THE LEGACY OF GREAT AUTHORS: THE FAULT-LINES OF MODERN CIVILIZATION Dr. Jernail S. Anand

 THE LEGACY OF GREAT AUTHORS:

THE FAULT-LINES OF MODERN CIVILIZATION

Dr. Jernail S. Anand

The world still basks in the glory of great scholars like

Aristotle and Plato although the books that celebrate

Socrates for being the greatest man, who loved truth

over his own life, have failed to inspire the modern

man. Life was not easy in those times, nor people so

learned, there were not so many universities, so many

books, and so many institutions which imparted

knowledge, still those people loved ‘learning’ and the

idea of being human. As the civilization has progressed,

and man has known more and more, it appears the law

of diminishing returns has gone into operation. Writers

look upon civilization itself as a great challenge to

manhood. We need not go far to see that the man that

we meet today has dwindled in his humanity, he is

smart, but lacks grace, he lives on his wits, not on truth.

Did we really bargain for such a situation? Did the great

authors dream of a man who loses his manhood, his

humanity to grain physical affluence?

Self-obsession, self-love, selfishness – these are human

traits which foreground movements like individualism,

and liberalism, and we had no idea the modern times,

in spite of the fact that Google and X connect people

across continents, will hasten the process of alienation

and finally, man would shed all that is imaginative in

him, and remain only a dish of desires.

FAULT-LINES

The niceties of life which should have been a part of

our living, down the ages as we have been studying

great masters like Aristotle, Plato and Shakespeare, are

absent from human behaviour and thought. We have

developed a coarse life style in which the physical has

got the better of the inner life of man. Civilizing

processes have moved into a danger zone, and man,

instead of getting sensitized about his spiritual

relationship with the cosmic reality, has acquired a

blatant lifestyle glorifying only his self. In Our

civilization has moved into a domain, where we have

lost not only our language, not only our feelings, and

our sensitivity, and most pathetic, our legacy too.

POVERTY: THE CRADLE OF GREATNESS

All is not lost though. Adversity has saved mankind

from itself. If you want to see the best specimens of

mankind, go to poor homes where men and women

have to work hard to survive. Here, you will find

parents who have time for their kids, and siblings who

love and die for each other. Only here you will find

dreams which are human in intent and divine in content.

If the daughter of an autorickshaw driver dreams of

becoming an IAS officer, here you will find the mother

and her brothers and father all engaged in a super

human fight to support the girl. But move out of the

poor locality. You will find the rich of this city, their

bloody boys, waiting in their cars, to abduct young

girls, violate their bodies and destroy their dreams. The

jungle that we see rising among the rich and the

wealthy sections of society is an alarming development

of the present civilization. Not only young boys, even

their fathers and mothers have lost their sense of

balance. And the most dangerous things is: this jungle

is growing fast.

AUTHORS AND THEIR LEGACY

The world of today, which has absolutely lost the

legacy of great authors, - you will not find anywhere the

message of Leo Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gorky. Don [the

great river of Russia] shakes its head in despair, and

cries at the falling stock of mankind. The world that

came up reading Shakespeare, William Wordsworth

and Donne, will turn so insensate, who could imagine?

King Oedipus, who faced in most inhuman situations,

has left nothing behind. No lesson. No legacy. The

civilization that took shape around the Vedic effulgence

of the Ganges is now drying up in utter neglect by its

inheritors. Dr. Faustus, however, is still in great

demand. We don’t find any takers for Aristotle and

Plato. And if we have absolutely disowned any author,

it is Socrates.

RAVANIZATION OF MANKIND

Human mind has acquired super powers so that it can

masquerade like the elemental forces. ‘Some’ men have

overgrown in their size, and, in their hunger, turned

Ravanic. The Ravan of Ramayana was an demon with a

huge physical embodiment. But the Ravana of modern

times ‘looks’ most human, you will find him visiting

the shrines donning a particular dress code which

makes him look quite normal. Physically he looks like

just another man. But just descend into his mind. You

will see a Lanka, a city of Lust, a city of Passion, a city

of Ambition, a city of Illusions. These are the men, the

Ravanas, who rule this world, they are few, but too

powerful for the poor masses even to understand the

reach of their powers and their discrete designs.

AUTOMATONIC HUMAN BEINGS

These ‘demonic’ people have created a breed of auto-

matonic human beings who do not think, who do not

feel, who have no sense of good and bad, except

achieving the ‘target’. The young men of today, who

have no time for breakfast, no time for lunch, no time

when they will return ‘home’, [have they any?], who

have no family, young office girls who don’t marry for

the sake of career, and couples who don’t want babies

for they have no time – and they have no time for their

mother and father, they have no understanding with

their MIL and DIL [mothers in law or even daughters in

law] – we are not living in an advanced society, we are

living on the ruins of a great civilization, which has

been, and is now in the throes of extinction.

[The author is winner of Charter of Morava, the great

Serbian Award in Creativity, and his name adorns the

Poets’ Rock in Serbia].