In her science fiction book the Sparrow[1] Mary Doria Russell offers us an imaginary world known as Rakhat, its central city is Gayjur, the ruling elite, the Jana’ata are described as being,“not lively but frighteningly intent, not friendly but coldly courteous,not humorous but keenly observant, and above all: unapproachable.”
On our world I have met people who fit this description, ironically several are or were teachers, and unbalanced. It is rare to find a balanced person. Teaching, like Medicine, is one of the great scientific arts, and it is both, requiring knowledge, skill, discernment, understanding of what is actually needed, why it is needed, being enabled to fulfill that need,rather than giving what is wanted.
I reflect on occasion my years of attening schools and universities, asking what did I actually learn? In my case, due mostly to bad teaching, very little. One sentence in all those years did touch something deeper within me, I was in early high school and the remarkable words were, “To be, or not to be, that is the question”.[2] Although I did not then understand the words, they were felt, resonated and left an impression. To enable one to be is a fundamental of education.
Should I have understood those words upon first hearing them fifty years ago, what then would have been required of me? Would it have been necessary as a remarkable professor advocated to us some years later to leave the University, "go away and learn to think for yourselves"?
So much that passes for education is in fact quite the opposite and is based directly or indirectly upon fear and/or violence, however subtle or brutal.
What could it actually mean to be 'awoken' to life, contained as it is by time within the mysteries of death? Is it possible to take a step towards living our life's purpose, becoming free of all destructive authority and unhelpful influences?
[1] The Sparrow Mary Doria Russell, Black Swan, 1997, p448.
[2] To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause – there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
Shakespeare Hamlet Act 3, Sc. 1.
