98. TIMELY AND THE TIMELESS

LITERATURE- LIGHT AND DELIGHT

98. TIMELY AND THE TIMELESS

"The Timely And The Timeless" - this is the title of a book from 1970,  by Bentley Glass, then Prof. of Biology of the State University of New York. It examined the interrelationships of Science, Education and Society. The theme of the book is that "science as a social and historical process is  surely not the same as the nature of science as an individual scientist's process of investigation". The sheer volume of 'scientific knowledge' is so huge and overwhelming , and yet multiplying so fast, that no one 'scientist' can claim  to know everything even in his own specialisation, narrow as it is. Society at large is turned into a consumer of the products of science and technology, with very little understanding of the processes of science. The whole society is thus affected by science, but this understanding is not fostered by education, which fails to keep pace with the advancements. But more serious is the fact that the long term consequences on society of the products of science are not reckoned. Glass said :

Science is indeed an instrument of service, but only if its course can be understood and its technological applications regulated and constrained in the service of man.....one must agree with ...Alexander Meiklejohn, when he wrote: "Our final responsibility as scholars and teachers is not to the truth. It is to the people who need the truth."

 .....the scientist .....must reach beyond the immediate  consequences of any technological application of his discoveries and strive to grasp its most far-reaching  and long-lasting effects upon the terrestrial environment and the social system of man as a whole.

Here we shall find  relief from the trivial. Here we may seek and join the timely with the timeless, the socially relevant with the eternally true, the goals of man with his status in the universe, of which he is indeed so small a part......the end is not even the advancement of science, though that will accrue. The true end is quite literally the salvation of man.

 From: Bentley Glass: The Timely And The Timeless, Basic Books, New York,1970.

Image from Stony Brook University

The phrase 'Timely and the Timeless' struck a chord in me. This is what our religion has been trying to express. Life is endless, eternal; but our individual lives are so short, so full of suffering and struggle. In trying to cope with the immediate, we lose sight of the eternal. The world we see and experience through our senses hides a larger reality behind it. So the scriptures tell us to use the short term means and instruments to attain the eternal goal- this indeed is  both the wisdom and fortune of man, as the Bhagavata makes it clear. We have to use the perishable body to attain the imperishable state!

This too has been the vision of poets and men of literature. Like true philosophers, they see that the the phenomena of the world distract us from our true purpose. In playing with the small toys, we lose hold of the true gems.

But in the modern age, poets and authors are more concerned with the current developments, than with the more permanent verities. Poets are more sensitive than the rest and so are quick to be touched by what happens around them. But these days they seem to be touched more by the negative aspects. Adrienne Rich, the celebrated feminist-civil rights activist-poet refused to accept the National Medal for the Arts from President Clinton in July '97, and in an article explaining her stand wrote:

"Both major parties have displayed a crude affinity for the interests of corporate power, while deserting the majority of the people....I 've watched the dismantling of our public education, the steep rise in our incarceration rates, the demonization of our young black men, the accusations against teen-age mothers, the selling of health care- public and private- to the highest bidders, the export of subsistence-level jobs in the United States to even lower-wage countries, the use of below-minimum-wage prison labour to break strikes and raise profits, the scapegoating of immigrants,the denial of dignity and minimal security to working and poor people.....we have witnessed the acquisition of publishing houses , once risk-taking conduits of creativity, by conglomerates driven single-mindedly to fast profits, the acquisition of major communications and media by those same interests, the sacrifice of the arts and public libraries in stripped-down school and civic budgets....the democratic process has been losing ground to the accumulation of private wealth.

  All this is substantially true, and cannot be found in the academic textbooks. And these developments are repeated wherever the same style of economic organisation is followed- as is happening now in India! She goes on to say:

the all-embracing enterprise of our early history was the slave trade, which left nothing, no single life, untouched, and was, along with the genocide of the native population and the seizure of their lands, the foundation of our national prosperity and power....

And what about art? Mistrusted, adored, pietized, condemned, dismissed as entertainment, commodified, auctioned at Sotheby's, purchased by investment-seeking celebrities, it dies into the "art object" of a thousand museum basements.

 All this is also true. Yet what is new in all this? This is what Goldsmith had foreseen two hundred years earlier, and simply said: "Where wealth accumulates and men decay". The money culture turns everything into a tradeable commodity. 

Adrienne Rich, 2001 By Katharyn Howd Machan
(Katharyn Howd Machan [CC BY-SA 3.0 Creative Commons.

But this is not the fault of a Clinton, or any one. It is not that these people were particularly bad, or ignoble. They are all prisoners of a system, as we all are. Yet I feel Rich had reason enough to celebrate: that she could write such a letter and send a copy  to the President! With all her leftist enthusiasm, in how many leftist countries, calling themselves democracies, could she have attempted that and hoped to remain alive or free?

Mary Wollstonecraft, the 18th century feminist thinker and writer wrote (and this is quoted by Rich in her poem 'Snapshots of a Daughter-in-law):

To have in this uncertain world some stay which cannot be undermined, is of the utmost consequence.

Mary Wollstonecraft, c.1797
National Portraits Gallery, London.

She was writing of course about the aspirations of women. But is this not after all what every one would like- men or women - to have  some stability or certainty in the uncertain world? Yet it is the very essence of philosophy that it cannot be had in this world! We cannot find the timeless in the phenomena bound by time! Yet, we have to use the timely to attain the timeless! We may make bold to say that this is the 'skill' involved in living in this world meaningfully- the real yoga- Yaga karmasu kausalam, as the Gita says!