I am sure enough and more has been written, rewritten and spoken about the terrible massacre by the self-styled protectors of religion, and the inhumane acts committed in the name of being the harbingers of the rule of the ultimate power on earth. The price that we pay each time we are plundered is something that cannot be measured, either materially, or psychologically. As mute spectators, we wait and watch, wondering when the next strike is coming…. Is there nothing we can do, to make at least passable peace with ourselves? The war that goes on within us, the sense of anger, angst, helplessness, and the sheer, quiet desperation, as Thoreau says, wrings my heart.
It is not a blame game, but let us face it, we as a nation are very complacent: be at the macro or micro level, we would act only after or just before a crisis. Take the current case on a global level for example. I read somewhere, that recognizing nuances of facial expressions, in fleeting seconds, for example, is a sign of social intelligence.
Forthrightness, according to Daniel Goleman, is our brain’s default response. Any attempt to be anything else does bring about a cognitive dissonance, however much a person tries to mask it. The conditioned and learned response shows. He talks about a man who had come to an embassy for a visa. The interviewer noticed something strange about this person as they spoke, and when questioned about the reason for a visa, there was a fleeting expression on the man’s face. The interviewer was alerted and asking the applicant to wait, went to check the data bank. He trusted his gut feelings; he used ‘social intelligence’ in reading the expression: something is not quite right here. He was listed as a fugitive, wanted by the police in several countries.
Now I wonder whether, if any of the Indian public, when face-to-face with a nameless, faceless radical, would draw on this inherent gift, this non-cognitive aptitude that we all have, and draw up a red alert? Imagine how safe we could start feeling, if each one of us had this preprogrammed antenna always ready to receive warnings of any untoward mishap, and take proactive action?
This gift for primal empathy, the ready ability to sense the emotions of another is one weapon we can use against the more tangible weapons of mass destruction. Forget about sophisticated weapons; forget about bullet proof vests and hi-speed jets, or boats. Can we start fighting this war on another level altogether? We can get our resources together on educating public servants on developing this innate human ability to read the human mind, which is reflected on the face. It could be a kind of mental x-ray, an ability that has been dormant and is coded in our genes, and can be developed through conscious effort and training.
It comes under relationship management. When we learn to manage our core associations and relationships, we need to go a step further and develop this ability to hear the unspoken, to see the finer nuances of expressions that the other person expresses: and learn to read it right. It helps in fine-tuning our relationships. It should not be difficult, considering we are programmed as a species to do it.
Once we are successful in doing this in our day to day relationships, we can extend it, I am sure to read it in a stranger’s ( read that as a terrorist’s) face. And build a fortress around all of us, where our only ammunition would be this ability to scan out one who has no respect for humanity, and our common bond would be the will and the desire to live: peacefully, in harmony, and in the beauty of life.
Mohana Narayanan
Nov 30, 2008
