I Can’t or I Won’t?
An American scientist experimented with five monkeys. He put them all in a specially constructed room that had neither windows nor door. The only escape route was a small, round ventilator at the top corner of the high- roofed room. The minute they were in, the monkeys tried escaping. And as soon as they went near the ventilator, there was a spurt of water, which got the monkeys wet; and monkeys as a species, don’t like to get wet. But every once, a monkey wanted to escape; and whenever he went near the opening, the other monkeys pulled him down and beat him up; of course, they did not fancy getting wet!
After a few days, the scientist removed one monkey and put in a new monkey; and you can imagine what must have happened; the new monkey, took a look around at the old ones; a look which said, ‘you idiots; there’s the escape; can’t you see?’; and with a litheness that could only be a monkey’s, shinned up in a trice to the opening; and of course our long-tailed friends didn’t want to get wet, did they? Boy, how they hated water! So, the new monkey was pulled down and beat up. Soon, the scientist had removed all the old monkeys one by one and put in five new monkeys; and still the ‘pull-down-beat-up’ game continued; and these five new monkeys did not know WHY they were doing it!
Well! This is what is called ‘mind set’. This is what most of us do too! We, the tail-less, two-legged variety! More often than not, we do things, without having a clue as to why we are doing it; because we have been told; because that’s what everyone else does; because we love to ‘follow the mob’; and that’s how the ‘mind set’ has been!
Recently, I was training a batch of freshers at Infosys, Mysore. On that Friday, when we were back for the post-lunch session, I noticed woe-begone faces around me. The ‘agony aunt’ that I was, I asked them the reason for their agony! And they told me that they had had their postings announced, some in Pune and some in Bangalore. The Bangalore lot was beaming with smiles; the Pune lot was down in the dumps. And what was their case? Well, their parents didn’t like them going to Pune. Fair enough; but why? Oh well, who knows? Pune was to their ‘cocooned’ existence, a ‘timbuktoo’; and their imagination worked overtime, visualizing two-headed monsters and dark Lords, walking the corridors of the Pune campus! Well! I asked them, ‘have you ever been there?’ No. Do you know anything about Pune? No!
So what’s your problem? If you had lived there for a while, and you have the pluses on the one hand and the minuses on the other, then your objections would hold some water; but this apprehension, this fear of the unknown----------------------------!!!
We as a race, is happy to hide behind a cloak of familiarity. If I don’t want to do something because I don’t like it, it’s fine; but if I so want to do it, but hesitant because I’m worried about the ‘moral policing’------well, I’m just refusing to come out of the ‘conditioning’! Every revolution we’ve had was an attempt at breaking free of the shackles; breaking out of ‘conditionings. It doesn’t always mean losing culture; it brings in new cultures; widening the horizon, broadening the vision, lengthening the road ahead.
And again, breaking traditions doesn’t mean ‘bad’ or ‘obnoxious’! It takes gumption of the highest order to put your foot down and be heard; it takes character of a certain class to stand up and fight for a cause; a cause of upgrading the human race; of elevating the soul; of moving up to a higher plane; of doing away with superstitions that is the greatest hindrance to progress!
I’m not advocating rebellion; I’m egging on revolution. A friend of mine suggested that I do something, but I refused. He didn’t waste time, smart that he was; and pounced on me saying, ‘well, you say you’re a rule breaker; so why don’t you’? I patiently said, ‘I don’t go by a book of rules, yes; but I do have values’! There is a lot of difference between the two. Breaking rules does not mean going against the sacrosanct; for a while it may be termed ‘scandalous’, but that’s about all!
It’s time we did things that proved we are of a higher species than the ‘chained elephant’ and the ‘salivating dog’(mind set); time we justified the possession of a ‘multi-faceted’ organ called brain; time we thanked the almighty for bestowing us with that extra-special bit that we’ve termed ‘sixth sense’! And yes; thanksgiving is as good a time to say, ‘GO’; only it’s not ‘ready, get set, go; it’s ‘ready, DON’T get set, goooooooooooo------!!!
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