Adapt or die!

The obsessive leitmotiv of today's culture is change, flexibility, updating but also obsolescence…Our ears are bombarded daily with this lexis. ‘Time to change’ is the credo today. Change is shown as the only prospect of life and the sign of viability. However, the change we witness today appears as a waste of time and energy, a derailment from the natural process.

 

Every now and then, some influential people are coaxed with an idea and surreptitiously make out of it their raison-d'être and defend it vehemently as an absolute truth. No sooner had they started talking about it that it became a trend, an option, a necessary change…with an army of advocators and fervent devotees.

 

Even in the field of education, shifting from an approach to another is like changing jackets. It is undemanding! Just tailor-make it so that it suits the body, with some quick brush strokes for the make up…it is done.  It looks beautiful, it is fascinating…It is a TREND. Too much ink about it makes it sound and unequivocal.

 

What was a truth yesterday becomes a fallacy today. The same lips that muttered the hundreds of arguments to defend yesterday's approach falsify it today and torment those who do not abide by the new trend. "The truth has to be defended"; they say. But we know that great talkers are never great doers.

 

Self-righteous as usual, they require teachers to behave differently with their students. Students are now seen as "full" human beings able to decide, to comprehend, to analyze…Nice words, unquestionable facts, an undeniable truth. 

Weren't they so before? Were we teaching brutes, zombies or extraterrestrials?

 

The magician waves his wand, cries abracadabra, and zombies turn into humans. How easy! How great! The magician is talented but what about the human-zombies?!

 

It is not thanks to the magician's contrite heart, that yesterday's zombies will be trained, refined, and cultured into humans. It is the conjuncture of events. It is the bittersweet reality, the winds of change that are sweeping clean all the fortified bastions

To survive, the bastion dwellers --the magician's endeared disciples --have to initiate an adjustment in their thinking, in their behaviour…to convince themselves, and give the illusion to outsiders, that they are viable in this wobbly world.

 

Those who recall their past are seen as antiquated. But man has the peculiar faculty of calling up again, at least in his mind, the echo of past experiences, of going over them again.

-Isn't it a blessing?

-No, No, No, mind your words! On the contrary, it is a cuuuurse!

 

We tend to persuade ourselves that life indeed would be dull if there were no difficulties. But deep down we feel that these difficulties are not genuine. They are far-fetched, and sometimes prefabricated. It is a part of the make-believe, to give the impression that there is no gain without pain.

 

The watchword is: ‘more efforts are required’, ‘Keep them panting’, ‘don’t give them time to think’... It’s a good way to make them mind their own business. Why should they waste their time and energy thinking? Not them anyway.

 

Each man's belief is right in his own eyes, but when that belief concerns the fate of a nation, it has to be discussed publicly and meticulously. 

 

The wand of the magician cannot always be righteous. People who find themselves unable to trace the waving of the magician's hand ultimately turn to gullibility. They take everything for granted.

Great! The objective is reached…

 

A society like this produces spoof scholars and pseudo-thinkers. How true! Those fake figures willingly become the mouthpiece of the magician and propagate his art.  As for the rest of people, it seems they are following many hares at the same time. We know for sure they will catch none.