We are always open to listening to good news and avoid bad news. This is perhaps because we like to have pleasant immediate consequences and are not really bothered about consequences of consequences (c-of-c) or the sconsequences of consequences of consequences (c-of-c-of-c)
Sometimes bad news especially when it is big, has some wonderful c-of-c or c-of-c-of-c especially when they push any phenomenon to a tipping point which creates real change in society.
For example, the news about the editing of documents by the Law minister is definitely bad news for the country but it has ended up exposing the working of the CBI comprehensively and, perhaps, may pave the way for CBI to become a truly independent body.
Today, I heard another piece of very bad news. There are now month/s long coaching classes that are being held to help students "crack" the aptitude tests of companies like Infosys, Persistent etc. At one level, this is bad news but at another level this is good news as the companies are going to be flooded with successful candidates who know how to "crack the exam" but do not have the real skills for which this test was a proxy measure. This is going to create a tipping point for the companies, who are going to be sorely disappointed by their picks and be forced to come up with a better way to measure students' abilities.
I once read a story in Narada Purana in which a sage asks Sage Narada why he goes on instigating people with an evil bent of mind. Narada's answer was simple "It is only when the cup of evil if filled to the brim that the wicked attract punishment."
I have learnt from personal experience that to look at the good news embedded in bad news requires a training of the mind - to suspend the usual way of looking at immediate consequences and look to downstream consequences. In this state, a lot of bad news begins to look really good and not enough of it doesn't look good because it causes no change in the system. Paradoxical !
I confess, I too tend to keep falling back into the immediate evaluation state but it takes continuous effort to change the way we look at things.
In these times where there is no shortage of "bad news", I welcome you to try and look at reality in this way to see where there may be positive change and where the new opportunities may lie.
Sometimes bad news especially when it is big, has some wonderful c-of-c or c-of-c-of-c especially when they push any phenomenon to a tipping point which creates real change in society.
For example, the news about the editing of documents by the Law minister is definitely bad news for the country but it has ended up exposing the working of the CBI comprehensively and, perhaps, may pave the way for CBI to become a truly independent body.
Today, I heard another piece of very bad news. There are now month/s long coaching classes that are being held to help students "crack" the aptitude tests of companies like Infosys, Persistent etc. At one level, this is bad news but at another level this is good news as the companies are going to be flooded with successful candidates who know how to "crack the exam" but do not have the real skills for which this test was a proxy measure. This is going to create a tipping point for the companies, who are going to be sorely disappointed by their picks and be forced to come up with a better way to measure students' abilities.
I once read a story in Narada Purana in which a sage asks Sage Narada why he goes on instigating people with an evil bent of mind. Narada's answer was simple "It is only when the cup of evil if filled to the brim that the wicked attract punishment."
I have learnt from personal experience that to look at the good news embedded in bad news requires a training of the mind - to suspend the usual way of looking at immediate consequences and look to downstream consequences. In this state, a lot of bad news begins to look really good and not enough of it doesn't look good because it causes no change in the system. Paradoxical !
I confess, I too tend to keep falling back into the immediate evaluation state but it takes continuous effort to change the way we look at things.
In these times where there is no shortage of "bad news", I welcome you to try and look at reality in this way to see where there may be positive change and where the new opportunities may lie.
Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish -- and how current education culture works against them. 1. We must accept that children are different from each other and diverse and so one size fits all system of education produces ineffective adults. 2. Children are curious and the system must encourage this and allow children to explore and learn; Instead, we have put in systems that depend on testing and working to answer test papers and 3. Children are by nature creative and we do not encourage this.
ReplyDeleteThe system bar in a hand full of countries, therefore produces adults who are incapable of learning and innovating and instead become robots!
This is particularly true in India as having been a recruiter, I have found unemployable adults coming out of some very prestigious institutions of learning. Somehow, the same adults who had gone to Montessori schools before they got sucked into the mainstream system, do much better despite changing to the moronic Testing system that we follow.
What else can we expect when an entire town's (Kota)economy is dependent on coaching classes that teach students to crack entrance examinations?