MURDER AT JAYAWARDHANAPURA UNIVERSITY

These beloved pets are missing and presumed murdered

If a dog lives its life in a specific area, had been doing so for years, is properly cared for, neutered when necessary, fed, watered and sheltered, is at least content if not downright happy, provides contentment and happiness to its primary caregivers, that dog is not footloose or set astray. It is a factor, a component, a definite entity of a larger social order, habitat if you may, where it has its place, has its role.  If that habitat is a small apartment, annexure or home, then the alpha-dog of that space, in most cases a human will be responsible for the dog and will look after it and take responsibility for it. If it is a much larger space such as the premises of J’Pura University, occupied by a large number of human beings hailing from various places for various reasons, then  alpha-dog is not a person sitting in some high chair but rather, a collection of those that look out for that dog. If decisions have to be made about that dog, then it is those caregivers who should make those decisions not someone far removed from any idea of such matters as habitats, definition of strays or ideas of social-anthropology, animal domestication or institutional culture. Those decisions cannot be made by an unqualified, intellectually vacant, socially bereft apology for a human being. Such decisions cannot be made by people like the Vice Chancellor of J’Pura university. He has no clue, therefore, he has no say. He cannot understand and will never understand that the dog population of all of our universities form an integral part of the portal, has been so for decades and are pets to a large number of students and teachers and by no means strays. 

Yet, this man has taken it upon himself to give strange definitions for what constitutes strays, vermin and pests.  He has decided, contrary to every definition of canines, that they are pests akin to cockroaches and termites. Things that need to be crushed underfoot or gassed out. Therefore, he decides in his maladjusted mind, to hire a terminator, a pest controller to exterminate the dog population of the J’Pura campus. Just as much as he doesn’t know how many termites are eating away at his books, he has no clue how many dogs there are. He only knows that they need to be sprayed with sarin or worse. There were 83 dogs a month ago. 30 of them have been murdered by a pest controller. If he wanted the dog population of the university wiped out he didn’t succeed. Instead he only succeeded in performing illegal, extra-judicial action that brought out a storm of grief and protest from all parts of the country. The outpouring of shock and horror was akin to sentiments expressed across the world at the extermination of human beings in Syria recently. This madman doesn’t understand that what he caused to be done to the dogs at J’Pura was no different to what was caused to be done to human beings in Syria. According to eyewitness reports, the dogs started vomiting, foaming at the mouth, losing consciousness in the same way, with the same suffering, over the same period of time as the human beings in Syria.

The students fought back, hard, on behalf of their beloved pets and they did it right. Even as they sobbed their hearts out that a pregnant bitch they had been caring for had been poisoned to death, they asked the careless, vicious, heartless, soulless, lawless VC for a meeting. He ignored them. They went to the police. They wrote to the papers. They campaigned on social media. They invoked every relevant law, directive and circular to protect the canines that were still left. Their voice could not be stilled and it was taken up by the larger populace of this country full of the followers of the Buddha and Lord Shiva to whom such action constitutes nothing less than murder. 

This man has and will continue to try to use political clout to kill the inquiry or, if possible, go against the very grain of governance and skew the findings of the inquiry that is being currently conducted. As I write, not only as a follower of the Buddha’s Dharma, a humanist, an ahimsaavaadi, a social activist, a musician, an environmentalist, an anthropologist, a corporate strategist, a mathematician and a lecturer, but also as an active member of the National Consumer Movement of Sri Lanka and a promoter of His Excellency the President’s campaign for a sustainable Sri Lanka where the sanctity of all sentient life is one of the priorities and for whom this sort of irrational, illegal behavior is anathema, so too, many others have taken up the righteous voice of these children and converted it into a roar that no amount of political clout can suppress. This man will be held accountable. This man will be persecuted. This man will be hounded (pun intended). This man will be prosecuted. This man will pay for his crimes against life. 

SHOOTING FOR THE WORLD WHILE AIMING FOR THE STARS: THE DANGER OF COMMODITIZING SUSTAINABILITY

Old habits die hard, even when new ways of thinking and doing are being either promised or claimed or assured. We are now in an era where we are buzzing the word “sustainable” at everything, anything, anyone, everyone. Few of us understand what this word really means but one thing is certain. Even before it has been fully understood, it is in danger of becoming stale and going the route of such words and phrases as green, conflict transformation, nation building, reconciliation, integration and good governance. The reason is quite easy to understand: we are attempting to market and promote something which we have understood but little and realized but less. Without knowing it, we are using the mechanisms of failed classical socioeconomics on a process that is the antithesis of it. Doing so, we are headed for a major disaster even before we start because a few pretty basic, pretty stupid things have happened to bring about this state of affairs. 

The first is that there are quite a few people who have jumped on the sustainability bandwagon believing that it is an opportunity for profit. Even a person with marginal intelligence knows that sustainability is a process – an opportunity (if opportunity it is), to subsume one’s individualism within the collective consciousness and commonalities of a nation pulling together for the preservation, regeneration, enhancement and continuation of life. Many times over the last few years I’ve heard phrases such as “organics fetch a higher price so why don’t we try to position ourselves to tap those markets and use sustainability as our promotional slogan” or “if I can become the only manufacturer of natural fertilizer, I will be the don of the sustainable age”, or “if our products are accredited and certified there will be greater acceptance in global markets”.  The rationale behind such thinking is easy: all that these people want to do is leverage any effort coming under sustainability to make … the least sustainable of all things…money. If a sustainability effort ends up with commandeered markets with just one fertilizer manufacturer, one rice mill, one fruit distributor, one soap maker, one physician know then that we have won nothing but lost much. All we would have done is created a new word for old nonsense. What must be understood is that in a sustainable world, profit is merely a collateral outcome of a process and not a primary goal. Financial gain is a happy positive but not an essential. The minute anyone thinks otherwise, we are back in the old humdrum of markets promoting sweet nothings to people desperate for hard somethings. Go this route and all we can hope to do is sustainably consume bitter dreams and dashed hopes. 

The second is that quite a few people want bragging rights. The right to claim that they were the first and the best in pushing a community, a nation and region a planet towards sustainable living. Even a person who is not too smart will know that sustainability is a process so complex when set against the modern realities of the world that no single person can or should claim hero status for its establishment. They cannot. If they think they can, they have been guilty of oversimplifying the infinitely complex. By its very definition it is a process that requires very large numbers of very wise people to be given hands-off ownership of the process at any level, at every level. To do this, every individual, group, community should be allowed to do their thing the way they want to do that thing. Over time, these pockets will organically merge into common collectives. If anyone attempts the insanity of forcing them to adhere to this or that, vote for this or that, salute this or that, sign-in to this or that, they should understand then and there that the effort is doomed. If someone can do that, he doesn’t need to become the next leader of a nation to be respected for what he has done. She needn’t be looked upon as the great bountiful goddess of sustainability to feel a sense of worth. No. Just the simple, personal knowledge of having done something well, something durable, something sustainable is sufficient.

The third is that quite a few believe that sustainability can be achieved as quickly and as easily as flipping a switch. Sorry folks. If we want to do things quickly, easily, conveniently or politically, we might as well go back to the industrial era. That was an age where time was money. That was a time where IQ tests were devices to test how quickly people can do something not how well people can do it. That was an era where quality was measured by how many people bought something over ten days not on how good something was that they never had to replace it over the next ten years. It was a period where the next election determined the development cycle. The way of doing things sustainably is directly opposed to such tactics. 

Sustainability takes time and it doesn’t care at all for individual agendas or fiefdom economics or party politics. It cannot be promoted to the human collective if it is not present exactly as claimed upon the ground. It will not tolerate failure or post-failure finger-pointing. It is not dependent on positive and hopeful slogans but on cold assessments of what is possible, probable and impossible when measured against social and temporal parameters. It takes care to exquisitely create things that are durable. It does not create things that have short sharp burst lifetimes and which hardly qualify as produce and products. It doesn’t do things in contravention of nature’s timetable just because the political timetable for delivering results is different. In the industrial era, politicians, businesspeople, civil agents, activists, media and researchers could and did lie through their teeth about what is good, what is bad, what is right, what is wrong, what is popular, what is not. They collectively fibbed, blatantly, on how well or how badly a country was governed or its security and happiness was assured. In the sustainable era, nobody can lie. If they do, then they get caught quickly because one of the key foundations of sustainability is to stop buying into lies be they lies on goods, services or politics. You see, the sustainable man cannot be fooled and to try to fool him is foolish. 

So, let us take a step back and assess these things soberly. Let us be circumspect and thoughtful. Let us be considerate and careful. Let us not make age old mistakes in our attempts to curve out a new age for our children. Let us not try to commoditize sustainability and go the route of desiring gain, or fame or praise which will only result in pain for all. We cannot do that when we are trying to collectively overturn centuries long loss, shame and blame so that all will live content. 

Let us understand that if we are shooting for the world, we must take a pass on the stars. 

 

Those who can, do, those who can’t teach. REALLY?

This paraphrased quote from George Bernard Shaw (actual quote: “He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.”)  is frequently used to demean teachers and ridicule their efforts while lauding the doing part of life over the teaching part of it.  The problem with the statement is that no one has the slightest idea what actually constitutes a “doer” and what constitutes a “teacher”. 

Is a doer an action hero? An activist? An inventor of new things? A re-creator of old things in new skins? A person who exploited thousands to salt a few million francs away?  A person swollen to the gills with achievement in action? All of those? Some of those? None of those? 

Is a teacher an instructor in a skill? An imparter of knowledge? An educator? A trainer? A parrot of things heard casually and remembered with difficulty? A person swollen to the gills with achievement in qualification? All of those? Some of those? None of those?

See also, Accomplishment must come at the cost of achievement

In the modern reading of those two terms, it is not that hard to figure out that both arise from a base of two fundamental commons. Two foundation cornerstones. 

One, self-servitude, the other, ego.  

Once this is understood, it is not that hard to understand that both the so-called doer and the so-called teacher are basically doers – doing for themselves, their self-enhancement and their self-aggrandization only. The sum result of that effort, regardless of the label attached, is transitory and fleeting, largely destructive and mostly useless. We have seen that over the last few centuries in the horrors we have visited upon ourselves and our planet due to such self-centered ideas of what constitutes action and education within this questionable framework of endeavor we call civilized behavior. Behavior which, antithetically, actually breaks apart human groupings and mocks the very word, destroying civilization while claiming to be its developers and its growers and its consolidators. After four centuries of this madness, all we have to show for ourselves is a large number of buildings, an equal number of machines and a comparable number of degrees and qualifications. When these are combined with dysfunctional families, fragmented societies, infighting, cross-fighting, world-wars, disasters upon disasters mostly made by our own hands, we must recognize the painful truth that our doers and teachers have failed us.  We have only managed, by our action, by our instruction, to create the conditions that may well lead to the death of us all. 

Where did we go wrong?  Well, many things but greed, primarily. Greed in one exists to pull everything to oneself and remove everything from everyone else (1% at the top use more resources and wealth than 57% at the bottom!). The imbalance of energies, potencies and dynamics created by a civilization founded on greed cannot sustain as we are seeing now. 

Here is a brief litany of our insanity: 250 major wars since WWII and 49 ongoing, 23 million people killed, more children killed in wars over the last decade than soldiers, three out of four casualties of war women or children, 9 million people incarcerated, a third of the global labor force (1 billion people) unemployed or underemployed, 20 million people in bonded labor,   8.4 million children trapped in the most abhorrent forms of child labor - slavery, trafficking, debt bondage, prostitution and pornography, 1 out of 6 (246 million) children between the ages of 5 and 17 in child labor, women constituting 70% of those in poverty, extrajudicial executions in 47 countries and disappearances in 37 countries, detention without charge in 66 countries, prisoners of conscience in 78 countries, half the world (3 billion people) in poverty, 800 million without proper healthcare, 75 million children never attending or completing primary school education,  870 million of the world's adults illiterate, 3 million people dead of HIV every year, half of the forests that originally covered 46% of the Earth's land surface gone, 30% of the world’s freshwater species extinct, 250 million people affected by desertification and 1 billion at risk, temperature rise expected to be 3 degrees over the next 100 years. 

The master species has taught itself to do these wonderful things to themselves and their world

We, killing off our world, must ask ourselves: Is this our great human race? Is this our fantastic civilization? Is this the group that claims to be overlords of all things, ideas and life? Can we call this type of intent to hurt, this type of desire to inflict pain and suffering, this type of action to exploit, pillage, corrupt, damage, rape, murder and destroy “doing”? Can we call the type of instruction that led to this type of destruction “teaching”?  

I will not answer those questions because the answers are not convenient or right to the majority of the people on earth. Hell, they created this craziness and they are pretty happy with it, right? Unashamed, this peopled earth has stripped itself naked and is not at all upset that it stands so, unclothed, for all to see. We, flensed of cover, see value in lying, cheating, thieving, manipulating, conniving and murdering. We, bereft of shields, see value in driving ourselves to the grave and making certain we take everyone else alone with us for the ride. 

There doesn’t seem to be much that anyone can do about this mess but I can certainly state my claim as to what constitutes  doing and what constitutes teaching. It is simply this: None who can do for the good of all will ever stop short of doing, and none who do so stops short of teaching what was done for the benefit of all. 

Against that rule, real doing upholds all sentient life, regenerates all sentient life, succors all sentient life, protects all sentient life, makes content all sentient life, makes joyous all sentient life. Even if such doing costs the doers their own lives.  They will never say what they have done until they have done what they have said. Then, if they survive the life-giving tasks they have set themselves, they will proceed to teach everyone else how to do the same. True doing is then the antithesis of the vulgar idea of doing and, by extension, the vulgar idea of teaching. 

That, friends, is a terrible truth to swallow. For most people it is a truth that is impossible to digest. Every indicator of what most people have decided is good points in the diametrically opposite direction. To acknowledge this truth is to acknowledge the fact that there are very few people who can do in this world, and very few people who can teach in this world. To acknowledge it is to understand that the chances are high that one has never been either a doer or a teacher regardless of how one labels oneself. It is to acknowledge that it is only the true doer who can truly teach and that the chances are that one does not fall into either category. 

SO……? Be it! 

See also, Educating for a lesser idea of knowledge

I cannot apologize for exposing the naked shame of the human race because I value above all else, the fact that I have been the happy recipient of the knowledge of doers who taught. I have been the beneficiary of a few “disaapaamokh anduras”. Men and women who have been holistically enabled doers who then spoke as empowered and envisioned teachers  - or knowers of the ten directions - or those who have practiced the sum total of all there is to practice and are thereby bound to instruct others in the same.  

The great doer-teacher, Disaapaaamokh Dronacharya instructs his student Arjuna to become the greatest bowman the world had ever known

To have known the true quality of the doing teacher is to know the misery of what passes for both doing and teaching as they are cognized these days.  Within a mangled value system, few will get a chance for engaging in anything that sustains, regenerates and rejuvenates our earth, its plants, its animals and its people. 

I can look forward... with misplaced hope perhaps... to our young. We have already shot ourselves in the head while shooting the world in the foot. Having seen the darkness we have bequeathed to our children through our action and our instruction, I can only hope that our 25 something kids will reject everything they saw us do and redact everything they heard us teach and start afresh in their approach to human effort and what constitutes true quality in those exercises. 

It is perhaps a fools hope. Perhaps it is a quiet desperation. Perhaps it is an acknowledgement of "Oh my God... what have we done...  Dear God... what are we telling our children to do?".  

But I do hope that they will know that those who walk their talk will also talk their walk and, instead of making silly statements of no merit, change Bernard Shaw’s saying to “Those who can truly do, can truly teach” .