Is the mind held captive by knowledge?

It is when I read a blog recently, which spoke about the mind and its struggles with its own ego, that set me thinking on whether indeed we could define tangible boundaries to the minds capabilities.

Later on in the week while discussing topics for a debate competition, we hit upon an argument on whether a topic could favour someone who has an idea about the topic. Yes, it could in terms of facts and figures, but what about abstract thought flows, ideas, logic and reasoning? Are these affected? That brought me right back to the question on being able to define a clear boundary for the mind’s capability.

Encouraging a parallel line of thought, I arrived at the next question : Do we need education? Is it a barrier to free thinking? Does it keep the mind captive within its realm?

Cogitating over this left me rather confounded. The very process of thinking about the mind, if I go by the questions raised above, would be limited by my knowledge and the ability of my own mind to think beyond the boundaries of its knowledge. But at the same time the very knowledge that ‘knowledge could be a barrier to the way my mind functions’, could empower me to think beyond what knowledge would permit me to otherwise.

So then, knowledge certainly does not restrict us but only acts as a guiding light. For most a guiding light can prove very useful. It takes an exceptional mind, an Einstein or a Newton, to find its way in darkness.

What knowledge also provides is a template to discipline the mind. We are all aware of the vagaries of the mind and for most it is a constant struggle, consciously or unconsciously, to bring it back on track. Whether it is a simple task like reading a book or writing this article, the mind is relentless in its efforts to attain freedom. As the Gita put it very simply, the mind is like a monkey. That one statement says it all. Doesn’t it?

Without education the mind is like a blindfolded monkey on a very tight leash. It jumps around having no clue what its treading on, but is limited by the area it can tread on.

Education takes the blindfold off and provides a longer leash. Now the monkey can not only see what its jumping on, but is also able to toy around with many more things.

What happens in most cases is that people end up getting tight ‘inelastic’ leashes for their minds. Thus limiting themselves to only the length of the leash provided by knowledge.

So people make sure you get yourselves ‘highly elastic’ leashes . So you can stretch it way beyond where knowledge could take you.

Hmmm!! This is getting recursive. The mind thinking about the mind.....

You’ve Got Mail

With such tremendous improvements in technology, we should be completing our work faster. Shouldn’t we? But how many of us do? Why is it that people these days tend ‘to work’ longer hours, finishing exactly the same amount of work? Or should I be saying why is it that people these days tend ‘to stay in office’ for longer hours, finishing the same amount of work?

So what is it that people do in office? How do companies manage to keep their people busy?

By getting them to check their mails of course.

Everybody sends out mails to everybody else. The xyz department has to prove that its doing its bit, so it sends out a bunch of emails to everyone, the abc division of course does not want to be left behind, nor do the various other departments that exist in organizations. The managers of course have to keep their team motivated and focused, what better way could there be to communicate to them than to send frequent mails.

Thanks to mailing groups, you don’t even have to type in all the mail addresses, just type away and enter the group mailing id and you have just sent a mail to a thousand people.

So the top management keeps itself busy sending emails to everyone. The various departments compete with each other sending mails to everyone else proving how active they are in the organization and what a wonderful job they are doing. The managers motivate their respective teams by sending out mails to them and inform the rest of the world how well their teams are doing by sending out mails again.

The remaining people have just about enough time to read all their mails and realize how much work everyone else seems to be doing.

So who does all the work?

My guess is it gets done after office hours, when you are not expected to be in office. Which of course also implies that you are not expected to send any mails.

We are so used to being ‘connected’ all the time, through either email or chat clients or cell phones or landlines, that we are always expecting to be contacted by someone all the time. This has become such a constant distraction that it has had a huge impact on our productivity levels.

I bet you read at least 15 mails before you completed reading this. Gotcha!! Didn’t I? Anyways, its about time I check my inbox….