I listened to a very interesting podcast episode recently. It was from a series called The Seen and The Unseen with Amit Varma. The particular episode was called Caste, Gender, Karnatik Music. The subject matter of the particular episode was actually broader than the title makes it sound. The whole episode made me think about various things, some even unrelated to the subject of the interview. The person being interviewed was a remarkable person – a thinker who was self-aware to an extreme. He was able to express this self-awareness in very clear manner.
One of the things I ended up thinking about is how most of us tend to get stuck in our own bubbles in various ways, and even in multiple contexts. This is nearly always counterproductive to our own growth, our true understanding of the world, and our own broad-mindedness. One aspect of the bubble is our inability to properly understand things from beyond our own circumstances, background, and perspectives, and to understand where other people are coming from. I am not sure if this is only about empathy. It is about smugness of those of us who are fortunate in our circumstances, and this can be true even when we think we are doing the right thing for other people who we may think of as less fortunate than us. It is about complacency. It is about a determination of fairness in society. It is about the ability for societies to exist and thrive from everybody’s perspective.
I am not sure that it is easy for us to break out of our bubbles, but I am sure that I would better off if I could break out of mine more effectively. Once you become complacent, you are lost.
Splattered Brains 