It is not fair to make a sweeping
statement without making adequate and proper investigations about the facts. At
the same time, it is also incorrect not to express about one’s constant
experience.
We all, from different backgrounds,
from different professions and different social environments, know that many
untruths prevail in our surroundings for a pretty long time, until a seemingly
stupid fellow finally protests by saying, “What nonsense!”
For instance, the provisions of laws
framed in the 19th century that have no relevance today are still
applied after prolonged arguments by the learned solicitors and hearings by the
wise judges or certain meaningless rituals, often causing some harm to the
society, are still performed in the most ridiculous manner by the most
intelligent people.
There is a common belief that poor people
cannot be fully relied upon. This, perhaps, is not because they are dishonest,
but because their circumstances do not permit them to act the way they actually
intend to act. No one tries to go deep in this matter. As against this, my
experience tells me that the more one goes after the money more unreliable he
becomes. We know that to make a little more money than others; one has to give
away, deploy or invest something extra, and that extra becomes the reason for one’s
unreliability. It is better to analyze this situation with an unbiased mind.
Let us start with a very honest,
hardworking and intelligent individual who wants to make more money with his sincere
efforts. The least he may be needed to invest would be his time. But, the time
he has is not entirely his own. Those who looked after him in past, look after
him at present or depend upon him do need their share of his time. If he is not
able to spare enough time for them, how can we consider him to be reliable for
those who need a little of his time but never get it? This was, perhaps, the
most favourable argument for the one who wanted to be categorized as a reliable
individual, notwithstanding his efforts to make a little more money. From here
on starts a large chain of unreliable actions that are needed to make more
money. It starts from paying less for the services or goods received, charging
more for the goods or services sold than what is justified, hiding some
information that must be revealed to the customers, passing on false
information to the buyers of services or the goods, taking advantage of the
problems and inabilities of the others, not hesitating in harming others if it
could help one to make a little more money. One who makes money to satisfy his genuine needs
can be relied upon, but who wants to earn a little more money cannot be relied
upon. Starting from the smallest of the vendors to the largest of the business corporation,
or the Governments of the richest of the countries, reliability is the rarest
thing to find if the thought of little more money, little more comfort, little
more convenience or little more luxury persists.
We don’t easily trust the fellow we
interact with in our day to life; and we are never very comfortable with this
occurrence. We might also have become habituated to it to an extent so as to
treat it as normal. Do we anticipate if things would improve in the future and
people will become more reliable? Or, do we suspect this situation will worsen
in the future?
I think, we all suspect the existing
trend, at best, will continue as it is and may even get worsened in the future
from time to time, from place to place and depending on the prevailing
circumstances, sometimes even becoming intolerable. The more important question
is, will we feel better if people become more reliable? I think everybody would
easily welcome it.
The thought we keep avoiding is about
the possibilities of change for the better. We are afraid that it may not be
possible. It seems that the man, in his efforts to get rid of the weaknesses
and ills of the past and to make materialistic progress as quickly as possible,
has started believing that his materialistic growth has automatically improved
his thought process and conduct. It might have happened because ‘the old guards’,
the guardians of the man’s thoughts and conduct, the religious leaders and
their likes, have ever been skeptical and hateful about the man’s efforts to
grow in materialistic terms using his intellect, because excessive use of
intellect, unless directed to serve all that is living, is detrimental to the
human faith in the good of the entire universe. Hence, they always overreacted
to any intellectual efforts made by the mankind. Perhaps, the modern man, as a
reaction to the ‘overreaction of the old guards’, considers that any talk about
‘right thoughts’ and ‘right conduct’ has a hidden agenda of making him a
primitive man once again. Modernity, therefore, suspects any attempt to bring
about a change in the man’s thoughts and conduct viewing it as a retrograde
step.
In my book “In Search of Our Wonderful
Words” I wrote;
“The
societies can never be creative. The battle to create wisdom for his benefit
the man has to fight alone.”
We should not expect a collective
action or a social reform to happen to make the man a little more reliable. Even
if a society passively favours such a reform, the selfish elements in the
society will not permit it to happen. A few or many among us will have to individually experiment to find
out what happens if we try to become a
little more reliable in our day to day conduct and give lesser importance to
making a little more money than what we give to it today. I have often emphasized
that such individual experiments that have a potential to benefit the society
take time and they must be persisted with enormous patience. People are
interested in change; they change themselves, perhaps slowly, but definitely,
if they have an opportunity to see a live example. The ridiculous mistake of drawing hurried
conclusions must not be made, in relation to such experiments.
When someone tries to become a little
more reliable, he is definitely experiencing some problems with regard to his capacity
of earning money, but why should we doubt his ability to manage his affairs
without things that are redundant and are superfluous in nature. For all we
know the little more we try to earn may be going towards what is ostentatious
and wasteful. We may be using a part of our ‘extra’ earning for meeting the
cost of hiding what is unreliable about us and of course, for financing our
inefficiency.
We have enough ground to suspect that
perhaps, the rich who are in a small minority can bear the cost of
unreliability, but the poor (who constitute a very large majority of the world
population) cannot bear that cost. They suffer badly. That is why it is all the
more important to reduce the extent of unreliability from our conduct.
I have talked about ‘reducing the
extent of unreliability’, not about eliminating it. Not that, the unreliability
has something positive associated with it; it is only because we have a lot to
learn about our own welfare.
PROMOD KUMAR SHARMA
[The writer of this blog is also the author of “Mahatma A
Scientist of the Intuitively Obvious” and “In Search of Our Wonderful Words”.]
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