It was evening rush hour at the biggest open market district in Africa. My friends and I were waiting for a bus that goes to our quarter of the city after a long day at school. It was raining very heavily and the poorly constructed streets of Addis were flooded, as usual. We were sheltered at the gate of a department store, entertaining ourselves with the drama unfolding in the streets ahead... reckless drivers dashing over potholes and splashing heaves of mud and rain over rushing pedestrians, girls struggling to cover their body parts uncovered by the hushing cold wind, while other people are chasing after their umbrellas that the wind snatched out of their hands, and yet others searching for their shoes lost in the flood... For a bunch of jovial teenagers who had spent a stressful day at high school, it was indeed a perfect amusement.
While we were cracking over the show in the streets, a stranger approached us, with a rather reprimanding paternal look on his face. He said "There is nothing to laugh here, there is no time to laugh; the world is in crisis!". That made us all feel a bit guilty, and for a moment I thought he was one of those Protestant evangelists preparing to shove their doctrine down our throats. Then he asked us, "What is the most serious problem of our time in the world?" One of us was swift to answer saying "Floods!". It made us all laugh, but we all agreed on the answer and mentioned the events unfolding before our eyes in the streets of Addis as evidences to the magnitude of the problem. Our sense of humor made the stranger sad and angry. He disagreed saying "NO! The most serious problem of our time is HIV/AIDS!"Then he started telling his story... He was suffering from AIDS, and on a personal mission to save upcoming youth like ourselves. The stories he told us really touched our hearts, while scaring us to some extent. He was the first person that we met who openly spoke of his condition, and indeed one of the few brave people doing so at the time.
A decade later, HIV/AIDS is still a pressing issue for a large fraction of the world's population. Several other issues such as poverty, inequality, war, globalization, etc could also be included in the top list. However, today, none of these would be my answer to the same question that the stranger asked me over a decade ago. I think, the most pressing issue of our time, of any time, as a matter of fact the mother-lode of all problems, is something else. It goes by the name of 'Narrow-mindedness'. Idiocy, selfishness, egoism, ignorance, dogmatism, etc might serve as synonyms to a certain extent. But I prefer to use the term 'narrow-mindedness' as I found the image of a little mind confined in an impenetrable wall very telling.
It is simple, really. A narrow-minded mind is simply narrow! It has only a limited scope of understanding and solving a problem. Sooner or later, it saturates its resources and only creates more problems than it solves, eventually imploding in itself. All the major problems besetting the world we live in can be tracked down to the narrow-mindedness of someone, somewhere. And if not the problem itself, then the lack of a successful solution is due to narrow-mindedness. Wars are results of selfish narrow-mindness that ignores the miracles and beauty of life. Poverty is the result of selfish, narrow-minded imperialism/capitalism that perpetually robs someone to feed someone else. Economic crises and climate change are results of selfish, narrow-minded structure for wealth creation. Diseases are rampant because selfish, narrow-minded groups of humans control, divert, and manipulate resources that could be invested to find cures, assuming they don't participate in the genesis and expansion of diseases in the first place. In short, pick any problem or lack of its solution, and you will witness the footprints of narrow-mindedness all over it.
Narrow-mindedness is not just a cause for individual problems or lack of their solutions. More importantly, it is a chronic illness that self-amplifies with every generation of problems and proposed solutions. A narrow-minded mind responds to a problem with a narrow-minded approach. Thus any solution it puts in effect can only go so far in solving the original problem before generating a new one. Stimulating a dull economy by bailing out bankrupt banks that sank the economy before they went bankrupt in the first place is a good example. So is pouring billions of dollars of aid every year to poor countries, which are made poor by rich countries in the first place. So is going to war with some 'terrorist' country that is made an enemy by annihilating it from its due share of peace and prosperity in the first place. The list could go on and on.
The perils of narrow-mindedness are very well known to the narrow-minded than to anyone else. Yet, the narrow-minded can not escape this state for two major reasons. Firstly, they are too narrow-minded to consider other effective ways of solving a problem, including the problem of being narrow-minded. Secondly, narrow-mindedness is almost always accompanied by selfishness which over magnifies minute personal losses in a face of huge mutual gains. This grossly explains why the world, controlled by few narrow-minded humans of the north, is increasingly becoming a difficult place to survive for most of mankind and other life forms that have long existed in the planet harmoniously.
Thus, to bring lasting peace and prosperity to mankind and the planet, to solve all major problems, and to progress forward in this glorious cosmic journey, it is imperative that humans avoid narrow-mindedness, while harnessing absolute, honest, fearless open-mindedness in all their affairs. All of us - humans, or non-humans, living or non-living, matter or antimatter or energy - are connected. Attempting to create a narrow universe of our own, designed for our narrow interests can only unbalance the equilibrium of existence, for which everyone would eventually pay the price. So, let's not fight it! Let's embrace the oneness and openness. Let's enter into a fearless existence!
Peace!
No comments:
Post a Comment