Society’s Responsibility Towards our Youth
When our youth become adults and are ready to take up a suitable role in society, they usually do not have the self-awareness and knowledge about our society to create the best role for themselves. The present assembly line education never prepares them for an ideal and constructive role in our society. On the contrary, education produces undifferentiated zombies with abundant but obsolete theoretical knowledge in subjects irrelevant to real life. To add insult to injury it pits them against unfair competition to secure jobs or engage in vocations where whatever they will do will neither make them happy nor benefit their society much. This predicament effectively destroys the vigour and abundant potential of our youth.
When we sideline youth in this manner many of them waste away as addicts, alcoholics, or even become anti-social elements. Then we confront such youth with our security forces and the punitive judicial system. It is not the responsibility of the youth to discover the best way they can contribute to their society. They do not even have the means to accomplish this all by themselves. Youth suffer for the crimes committed by our society. This is a very unfair system that somehow continues to harm us to this day due to our sheer lethargy. Adults and elders in our society must diligently work to change this system. They must operate outside our broken academic system to teach our youth that the only noble and true purpose of their lives is to alleviate the suffering of other humans and all other living things. This can only be achieved when all of us in society wholeheartedly embrace this purpose. When we model the right behaviour, our youth will follow us unquestioningly.
Every young person must be encouraged to abundantly experiment to discover their true passion as early in their lives as possible. A caring and non competitive environment must be created in society so that they are nurtured to bring out their best talents. Successful men and women in society must mentor youth whose passions overlap their own. They must show the youth how their passions can be aligned with the true purpose of humanity so that they can contribute their best to their society. The sooner youth in our society achieve this in their lives, the larger will be their contribution to society. An even larger benefit will result when both addiction and crimes drastically reduce. Now we have a thriving society where our youth give their best while the whole of society prospers.
Born in the rich culture of South India and educated in English, I have been exposed to two opposing world views enabling me to achieve synergy and realize true harmony. I belong to linguistic community “Saurashtra” who were silk weavers patronised by kings of yore. Our ancestors are said to have migrated from Western part of India to Tamil Nadu in the South several centuries ago. Growing up in the country as India underwent its pangs of Westernisation, I was able to synthesise the self oriented Western perspective with the community oriented native one to arrive at a wholesome concept of self after considerable efforts and experimentation. My forthcoming book “Searching for Self – In Pursuit of Inner Peace” is the culmination of this labour.
Coimbatore, India
