On the Fallibility of Humans

8/7/2019 On the Fallibility of Humans

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End Term Evaluation- Mind, Body and Soul

Topic No.2 by C.S. Lewis

Shiva Kakkar (PGDM/09/155)

2. 'The greatest evil is not done in those sordid dens of crime that Dickens loved to paint. It is

conceived and moved, seconded and carried and minuted, in clean, carpeted, warmed and

well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails, and smooth-shaven

chins, who do not need to raise their voices'- C S Lewis

Man! The only animal in the world to fear. D.H. Lawrence

Dear Board Members, the letter began, it is with deep regret and tremendous burden that I am

carrying on my conscience, that I would like to bring the following facts to your notice: Six

million investors stood in disbelief when they read the contents of the letter coming straight from

the CEO.The Balance Sheet, as of September 30, 2008, carries inflated (non-existent) cash and

bank balances of 50.40 billion rupees ($1.04 billion) (as against 53.61 billion reflected in the

books). The letter continued, Every attempt made to eliminate the gap failed. As the promoters

held a small percentage of equity, the concern was that poor performance would result in a take-

over, thereby exposing the gap. It was like riding a tiger, not knowing how to get off without

being eaten. As millions of shareholders were left shattered, a massive manhunt was launched

to catch the offender. The offender one of the shining stars of the Indian IT industry B.

RamalingaRaju.

The biggest frauds have not been committed through the use of might but by the shrewd brains

of affluent people. In frauds, lies the testimony to the fallibility and corruptibility of man. Be it

Enron or Satyam, the rise of Nazi Germany or the violent oncoming of the proletariat in

communism each of them was contrived by seemingly harmless and well to do men. Jeff

Skiing, the president of Enron was one of the most intelligent students in his Harvard class.

When he was asked in his Harvard interview whether he was smart, he famously replied by

saying, Im fucking smart!Hitler was the physically weak son of a trader. He was a failed poet

and a miserable painter before he went onto annihilate millions. Karl Marx was a rejected and

desperate philosopher before he went on to topple governments and revolutionize the world

through the violent use of proletariat. Those who knew thesemen could never have believed thatthey could even kill an ant. These men went on to become the turning points of history, the turns

mostly being hideous.

The affluent and the intelligent too are fallible to corruption, rather more so. As Honore de

Balzac put it, Behind every fortune their lies a crime. But it is important to know what causes

this fallibility. Why is man the biggest obstacle in the progress of man? Why is it so difficult for


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us beings to resist the temptation of abusing power? One of the reasons is the continuous conflict

between ourrationality and desire. We tend to see life as limited to material objects of

gratification. Life in itself does not seem to serve any purpose. It is what pleasures and trophies

we gain that define us rather than us defining ourselves. Every now and then we need certificates

and documents to prove ourselves. Society, as a necessary evil, has made it a protocol to loathe

its inhabitants. We may criticize and ostracize everyone around us but each and every moment of

our life is spent in proving ourselves to the very same people who we disprove of. Power,

money, fame everything is needed just in order to prove our worth to others. We try to rise in the

eyes of others but in the process fall in our own. The fundamental root to all evils is our

hedonistic love for life. As a person, my success is no success until others acknowledge it too. It

doesnt matter if I am superior to you. What matters is that you acknowledge that you are inferior

to me. Berating other people and proving them wrong is my own way to prove myself as correct.And in this lustful pursuit of domination, Ill do whatever I can to inflict injuries upon others.

Schedenfreude i.e. pleasure in anothers pain - this is the basic nature of man. The tragedy is

that even after all the pains man undertakes to become superior, at the end he feels that life was

something that he endured and overcame rather than lived. This is the price he has to pay for his

over-ambitiousness and corruption.

The blind faith in capitalism and commercialization is also to blame for the fall of man. They

have efficiently substituted our mental aspirations with hedonistic needs. The design of

capitalism to a certain extent is one that increases the chasm between the rich and the poor. The

resources get polarized with a few and make the rest dependent upon them. This creates amaster-slave relationship between the two conflicting groups. Therefore, my prosperity should

come at someone elses disparity. The basic parameters of success have been changed. It doesnt

matter what satisfies me. What matters is that if I dont get something then I assure that nobody

else gets it too. I feel envied and jealous at others success because my breeding has hammered it

into my brain that there cannot be two equals but only an authority and a subordinate; a higher

and a lower. I am dissatisfied with life not because of my inability to be satisfied but because of

my constant rejection of satisfaction. My own personal experience happens to sufficiently

illustrate this. During the course of conversation in one of the interviews, I happened to say that I

was satisfied and complacent with my life. The panel pointed out that my comment proves that

I was not ambitious enough and thus, unfit for the job. That time I left the room in delirium, buttoday I see the irony. In my nonchalance, I had offended the blind ego of the interviewer. Wasnt

satisfaction the final aim of his life too? People dwell in corruption, manipulations, politics for

one reason that perhaps it will give them happiness and satisfaction. Alas, it is not meant to be!

The problem today is that there is ambition but no mission in the lives of people. Blind Ambition

gives rise to blind competition and blind competition to corruption. We are being bred to sustain

a morally corrupt world.


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Even the dimensions of human relationships have changed. No more are trust and kinship seen

as virtuous and desirable qualities. What matters is how we network and solicit contacts. Each

and everything in life must satisfy our selfish financial objectives. We have put rate cards on

every relationship and calculate their strength based on the return on investment they provide.

The moment the return is lower than the investment we cease to relate. People today complain

over the lack of trust. How can trust exist in such a suffocatingscenario?

Maybe this is what happens when money turns to be our god and America our heaven. We talk

of ethics and values but the truth is that all ethics are relative and expendable in nature. It is the

fundamental weakness of human being that he lives and sees only the present. Because of his

limited range of vision he does not see the consequences of his actions. Each action is a part of a

tremendous system of cause and effect. What started as a small moral corruption in the

prevailing Hindu population gave rise to abarbarous British Empire. It was because some of

them loved the riches of lives much more than their morals that a hand-full of white skinned men

were able to dominate such a large country. Had those few realized the repercussions of their

actions none of it would have ever happened. This is what Socrates meant when he said that

people are ignorant because they cant see the future. They are unable to comprehend the effects

that their actions would have.The corruption today remains the same only its form has changed.

Previously, we contrived with British for survival and luxury. Today,we contrive against each

other for rewards and benefits. It is a war of all against all.

This brings us to the question - is there no respite from this? Are we all trapped in a quagmire of

endless desires and hopeless materialism? Are we really incorrigible in our amorality and

unalterable in our standards? As of now, yes. If we have to represent mans history statistically,

it will represent and inverted U; a bell curve. Like a curve, we also have phases of growth,

maturity and decline. Every growth must lead to decline and every decline to growth.Perhaps

now, we are in a declining stage. Our improvement will result only result after a collective

decline. We obviously feel complacent considering ourselves the master of destiny and indeed

we are, but rather ignorant masters. We are like gamblers wholl put everything at stake and

realize the repercussions only when its too late. Well not do the right thing until we face the

destruction made by our own hands and scream what have I done! That is when our journey

towards recovery starts. You may ask then what the value of being honest is.Honesty is that dicein the game that flies in your face and screams at you to stop playing by turning over all the

wrong numbers. It is not the dice that lies but our mind, providing false aspirations of success. It

is upon us to get the cues and leave or throw away the dice.

Even with all the corruption and all the evils, it is the few honest that we pin our hopes upon. No

matter how corrupt a country is, its laws are made always in view to protect the few who are

honest. The honest may not be clean shaved. They may be grumpy and scrubby and may even


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bathe once in three days. But what they do have is the uncanny ability to see and be mindful of

the future. They see that there can be no superior country without superior people, and that is

what they work towards for. Lastly, for the wise who truly carefor the world I have only one

advice to give do what you think is right and the let the world go to hell! And believe me, it

never will.

Submitted by:

Shiva Kakkar

PGDM/09/155

On the Fallibility of Humans

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