From the Pyramidal to the Fragmented Society

The current debacle of our contemporary institutions leaves us all aghast with shock and maybe some nostalgia for older times when matters were perceived to be more organised. It seems that with the loss of the pyramidal structure of societies, which implied not only that the place of each individual was clearly defined but also that the diffusion of information was controlled,  our contemporary society is floundering to find its footing. Whether in the world of education, politics, religion, family, everywhere the debacle is felt as individuals scramble to cope with the fragmentation of knowledge and control which is our contemporary legacy. Objectively speaking, the past was far from egalitarian. All societies have historically been built on pyramidal hierarchies, with exploitation of labour of the many for the benefit of the few. The difference between the past and the present is that prior to the revolution of ideas in the nineteenth century the exploitation of people, serfs or slaves, was thought to be legitimate to preserve the world order. Since the advent of the great revolutions of the nineteenth century, that has become less and less acceptable as all societies are on the surface of things striving to achieve recognition of equality for all. With the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it has become ideologically less possible to justify exploitation of labour in its varied forms. However, practice always lags behind ideology. That a practice is not recognized to be acceptable does not mean that it has disappeared. In fact, we are all witness to the degree to which human labour is still being sacrificed to the altar of big capital. There are many worthy warriors against big capital in our own country who are doing a brilliant job with very little support and specially against the general apathy of the population. The fact that these anti-capitalist warriors are still waging war  means that the deep structure of capital is still relatively unchanged:  exploiting human labour to produce tangible or intangible goods which ultimately help in the structure of profit, is still very much the reality today. Since a system of privilege needs to ensure the reproduction of its own privilege and the maintenance of the social division which enables this privilege to exist, it becomes therefore imperative for social privilege to use the cupidity and self-serving ends of potential leaders to wreck the state. This first step has already been accomplished beyond the wildest possible dreams. In the absence of political ethics, of a sense of political responsibility, it is impossible to see how our self-serving political leaders will emerge from the morass of incompetence which they show us everyday.
Maybe the hope to redress the unequal balance of  power could reside in educating our children properly. But no one seems to care. On the contrary, most decision makers seem happy to keep the public education system operating at its middling level, to produce middling subjects for the machinery while elite educational establishments forge ahead  to introduce avant garde methods, which will ensure their children occupy the position of leadership in the decades to come.
Leadership is not something innate, it is something one learns sometimes from experience, sometimes from people who can impart some of the secrets of leadership. The world of business has  recognized this and learnt to exploit the idea through their leadership gurus. However, we need leadership gurus at all levels of the social system. Not to promote business but to promote self-responsibility. For the golden rule of leadership is that the individual needs to take charge of him/herself, develop critical acumen and shun tyrannical modes of control. However, nothing in our public education system or in our national media gives any hope of this happening. Our national media has generally forgotten their task of educating the masses for simply entertaining the masses. The interregnum in social reality makes it all the more important to re-assess the purpose of education at three-tiered levels. However, the real questions are not being asked. Rather the whole preoccupation of decision makers in this field seems to be in copy paste mode as they plug in  holes and malfunctionning sectors in a bid to stop the edifice from collapsing. Very little is seen to be done concretely, rather our whole public educational system seems to be functioning on emergency damage control mode. That must be reassuring in some quarters! It means that social privilege will reproduce itself in coming generations!

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