Dr Pamreihor Khashimwo
“Goodness without knowledge is weak; knowledge without goodness is dangerous. We have to build a better man before we can build a better society. All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing. Our purpose is not to make a living but a life a worthy, well-rounded, useful life. Morality is not a subject; it is a life put to the test in dozens of moments.” said Paul Tillich. Incredible political and social events are hitting across society every day, which demands that we learn to filter and mindfully ask critical questions about how these events may be shaping our lives and the relationships with others. Sadly, most of us tend to ignore and miserably failed to attend to this hard-hitting problem.
Here, I begin by sharing by using the metaphor that people often enter into conversations about big ideas without much sense of what is going on, or what people mean by what they are saying. Too many opinion and too often these dominant stories become the norm for evaluating other people’s competencies. This is precisely happening every day in our society. Notionally, we have built a grand scheme of beautiful political, social and economic ship and in it, it has all the comforts and splendor but largely it does not have a moral compass and that is why it does not know where it is going.
The paradox of our times is that we talk too much and do less, we build wider roads but develop narrow viewpoints, and we live in bigger and taller buildings but acquire shorter tempers. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge but less wisdom, more experts but more problems and less solution. We augment our possessions but reduced our values. The irony is that we have too many misguided leaders and followers. We conquered public space, but not inner space; we plan more, but accomplish less; we have learned to rush, but not to wait. Have you ever found it perplexing that we have been all the way to the highest political idea but we struggle to starts a conversion across or within the society for better tomorrow? Do we actually thrive off this paradox? It is that this paradox actually makes our society interesting? It’s what makes politics interesting; it’s what makes religion more interesting; it’s what makes life more interesting? Is this paradox actually what we feel off and what we live off and what we talk about and discuss in our society? Doesn’t it seem that we have tried to clean the air but polluted our soul? We have split the society, churches, and villages but not our prejudice and we are aiming for higher incomes but we develop low morals and no empathy. So I am asking you how do we bring a change? How do we dissect this paradox that exists in our society? Taking a moment to become more conscious and aware.
Taking a moment to really reflect on the consequence the implications of a misplaced word of an unnecessary power politics and argument that we all know we didn’t need to have or to speak slightly different in a different tone, in a different voice, with a different perspective, just to really connect with each other on a different level.
This thinking out loud started from the problems we have today cannot be solved with the same thinking we used when we once created them so essentially we need to seek alternative philosophies, we need to understand that more knowledge and more wisdom can transform our society otherwise this paradox means that every step forward we take, we are taking two steps backwards every time. This certainly means thinking creatively with renewed mind and heart, planning and working together as partners. We need to thought deeply about ourselves and technology, its opportunity, its risk, its values, and its morality. Sometimes the very technology that is meant to connect us, divide us.
The potential adverse consequence is spreading faster and cutting deep ever than before, a threat to our security, threat to peace, threat to our privacy, fake news, and social media that become anti-social. We are thinking like robots (computers), without values or compassion, without concern for consequences. Don’t get caught up in the trivial aspects of life. Let’s measure our impact on humanity not in likes and not in popularity, but in the lives, we touch.
