Light and life are inseparable. Swami Vivekananda said, ‘We are lamps, and our burning is what we call “life”.’ We need light to live and to guide our selves properly through life. Everyone attending a late-night theatre is able to get up and leave the hall at the end of the show without bumping into anything. But it becomes a little more difficult if the hall is in darkness. Similarly, we need light to navigate through life without bumping into things and hurting ourselves.
What gives us light? In general, we try to borrow light from others. We try to find people who will show us the way. We are led by the opinions of others and by public opinion. We behave as we think we ought to behave. We are afraid to be isolated or alone, so we behave in a manner calculated to show that we belong to a group. We conform to what we perceive to be the norm. When this is done on a large scale, it also defines the norm and ‘the proper way’. We can all look into our own life and reflect on the extent to which we do this in order to ‘fit in.’
Is this wrong? Should we instead rebel and become non-conformists? Even non-conformism is a kind of conformity. Some people want to prove that they are independent and nonconformists. Non-conformism itself becomes a kind of fashion. But if one deviates even a little from the currently fashionable form of nonconformism, one is isolated. Real non-conformism is to think rationally and clearly, and to act based on that thinking. Sometimes our action will be in consonance with the mainstream, and sometimes it will not. If we cannot think in this way, then let us admit that we dress, eat, and behave as we do because we want to be long to a group.
It is not only in action, but even in thinking that we want to conform. Nationalism sometimes circumscribes the independence of thought even of brilliant scholars, what to speak of the popular media. In contradicting that, one runs the risk of being branded unpatriotic.
Then there is the perennial debate between science and religion, the two high priests. We go to the religious place of one or the other. Either we are ‘believers’ and so decry science, or we are ‘scientific’ and therefore do not accept any religious speculation.
The security we derive from belonging to a group, though, exacts a heavy tax from us. As Plato said, the price that we pay for silence, for not thinking for ourselves, is to be led by fools. And as the Upanishad says, it may very well be like the blind leading the blind, with both ending up in the ditch.
What is the foundation for this? What is behind our desire to belong to a group? Firstly, we do need guidance. It would be the height of arrogance to think that we can do everything by ourselves. Secondly, we are all interdependent. Therefore, we must take into account the views and feelings of everyone. However, neither of these means that we should follow anything without full awareness and full responsibility.
Source – Excerpts from an article titled ‘Lead, Kindly Light by Prof. Vijaya Kumar Murty published in Prabuddha Bharata magazine November 2006 issue.