Open-Source Information Vs Ancient Knowledge System
यौवनं धनसम्पत्तिः प्रभुत्वमविवेकिता ।
एकैकमप्यनर्थाय किमु यत्र चतुष्टयं ॥
Youth, prosperity of wealth,
power of authority and lack of right judgment;
each one is enough for catastrophe/disaster,
what to say where all four are present.
As they say, “Data is the new oil”. In today’s world, where chaos in daily life is the new normal, the ability to process a certain information is a very critical. Plethora of information is available to be processed by means of smartphones and internet (well, most of the times, it is fed to our subconsciousness by governing entities via media), which in turn affects our decision-making process.
Off late, there has been a push towards open-source education. Sincere efforts have been made to make everything available on internet for everyone’s accessibility. With the recent pandemic situation, kids are now learning via online medium. Parents are also rejoicing about the progress their children have made with respect to technology (of course, children are getting more Tech-Savvy, but are we producing ROBOTS?).
While, it is a noble idea to make information available for all but it is equally important to emphasize that Information is not Wisdom. Wisdom to use information for the welfare of society is KNOWLEDGE. The burning question to be asked is “Are we making wisdom open-sourced for our next generation?”.
In ancient education system, ‘Guru’(teacher) used to impart this knowledge to their students. While, a common education system or syllabus was made available for students in their respective ‘Gurukuls’ (school of a teacher), teachers used to train students on how to use the information for the good of society and create value from it. There were certain aspects of education which Guru would only disclose to the suitable candidates whom he/she could trust to keep it safe from misuse by negative elements of society and pass it on to next generation. It has been one of the major reasons that in spite of thousand years of foreign invasion, in which hundreds of valuable schools and libraries (Nalanda, Takshila, etc.) were burnt down, Indians have managed to preserve their Vedic knowledge system till date.
In a simple case study, an electric circuit can be used to make a device work which might help in making daily life easy but on the other hand, same circuit can be used to make a bomb and create mayhem. While all the information is available online for everyone, who is going to be responsible to teach the students on the positive use of this information? Just putting out information in public domain, should not be the goal because it would lead to anarchy. Emphasis should be given towards shaping young minds to use a certain information for a greater good. And this cannot be achieved via open-sourced medium, where the only goal is to pass on the information.
Role of a teacher along with other human interactions (such as behavior of parents, circle of friends, etc.) plays a crucial role in shaping sub-consciousness of a child. In animal kingdom, children learn from the activities of their parents and group around them, hence, it is ingrained in our DNA that our sun-consciousness develops by watching fellow human activities around us, not by blatantly reading any information. As an evolving society, we must acknowledge the aspect of human interaction and learn to adapt and live with others in spite of our differences. Bubble of open-source is silently manipulating our judgement (powerful governing entities do not want us to think and act) and it is better to teach our kids human values first rather than let them swim in ocean of information.