Use, usefulness, and being used
It is a tradition to celebrate birthdays from a local calendar and I turned 28 last week that way. It is new year’s day today, from a different calendar. The last time I wrote a post was when I turned 27. I read that post again; to my surprise I found it extremely well written, unlike most of my facebook or twitter posts, which when I reread all I find is mistakes. This year I am writing my thoughts on usefulness-no general theories but just a few useful guidelines on use, usefulness and being used.
The program that nature has set itself doesn’t rely on the notion or find reason to use. It’s an impression sapiodefined to embed function to its existence. This function nevertheless has given seed to form societies and sustain them, which is probably the modern version of Levi Srauss’s anthropologic origins of society. Beyond pandering to morality needs, use also serves a purpose. Use engages. The understated causes of a migration to invidualism and vanity is the failure to live engaged. Being engaged must lead to indulgence and if it doesn’t, one falters into futility. What is the use, one has seen people ask; though a seemingly existential question is atmost a question incomplete. Because, use and need are linked and the posing is complete only with an ‘of’.
This bring us to usefulness which can be as abstract as pleasure and as material as touch. The varied interpretation of usefulness is, as one would imagine a laddu for art, to my knowledge heavily underutilised. Well we know at least Wilde feels “all art is useless.” This unsettled definition of what is useful is what has resulted in chaos in our society, especially in the Indian context. It isn’t so much a jump in train of thought as it seems to perception. The collective knowledge of the Indian ‘intellectuals’ has failed to agree on a definition that optimises a certain quantity which can be a pseudometric for usefulness. As vague as this statement sounds, usefulness is also absurdly so.
Nebulous writing aside, the issue at hand for India is its chaos. A part of it comes from its failure to recognise expertise and even a phobia towards it. India has for long feared intelligence, marketing it outside while denigrating it at home. IISc, TIFRs, AIIMS, IITs, IIMs, and all other institutions in India are seen firstly as epitomes of success by the urban elites and as failure of the state by left leaning intellectuals (for not providing such education to everyone). The former is accused of ignorance and indifference to the issues of the society while the latter of a preaching tone from a moral pedastal taller than others. Both arguments and their functioning are failures because they have not come to agree on a definition of what is useful. I would like to expand on this more but that’s for another day (or year).
Usefulness of something is derived out of it being used. The narrative must drive itself such that we recognise each section of the society is useful, for one another and that expertise is not evil. One sees accusations of meritocracy for this argument; however a society will develop not by shaming the smart but finding ways to use them, framing a world where being used becomes an incentive. This does not immediately mean that manual labour will have to slog like Sisyphus, but that the intelligentsia is useless without manual labour. There is no panacea to human misery but a step towards progress (another sapiodefined term) would be to recognise use, usefulness of something or someone and be used.
Jotting down these thoughts I feel will help me find a place where I shall be used; for all we know use, beyond engaging, might be the purpose of life.