Step Your Game Up

The afternoon session of Abhyas Varg B was designed to give us the tools to enable us to push ourselves further and aspire for excellence. We watched a video from the TED website – an organisation that does talks and seminars spreading innovative and creative ideas.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html

To push for excellence, he motions the idea of ‘virtue’. To illustrate his point he gave the example of a hospital janitor. His job description does not involve one aspect which requires human interaction. However, when interviewed, many janitors gave stories of how they ignored orders and parts of their job description in order to help patients such as helping them with their rehabilitation. So, despite not requiring any social interaction as part of their described role, many janitors feel it is necessary to do so and this helps the hospital run smoother and create a pleasant environment.

So values such as kindness and empathy are an essential part of their job. A wise person requires the moral will and moral skill in order to do the right thing and knows when and how to make an exception to every rule. A wise person is adaptable and changes according to the situation.

A wise man is made, not born. Wisdom comes from experience and this requires trying new things and accepting and overcoming failure. To be brilliant, you need not be wise but without wisdom, brilliance is not enough.

Applying the above to society today, we see a world full of compliance and bureaucracy. Rules are rigid and we often hear the phrase, ‘I hate to do it but I have to follow rules.’ Has it occurred to us that rules often prevent thinking and initiative? Rules and incentives are useful in the short run but in the long run they deprive thinking and discourage people from using their moral will and doing the right thing.

But this structured and regulated society we live in is rife. Today’s education system hampers creativity and promotes mediocrity. Children are losing their ability to think and their creative prowess is diminishing. I, like many other university students can relate to this. To pass our exams, all we do is memorise a few lecture handouts and read the core textbook (obviously, not just the night before the exam!) and once it is finished, we forget everything that we learnt. As a result of the current education system, we often lack initiative and struggle to adapt to working life which is fast paced and ever changing.

To address this issue, the speaker spoke of how the education system needs revamping in order to promote creativity and forward thinking. In addition, work needs to be re-moralised – people should be inspired to do the right thing and this requires moral will and initiative. Furthermore, social interaction is needed to gain a greater sense of community spirit.

In many of our lives, we will be faced with the following dilemma – do we follow the rules given or do we use our moral will and do the right thing?? What would you do??