Skip to main content

My ignorance better than your knowledge




There are facts and there are opinions. Facts can be verified while opinions can be disputed. That water boils at 100 degrees Celsius under normal temperature and pressure is a fact. Water will boil at that particular temperature whether it is in Hindu India or Muslim Pakistan, Trump’s America or Kim’s Korea. No sane person will bother to question such facts.

If I say that Narendra Modi is the best Prime Minister India has had so far, that’s just an opinion which cannot be verified the way water’s boiling point can be. There are still a lot of Indians who will argue that Nehru was the best Prime Minister India has had. Which other Prime Minister of India possessed his kind of knowledge and intellectual acumen? There are those who pitch for his daughter who after all bifurcated Pakistan into two nations and sent shivers down the spines of both with the nuclear explosions in Pokhran. You can bring in a lot of facts to defend your opinion. Facts are not enough to convince people to change their opinions, however.

The Ganga is a holy river for quite many Indians. The fact is that it is one of the most polluted rivers in India. Facts don’t matter at all when it comes to beliefs. The Ganga’s sanctity is a matter of religious faith. It is not even an opinion; intellectually, religious faith is far inferior to opinions. It is more of a sentiment than anything else. Such sentiments are rooted in what Freud called “the infantile needs” of adult human beings. Religious beliefs belong to the darkest (the most undeveloped) realms of the human mind. These beliefs are supposed to throw some light in those savage realms. That’s their only useful purpose. Instead, people insist on equating beliefs with facts and thus create untold problems for themselves and others.

It is difficult to reason with people who don’t know the difference between facts, opinions and beliefs. Reason is alien to most people. People prefer opinions and beliefs. Opinions and beliefs, particularly the latter, have a dark power which holds a mysterious, supernatural sway over people.

The really dark truth is that most people don’t even have their own opinions and beliefs. As Oscar Wilde said, “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” People live with borrowed truths: borrowed beliefs and opinions. But they convince themselves that these borrowed things are their own. They guard these borrowed things aggressively precisely because they are borrowed. If they were their own, aggression would be redundant. What better defence is there for your beliefs and opinions than your own convictions? As it is, the only conviction is: My ignorance is better than your knowledge.

***************************
For a copy of my poems, God's Love Song, click here. 

Comments

  1. जितेन्द्र माथुरAugust 22, 2019 at 10:40 AM

    Facts are not enough to convince people to change their opinions, it's absolutely true. Besides, pure facts are hard to find. Statistics can prove everything and can prove nothing as well. Now we live in an era of distorted facts, biased opinions and brainwashed minds. Hence the wiser thing is to be cautious with our own opinions (and minds as well).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 22, 2019 at 5:25 PM

      Facts are distorted beyond imagination in any fascist system. It becomes the bounden duty of citizens to verify given "facts and truths". When beliefs or religion is mixed, the concoction is deadly.

      Delete
  2. Vartika GoyalAugust 22, 2019 at 1:29 PM

    It is not easy to change the believe. I agree

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jyotirmoy SarkarSeptember 1, 2019 at 8:31 PM

    Nicely explained the differences between the facts and the beliefs.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Randeep the melody

Many people in this pic have made their presence in this A2Z series A phone call came from an unknown number the other day. “Is it okay to talk to you now, Sir?” The caller asked. The typical start of a conversation by an influencer. “What’s it about?” My usual response looking forward to something like: “I am so-and-so from such-and-such business firm…” And I would cut the call. But there was a surprise this time. “I am Randeep…” I recognised him instantly. His voice rang like a gentle music in my heart. Randeep was a student from the last class 12 batch of Sawan. One of my favourites. He is unforgettable. Both Maggie and I taught him at Sawan where he was a student from class 4 to 12. Nine years in a residential school create deep bonds between people, even between staff and students. Randeep was an ideal student. Good at everything yet very humble and spontaneous. He was a top sportsman and a prefect with eminent leadership. He had certain peculiar problems with academics. Ans
25 comments
Read more

Queen of Religion

She looked like Queen Victoria in the latter’s youth but with a snow-white head. She was slim, fair and graceful. She always smiled but the smile had no life. Someone on the campus described it as a “plastic smile.” She was charming by physical appearance. Soon all of us on the Sawan school campus would realise how deceptive appearances were. Queen took over the administration of Sawan school on behalf of her religious cult RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]. A lot was said about RSSB in the previous post. Its godman Gurinder Singh Dhillon is now 70 years old. I don’t know whether age has mellowed his lust for land and wealth. Even at the age of 64, he was embroiled in a financial scam that led to the fall of two colossal business enterprises, Fortis Healthcare and Religare finance. That was just a couple of years after he had succeeded in making Sawan school vanish without a trace from Delhi which he did for the sake of adding the school’s twenty-odd acres of land to his existing hun
19 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
37 comments
Read more

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
13 comments
Read more

Sanjay and other loyalists

AI-generated illustration Some people, especially those in politics, behave as if they are too great to have any contact with the ordinary folk. And they can get on with whoever comes to power on top irrespective of their ideologies and principles. Sanjay was one such person. He occupied some high places in Sawan school [see previous posts, especially P and Q ] merely because he knew how to play his cards more dexterously than ordinary politicians. Whoever came as principal, Sanjay would be there in the elite circle. He seemed to hold most people in contempt. His respect was reserved for the gentry. I belonged to the margins of Sawan society, in Sanjay’s assessment. So we hardly talked to each other. Looking back, I find it quite ludicrous to realise that Sanjay and I lived on the same campus 24x7 for a decade and a half without ever talking to each other except for official purposes.      Towards the end of our coexistence, Sawan had become a veritable hell. Power supply to the
12 comments
Read more