Teaching Jispa is to go on a journey yourself. Now more and
more I am the guy in charge of the studies. In many ways I am the fall guy if
anything happens to Jispa academic pursuits. Haha! I think this has come about
thanks to two things – first Jasmine just doesn’t seem to have the patience to
deal with the all the extra science and history and everything else. She would really
need to up the ante and keep researching if she needs to be relevant. And second
– more importantly – Jispa drives her up the wall. I think these two aren’t really
designed to coexist and learn from each other. They are designed to be happy if
they decide to let each other be.
So I am the guy. Buts interesting and its helping me in more
ways than I can imagine. It’s a enriching experience. What Jispa learns in
school is completely different from what I have been taught or in the way that I
have been taught. Her geography text
book is with every penny and her history teacher forces her to think and
research. They push the child into thinking and having an opinion beyond the
syllabus or what’s written. While I was growing up, the rules were simple –
textbook wrote – you memorized and you puked on the exam whatever you retained.
Independent thought and inquiry was not really encouraged except for the
personal beliefs of certain professors who naturally brought it into their
teaching styles.
So I like it when we do geography its important to
understand the history of the place and some other associated facts. Like right
now we are doing China in Geography. If I have to teach her I better learn a
lot more than what I know, as it helps in the discussions. Here of course
learning channels like youtube have helped a lot, where some seriously talented
people are putting their talent to good use. The Crash Course channel on
youtube is especially useful for understanding history. So while learning about
China I heard a few terms on Confucianism which I then further researched and
its quite interesting that these principals are pretty universal in nature and
that at the core of it, they can be applied to various situations that we face
today.
Here in Confucianism, the Sage archetype is the
ideal but it hard to achieve and hence there is another one for us mortals to get
– Junzi. I like this guy. ‘A superior
person’. This man can stay in poverty, does more, speaks less, loyal obedient
and knowledgeable. He disciplines himself. This man stands in contrast to the Xiaoren.
The xiaoren is the ‘petty person’, someone who doesn’t grasp the values of virtue
and goes only for immediate gains. These two archetypes are the types you get
in offices. The text says that a ruler must be surrounded by junzi and not
xiaoren. Which is true. I have seen it many times that good nice leaders
quickly get surrounded by xiaoren and this starts clouding their judgment and
affects how they behave. I have seen them in all orders and magnitude. The typical
xiaoren is the insecure idiot who butters up his boss, surrounds himself by
stooges, keeps his stooges insecure all the time and pumps bad blood in the
system. These xiaoren have to be exterminated if the organization has to
function. You have to keep these away from you, as far away as possible if you don’t
want to turn into one yourself. I have seen it here where a leader whom I trusted
and respected was clouded by the xiaoren in his coterie. He ate up the system
form inside and left a lasting legacy of distrust and infighting. The leader,
who is a good guy, had only one fault – he let the Xiaoren in. When you let one
come in – you not only allow him to come in but in effect you also keep the
junzi out. The two cannot co exist. The Junzi slowly stayed out of the leadership
and were marginalized.
As a marketing head – I have had the experience of leading
teams. I see the insecure people everywhere. Some of them in the team try and
become my friends – close friends. Sure – I am all for friendship but then they
quickly realize that just by being close to me doesn’t really mean that they
get any preferential treatment as regards special coaching or perks or salary. They
get equally jammed when make mistakes or have issues. Typically I have learnt
that they like to hog time like pac man and let anyone else come in. The more
time the xiaoren spend the less time the junzi have. By definition the junzi is
a superior man – he doesn’t stoop so low as to fight. So you have to allow the
junzi in. call him or her inside the circle, take an effort to listen to him
and to understand his point of view. Often it’s not the junzi who is eating
away your time – it’s the xiaoren.
So the leader must fight and fight hard to push these
characters into their respective places. Bring the good guy in and push the bad
guy out. Slowly of course as you do this – I have seen the insecure form a
clique of their own and then branch out to other trees where they can fertilize
seeds from their own toxic poop. Hehehe… I like that metaphor. It seems so apt.
so these negative guys will slowly go away and you will be better off. Ofcourse
you will miss the attention that these jokers gave you, but will live to be a
stronger and wiser person. To become the Sage, you will have to wean yourself
off from the licking that the xiaoren will give you.
So what’s the hope for people to more to the junzi archetype?
Here also Confucius has given us an answer. To become the Junzi the core is Ren. So WTF is Ren? “Ren is the virtue denoting the good feeling a virtuous
human experiences when being altruistic.” If that sounds impossible to achieve – our friend
has given us simpler solutions as well - "Ren is not far off; he who seeks it has already found it." Ren is close to man and never leaves him.
Also –
Ren relies heavily on the relationships between two people,
but at the same time encompasses much more than that. It represents an inner
development towards an altruistic goal, while simultaneously realizing that one
is never alone, and that everyone has these relationships to fall back on,
being a member of a family, the state, and the world.
Ren is not a concept that is learned; it is innate, that is
to say, everyone is born with the sense of ren. Confucius believed that the key
to long-lasting integrity was to constantly think, since the world is
continually changing at a rapid pace.
The more I read about all this , the more I realize that all
of this is open to interpretation and the answer is in many ways for each one
of us to seek for ourselves. I think the essence of both Indian and Chinese
thought is to look inside and seek for truth. This truth I think, is different
for each one of us. The truth that lets humanity survive and thrive and
progress is the truth that takes into consideration the truth of others. The duality
of truth or the acceptance that various different truths can co-exist at the
same time is the essence to being Humane, or experiencing ren. That’s why I think
he says that Ren means to constantly think. I think it means to constantly
evaluate our ideals and beliefs in relation to various different things. What the
society now is thinking and what it means today to live or the force of
technology or cultural change or whatever. Constantly think and relook at your
self and see if you are indeed humane. Thast why he says – anyone can ren. Its inbuilt,
one only has to search. The act of searching itself is to find ren. That itself
is ren.
From here on there are two other interesting words – li and
yi. “Li is the action which has been deemed appropriate by society, yi is the
action that is indeed correct”. This is also very deep. Many times we do ‘li’
because that’s the path of least resistance. Change in society happens when ‘yi’
is done by the unreasonable man, even when it contradicts ‘li’. Many times we
see ‘yi’ in action and we condemn it. Only when you have ren, will you reflect
and figure if there is li in the action and then think twice when you pronounce
judgment.
These are such amazing
references from philosophy or history. I loved reading about it and thinking
about it. The internet is a lovely thing of course but it also requires you to
have some ren on your own. It can give you a lot of information, but what you
make out of it and refer back to your life is yours alone. I am glad that I had
a daughter as early as I did. Thanks to Jispa, I am physically fitter than what
I would have been and my diet is much better, as I am forced to follow her
swimming life style. But also thanks to her questions and her education, I dare
say, I am smarter than what I would have been. It is finally what you make out
of it. There are sponges filled with water everywhere you look, how much you
squeeze out of it is your problem.
Some days I aimless surf the net and see videos, but here,
one led to another and the reason to surf was pointed. It was a geography class
topic. China. Who knew how it would pan out? and definitely philosophy was not I
was aiming for… but the mind – it’s such a lovely thing, isn’t it? keep ‘renning’
--
Here is a video on our hero. I don’t necessarily agree
blindly with all his ideas but – its an interesting point on the never ending ,
ever expansive map of philosophy.
