THE HEROES OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION

The full moon, brilliant on a cloudless night, can humble even the most
beautiful moment or a great heroic deed --even the virgin beauty of an
emerald valley. Yet the moon is mute. And the magnificent swirl of the
cosmos simply marks time; it cannot tell us of history, cannot instruct us
on what to remember, what to proscribe, what to avoid. Memory is born of
biological time and it is borne on blood and bone and phlegm. Can the
stars shudder at sacrifice? Can the meteors exult at the sight of ecstatic
wonders of our planet? The moon may have waxed and waned. The clouds
may have veiled the stars, but they cannot give meaning to time, to
history, to life.
We need our savants, our seers, our icons and our heroes to give
meaning to time. Human existence in the words of T.S. Eliot is made up of
“undisciplined squads of emotion” and to articulate our “general mess of
imprecision of feeling,” we turn to our giants and icons of history the
nearly sacred modules of humanity with which we parse and model our
lives. Iconoclasm is inherent in every icon, and heroes can wear different
faces in the after lives granted to them by history and remembrances.
Legend has it that the eighth century Chinese poet Li Po, drunk with
wine, tried to embrace the moon reflected in a lake. He drowned in the
clutch. He should have continued to embrace the tales of flesh and blood
instead of the surreal. For it is the saints through their magnetic charm
and aura of divinity and the heroes — through their triumphs and follies-
who teach us how to live.
In the long flow of history, we find that there is a continuous passage of
human characters that symbolise the vast diversity in man’s physical and
mental process. The romance of history is not only fascinating but also
truly inspiring. Every age has been a model for the succeeding one, and
thus the history of either the kingdoms or the human race, or for that
matter the history of religion of science and education, has been basically
the history of the evolution and development of man from a cave dweller
to a visitor to the moon. But even in its vast penumbra, history reveals
only a few individuals whose lives shine in luminescence and whose ideals
are living models of guidance and spiritual salvation. They have been the
pathfinders and torchbearers of ideals that shaped and glorified
civilizations. Their teachings were a glue that held people together.
“Men of genius,” said Napoleon, “are meteors intended to burn to light
their century.” In the twilight of history there were men from diverse
areas of life, men who have been kings, philosophers, scholars,
merchants, and generals who could grasp the true purpose of life quite
early and did not had to share the ignominy of many others who could not
catch the radiance of this truth. Many of them did but it was in the
autumn of their lives. In the twilight of history, we find many great men
whose hearts were all along clothed in a raiment which could hardly allow
the light of truth to peer through. These are the people who left this
universe without ever understanding the true mission of man and the
purpose of life. The great people who have survived the driftwood of
history and whose name still carries an aura of greatness were men driven
by a ceaseless urge to open out their hearts to others, or those who
changed the society by liberating a segment of population that was
fenced in by prejudice.
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path
and leave a trail” says Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The effulgent light of history reveals that the most popular rulers have
not been those who had vast kingdoms, powerful armies or abundant
wealth; it were those who changed the course of society and whose eyes
could not stand even a trace of suffering on the face of their subjects.
Leaders bring about change. When we need change we need leaders.
We must distinguish leaders from managers. Leaders create new frames
of reference. They build new institutions. Managers work within those
frames, and managers operate inside those institutions. Leaders lead
people to work together to produce the changes that people aspire to.
They enable people to realise their full potential. Leadership is in essence
a relationship between a person and other people. Leaders do not lead
machines. Nor do leaders lead balance sheets. Managers manage
machines. Managers manage cash. Leaders lead people.
Think of Mahatma Gandhi. He was not appointed the leader of India. Yet
he led. And millions followed. All together towards an aspiration for
freedom. Leaders lead others towards the dream they have. Dreams and
aspirations that appears impossible sometimes. Alexander the Great had
an aspiration, as a youth man, to rule the whole world. And before he was
thirty-three he had achieved it. Here is why Alexander said to his
biographer Eumenes: “The gods put dreams in the hearts of men —
dream desires, aspirations that are often much bigger than they are. The
greatness of a man corresponds to that painful discrepancy between the
goal he sets for himself and the strength nature granted him when he
came into the world.”
The mark of a great leader is the recognition of that ‘painful
discrepancy’. Therein lies a great truth of leadership. Leaders are
learners. They introspect. The work on improving themselves: to
overcome that ‘painful discrepancy’, as Alexander so poignantly puts it.
Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography is titled, ‘My Experiments With Truth’. It
is a record of his struggle to improve himself to his dying day.
Leaders have dreams. But they do not retire into their own dreams.
They enrol others in those dreams. And while leaders have dreams and
aspirations, they do not merely build castles in the air. They lead people
that often painful journey, with its ups and downs, to realise the shared
vision.
Aristotle spells out the purpose of man’s existence:
What is the essence of life? To serve others and to do good was not controlled by
blind chance or magic, but by a set of rational laws that could be before him or
since discovered, analysed, and catalogued to guide human behavior.
Because of Aristotle, human beings have tried with much success to
analyse and understand the operating principles behind every aspect of
human life and to apply this knowledge in a beneficial way. His primary
gift to the world was proof that the universe.
Both the quantity and the quality of Aristotle’s work are astonishing. He
was the personification of all knowledge in the ancient world. He studied,
wrote about, and became the worlds’ acknowledged expert in every field
of science from astronomy to zoology. A part of his knowledge
represented a compilation of knowledge acquired by others, sometimes
obtained through the help of research assistants and part of it was the
result of original research and his own observations. He left his strongest
influence on the fields of anatomy, physiology, physics, geology,
geography, and astronomy.
However, it is his work on the theory of logic that has most impressed
historians. He invented this branch of philosophy and it was his logical
mind that allowed him to organise and categorise so much knowledge in
so many different fields.
Aristotle’s influence on Western thought has been so great as to be
almost incomprehensible. His works were translated into dozens of
languages and admired by Byzantine, Islamic and medieval philosophers
and scientists. Among those who were highly influenced by his work
include Averroes, the Arab philosopher, Maimonides, the medieval Jewish
philosopher, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas Jefferson, author of the U.S.
Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Donald,
February 7, 1788, “Aristotle’s influence in medieval times was so great
that for a time, it prevented further inquiry and evaluation of knowledge. I
had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family
and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on
as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human
power can give.” Aristotle was a visionary who understood how things
worked, whether in science or in government. “Poverty is the parent of
revolution and crime,” he said. Some of his most important contributions
were in the field of education. “Education is the best provision for old
age,” he said. “Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men as
the living are to the dead.” The fate of empires depends on the education
of the youth, he added.
Aristotle contributed greatly to the concept of democratic government.
“Man is by nature a political animal,” he said. “The basis of a democratic
state is liberty. If liberty and equality are chiefly found in democracy, they
will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the
utmost.”
Aristotle was also a caring person. The Golden Rule formed the bedrock
of much of his philosophy. “We should behave to our friends as we would
have our friends behave to us,” he said. “It is the characteristic of a
magnanimous man to ask no favour, but to be ready to do kindness to
others.”
The most important aspect of Copernicus’ work is that it forever
changed the place of man in the cosmos; no longer could man
legitimately think of his significance bein greater than his fellow creatures;
with Copernicus’ work, man could now take his place among that which
exists all about him, and not of necessity take that premier position which
had been assigned immodestly to him by the theologians.
Of Copernicus’s genius, Goethe says:
Of all discoveries and opinions, none may have exerted a greater effect on the
human spirit than the doctrine of Copernicus. The world had scarcely become
known as round and complete in itself when it was asked to waive the tremendous
privilege of being the center of the universe. Never, perhaps, was a greater demand
made on mankind — for by this admission so many things vanished in mist and
smoke! What became of our Eden, our world of innocence, piety and poetry; the
testimony of the senses; the conviction of a poetic — religious faith? No wonder his
contemporaries did not wish to let all this go and offered every possible resistance
to a doctrine which in its converts authorised and demanded a freedom of view and
greatness of thought so far unknown, indeed not even dreamed of.

Arthur Schopenhauer was certainly one of the greatest philosophers of

the 19th century. Schopenhauer seems to have had more impact on
literature (e.g., Thomas Mann) and on people in general than on academic
philosophy. Perhaps that is because, first, he wrote very well, simply and
intelligibly (unusual, we might say, for a German philosopher, and unusual
now for any philosopher); second, he was the first Western philosopher to
have access to translations of philosophical material from India, both
Vedic and Buddhist, by which he was profoundly affected, to the great
interest of many, and, third, his concerns were with the dilemmas and
tragedies, in a religious or existential sense, of real life, not just with
abstract philosophical problems. As Jung said:
He was the first to speak of the suffering of the world, which visibly and glaringly
surrounds us, and of confusion, passion, evil — all those things which the [other
philosophers] hardly seemed to notice and always tried to resolve into all-
embracing harmony and comprehensibility. Here at last was a philosopher who had
the courage to see that all was not for the best in the fundamentals of the universe.
Abraham Lincoln said on his election as the President of the United
States: “I have been selected to fill an important office for a brief period,
and am now in your eyes invested with an influence which will soon pass
away. But should my administration prove to be a very wicked one, or
what is more probable, a very foolish one, if you, the people, are true to
yourselves and the constitution there is but little harm I can do, thank
God.”
Lincoln reiterated the commitment in his inaugural address on March 4,
1865:
With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God
gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the
nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow,
and his orphan.
On September 6, 2001, Secretary-General Kofi Annan delivers a lecture
in Uppsala, Sweden, “Dag Hammarskjöld and the 21st Century,” and
declares: “His life and his death, his words and his actions, have done
more to shape public expectations of the office, and indeed of the
organisation, than those of any other man or woman in its history. His
wisdom and his modesty, his unimpeachable integrity and single-minded
devotion to duty, have set a standard for all servants of the international
community — and especially, of course for his successors — which is
simply impossible to live up to. There can be no better rule of thumb for a
Secretary-General, as he approaches each new challenge or crisis, than to
ask himself, ‘how would Hammarskjöld have handled this?’…. What is
clear is that his core ideas remain highly relevant in this new international
context. The challenge for us is to see how they can be adapted to take
account of it.”
Mother Teresa, the charismatic nun was hardly a political figure in the
conventional sense. But she had a politician’s sense of issues and timing:
she knew that in modern-day India, a nation of nearly a billion
overwhelmingly poor people, the biggest issue of all was poverty. She
drew larger crowds and invited greater affection than any politician —
testimony to her integrity and her humility, qualities conspicuous by their
absence in the men and women who govern the world’s largest
democracy today. Once Mother Teresa was accompanied by an
international journalist. After two days the journalist was totally
exhausted. He asked Mother where she found the strength to continue in
such a manner. She said, with a smile, “I fill my tank with prayer.”
Divine fuel has the highest octane and is inexhaustible. The distinctive
white saris of the missionaries of Charity, with the familiar blue lines on
the border, woven by rehabilitated leprosy patients at Mother Teresa’s
home have become a symbol of hope for thousands of poor, sick and
needy at more than 700 homes in 132 countries. Can you even name 132
countries? Mother always said that material needs can be reduced to
minimal and provided for; but the biggest void was the absence of love.
The pain of the abandoned, the unwanted, the unloved is the deepest.
No soaring rhetoric for her, no appealing to atavistic impulses to take to
the streets for humanitarian causes — just a simple, central message that
resonated among everyday Indians: poverty is not noble nor acceptable,
social justice does not automatically follow economic development.
She said in a1974 interview: “I see God in every human being. When I
wash the leper’s wounds, I feel I am nursing the Lord himself. Is it not a
beautiful experience?” — She drew larger crowds and invited greater
affection than any politician — testimony to her integrity and her humility,
qualities conspicuous by their absence in the men and women who govern
the world’s largest democracy today.
Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, 1979 she said, “I choose the poverty of
our poor people. But I am grateful to receive (the Nobel) in the name of
the hungry, the naked, the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the
lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared-for
throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and
are shunned by everyone.”
Commenting on the fighting between the Israeli army and Palestinian
guerrillas she said: “I have never been in a war before, but I have seen
famine and death. I was asking (myself), ‘what do they feel when they do
this?’ I don’t understand it. They are all children of God. Why do they do
it? I don’t understand.”
 Perhaps, French President Jacques Chirac summed up Mother Teresa’s
legacy best when he said after her death: “This evening, there is less love,
less compassion, less light in the world.”
Another stunning female figure of history who continues to illuminate
the corridors of history is Anne Frank .Writing in Dutch, Anne confessed in
her diary her innermost desires and fears. She was terrified that her
hiding place would be discovered and took a sedative to control anxiety
and depression. “I wander from room to room, climb up and down the
stairs and feel like a songbird whose wings have been ripped off and who
keeps hurling itself against the bars of its dark cage,” she wrote in
October 1943. “I long to ride a bike, dance, whistle, look at the world, feel
young and know that I’m free.” She wondered if, in time, people would
not “worry about whether or not I’m Jewish and merely see me as a
teenager badly in need of some good, plain fun.”
Anne was a tirelessly searching, sharp-tongued, cheerfully exuberant
and doubting adolescent. Despite the many privations, she could still look
on her time in hiding as an ‘amusing’ adventure. “Why then should I be in
despair?” she wrote. By the end of the diary you love her, respect her
wisdom and grieve as if you have lost a fiercely talented daughter, sister
or friend. As the Italian author Primo Levi, himself a holocaust survivor,
once put it: “One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless
others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the
shadows.”
Her diary bristles with words that reveal an extraordinarily sensitive
soul. “I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear
the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, and I feel the
suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel
that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end,
that peace and tranquillity will return once more. In the meantime, I must
hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I’ll be able to realise
them!” (Anne Frank, July 15, 1944, age15)
We see that even in modern times every nation that has brought about
a big change has had a visionary leader leading this change from the
front. Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Lee Luan Yew, Martin Luther
King Jr. and Nelson Mandela are a few names that come to mind. What is
common among all these people? They turned a set of average people
into an extraordinary force, thus, creating a better future for their country,
their teams and their companies. The only resource they had was the
human mind. The main fuel they used in order to ignite these minds was
aspiration. They raised the aspirations of their people and made them
courageous to dream the impossible, and work hard and smart to convert
that dream into reality. Who would have thought that thousands of young
men and women would sacrifice their lives to lead India to freedom? Who
would have thought that a tired African-American housemaid called Rosa
Park would have the courage to refuse to vacate her seat in a bus? The
courageous acts were the result of the high aspirations created by leaders
like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Aspirations build
civilizations; they make people more confident; they make the people
achieve the impossible. The difference between a great country and the
foremost attribute for a successful leader is courage — courage to dream
big; courage to expect the impossible from colleagues; courage to take
tough decisions; and to make tough decisions and to make sacrifices.
Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time:
an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial
oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the
presidency of his country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more
than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the centre
of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As
President of the African National Congress and head of South Africa’s anti-
apartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation towards
multiracial government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a
vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality.
The Long Walk to Freedom is his moving and exhilarating
autobiography, a book destined to take its place among the finest
memoirs of history’s greatest figures. Here for the first time, Nelson
Mandela tells the extraordinary story of his life — an epic of struggle,
setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph, which has, until now, been
virtually unknown to most of the world.
To millions of people around the world, Nelson Mandela stands, as no
other living figure does, for the triumph of dignity and hope over despair
and hatred, of self-discipline and love over persecution and evil.
Nelson Mandela’s speech at the acceptance ceremony of Nobel Prize
continues to inspire generations of people.
We stand here today as nothing more than a representative of the millions of our
people who dared to rise up against a social system whose very essence is war,
violence, racism, oppression, repression and the impoverishment of an entire
people.
I am also here today as a representative of the millions of people across the globe,
the anti-apartheid movement, the governments and organisations that joined with
us, not to fight against South Africa as a country or any of its peoples, but to oppose
an inhuman system and sue for a speedy end to the apartheid crime against
humanity.
These countless human beings, both inside and outside our country, had the
nobility of spirit to stand in the path of tyranny and injustice, without seeking selfish
gain. They recognised that an injury to one is an injury to all and therefore acted
together in defense of justice and a common human decency.
While accepting the reward, Mandela reiterated:
This reward will not be measured in money. Nor can it be reckoned in the collective
price of the rare metals and precious stones that rest in the bowels of the African
soil we tread in the footsteps of our ancestors.
It will and must be measured by the happiness and welfare of the children, at once
the most vulnerable citizens in any society and the greatest of our treasures.
The children must, at last, play in the open field, no longer tortured by the pangs of
hunger or ravaged by disease or threatened with the scourge of ignorance,
molestation and abuse, and no longer required to engage in deeds whose gravity
exceeds the demands of their tender years.
Gautam Buddha’s Lotus Sutra describes a Bodhisattva as a person
committed to the work of restoring a sense of cosmology to contemporary
society. This means being a master of the art of dialogue and a standard-
bearer of soft power. The following three traits summarise the character
and mindset of a Bodhisattva of the earth: To be strict towards oneself,
like a sharp, autumn frost. To be warm and embracing towards others, like
a soft, spring breeze. To be uncompromising when confronting evil, like a
lion monarch.
Each individual’s step is significant and contributory. A story is told
about Chanakya. Touring the countryside in disguise, he halted in a small
village. An old woman offered him a meal. Chanakya was ravenous and so
accepted the invitation. He was served steaming hot rice. Chanakya
delved into the centre of the rice on his plate, which resulted in his
burning his fingers. “Oh dear!” exclaimed the old woman. “You are
indeed, like our stupid minister Chanakya.” Chanakya was taken aback.
The old lady explained: “Never begin at the centre of the problem.
Chanakya plans his attacks on the capital city and loses. He should begin
at the periphery and slowly make towards the centre.” Chanakya had
learnt a new technique for success. The beginning is always small and at
the periphery. But it will unfailingly lead to the centre, one day.