Contagious Diseases of Compassion, Creativity, Ethics and Sustainability

Contagious Diseases of Compassion, Creativity, Ethics and Sustainability

“[S]tudents should blend science and ethics to become global citizens ...” thus spoke a modern Zarathustra! This, (the statement between the quotes) was as reported in a newspaper at a function in a quasi-academic setting, a campus festival. 

I got interested and read through the approximately 14.803 newspaper column inches long (error estimate, plus or minus 0.002 inches! After all, Zarathustra was speaking at a technical education imparting institution) article. So, ethics is important; indeed, students must not have heard this earlier.

He added that technical skills alone (basically coding) in any stream will not be of much use globally. (Tell that to the annual exodus of students from India, including that particular institution hoping to land a coding job after their higher education (MS in Computer Coding!).) Again, something students were hearing for the first time. Add in the mix compassion, creativity, and sustainability. I pitied Zarathustra for the limited wide-angle lens he had used in his slide show!

Innovation must change lives even as it promotes sustainability. Students must have understood this as not to worry about their levels of consumption−howsoever huge it may be, only try reducing it, like throwing your paper cup in the garbage can at the airport. That shows you are committed to sustainability!

I must mention an instance in the 1980s (recurring every year) Zarathustra or his father and cousins of Arab descent (like the Zarathustra referred here) and their retinue flew into Bluegrass Field Airport in Lexington, KY, USA in their plane to bid for yearlings at the world famous auction (where you saw fast women and beautiful horses), as much as the then record of thirteen point something million USD.  

Not flying commercial airlines was their concern for sustainability. Extolling compassion, while recommending whiplashes in the town square for women for committing so-called sins of exposing their forearms is not hypocrisy, of course.

Creativity is where hypocrisy shows up in stark relief. Creativity is on your time and not on company’s time, understand? Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Paige, Sergei Brin (never mind James Watt who helped usher Industrial Revolution, John Fowler’s Firth of Forth Steel Cantilever Bridge, Eiffel, those who developed designs of commercial airplanes ... the list is so long, only to be ignored) all made their mark on their own time, and so should you try to do−the implied message from Zarathustra.

Perhaps the original Zarathustra said many more things but from the newspaper piece and what the modern era Zarathustra is reported to have said, I could take in only the few, and tried answering them with reference to context question in it.

Yes, all the diseases listed in the heading are contagious as these are necessary for human beings to survive civilizational dangers lurking around the corner. Coronavirus Disease 2019, anyone?

Raghuram Ekambaram