A teacher in his late fifties and his father in early seventies were sitting in the garden. A group of five students noticed their teacher and walked up to exchange greetings with him.
Their teacher introduced each student to his father and said they all are very clever and smart and they wish to pursue MBA. The father immediately responded ‘now that worries me’. One of the students immediately reacted isn’t smartness and cleverness an expectation of every parent and teacher.
The elderly father explained during our times the smartness and cleverness we developed carried a reputation of sincerity in the circles of academic learning’s. With it we developed our spirituality connect which brought further wisdom, a deeper reality to a more meaningful and conscious life. These learning have then produced professionals, skilled people, technologies producing products and services that were for the wellbeing of mankind and safe for environment.
Lack of spiritual learning’s & wisdom facilitates easy compromises with norms of integrity, ethics, values, social rules, laws and environmental abuses. This drifting away influences minds to twist smartness and cleverness (the bad way). Although for humans this has been an old affair, unfortunately it is very predominant nowadays in most aspects of life.
Let me share some examples:
God gave man no natural defence weapon (no fangs, no claws, no poison or venom) but the human mind twisted their smartness and cleverness to invent, produce and now influences use of mass destruction weapons.
An unethical hacker’s twists with cleverness and smartness is to accesses digital systems illegally with malicious intent and often for personal gains.
Non conclusive legal settlements/judgements mostly are the outcome of twist with smartness and cleverness by people playing with the justice system.
Large scale tax evasions and financial fraud dealings are outcomes with twisted smartness and cleverness actions of one's mind.
In 1925 twist with smartness and cleverness was when major light bulb manufacturers cartel, engineered a shorter lifespan for incandescent light bulbs, standardizing them at 1,000 hours. This significant reduction was from previous over 2000hrs, so that consumers will have to buy more often.
Recently a computer brand offered software upgrades, which significantly reduced performance, leaving no choice for customers to hasten new purchases. This twist with smartness and cleverness backfired on the brand that later had to compensate customers on intervention of a court in one country.
A prominent taxi service company used AI that reflected a caller’s low battery status. For callers with 12% and low battery status, the taxi company would take advantage and hike fare for the trip.
If you cannot convince customers, confuse them. Many an advertising firms often twist with smartness and cleverness to produce baseless, misleading content.
Shrinkflation is a recent culture among food brands; they retain the price but reduce the quantity of the product. The twist with cleverness and smartness by brands goes unnoticed as many consumers do not read the change in weight labels.
In the modern world “smartness and cleverness are highly valuable commodities, translating to better career opportunities, higher earning potentials but their productivity is becoming a customer nuisance.
The Father’s advice to the young minds was do not submit your smartness and cleverness to wrongful ways, means and gains. ‘Kirit Karo’ is to earn one’s livelihood through creative, productive and honest labour. Profit is not a dirty word, but it has to be shared with humanity. Be the rich and famous with kindness and gentleness, having a relentless desire to alleviate sufferings and making a positive impact on lives of others.
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