Sundays are always an obdurate
melancholy. Appearing uninterruptedly every sixth day it hardly promises
imagination. Much of the day is passed in the thought, ‘So many things to do,
so little time left.’ While doing
nothing and idling away your brain is a difficult task too. It may give the
cerebrum some serious rest, a much sought after relaxation of twenty-first
century but it spoils away your time.Unable to do so, one lazy Sunday
afternoon I was struck with the idea to research “Information, Intelligence and
Common Sense”. Are any two of those same?
Or separate entities deserving togetherness. Are they comparable? Is one dependant on the
other? Such random thoughts having descended on made leave my cozy divan for an
Oxford face saver (my dictionary) and finally internet.
I
wondered, if one has some serious intention of listening to others in a
harmless spying mood, even to those
unknown, at street corners, one will
often find talkative individuals superiorly ‘intelligent’ and knowledgeable. Such knowledge was not
available some twenty years or so, before the internet and opening up of the
society to everything that is available, good or bad, rational or irrational,
sense or nonsense.
This
flourishing business of ‘Information Technology’ with management spree produce
learned humanoid , half hearted, indecent, arrogant, good looking, smart and handsome population. They exhibit knowledge about everything and an empty pocket with a plastic in it. On
a Friday evening a distinguished friend of mine and secretary of an updated,
upfront, up market club took the risk of inviting me to a sitar recital. There
I found so many upwardly mobile men and women discussing Israel conflict to
innocent herbals without side effects in weight reducing drinks. So
knowledgeable were they, that it would put you to shame. I couldn’t resist
inviting one of them to deliver a quarter hour lecture at our university club
only to listen that time is too scarce for him. Knowledge here seemed ample,
making everyone proud with unputdownable heads and glamorous grin.
So
what is this knowledge about? This age of information technology brings
enormous amount of awareness but only in
the form of half-hearted learning, popularized by the present generation to be
kings in their own world. A man who had surfed internet in a desultory way comes
out from this veritable ‘net world’ remembering little about the pages he had
visited. It’s rightly called surfing, I believe. Touching everything but
nothing is in vogue and it guarantees social standing.
‘‘Keep
talking’, the golden word for cell phone companies is no more restricted to
billboards. It is now part of our life. We keep talking, often ejecting
unhealthy unverified data. Smart and convincing are we now, much more than our
forefathers .With so much in our head, ready to be displayed like throwaway
objects in glorified gatherings funded by billion dollar establishments, is
the trend of this age ,a prestige indeed
for the speaker.
A
few decades back when knowledge was not that rampant, learning was slow like a fat lazy lady strolling about one
winter afternoon. Not many a bright student would care to show off their
reference books. A score card never nearly touched the full score. The readers
chewed each line like a cud in search of thoughts kept out of sight. Chewing
the fat at street corners was common. In modern times this phenomenon will be
looked down upon as obsessive compulsive disorder. In countries like India
where buying magazines like National Geographic and Life was sheer luxury, bibliophiles
would throng around dusty old book shops mining earlier issues for a bargain.
Books and magazines would never turn old and obsolete and would rightfully
occupy spaces in a voracious reader’s unkempt rooms.
Is
it really necessary to slowdown? My honesty murmurs, “ I don’t know.” Speed
though measurable, is incorporeal to modern man making it difficult to
ascertain its power to push human race to destitution. But there is no harm in
pausing, I believe. It may provide a closer look at your heart that occupies
your brain. It is the ‘mind’ you had forgotten. It gives you the free chance to
breed your good sense and reasoning. It gives you the rich thought of understanding
and perception, regaining the power to think rationally. For the time being it
may be enough of what the human race had learnt provided it forgets unshackling
it’s destructive powers. The nous may be shedding silent tears. Heraclitus had
complained “much learning does not teach nous” and this saying still stands
upright.
So where is this
four letter word ‘nous’ gone? But the modern man has forgotten this word
remembering only one four letter word that kept missing from dictionaries in
our childhood days some fifty years back.
Believe me, I won’t lie, the nous is at nadir impatient to reach zenith. If
intelligence is human discovery, nous is the application or technology we enjoy. So
long we don’t appreciate nous, we are all humanoids, heartless engines running
after “ Buy one get one free’.
