Heartbroken by Unrealistic Goals? || Acharya Prashant (2023)

Acharya Prashant

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Transcript

00:00Hello Acharya ji, I wanted to ask about the recent suicides, multiple suicides which happened

00:11in top institutes of the country which included our institute as well.

00:16So I wanted to know what is the reason behind these suicides which are occurring in the

00:20country and is it due to societal pressure or academic pressure?

00:25You see a kid is a very dependent being, very dependent so the kid is heavily exploited.

00:40You tell the kid that your life is worthless if you do not attain such and such goals and

00:52then you keep the goals so unrealistic and make the competition so severe by telling

01:03the same thing to every kid that practically only 1% can attain the goals they have been

01:15conditioned to attain.

01:16What will happen to the remaining 99%?

01:25One of the most fundamental needs of the mind is to know itself, who am I and why do I exist?

01:35Parents and educators never bother to address this question let alone answer it satisfactorily.

01:46They did this indirectly, unconsciously, supply you with a readymade and junk answer.

01:53They say you exist to achieve, achieve what?

01:57Stuff that we tell you to achieve.

02:00Who told you that working for some MNC and earning fat dollars is the purpose of life?

02:09Left to yourself, would you have ever come to this conclusion?

02:12Please tell me, any of you?

02:16In fact, left to yourself, most of you would have never bothered to appear for the JEE

02:24but you have been told that such and such things are non-negotiable.

02:28You need to have these and everybody is telling you the same thing and even that would have

02:36been alright had you been helped to awaken your own capacity to inquire and know.

02:50If that capacity is awakened, then it does not matter what the entire world is telling

02:56you.

02:59Then you can keep everybody's opinion aside and say I know on my own.

03:05I do not need to believe because I know but the constant bombardment of propaganda is

03:17accompanied by an equivalent dehumanization of consciousness.

03:28Your consciousness is turned mechanical and animal, dehumanized.

03:33So these two things happen in tandem.

03:36One you are told what things are all about, secondly you are actively discouraged from

03:43knowing on your own.

03:47If you know on your own, then you become some kind of a renegade, unacceptable, an uncontrollable

03:57rebel or something who needs to be straightened.

04:05So now the fellow comes and he has been given impossible targets to achieve and he has been

04:16told if he does not achieve those targets, then life is meaningless.

04:24Some of them buckle, very sadly.

04:30All links in any chain do not carry the same strength, there are weak links.

04:37If you put undue pressure on the ends of the chain, some link will break.

04:44The fault does not belong to the link.

04:47You must question those who put the pressure.

04:59Great talent, great talent and what is that talent being told to do?

05:04That talent is being told you go somewhere and write code, random code and if that random

05:14code is for one of the top companies, then you are successful.

05:20What success is there in this?

05:24Somebody is being told you go and work in a bank and you just do data all your day.

05:30What success is there in this?

05:32Had you not been paid those big dollars, would you ever choose this kind of work?

05:38Please tell me, what success is there in all this?

05:47Somebody is selling shoes after doing computer science B.Tech from IIT Madras.

05:52What success is there in this?

05:55It is just that the company is a footwear giant, MNC footwear giant and then you take

06:08pride.

06:09You do not take pride, your parents take pride.

06:13Your parents take pride and the entire society takes pride and then a few girls can come

06:22to you or their parents rather.

06:26The fellow is earning, so how about a match?

06:34From all the directions, the message that is coming to you is there is this particular

06:39definition of success and if you cannot measure up to it, then life is not worth living.

06:52Some of our friends unfortunately take it very literally.

06:57They say if life is not worth living, why should we anyway continue living at all?

07:02You could say they are more logical than the rest of us.

07:09Culpability has to be fixed.

07:14Everybody who has been continuously teaching you that life exists just for the sake of

07:19material gratification is the culprit.

07:24Catch him.

07:27Justice needs to be done.

07:29Otherwise this kind of trend will continue.

07:31It is not just about your campus, it is happening everywhere.

07:39Pressure by itself might not be necessarily a bad thing, but pressure for such nonsense?

07:48One fellow gave up his life because his elder brother was a super achiever.

07:53The elder brother was actually from an IIT.

07:55This fellow did not manage into an IIT, he was at some other place and there too he was

08:00not getting the desired kind of job offers.

08:06He quit.

08:09On one hand I commiserate with the parents, on the other hand one needs to have a straight

08:17word with them.

08:20What exactly are you feeding your kids on?

08:26Do most parents even deserve to be called parents?

08:31For any small project you require at least some qualification.

08:37But for the project of raising a kid, you require zero qualification.

08:43All you need is one night of physical encounter and then you say I am a father and she is

08:51a mother and the two of us are qualified to raise the kid.

08:55How exactly are you qualified to raise the kid?

09:03This is nothing but symptomatic of a society where inner education is considered dispensable.

09:12Where we say that if you teach the student in history, geography, math, science and the

09:20languages that is sufficient.

09:24The student does not need to be given education in life, education of the self.

09:30That is not necessary.

09:31If that is not necessary, this will be the outcome and sadly this outcome might keep

09:38getting repeated.

09:43And that inner education mind you cannot come just naturally from the family or somewhere.

09:51Just as you require experts, professors to teach you maths and physics, similarly you

09:57require experts to deliver life education.

10:04If that is not there, then the mind will remain very cluttered, very confused and ultimately

10:12sometimes suicidal.

10:14What a wastage, what a wastage.

10:22And what makes the wastage worse is that the lives of those, even those who survive are

10:31rendered waste.

10:33We talked about the fellow who is working in a footwear MNC post his electrical engineering.

10:41Why should that not be considered an equal wastage of life?

10:48Or the fellow who decides to sell fizzy drinks.

10:53If you look at the IMs, for example, they attract a lot of crowd from the IITs.

11:00And what do these ITNs do passing out from the IMs?

11:06Somebody is selling fizzy drinks, somebody is selling home loans.

11:16That's an equal wastage.

11:19But we don't want to talk of that.

11:20We talk of that as gainful employment.

11:22In fact, we gloat over that.

11:25We say this is heroic.

11:29My Johnny has attained a three crore package and that sometimes comes to the newspapers

11:38as well.

11:44That should indeed come to the newspapers as a thing of tragedy, not as a matter of

11:51celebration.

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