Living Wisely

You might actually be living wisely, who would admit to anything else. Rama thought he was living wisely, Ravana also thought he was living wisely, so thought Judas and Jesus. One betrayed, the other trusted.

It is clear, however, that all that one considers to be wisdom could actually be something else. A couple of decade ago, mass manufacturing was at its peak. Large factories produced a small product in millions. It produced a very good product and then produced more of it and then even more. It was called a great organization. The mirror image of manufacturing was bureaucracy. It was supposed to churn out standardized decisions and if it was good, do more of the same – very mundane indeed.

This article is on parenting issues; but the social churn is important to understand. It is more like social mutation. There was a time when all parents looked smart. They did something well and then did more of the same. It made them look even better. Today, this strategy would be a blue print for disaster – doing more of the same does not work any more.
Your children still think you are the best mom and dad in the world and they would not trade you for anything. Then comes the effect of a mutant society. “But folks, that is not good enough for me.”
Today, the environment is very unstable and accelerative with unclear direction. Take an example – Our parents had to deal with “Binaca geet mala” and “Jaimala” and you deal with hundreds T.V. Channel, broadband and a Gizmo called cell-phone.

By the way, I wonder how many of you know what blue – tooth is? I will drop a hint. It is not about color of our dentition.Our society is possibly going through a lot of mutation. Look at the new things and the new behavior that spring up regularly. The novelty ratio is rising and if one thought that history and tradition will teach us skills for the future, that is not happening.
We are forced today to re-examine concepts and beliefs and this is true for almost all walks of life. I would not want this write up (and others if there are more) to become a “Samizdat” document among parents, but we must learn fast and have good channels of idea sharing. By the way the next word to Samizdat in my dictionary is Samosa.India Shining ?
A very high novelty ratio makes behavior adaptation much more difficult. We need to modify some of our postulates of thinking to improve our adaptation to this new society.
a) Most of us have an acute fear of the future, it is almost, mythical and we would love to preempt life.
In last few decades, some great things have happened. Berlin wall came down; Ideological wars in economic theory are non existent. Our relationships with neighboring countries are on the mend. Economically we are on the fast track. There is so much work on disease control - life is going to be good.
Our glass is more than half full and we are victim of nothing. So this mythical fear of the future is absolutely misplaced.

b) It may be a mistake to treat life as a game of checkers, where every piece is the same, every move is similar.
Life gets an entirely new meaning if it is treated as movements in a game of chess. Every chess piece is positively differentiated.
I must add here that the greatest service you can do to your children is help in differentiation that is to identify his strength. In the age of instant noodles and drinks this is going to be a long drawn old fashioned process, please be careful.
We will come with real action plan for your children of every age group in due course.