Fast Food Education

 Fast Food Education

The recent lockdown has led to a substantially greater number of people cooking and eating at home and not restaurants. I noticed some interesting psychological inter-play when doing this. The process of purchasing, preparing, cooking, and presenting a meal forces so much mental involvement in the process, that it continually distorts and diminishes the sensation of hunger. Therefore, we often find when we are hungry, if we take time to cook, we may not have the same urgent sense of “I must eat, now!” Which is very different to when we know our meal simply awaits us devouring it. What can we learn from this? A culture of consumption as opposed to proactive engagement in process takes many forms. I recently prepared a relatively simple toasted vegetable sandwich, and the process of firstly choosing the salad, inspecting the leaves with your fingers, then seeing the water droplets cleanse the leaves, then later chopping cucumbers and seeing the soft seeds inside contrast against the relatively thick green skin, then applying the various spreads and sauces to add taste - this process gets you in touch, it conditions the mind to become familiar with the meal. It is also comparable with a warm up before sparring in martial arts. It helps acquaint you with your body and its condition, its movement, the feeling of your muscles when handling different challenges, and gets the senses geared up. After spending time preparing the meal, bites will inevitably be more conscious and appreciative. The fast food culture trivialises the process. Instead of making it a conscious process, it creates desensitisation. The same principle will be scalable for many things. A leader who is very disengaged from the workings on the ground is another good example. If there is a factory that is suddenly taken over by someone with little experience in the field and with such environment, it automatically creates a disconnect. If however, we build up the familiarity of looking at the cucumber seeds, we will appreciate more when we taste it. If we walk the floors, talk to people, we will appreciate more the output. If we appreciate the individual journeys, we will value our staff. If we don’t, it will be like fast food - use for our benefit, and discard when useless to us. 

The Library

A prominent Chinese scholar was asked why he liked living in Europe. He said he liked the old buildings there. Indeed when I went to work in mainland Europe in the past few years, I noticed how the bank buildings were not newly formed glitzy sky-scrappers. Rather they were buildings frequently put up after World War II, and some that dated before this. This beautiful heritage and value of it, creates a culture of appreciation and depth. Appreciation means referencing the past, since it refers to what someone has done, or a culture has done. With focus solely on what needs to get done, without appreciation, this is similar to the “I need to eat, now!” consumerist mentality. The University of London had as one of their shared facilities, the Maughan Library (pictured above) which is near to the Royal Court of Justice on Fleet Street. It was tucked away, a private little place. WIth lamps, and meters high of books all around you in a very large round room, it oozed a spirit of deep thinking, contemplation, thought and learning. It is not a place for rushing. At times I’ve entered it in a semi-panic pre exam, with a need to cram as much as possible. Yes, it served that purpose for me, but this was not the spirit of the place. The paintings, the dim light, the carvings outside, gave a feel of attention and above all appreciation for the process of education. A simply beautiful experience, the educational equivalent of taking a slow breathe of fresh air at the summit of a mountain. It is in such a place that the mind can be open to education, where there are no constraints. Education after all, is a two way process; the knowledge getting to you, and also of you assimilating the knowledge and personalising it to become acquainted with it. This is not something that materialism can create simply be amassing lots of wealth. It is an experience on the mental platform of mental openness, facilitated by an environment that allows for mental comfort and intellectual stimulation. It is then not a surprise that the worlds most wealthy opt to study in these institutions and environments.

Fast Food Education

Fast-forward to the lockdown. It resulted in me doing a number of things in the house which I wouldn’t do normally. On the digital front, more time on Netflix, more time watching videos on YouTube etc. What we watch, often depends on our mood and what we prefer to digest at a particular time. When my mind feels a hunger to learn, I don’t put on Tiger King. Conversely, when I am in a more laid back mood, I will not watch a very serious documentary about World War 1. Anything meaningful takes effort. Periods of prolonged study do not pay off immediately. The opportunities for applying what we study may take time to manifest. However, a continual cycle of learning, checking what we have learnt against the real world we observe, will keep us ever evolving. Discipline also plays a great role. Social media has played a huge role in personal discipline. Checking feeds is an activity we begin doing when we might be bored, but ends up becoming such a habit that we do it when we are supposed to be doing other things. When we are distracted mentally, we might go on social media platforms. Human and animal-kind are both organised by natural hierarchy; it’s just the way we work. The more efficient will know the call of the day, and make it to the top. Most won’t, and will be governed by the others. Irrespective of form of government, this is just how things will work out, because it is natural. The average person may not be as disciplined as those that make it to the top, and therefore the vast majority will gain their knowledge through the mainstream forms; the precise reason why politicians are swarming to social media platforms to attract the masses to their messages. How does medium affect acquisition of knowledge? Well, do we want fast food, or conscious food. There is something about digital platforms that seems to grab the brain and make it hostage. Sadly, as generations continue to go on, the availability of such fast food style education is increasing. Ultimately there is a paradigm shift. This does not necessarily need to be negative since humans will always have some tendency to seek knowledge. However, it will certainly dumb down the extent to which there is a more conscious approach to seeking it. For those that have a more old-school tendency towards the beautiful high ceilinged libraries, layers of books, carvings on the ceilings, and this kind of environment to help open the mind, this can be done, it might just take more effort in an increasingly digital age.

“The only thing you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.” Albert Einstein

Lockdown Reflection: Fools & Angels

"Only fools go where angels fear to tread,” was first written by Alexander Pope over 3 centuries ago in his famous Essay on Criticism. The current backdrop of the pandemic paints an ill picture of so-called, and self-proclaimed progressive civilisation. Indeed for all the feats of the past centuries, it is staggering that a grinding halt can be called by something that is approximately 120 nanometers wide in diameter. To give some meaning to this, the diameter of a human hair is 75,000 nanometers. Nitrogen dioxide, one of the harmful gases contributing to poor air quality, dropped by 10% per week between late January to mid March. In a world full of propaganda & disinformation, much defaults to what we can see and feel tangibly. The skies have been clearer, the air fresher during periods of limited mobility for business and industry. The lessons for leaders are now clearer than ever if we are to stop going where angels fear to tread.

1. Contemplate
A forcefully imposed slackened pace of many industries has forced free time. Rigor in routine pays dividends. Those who have forsaken lethargy in pursuit of structure will gain. Like progression from school to college and university, the period has given freedom to choose our forms of engagement and productivity. Dependence on group-think and group-motivation wanes, in favor of self-discipline. We will find that when the cameras aren't on us, we will be afforded the mental freedom to do what is natural to us, what is pleasing to us. This will involve confronting both vice and virtue almost inevitably. When force is removed, we will tend do what appeals to us in our most natural form. The so-called constrained state, will bring out what we have been cultivating all this time, and have a longing for. If it is confrontation, we will find that. If it is serenity, we will find that. Seek, and you will find. I recall a conversation with one of my martial arts teachers, when I first started training and would train almost every day. I said to him, I really find it frustrating when I have periods when I can't train for whatever reason. Being a contemplative person, he shared that actually we should be OK whether we train, or do not train. In a scenario where interaction is limited, we will seek the energies that we are after, and we should be more than OK with this. We should savor this time rather than lament during it. It is a window we may never get again. A short window of pause, when access to your deeper nature is more available than ever before for many of us. 

2. Value
There are different grades of evil, different grades of exploitation. The period highlights what has been going on much clearer now that there is a pause. Almost like catching people red-handed. An example best used to illustrate this is one of holidays. Whilst many people like the idea of City breaks, visiting Cities for a glimpse into their vibe, food & history, there is little question over the immense mentally therapeutic aspects of holidays involving the sun, sand, sea, and greenery. Natures paradises are breathtaking, beyond imagination, and completely organic, being dependent not on the opportunistic exploits of human-kind, but on its own accord with its naturally infused function. It is beyond compare, and irreplaceable. The White Rhino being on the brink of extinction for a few years, with only 2 remaining in 2019, is an example of a warning signal. This animal can weigh up to 3.6 tonnes, almost 2 meters high, and up to 4 meters long, it can strike fear into even the King of the Jungle, the lion. Yet, through exploitative practices, and the pursuit of human fantasies, this animal, which we may one day only think of as a figment of our imagination, is bordering extinction. Back to holidays. Industry is largely responsible for shaping the way most humans are forced to live, the routines they need to go through in order to survive. At the top of this human food chain sit people who have some ability to control the direction of humankind. It is not that there is no accountability. Everything that has happened, has happened for a reason. As Bill Murray infamously Tweeted, "Everything happens for a reason, and sometimes that reason is that you're stupid and make bad decisions," somewhat sums up that there's only so much that we can put down to external factors. At some stage, the buck stops with people who decided to create certain things, for certain reasons. It is those very people who are responsible for the destruction of much of the Earth to serve their own ends. It is those very people who would also be enjoying the bounty of nature that the Earth offers on their luxury yatchs, and on their elaborate island getaways. For you to be OK with mass destruction of the very thing that you enjoy, defines the next grade of evil. For us to contemplate, and to then attribute value to these immensely valuable treasures of the Earth at this time, is something that will contribute a tiny part to the hopefully gradual rising pressure to the higher grades of evil to put the breaks on their nefarious dealings.

3. Act
Ultimately contemplation, and affirmations on what we value, should translate into action. Action isn't only concrete steps, but also the mental commitment to higher-level thought. Since higher level thought has the power to change habits, which in turn has a bottom line impact. The more positive sentiment there is towards the Earth, naturally the more benevolent behaviour there will be in relation to it. We must understand the nature of exploitation. What does it mean for us to exploit? Exploitation quite simply means taking advantage. It is leveraging to gain an upper hand on something just because we can. Why? To further our own cause. What is our cause? If it is simply self-centric, then this becomes a pathway to the higher grades of evil if empowered sufficiently. It is not simply about empowering the disempowered. A poor person isn't necessarily noble just because they are poor. As the great Abraham Lincoln said, "Almost all men can stand adversity, but if you really want to test a mans character, give him power." It is about empowering those who will safeguard benevolence towards others and the Earth, and not behave exploitatively of these things. Whilst this is a very opportune time to learn these lessons due to circumstance, in one sense it does not matter if the lessons are not learnt also. This is because there is a universal balance, which auto-corrects situations. In a similar way that market shocks sometimes lead to pricing corrections in stock valuations which might be distorted for the wrong reasons, the universal force acts to re-inforce or re-instate the truth. It is far easier to make the correction ourselves, rather than have this great force of nature make an auto-correct, which can indeed shake the self-proclaimed civilised human race to its core.

"Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds, and I have come here to destroy all people." 

Sri Krishna to Arjuna, Bhagavad Gita, 11.32