Between despair and hope

Collapse

The world is globalized and we are in our mid journey.  Continuity with modifications and change has been the strides of history.  History is understanding change without passing the judgements. What then could be our role, if we are amidst ecological collapse, technological disruption and thrown in global wars? Perhaps understanding the deepening crisis, we can take preventive measures to stop it from final collapse. The problem is how to bring consciousness back in the ensuing era of super intelligence. Until now, the human agencies had role to play, from prophets to sages, reformers to statesmen, the intelligent minds could become human agencies to bring social transformations. With the rupture of modernity, the journey of humankind has entered the new phase. Human agencies are inadequate and the project of humankind is eluding. The run for supremacy of one faith has left religions contesting, belligerent nationalism on unidentified traditions are creating schisms and divisions in the society.  The unintended consequences of Modernity produced fascism, communism and liberalism. Fascism and communism, like religion relied on human agencies to make hierarchical supreme world, under the pretended banner of parity and oneness with conflict inevitable. The collapse of ideologies after the Cold War did not end history, but made popular liberalism turning primordial. This has cast shadows on the institutions witnessing decline in the institutional merit.

The selection of lecturers in the Delhi University colleges last year did not go all well, without questions. Similarly, NEET, NET examinations loopholes have raised eyebrows on the systematism of faith and wellbeing. The popular liberalism rests on quantity in numbers and scoring, not on quality and substance.  Do we need more colleges and institutions to boast about, if it does not produce quality results? When we look at the global ranking or even at the national ranking, of our universities and institutions, it is either of some selective urban private universities or a few national institutions that have English as the medium of learning and teaching. Hindi, unless it becomes rich and powerful as English language is, our knowledge system remains bankrupt. Till then, even after English is the language of power and technology. If you do not believe it, be a participant observer for a week or so in any of colleges in UP, Bihar, MP and Rajasthan, hundreds in number. You can understand why a post-graduation degree does not fetch a job, but a student of 10 2 with skills of  communication, from an English medium institution, has instant offer with assured future. Patriotism can be better served, if one has institutional excellence. That can be achieved if you have access to the window of knowledge. China, Japan despite translating millions of books instantly in their language, still are popularizing English in schools and institutions in significant magnitudes.

There are arguments that emergence of modern schools has come from industrial order of factory systems. The same timings, queues and dress ups for the factory workers were regulated, for children in schools with the notions of discipline and punish for leaning and memorizing. The universities have older histories, possibly to Middle Ages, as institution for the generation of ideas. Universities might live. Schools in this form are difficult to survive. Therefore, schooling needs revamping in texts and methodologies. Since, modernity had disconnected schooling from homes, it is under scrutiny. What the critics fail to understand is that   schools are the only institutions viable, as a result of disintegration of families and loss of social geographies and primary groups.

The crisis is global.  For, artificial Intelligence, AI has knocked the door of this world to take off consciousness out from intelligence. The organic religions would  enforce the moral space on the presumption that humans alone have the consciousness and intelligence intrinsic in it. Therefore, the accountability, in life or after death has been part of religious tenants. However, AI relies on universal data from ages, from anywhere, organic or non-organic beings to create super intelligence. It would be first time to replace human intervention. And this could be devoid of consciousness. It will alter human subjectivity altogether. Scientists argue that it so fast that it may not take more than seven decades in altering the human subjectivity.

The existential risk debates have predicted that the corporate companies would turn into legal persons. The new legal persons can buy political elite with their money power to change the grammar and rules of market ethics. Since it would transgress the national borders, so human civilization as such is vulnerable. The human intervention can be through creating new narratives, demystifying the old stories and bringing them in the project of humankind. We need narratives that can come from native wisdom to national priorities and bring it in consonance with universality. It is where alternative to modernity will come from multiple- modernity to complete unfinished agenda of modernity.  It is a must before AI gets in full control. Thinkers like Youval Harri strongly plead that democracy which is all about conversations might be the first causality when AI would enter into its second stage of development.  It is a shift form organic to inorganic world and that inorganic revolution would be too fast to imagine.  Still, the time is to change.

To change the war discourses, divisive strategies and selective welfares and save the ecological catastrophes. That is possible only if we have brilliant and compassionate minds in the institutions to tell us the stories of humankind. The west is already struck in its project. We have the benefit of our sustained history of our evolving civilization. We need to identify traditions and identify authentic knowledge that could traverse globally and save us from ecological collapse, end wars and violence and make process of correction to the technological disruptions. It is pity that we remain tugged in trivial issues. According to the historians the war histories are the product of’ human’s fight over the imaginary stories in their mind.

The wars have not been ‘on food and territories, but on augmented realities and imagined stories’. Nationalism and religions are stories, but these stories should not create hate. Present day large scale democracy is a human endeavor of technology and information. Therefore, information should not be left to AI or in the hands of power hungry dictators, who are not able to understand human emotions, compassion and trusteeship. Despite vulnerabilities for the last five decades, it was supposed to be best possible period in human history, in terms of benefits of globalization and digital revolution. Humans have power to change the trends that point towards dark times to come. Science has made a split in consciousness and intelligence. AI has only super intelligence, devoid of emotions, love and pain. It is why we should have brilliant minds in our public and private institutions, as the leaders and the advisors, who can create humankind stories with human budget to support it. The recent experimentation of Higher Education in Jammu and Kashmir is a right step in ‘Designing the Degree’. It should come to schools also, so that they have new narratives of humankind, acceptable to the humankind project with consensus, in spreading right messages of compassion, dignity, trusteeship and fellow fleeing. For, religiosity and negative nationalism have robbed the moral space of humanity. We need to change this discourse.

Professor Dinesh Singh is a brilliant scholar, a mathematician, who has scientific temper and grooming in the positive sides of all religious traditions. We need such leaders more in public sphere and other universities of the country as well. The three language system was well thought project to link native wisdom with universal requirements. More languages known, better understanding our children will develop. It is myopic not to have blending understanding in diverse society. It is a privilege to live in this country and enjoy that charm of resilience and comprehend the future on native wisdoms coming from identified traditions, provided we have persons of excellent institutional merit, who are reformers also at the helm of affairs.

Prof. Ashok Kaul, Retired Emeritus professor of sociology at Banaras Hindu University