Myopia is the other name for short-sightedness. I have no doubt in claiming that we all suffer from it and indeed we love to suffer from it. We, the torch bearers of social, political and religious status quo do not want to look ahead as it threatens the vile sense of comfort we have developed in our lives. We do not want to change as we fear that moving everything that has been going on for centuries will destroy everything we believe and experience.

For centuries we are a society without reason. We do not have the slightest idea about anything we do in our lives and we never care to find out why. Almost five centuries ago, some “learned” people of our religious establishment decided that human reason (that was carried on in Islamic traditions for almost a millennium) was not to be trusted. The application of reason and logic to human life should be out of question. The doctrine of “following” was thus established. Human reason was denied its due share in human development. People were asked to blindly following the clergy as it was the best path towards salvation. Reason and logic were declared incompetent and in fact heretical as they could lead someone to search for some of the fundamental questions and as a result find out that truth could be found without clergy.

The shift from reason to following has created a large intellectual black hole in our society. Deviance from reason encouraged rote learning as the only form of education. We can still see that rote learning prevails throughout our education system. Closing doors of mind towards active learning and reasoning has developed a mass myopia. We are not ready to learn, progress or open up to facts of rapidly changing world.

This short sightedness has restrained our people from looking at the wider aspect of everything. Today we have an educated class (an outcome of rote learning), that puts to shame some of the most ignorant tribes of Amazon. You may go out and have a lunch with some of the highly educated people of our middle class. A large number of them would be anti-Semites who would revere Hitler as their ideal without even pondering that if subcontinent would have been located where Austria and Poland are, their grand parents would have been Auschwitz survivors.

A significant number of these educated intellectuals would see an international conspiracy in everything that happens in their daily lives. For some, the recent engine failure of their cars would be triggered by a Jewish/Zionist/American conspiracy to prevent these devout followers from overthrowing these satanic forces from the world (which they are going to accomplish by discussing these conspiracy theories in their air-conditioned rooms).

A few of these would always reject that the recent suicide bomb blast was even a suicide attack. For them every suicide attack is remote controlled and they won’t even bother to read the eye witness accounts of sufferers who saw the bomber with their own eyes.

Talk about reading the eye witness account, they never have read anything. I can’t forget the day when somebody told me that the currently ongoing (at that time) Inquest on Princess Diana’s death was triggered by the death of her son. I was unable to suppress my shock upon knowing that I was ignorant of the fact that a Prince of British Crown has died recently. Upon inquiring, the confident intellectual claimed that he was told by his brother who is very much in into the current affairs thing. (They all have such brothers!). It has been months and I have been unable to find the unlucky prince who died. Maybe the deceased princess had a third son whose whereabouts were only known to the all so informed brother. How many times have you heard someone telling you some graphic details of some government operation/activity/embezzlement /party of which he was informed by some well informed insider (who always remains unknown)?

Absence of reason, blind following and lack of scholarly attitudes create a society where people only believe what they are told and what they hear. They would never try to find out truth on their own. Education is sought for the sole purpose of acquiring degrees and well paid jobs. These well paid jobs are sought to fulfill their consumerist desires.

Religious fanaticism is a product of all the above. A major reason of such fanaticism has been attributed to ignorance and lack of education but it may not be true in all the cases. It’s true that better education proves helpful but we can see some of the highly educated fanatics around us. It’s a fact that our stinking education system cannot open up minds to reason. It promotes memorization and blind following.

Every year or so, there is a messianic frenzy in our society. Every natural disaster (earth quake, hurricane) attributes towards the rumors of approaching doom. Once again this is not limited to the uneducated. We can easily witness it in the educated circles. Some pseudo-intellectuals and religious scholars can contribute further by using mass media to present their highly interpretive predictions of doom and messiah. It’s a fact that even our educated classes are widely ignorant of any such thing known as history and for them any recent activity is a sign of dooms day.

The mass myopia prevails!