The Mystic Ranger

The rea­son­able man adapts him­self to the world. The unrea­son­able man per­sists in attempt­ing to adapt the world to him­self. All progress in the world, there­fore, is depen­dent on the unrea­son­able man.

–G.B. Shaw

We Indi­ans (yes, call me a racist here, but I still plod on) are not taught this when we are kids. We are told the story of the king.

Once there was a king who used to live a lux­u­ri­ous life — as is very expected of kings in sto­ries. Once, he had to make a long jour­ney — by foot or some­thing? — and he real­ized that the hard roads were very uncom­fort­able. In his para­noia for lux­ury every­where, he com­manded his sub­jects to spread leather all over the roads, so his feet never hurt in walk­ing on them. And then, one very smart sub­ject — a clone of Bir­bal per­haps? — offered an instant solu­tion — lets make a shoe of leather for the king, so wher­ever he went, he’d feel comfortable. 

Hence­forth, we were taught that we aren’t sup­posed to go about chang­ing the world. We ought to change our­selves. It is “eas­ier to point out other’s faults than our own, but it’s still eas­ier to rec­tify what’s within us, than what’s out­side of us”. This is how we went. I was strongly reminded of this when I read this post by Espera — which talked of some stereo­typ­i­cal very shame­less guy who actu­ally went about telling that it’s the rape vic­tims who ought to pro­tect them­selves — it is only their fault they get raped at all. 
Many of us Indi­ans, any­ways hold that opin­ion. Go ask my mother. Ask her what she  thought should be done to get rid of eve-teasers etc (I asked that because it was in con­text of the TV ser­ial we were watch­ing), and she’ll say her­self — the girl should choose a bet­ter route, and dress more decently. How will it ben­e­fit us if we get on to improv­ing the world?

For God’s sake, we need to learn to get rid of that men­tal­ity. We were also taught to be sat­is­fied with what he had — and this les­son was pushed in way more often than — “We should want more and more out fo life — until we’ve con­quered the world”.I don’t know why we are directed in such a way, but it is def­i­nitely very annoy­ing. It is also very frus­trat­ing — to think that you live in such a coun­try of pas­sive peo­ple — peo­ple who are will­ing to accept a vis­i­bly imper­fect soci­ety, in just such a way, that they man­age. Is that what we were born for? To man­age? To adjust? It is freak­ing unimag­in­able when you think strongly about this.

It is a remark­ably brain­less char­ac­ter­is­tic, and it explains a hell lot as to why peo­ple can lie back and say that stuff ain’t how it ought to be; and then do noth­ing at all about it. They’ll live. They are not exactly doing what they think they’d have liked to. But what the hell? They have a salary, a fam­ily — what more could they want? Really? You couldn’t want more, could you?
Well, I couldn’t want less. I’d rather die than live that life. I’d want to be a politi­cian some­day, and that’s after I’ve done a hell lot of that stuff I love to do. Why? Beca­sue I want to see change. And actu­ally, I want to cause it. I want to be that one lame guy, totally unre­mark­able per­son with no busi­ness, or polit­i­cal back­ground, who causes change — most impor­tantly in the men­tal­ity of the coun­try. I know that that sounds impos­si­ble, but I don’t think it very highly is. I will very soon rant on the absurd men­tal­ity of the Kapil Sibal removal of class X Board exams move too. I wish I could help change that. For the meantime -

Read A Mathematician’s Lament, by a cer­tain math­e­mati­cian called Paul Lock­hart. You might get some insight into what direc­tion of men­tal­ity change I want. And also why I’d rather pre­fer to be an edu­ca­tion minister.…