10 September 2022

Gajalakshmi Paramasivam

 

LITERACY VS INTELLIGENCE

Yesterday, a young Australian tried to correct me when I referred to the Queen in Present Simple. He was using Past Simple. We were both right as per our respective investment in the Queen. The young one was referring to the body, while I was referring to the mind. As an Australian, I honoured the Queen through indigenous culture of living with the Spirit. To my mind, I was sharing my intelligence in a locally ‘free’ environment where I did not have to dot my i’s and cross my t’s. To me, that is intelligence while the young one was sticking to technicality / literacy.

This morning, I came across the following under the title ‘GotaGoGama: A Learning Curve’ at  https://groundviews.org/2022/09/08/gotagogama-a-learning-curve/

 

[World Literacy Day is a day that is usually celebrated in Sri Lanka. What is synonymous with literacy here is the extremely high rate of literacy the country can lay claim to. But what could literacy truly show in a country that is reeling from an economic crisis of this scale? ]

Literacy is like majority vote. In the above example, it is the ‘body’. Intelligence on the other hand, involves discriminative analysis as per a common measure and/or the Truth we have discovered.

Let us therefore analyse what happened in Sri Lanka, through the Constitutional provisions as theory.

Article 9, which declares that  ‘The Republic of Sri Lanka shall give to Buddhism the foremost place’  and goes on to state - ‘ accordingly it shall be the duty of the State to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana….’

This means that only Buddhists can form government of belief.  A non-Buddhist has to use intellectual logic on the basis of Buddha Sasana to know right from wrong as per the Constitution.

Article 10 with which the chapter on Fundamental Rights/Human Rights begins, states as follows:

[10. Every person is entitled to freedom of thought, of conscience and religion, including the freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice.]

Articles 9 & 10 cannot be practiced by the same person at the one time, for the simple reason,  Article 9 is relative and Article 10 is Absolute and therefore when practiced spreads Itself exponentially. This spread is essential in Democracy.

Sri Lankan politics failed relatively when Article 9 was passive. When activated by Mr Gotabaya Rajapaksa, it failed  exponentially. Prior to this it happened due during the rule of Mrs Bandaranaike – the architect of ‘Buddhism Foremost’ article in the 1972 Constitution. The New York Times reported as follows on 06 May 1974:

[COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, May 6 — At dawn hundreds of people wait in bread lines. Elderly men and women pick through garbage. Thieves harvest vegetables and rice in the countryside.

Although the earth is bountiful in Sri Lanka, which was formerly Ceylon, the nation of 13 million has a critical food shortage. Moreover, it is going broke, jolted by inflation, torn by internal dissension and plainly alarmed about the future.

Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike, a tough politician and a Socialist, said recently that the economic crisis had “almost squeezed the breath out of us—we are literally fighting to survive.”]

 

As per my belief based observations, whether it is the Corona virus or Sri Lankan Economic collapse, the spread is exponential. This means a Spirit has been awakened rudely for current benefits. Both awaken pre-existing ailments that were put to rest previously. They do not directly cause new disease.

In the case of the virus – it was the Silk Road which was declared a World Heritage.  In the case of Sri Lankan Economic collapse, it was greed for money which was put to rest by Buddha Sasana.