on impressionable minds. The social learning at home too is in abeyance because families have shrunk, and both parents are employed. The books that fascinate the earlier generation have lost their allure. The young are left alone to role-play in the virtual reality that appears at the touch of a button. Fact is they know more about video game plots than they do about human values.

Furthermore, blatant lies have become the weapon of manipulation in today’s world. Lawyers, for instance are said to be liars by profession, scarcely concerned any more with justice. They weave webs of words to twist and turn perceptions of events, projecting as the absolute truth the perspectives of their own clients. In similar vein, the search for political power in any organization requires mastering the art of persuasion whereby a molehill may be made to assume the proportions of a mountain, and vice versa. The point is to bring down opponents wresting from them the reins of power. In corporate industry, the Madoffs, the Lehmans and the Lawsons of the world use their genius with numbers and technology with the same cynical disregard for human values to defraud their victims and even their own organizations of currency notes in the millions. They call it hustling, spinning elaborate cons to dupe the unsuspecting. There is no remorse in scamming the elderly and the financially weak out of their trust and their life savings.

Cynicism permeates the interactions of groups with other groups. There is take rather than give in this predatorial world that transposes going for the jugular from the wild into the organizational process. To use subterfuge to get close to the prey and to then move in swiftly for the kill is an act that plays out regularly in everyday life. People learn to be less disturbed by lies, which in fact interweave into their social masks. These hide their true natures or conceal their vulnerability. The motivation is again fear, but in psychological terms, because nobody wants to lose. To be the winner, the game must be played and played well. The humans tend to forget that their minds have evolved beyond that of the other animals; that they actually need to adapt to the world of other people, rather than to orders on the food chain.

The heroes the young emulate are in virtual reality, sometimes perceived as more real than real life may be. The ploy set up for immediate rewards can turn into the long term habit they wear like a second skin. They may begin to live the lie, believe in the illusion, and be caught up, unable to escape, in the traps they build for others. Like addicts, they seek the next score, the next adrenaline rush, and the next win in the games of their own making. Lies may become the compulsion that pushes people to deny their true self. Peel that cover of lies away and there might be a frightened child within, afraid to grow up, making believe his maturity. 

Challenge of the abstract

Since money became the normal medium of exchange, financials have led the critical thinking process.  Tangibles like income growths have made sense, while anything more abstract is considered impractical. With numerous financial downturns, realization dawns that to ignore abstract processes is to overlook their strong motivational forces.

The error in financial thinking, authors perceive, has been in carrying forward assumptions – e.g., assuming the words ‘strategy’ and ‘plan’ to be synonymous. The difference they hold is that ‘plan’ concerns with mission statements, goals, and budgets, while ‘strategy’ should necessarily investigate the multiple factors causing environmental change. In other words, the former depend on standard received wisdom, and the latter is often called upon to break new ground.

Rumelt writes:

A real strategy is neither a document nor a forecast but rather an overall approach based on a diagnosis of a challenge. The most important element of a strategy is a coherent viewpoint about the forces at work, not a plan. Discerning the significance of these events is harder than recounting them.

He further illustrates the faulty thinking:

In the 1990s, for instance, IBM’s basic model of layering options and peripherals atop an integrated line of mainframe computers began to fail. Demand for computing was up, but IBM’s way of providing it was down. Likewise, newspapers are now in crisis as the Internet grabs their readers and ads. Demand for information and analysis is increasing, but traditional publishing vehicles have difficulty making money from it.

Businesses suffer from their short-term definitions of normalcy going south. Fact is the characteristics of normal transforms with time, and strategy should include most if not all its new possibilities. After every crisis, a new normal invariably arises to represent reality, different from what has gone before.

Davis writes:

The new normal will be shaped by a confluence of powerful forces—some arising directly from the financial crisis and some that were at work long before it began.

He also points out that increases in the number of college graduates, and the entry of women into the workforce have boosted incomes in the past few decades. He regards both these factors as one-time influences that are spent forces today.

Thinking along the lines of standard received wisdom fosters perceptions of the future as extensions of the past. End result: crisis. That means reality has undergone change, but perceptions remain entrenched in the past to render responses to challenges incohesive. The appropriate thinking strategy for the future, must factor in possible directions of change, to make sense in the future.

I rather believe that the greater fault in the utilitarian mode of thinking is to evaluate individual worth in monetary terms. People have become comfortable with the bottomline of money ruling all transactions. They audit others in cost-benefit terms as well, although factually, the diverse people issues that are thus left unresolved contribute more to business failure than do the numbers.

Further, human motivations are more complex and unpredictable than volatile markets may be. Now, it may be that education and employment for women have become commonplace enough to lose significance as contributing factors in financial circles. But in the abstract emotional mind, their effects may be in transition to influence behaviour at a later time.

For instance, in the more orthodox regions of the world, men have social worth as breadwinners; women as homemakers have none. The feminine gender brought up to forebear, have traditionally appeased the male ego in social equations. They have been diffident in interactions, overcome with embarrassment in public conflicts with men.

The tacit social expectation is of continuance of the conditioned behaviour. Even in matters as trivial as standing in a queue, men of the region tend to routinely cut in ahead of women, banking on their learned aversion to making a scene or drawing public attention to themselves.

Although various Parliaments invoke legislations to support the weaker gender, these measures appear to merely showcase the benevolent patronage of women. In India, for instance, a bill to reserve a third of Parliamentary seats for women has been introduced. Political parties are under duress to field women candidates, and their leaders promote the candidature their own female relatives for the posts. The obvious intent is to retain governing control as puppeteer behind the scenes.

Women in these societies need to confront head on the social learning of their second-class citizenship. The point is women’s attitudes to work and relationships are yet evolving from thinking about assertiveness to acting upon it. In small strident measures, the educated and employed fractions have begun to question men taking for granted the social inequality. We may expect the emergence of a new trend when the silent majority absorbs this need for change.

In the more liberal Western nations, political leaders are also prone to utilizing gimmicks to centralize power. Reporting on party plans to raise female electoral support in UK, Street Porter writes:

Yvette Cooper, with her new no-nonsense hairdo, won plenty of coverage for her speech at the Labour Conference last week and was even referred to as a potential new leader - you can hear Labour spin doctors hard at work promoting this fantasy scenario, which is as likely as her husband Ed Balls running my local yoga centre … Cameron says he plans to increase the number of women in key posts in his team. A recently leaked policy document written by existing advisers was full of laughable suggestions about how to win our votes. A drinks party at No. 10 to celebrate successful females in business? How patronising is that!?

She writes further: 

Justine Thornton (a successful barrister) is now reduced to being touted like a handbag on the arm of hubbie Ed Miliband, styled in a non-controversial High-Street frock, and forced to endure the ghastly ritual of the 'Conference kiss' in the full glare of the media. Ed even gets his cleaning lady to wash the family car. Cameron is no better. When he held a barbecue for President Obama in Downing Street, the macho men cooked the meat while Sam Cam was reduced to dishing out the salad! 

Financial analysts call for change in the thinking process as essential to prevent further financial crises. Human factor analysts need to advocate the same, because the strategy with humans seems to remain in continuity with attitudes of a bygone era. In issues of gender and culture, historical stereotypes and prejudices are readily invoked in place of actually understanding the present. 

However, although it seems absurd to apply financial terms to people issues, there is one notable exception. Housewives, who live with more inequality than others precisely because no remuneration is involved in their social contributions, need this evaluation. These women have also learned to devalue their own worth. They tend to say they do nothing when asked about their occupation, although unpaid and unappreciated, they carry the brunt of responsibility for managing the household and raising the children.

Luhabe, a woman entrepreneur from South Africa, recommends that stay-at-home moms should be given 10% of their husbands' earnings at the least, so that the choice to be a housewife is not not made with resentment.

As Curnow quotes her view:

"And money is the currency that we use to define value of a contribution to the world, so why shouldn't we do the same for the work of bringing up children, which I think is probably the most important contribution that the world should be valuing." 

This idea would definitely resonate with all women around the world saddled with marital and familial responsibilities! Traditionally, the homemaker earns little respect and appreciation for the caring services they freely dispense around the clock. In having to pay up, husbands, and etc., would be compelled to value woman’s work by the same standards they value their own.

Dominant social groups continue to think, plan and act in the same old ways expecting to prolong the status quo advantageous to them.  In this process, to either recycle stereotypes or to perceive people as commodities becomes habit hard to break.

Factors thought to be insignificant in finance, may be highly significant in the emotional world of people. In discounting this fact, the understanding of reality remains skewed. The thinking about people needs to change drastically, and be distinct from financial thought, because the abstract challenges of Diversity are far too formidable to ignore.

References for this post:

1. Curnow, Robyn. “Why women need a 'mommy's salary'” cnn.com. CNN. October 13, 2011.  
2. Davis, Ian. “The new normal” mckinseyquarterly.com. McKinsey Quarterly. MARCH 2009. 
3. Rumelt, Richard P. “Strategy in a ‘structural break’” mckinseyquarterly.com. McKinsey Quarterly. DECEMBER 2008. 
4. Street Porter, Janet. “Women don't want fluffy gimmicks - we want power!” dailymail.co.uk. Mail Online. 3^rd October 2011. 

Talking: Co-constructing knowledge

Synopsis: Diverse members of the team can contribute inputs from different angles. The group gains more insight of reality.


Clear distinctions of space and time exist in people’s minds in diversity.

Getting across

The more dimensions there are, the more the requirement for a better understanding of issues and their circumstances. Diverse members of the team can contribute inputs from different angles. The multiplicity helps the collective thinking become more rounded. The group gains more insight of reality and considers creative innovations to resolve them.

Issues and problems that create obstacles to workflow arise from different situations. They may also have different contexts and run different courses. The solutions then need to be designed to fit.


Two cognitive levels

Members verbalizing their inner speech are then vital to finding these new courses of action. Our intellectual development occurs at two cognitive levels. According to social scientist Lev Vygotsky, these are:

· Actual development: where the individual is capable of independently dealing with issues and solving related problems.
· Potential development: this constitutes the "zone of proximal development" where the individual needs assistance in dealing with challenges. The interactions with others are crucial for guidance or collaboration.

Learning continues through our lifetime in the zone of proximal development. Much of it is collaborative in nature, impossible to separate from the social context. As we gain in experience and expertise, the learning consolidates as actual cognitive development.

Learning

Learning does not occur simply with the intake of book knowledge. Vygotsky argues that all cognitive functions originate in, and are products of social interactions. By interacting freely and openly, we put the knowledge to test. In the process, we are always learners.

Consolidating learning also depends significantly on the individual's internal drive to understand and promote the learning process. With this inner drive, we develop even as we age. Without it, we tend to resist change.

Collaborative learning methods diffuse the required motivation person to person. In the process, learners develop teamwork. Individual learning and successful group learning are thus mutually related. Collaborations build up an atmosphere of mutual trust, respect and acceptance within the group. The system thus builds its own culture and values in diversity.

Co-constructing

Through the social interactions, individuals in the group can receive other people’s points of view, as well as present their own. Just talking together allows them to discover new ways of communicating their thought processes.

A close knit group, even with members of different cultures, develops a common language – like slang or verbal shorthand - that bind group experiences together. From shared learning, the cognitive structures may be utilized in new or innovative ways. People become more effective in adapting to environments and to change.

Being averse to ‘conflict’ among people of the system could inhibit creative thought or prevent its expression. To discourage talking amongst the collective is to retard processes of collective learning and problem solving. Fact is we don’t construct knowledge just by ourselves, but largely ‘co-construct’ it with others in the environment.

Comments/opinions, anyone??

References for ‘Talking’ and 'Problem solving' blogposts:

Social Constructivism
Why Vygotsky?

Talking: Focus on agenda

Synopsis: Minimizing personal contacts in organizations also minimizes lateral communications, preventing people from just talking to one another to create a common culture.



Differences, most organizations believe, will lead to conflict.

Talking

So they prefer to minimize personal contacts between members of the workforce. Keeping focused on the business agenda ensures a conflict-free work environment. It prevents time being wasted or interpersonal issues being raised. The trouble is it also minimizes lateral communications, preventing people from just talking to one another to create a common culture.

People are constantly talking around issues and solutions - in their minds. It is a conscious, purposive reflection on experience and learning. New perspectives are integrated into existing ideas, abilities and actions. This inner speech includes thinking slightly ahead of the present moment. That is, extending reasoning into the future, where outcomes will be met.

Its decisive power depends on each individual’s links with environmental factors, like other theories or other people. When people are familiar with one another these links are strong, and they are encouraged to share their thoughts and focus on issues and problems.

Culturally defined

Language and culture play a large role in our intellectual development. They actually define us, in how we tend to perceive worlds beyond our sensory data. Colour and shape that we see externally is transformed in throughput, to make sense as the things we see around us.


We assign meanings to environmental objects accordingly. For example, our eyes might see something round and black with two hands. Our minds then interpret the incoming data to mean ‘clock’.

More views

Diversity causes dimensions to multiply. Increasingly societies are becoming composed of various demographic groups. This means that the individual has to contend with more cultures, more languages, and more views than ever before.

Homogeneity among people makes communicating easy. Words, nuances and connotations are easily understood. But getting sense and meaning across those not sharing the same culture and language is harder, obviously because the words or signs that they will correctly understand need to be found.

Weak social and language skills inhibit group discussions. Cultural barriers stop people contributing their own thoughts to the group. Many in the workforce simply await instructions for task assignments.


Effective talk

Just talking outside the business agenda is an important aspect of social interactions. Heterogeneous groups get to know one another’s backgrounds, and can clarify boundaries, and express opinions, intentions and solutions. It helps in teamwork to fathom where one is coming from, or intending to get to.

Diverse people need to be just talking together to share knowledge, experiences, perspectives, and even feelings. It makes them aware of denotative and connotative words. They begin to catch on to undertones, nuances and idiomatic turns of speech.

Their interactions facilitate increasing the multicultural workgroup’s knowledge base and problem solving capability. The team members explore and present fresh angles, processes and options. The group, alerted by disagreements, can focus critical attention on the obstacles that are stalling the flow at work, or may do so in the future.

Cont’d 2…co-constructing knowledge

Intuition: learning without awareness

Synopsis: [You might view the earlier post “Intuition: comfort with ambiguity” before this.] The insight is quick, bypassing logic. The survival of the species through adversity proves its effectiveness.

Intuition allows a direct cognitive understanding and operates at many levels - physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

Immediate knowledge

It’s a far superior source of knowing than logical reason – and far more rapid. The insight bypasses analytic logic.

Intuition is defined as:

Immediate knowledge, as in perception or consciousness, distinguished from "mediate" knowledge, as in logical reasoning.

For example, we know that black is not white, or that a square peg won’t fit a round hole. But we can’t explain how we know so we call it a hunch, a gut feeling, or even luck.

Best practice?

Following ‘best practice’ became important in organizational life to preserve continuity and sameness. But global change has turned the world into a village increasing the heterogeneity that people now have to work with.

Society and the business organization need to relate to diverse people, in constituent demographic groups and customers. Among differences of age, culture, religion, and nationality, ‘tunnel’ vision and single-file progressions appear not to work too well.

It then becomes difficult to determine whether the erstwhile best practice can be relied on in new circumstances.

Adaptive behaviour

Theorists argue that instinctual reasoning was the only available daily intelligence that helped people in ancient times deal with the unknown.

In the uncertain circumstances they lived in, responses had to be instantaneous. Too many predators were about and there was no time to ponder laboriously over logical choice. They needed to correctly interpret sounds and movements to be able to survive.

Distilled knowledge

Experiential learning made unconditioned reflexes conditioned behaviour. These behaviour patterns, free of hesitation and doubt, eventually stored in memory as adaptive instincts.

In time they distilled as our intuition. The rapid route of thinking activates stored procedural knowledge, and quite unconsciously, we’re able to perform.

Feeling for order

Intuition is the “root” of all discoveries. Many noted scientists and Nobel Prize winners acknowledge knowing the answers before, working out the problems later. Said Einstein:

There is no logical way to the discovery of elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by the feeling for order lying behind appearance.

Intuition has a more global role to play in social intelligence, because people are far more unpredictable than things. It’s said that it takes less intelligence to land a man on the moon than it does to resolve the conflict of a married couple!

The learning

The ability to intuit is now considered innate. It represents our learning without awareness. Centred on person or thing, the ‘picture’ is built from elements obtained from generalized explorations on a wide horizon.

This real form of knowledge is critical for effective decision-making. It works through our emotions to provide the crucial understanding. The survival of species proves its effectiveness.

Comments/opinions anyone??

Intuition: comfort with ambiguity

Synopsis: Intuitive thinking has been considered relationship-based, ‘female type’ thinking. Women may be more adept at multitasking, looking beyond the obvious and in managing a variety of situations.


With discovery of two hemispheres in the brain in the twentieth century, functional dualism was theorized along gender lines.

The dual modes

The logic mode of the left hemisphere was perceived as the rational ‘masculine’ consciousness, task-based and academically brilliant.

The insight mode of the right hemisphere was looked upon as the intuitive ‘feminine’ consciousness that is relationship-based.

Feminine competency?

Insight bases on divergent thinking and inductive logic. But whether intuition (or rationality) is intrinsic to gender is still debated.

For example, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was mediocre academically. Yet he possessed "a zigzag lightning of the brain" that was universally admired.

Again, Indian littérateur Rabindranath Tagore went on to be a Nobel laureate, and two sovereign countries, India and Bangladesh have adopted his compositions as their national anthems. He created a university although he himself avoided formal schooling.

The non-rational way

Intuition or instinct isn’t irrational, but rather a non-rational, holistic way of thinking that forms the big picture from only a few dots.

The involvement with home, family and social connections could make women more adept at looking beyond the obvious, multitasking and managing a variety of situations at the same time.

So they appear more comfortable with ambiguity, better at decoding emotional messages, in nonverbal sensitivity, and in communicative verbal skills.

Stress responses

Unknown variables raise new levels of incompetence in people and performance falters. The resultant stress can cause unthinking responses, like:

• Panic is thinking too little, losing touch with situation and context and operating by some remote instinct to simply survive.
• Choking is thinking too much, losing touch with instinct and becoming tentative, approaching the job like a beginner, second-guessing oneself.
  

Stress conditions generally include emotional outpourings of fear and anger. They do also lead to irrational behaviours.

Hence ‘emotions’ have become connotatively associated - although it’s more accurate to equate ‘stress’ with ‘irrational’.

Systemic discomfort

Rationalism faces uncertainty in handling unknown variables. In interpersonal issues, motivation, and teamwork conflicts arise, producing hesitation, vacillation and emotional stress. The process of adaptation requires new learning.

But stress confuses the mind and shuts off reasoning. The decisional strategies adopted are reactive and only to alleviate the systemic discomfort.

People forced to think on their feet in uncertain circumstances might gamble on certain solutions working for them. Or they may become too overwhelmed by situation and context to make informed choices. They may also avoid taking a decision altogether by procrastinating or passing the buck.

Intuition rediscovered

An effective decision then seems a lucky strike. In a world of rapid change, multitasking and social skills have become keys requisite of ability because resources, including time, are now limited.

In its quest for the competitive edge, enterprise latched onto social intelligence as key in the global interactive process. Intuition, the “feminine” side of mind, has thus been rediscovered.

Cont’d 2…learning without awareness