UMass – Facing Challenges
Date:
Channel: Mirza Yawar Baig
File Size: 17.99MB
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AI Generated Summary ©
The rise of industrial revolution, parenting, education, and health care have made significant changes to society, including the transformation of society and the loss of natural resources. The crisis is due to predatory capitalism and the loss of faith and confusion, leading to loss of faith and confusion. The transformation of society is important, including advancements in AI and the potential for multiple career choices. The importance of humility and embracing mistakes is emphasized, and the speakers stress the importance of resilience and learning in making choices and making decisions based on the right approach.AI Generated Transcript ©
Asked to speak at this
wonderful gathering.
I have lots and lots of friends here,
and it's always good
to speak at an audience,
like this.
There are 2 ways
to lead our lives.
The way we want
or the way that Allah
wants for us.
Whichever way we choose,
we will be held accountable for that
when we meet Allah.
The issue is living
the way we want is that our knowledge
is limited
and our desires rule us.
The benefit of living the way that Allah
wants us to live
is that he knows what is best for
us
and guides us to that.
And since
the accounting is with him,
inshallah,
if we live by his way,
then the day we meet him will be
a day of rejoicing.
I remind myself and
you that to live
is not merely to draw breath.
That is the way animals live.
They are slaves of their drives.
They follow their desires.
And one day, they die
and the story is over.
Humans on the other hand
have the option of living like animals,
fulfilling every desire, or
of living a life of purpose
and leaving behind
a legacy of honor.
That is the choice
which we must make.
To underline that, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala set
the standard
where he said
Allah said in Surah Al Haram which means
every soul will taste death.
And you will only receive your full reward
on the day of judgement.
Whoever is spared from the hellfire and is
admitted into paradise into Jannah
will indeed triumph.
Whereas the life of this world
is no more than the delusion of enjoyment.
Let us give some thought
to this and ask
how our lives compare
to this standard.
Success and failure in life
are products of the choices we make.
The Quran and Sunnah
guide us to the best of them.
The path of those who Allah Subhanahu wa
ta'ala rewarded
and not those who angered him.
A quick history lesson.
To come to the topic
of my lecture today, which is facing challenges.
The industrial revolution, which is
roughly 60 1760
to
18 40,
changed the life,
the basis
of society.
It was less about assembly line or automated
manufacture
and much more about changing how people thought
and what they valued.
There were 3 major changes that remain with
us to this day.
Aspirational
values,
parenting,
and teaching.
This change society fundamentally
and gave us the world
that we have today.
In an agrarian society, in an agricultural society
pre industrial revolution,
parents were also teachers.
Children knew what parents did and learned those
life skills from them.
Usually, the roles were gender specific.
Mothers taught daughters the skills of housekeeping and
animal husbandry,
caring for children including complex matters like assisting
in childbirth
and dealing with
health elements.
They were also schooled in manners
and traditions and customs and practices,
both religious and cultural.
Sons followed fathers to the fields and workshops
and learned the skills of planting and carpentry
and handling animals.
They also learned how to make and repair
farming implements
and machinery and troubleshoot problems.
The skills learned by both genders
were critical to survive with a life quality
and being gender specific
created a positive dependency
one on another.
In agrarian societies,
parents are mentors.
Parents and grandparents are mentors.
They are very respected roles,
and they're also teachers.
Their experience
matters,
and they have huge moral authority.
Joint families are the norm
and are a support system for raising children
and caring for elders.
Every family member, irrespective of age, has a
place and usefulness to the end of their
days,
and so is valued.
In this country, to this day, you can
see this
among the Amish culture in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
The industrial revolution changed all that.
Clothing and fashion,
gender roles and responsibilities,
authority structures,
the concept of freedom itself
and accountability, and the basis of value all
changed
mostly to suit the needs of an industrial
society.
In all this, the fundamental change
was with what people valued and therefore,
benchmark themselves against.
That primarily became money.
3 critical aspects of society
became industrialized
and became businesses
and profit centers,
parenting,
education,
and health care.
In my opinion,
this is at the root of all that
is global society today.
When that
which was to be done for love
is done for money,
something fundamental
changes.
The results
are evident.
Mechanized
agriculture eliminated small farms and machinery eliminated the
need for farm animals.
Factories needed people, so both parents went to
work, and raising children
was industrialized
and outsourced
to strangers.
Daycare
and schools
became businesses,
and education became conflated
with skill training.
Since teaching our manners,
culture, social skills, the ability to get along
with people,
kindness, compassion,
citizenship,
caring for commons, and a host of other
things which are symbols of civilization
and critical to life
cannot be monetized,
they were ignored.
As a result,
education
which was for life
became merely
for earning a living.
As a result today,
and you can check for yourself,
most children
don't know
nor care
about what their parents do.
How many of you know what you what
exactly your father does or your mother does?
That's a very small show of hands in
this whole big room.
Most people,
young people especially, are disconnected with the earth
and nature and frankly wouldn't survive a week
left on their own.
Parents think
that throwing money at children
is a cure of cure for all evils
and fulfills all needs.
By the time they realize their mistake,
it is too late.
Joint families broke up and with that, the
sense of identity, cultural links,
and responsibility for others, including
taking care of elders.
Grandparents
who are the link with the with the
community
and the repository of tradition and culture
lost their position and role, and loneliness became
a major killer
despite people being financially far better off than
they were in the old days.
The daycare person and school teacher
were strangers
often from different cultures,
different religions,
different value systems
who naturally
imparted those to the children.
I'm not against
learning other ways, but when children learn those
without knowing their own, those become their own.
Children experience alienation from their own culture and
religion and fall into confusion which in some
cases results
in loss of faith.
All that I'm saying has to do with
the reason
why we do something, the nia.
When parents, teachers, doctors, and lawyers
became concerned about bottom lines and profit margins,
it is a sign that cancer has spread
in society.
That cancer
is called predatory
capitalism.
When you define net worth
as the amount of money a person has
and nothing more,
then we should stop wondering
at the results.
Just ask yourself,
when was the last time we define net
worth
as knowledge and character,
kindness, mercy, commitment to justice, to human rights,
to freedom for all people?
This is what Rasulullah
SAWAM
changed.
He changed the switch in the head and
the heart. He changed the concept of network
from Abu Lahab to Abu Bakr, and
that changed everything.
Today, we have come full circle
and nullified that.
That is the reason for endless wars
because war makes the highest ROI, the highest
return on investment.
War makes profit, and that is why we
have wars.
The purpose of wars today is not to
win territory, is not even to win the
war, but to continue the war
forever and ever.
When the only thing that matters
is money,
then human life and values and ethics and
morals are all distractions.
To continue with this or not
is in your court.
The future belongs to you,
and it is for you to decide
what you want it to be for yourself
and your children.
Today,
we are in the middle of another revolution.
The artificial intelligence revolution, the AI revolution,
which is further dividing and isolating us.
Some of our modern ailments
are loneliness,
leading to depression and worse, obsession with instant
gratification,
disconnectedness,
emotional distance,
fear of death,
diminishing
social skills, and reduced
attention spans.
All are symptoms of fatal malaise that destroys
the cohesiveness of society
and concern for one another.
It's not for nothing that Rasulullah
sallam defined his as one body
where if the head aches, the whole body
feels the pain.
Do we see that today?
Today, one of the biggest killers
for elders is loneliness.
They have children and grandchildren
who have no time for them.
Add to this, the psychological
manipulation of consumerism by influencers,
pushing those influenced
to buy more and more and more.
Research shows
that singles
buy more
than
married people, and therefore,
the institution of marriage and the importance of
raising families undermine
and discounted in favor of so called independence
and freedom.
We don't stop to ask
freedom
from what?
And what is the benefit of this freedom?
Technology gives us today free access
to vast databases
and the ability to acquire knowledge in almost
any area
and flexibility in ways of learning.
Potentially, this opens the doors
to multiple career choices,
but the tools to make good choices
come from reflective observation of life and abstract
conceptualization
to extract application lessons.
This
technology
cannot give us.
These are mental and spiritual tools
learned from wise mentors
who are willing to share what they learned
if
you can convince them that you are worth
their time and effort.
Because knowledge without experience is merely data.
To paraphrase from Mark Twain who said this
about the difference between the right word and
the almost right word,
Experience is as different from mere knowledge
as lightning
is from the lightning bug.
In my opinion, there are 4 attitudinal
skills that are critical to success in facing
life challenges.
Winners
have a high tolerance for ambiguity.
Number 2, they are willing
to admit mistakes. Number 3, they are willing
to learn. And number 4, they are highly
resilient.
The enabler of all this is humility.
Tolerance for ambiguity is essential because life by
definition
is a daisy chain of unknowns.
If unknowns freeze or frighten you, you can't
move forward.
What helps is to use
tools like probability analysis, scenario planning, and so
on
and chart the best path forward.
The goal is.
The approach
can and should
be modifiable.
The core of this is and Allah.
Complete and total reliance of the plan that
Allah
has for us. We do our best, and
we trust in his wisdom.
Willingness to admit mistakes
and willingness to learn are related.
Learning doesn't always come from mistakes, but very
often it does.
Making mistakes,
if done intelligently,
shows the willingness to take risks.
As they say, the one who risks nothing
gains nothing.
But often,
people are so afraid of the potential embarrassment
or admitting a mistake that they stay with
denial.
We can see some of some very glaring
examples
of that globally,
but it happens at the individual level also.
The result is the same. Everyone knows you
are wrong by denying it, you lose respect,
and more importantly,
you learn nothing.
But if you had focused on learning, then
the cost of the mistake is merely your
fee for learning.
I have five questions that I ask myself
when I make a mistake.
What happened?
What could have happened?
What is the cost of the mistake?
What should be done next time? And what
is the way to full proof that process?
Document
and move on.
So my question to you is how do
you
deal with the mistakes that you make?
Finally,
the most important thing is resilience.
I have a nesting box
outside my window.
Last year,
2 a pair of old world sparrows made
a nest and they raised 3 chicks.
But sadly, a blue jay found them.
And in about a week,
despite all my efforts,
the blue jay killed all those chicks.
The sparrows were distraught
and very distressed.
And then
when it was all over,
guess what they did?
They rebuild the nest
and there is another brood. This time of
4 chicks,
and they all survived.
And that is why they have more sparrows
than blue jays.
Resilience
is the ability
to get up after disaster
and continue.
As they say, you don't lose a race
when you fall. You lose it when you
fail to rise.
As the Chinese saying goes, if you fall
6 times,
get up 7 times.
Today, we have
live streaming to us.
One of the finest examples of resilience
the world has ever seen in living memory
anyway.
From a place called what?
That is a symbol
of the greatest strength
that you can ever imagine.
And one day,
it will change the world.
My brothers and sisters,
this life
is like a fertile field.
It will give you a harvest
of whatever you plant,
but only of what you plant.
We get what we pay for. So be
very careful
what you plant
in your life.
I may I want to end by saying
to myself and you,
it is time to stop living by default
and to start living thoughtfully
and deliberately.
I ask Allah
to guide us to what is pleasing to
him and to save us from that which
doesn't please him because in the end, that
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.