Under the post titled ‘Science delusion’, last week we looked at Dr Rupert Sheldrake’s list of ten dogmas that an educated modern individual religiously believes. Today, across the world, the dogma of the mechanistic and non-conscious nature of the universe is propagated with our education systems. In traditional or not-yet-fully-modern societies like India, our upbringing with the emphasis on the sanaatana, is in direct conflict with the dogmas pushed by the modern education system. Most people seem to make an uneasy, schizophrenic truce and manage to live their lives with, for example, a traditional home-life and a modern work-life.

Recently, I have been thinking that:

– What is natural is effortless.
(Is it because people are maintaining an unnatural system that they work so hard?)
– It takes enormous effort to keep the unnatural going.
(In ‘Hind Swaraj’, Mahatma Gandhi pointed out that western civilization is doomed because it is against nature and what is unnatural does not last long.)
– Everything we study in school and college is based on a modern, mechanistic, unnatural world view.
– The gaps in the modern narrative are becoming apparent to more and more people.
– Is it time to question everything we study? Many very interesting people seem to think so.
– Dr Rupert Sheldrake is talking about a new science.
– Prof CK Raju is talking about a new mathematics.
– Prof Balagangadhara is talking about moving to a brand new social science.
– Prof Stefan Lanka, whom I discovered recently, is talking about a new theory of disease.

And if what the scientists above are saying is true, does that mean that all the effort in making our children go through a complicated curriculum at great cost is pointless? What do you think?