Transforming the evil of ignorance

JUDY V KUBLALSINGH

SO, Mark Twain said it like this: “How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and (how) hard it is to undo that work again! An open mind leaves a chance for someone to drop a worthwhile thought in it.”

Sadhguru too tried: “How do you know? Usually, because someone or some book has told you so. Seeking is an admittance that you do not know…all that happens the moment you say you believe something is that your stupidity acquires confidence. Confidence and stupidity are a very dangerous combination, but they usually go together…If you start looking at the world you will see clearly that what you know is so minuscule that there is no way to act with confidence. A belief system takes away this problem; it gives you enormous confidence, but it does not cure your stupidity.”

Believing something because someone told us so is saying that we know something that we truthfully do not know. This is no different from believing gossip or ole talk, with no assessment of the story that’s sure to exist on the flip side. Indeed, from the moment we conclude that we believe something, we have essentially shut our minds off to any other alternative or possibility. And this is how stupidity and ignorance act and behave. You lose your ability to assess anything in an unbiased, novel way because you are stuck in locked-in, often bullheaded beliefs and notions about everything and everyone.

The media are called the fourth estate for good reason. The press and news media both in explicit capacity of advocacy and implicit ability to frame issues are a hyper-powerful machine. People deeply underestimate the impact news can have. Unfortunately, news coverage is far more than a benign source of facts. From attitudes toward illegal immigration to the content of our dreams, it can sneak into our subconscious, meddle with our lives, shape our views of entire populations, even influence the health of entire economies. It can disrupt elections too.

But the greatest evil on the planet isn’t the media. It’s ignorance. Ignorance of our true selves. If you do not know who or what you are, you rely on outside sources to tell you what to think, how to act, who you must love or hate. To add to the pile, whether you are conscious of it or not, we have all received myriad amounts of emotional promptings during our formative years that have influenced what we believe, ranging from racial differences to gods, to aliens.

And when you do not know who you are, you spend entire lifetimes seeking to derive your sense of worth; to "big-up" yourself from various forms of delusive identifications. Identifications with class, status, physical appearance, skin colour, race, hair, religion, UNC, PNM, wealth, achievement, talent, intellect, athletic prowess, gender, family, career, designer handbags, or just about anything from which you ascribe or attach value to define who or what you are.

Certainly, there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these identifications. It’s the illusion that these identities are you; who you are; or that your very worth is attached to these temporal identities that create the problem for us.

Consider the many people who define their entire, lofty life’s purpose as one of a “struggle for racial equality,” who see racial injustice in every nook and cranny of the universe. And for whom every transaction or experience is measured against a colourless backdrop of blackness or whiteness.

Think of the fundamentalist religious ones, so steeped in false notions of religious superiority and correctness that killing in the name of God seems not just perfectly rational, but honourable.

Notice how these insensible ideas that armies and wars are necessary with all their resulting pauperism, chaos, inhumanity and bloodshed elevate the notion of a domestic or national identity over our very humanity.

And witness how all these identities, the same as your thoughts, are things you have gathered in this lifetime, much like the clothes you wear or the car you drive, none of which are you.

“The creator has planted within every creature a fragment of himself, a spark, a spirit. The true self is perfect, omniscient, almighty, a fragment of God himself. A pure, transparent, luminous quintessence – there is a place within every one of us that is all-knowing and all-mighty” – Wayne Dyer.

God is that huge omniscient source which is the sum of all consciousness. Our higher self knows its divine connectedness to God because it recognises God, Krishna, Allah, or whatever you have chosen to call source.

And if we are all one, there is no one to compete with. How can you compete when you and I are one? Yet we have built up this ruthless, competitive society where man is against man. How do you compete against you? And if we are all one consciousness, how do we hate without experiencing the untoward effect of hatred ourselves? And how can you kill anyone? If your humanity was alive and well, would you need commandments to instruct you that thou shalt not kill, steal, or covet?

And if we are all part of one cosmic consciousness, who do we blame for the state of affairs in our country or the planet? Our world is only as angry, limited, ignorant or myopic as we are. If we want to fix crime, we must do the Trumpian thing. Fight, fight, fight! For yourself. For your own self-transformation.

Do you want change? Without self-transformation, there can be no change or transformation of our politics, languishing systems, or most heinous crime situation.