Abstract
Creativity, and its associates, such as emotion, imagination and intellect, could be a stimulating value to unravel the great longings of humanity. The book is an invitation by the author to undertake a journey of ideas across disciplines in the hope of experiencing the potentials of humanity in spite of the constraints it is subject to. The book is divided into nine sections. Essentially, the quest of the book is to evolve an understanding of a meaningful life by negotiating with the themes of work, power, order, conflict, desire, fear, ego and death that are central to the human condition. It seeks to do so by exploring the potential of the values of love, creativity, understanding and empathy in the light of a spirit of togetherness. The book reads as an insightful yet intimate conversation with social theorists, literary writers and religious texts that influence the author’s own aesthetic sensibility.
The author draws insight from the Bhagvad Gita and Karl Marx to contend that work is meant to be an expression of human’s relationship with the world and nature. This is indeed the uniqueness of the scheme of the author, which convincingly juxtaposes apparently two different texts. This is also commendable that a text, such as the Gita, is read without falling prey to socio-ideological solipsism and thus engendering a new possibility of engaging with such texts. And with the passionate readings of the disparate texts, the author engenders a distinct notion of work. Arguably, work can be experienced as a liberating exercise if we approach it with creativity, even though it is reduced to the calculative logic of personal gain and loss. As the author puts it succinctly, ‘creativity is not what we do, creativity is how we do it’ (2014, p. 18). Hence, creativity as a value of good work and society confronts the limitations of our egos and the structural constraints of the world. And in that, it inspires a connectedness with the inner and outer domains of life. In this context, the author reflects on power as a constraining factor in the realization of a ‘good society’. In his discussion, he traverses from Weber’s assessment of power and bureaucracy to Franz Kafka’s The Trial and Foucault’s discussion on ‘micro-physics of power’ to elucidate the lack of imagination and helplessness experienced by individuals caught up in a web of bureaucratic discontent. The author is primarily concerned with the emancipation from such webs of unequal power distribution. Here, the author introduces the value of inner strength or what Gandhi termed as ‘soul-force’ that is inspirational, powerful and liberating. From here, the author moots another concern over the capacity of love to heal and unite in a world stratified on the basis of class, status, caste, religion and so on. His discussion on this central question ranges from Marx’s arguments on class inequality, Weber’s analysis of status and Bourdieu’s insight on cultural capital to Gandhi and Ambedkar’s penetrating debate on the question of caste and religion in India. The author is of the view that Gandhi and Ambedkar acted through a common ‘spirit of love and compassion’, and it is that common thread that unites the two seemingly opposing figures in the Indian history. Thus, the concern with power makes the author affirm that while one must appreciate the desire for order as observed in functionalist and structural–functionalist perspectives proposed by Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons, respectively, the choice of order in society should emanate from a sense of freedom, relatedness and love. Here, he speaks of Aurobindo’s idea of unity made possible through the awakening of the spirit to promote human oneness and overcome limitedness. The author states that it is values such as sharing and understanding centred on what Erich Fromm refers to as a ‘being’ mode of existence as opposed to a ‘having’ mode of existence, characterized by an excessive concern with accumulation and defining one’s self in accordance with one’s material resources, that provides motivation to seek beyond crude accumulation of resources. The author thus puts forth the idea that the emancipatory ideal can be found in the creative potential of love that is not reduced to the oppressive tendencies of crude sexuality and patriarchy, but as a reaffirmation of the values of connectedness, care, nurture and healing as illustrated in the works of Gandhi, Ibsen and Tagore.
In this manner, the author speaks of a true religiosity based on the values of sharing, intuition, empathy, love, understanding, faith and receptivity not in the sense of blind acceptance but as a shift from ‘labels’ and ‘ritualism’ to ‘aesthetics’ and ‘inner faith’. Ultimately, this eternal and unbounded self has the potential to overcome the fear of death itself. As such, the book is a powerful critique of a one-sided concern with the rationalization of every sphere of life and the negation of the domain of intuition, feeling and sentiment that has always been central to human existence.
In this regard, by debunking dualities and building bridges between strands of thoughts, the author lays emphasis on a more holistic approach based on values of creativity, sensitivity and reflexivity. Hence, the book is a positive contribution across disciplines and can be read by both academic and non-academic readers with equal ease.