Monday, September 29, 2008

The Forgotten Map

Our life is the result of all the decision taken by us at that precise moment of time, at a given place in that given situation. These decisions have a decisive effect on the rest of our life. As a result of our decision and acts whole community and whose society is affected.
There are many people who decided to radically change their life like Francis of Assisi (Giovanni Francesco Pico Della Mirandola) who prepared himself for public defence of his 900 theses. He refused himself to enclose himself within narrowness of just one doctrine. He spoke about brother sun and sister moon.
Even Machiavelli who warned us that it’s much safer to be feared than to be loved.
Even Giordano Brono who was burned at the stake, victim of his pantheism, as he believed that earth is life and has a soul.
Science is through reasoning and human’s attribute is to reason. Nothing that cannot be measured was important in the science according to Galileo and Newton.
Science is not only the accumulation of knowledge of physical world but also an inner path of spiritual development.
We have chosen a path of Galileo and Newton and not navigated through route of Goethean science. Feeling, invitation, consciousness and spirituality are still banished from realm of science. We are totally divorced from reality as we think that only what can be measured is important.
We follow the route that is there in front of us, which is been followed by others from past many years. We don’t look around and thus only bookworms remember the path not navigated.
As we seek refuge in a technology that offers in an escape into virtual realities, we find ourselves in world of confusion.
KNOWLEDGE IS INFORMATION. The understanding of the knowledge is lacked by most of us. Understanding is basically the experience we get of the knowledge we have example love. We define love in many ways if asked by some one but unless and until we experience it. We cannot tell that we understand it. This is basic different between knowledge and understanding.
Thus those of us who are concerned with relation between science and spirituality are finally becoming aware that knowledge is not enough and we have to attain understanding in order to achieve completeness.
The language influences our perceptions and hence shapes our action. Eg. In 1st 3 centuries of 2nd millennium, the dominant language was teleological nature, in 19th century it was consolidation of nature-state. In 20th century economics great depression with emergence of Keynesian economics, developmental language and finally neo-liberal disclosure in which global poverty has increased dramatically.
The decision humanity has taken in past have led us to a place of global crisis.
Now finally the time has arrived in which we should analyse with honesty, our navigation map and see the alternative map route on which we haven’t navigated. Perhaps we should start thinking the way round. We need new language and we should open doors of understanding. If we manage the shift, we may experience the satisfaction of having brought about a new century worth living in.

Malav Sanghvi
3rd Semester
Product Design