Giving dispassion its due
Search for lists of top qualities for success, that include passion, and google will return 48,600,000 results. Now search for lists where dispassion is one of the pre-requisites for success and you’ll see a mere 297,000 results. I think it is time to reverse this trend.
This is the illusion I’ve lived under for most of my life — the illusion that passion is what makes the world go round. But in the last couple of years, I’ve come to realize that dispassion has a much bigger role to play in the growth story of a country and its citizens. Dispassion is defined as the absence of emotional involvement. It sounds cold and distant. It is cold and distant. However, when emotion makes an exit, it does not leave us in a vacuum — it leaves behind rationality in its wake. And how much more meaningful life and societal norms would be if dispassion were the cornerstone for human existence.
Growing up, all my NCERT textbooks had Mahatma Gandhi’s talisman right at the beginning. The talisman that asked us to recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man and contemplate if our actions were going to be of any use to him. Or at least, that is the part of the talisman that is easy to remember. What I re-discovered not too long ago was the next part of the talisman which goes on to ask—
Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny?
This is the message of the talisman that I should have internalized. For while the first part of the talisman, asks of us to be empathetic, the second half is where rationality steps in. The second half is where one is reminded that the goal is to give people control and agency over their own lives. And this goal can be achieved only if we keep emotions aside and let rational decision making lead the way.
When it comes to champions of dispassionate thought process, perhaps India’s strongest champion was Dr. Ambedkar. With a training in law and economics — two disciplines that necessitate rational thinking, Ambedkar is well-known to have seen all aspects of our lives under the prism of rationality — religion, social order, caste, nation-building. He had a talisman too that simply relied on the three pillars of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Perhaps it is the absolute lack of sentimentality in his writing that has made it inaccessible to the vast majority of us. And perhaps the fact that our generation is discovering his writing now, is also indicative of a trend to move away from living a life of unquestioning servitude to societal diktats — or at least some of it.
The most recent time I realized the role of dispassion was when considering India’s policy direction for surrogacy as a part of a public policy workshop. Surrogacy, like organ donation and gene editing is replete with ethical dilemmas. Weighing in balance the rights of a surrogate mother(who is carrying the baby), the unborn child and the intended parent(couple commissioning a surrogate) is the easiest way to realize that the idea of good and bad should be left behind in our moral science textbooks in school. While sympathizing with the predicament of one or all of the stakeholders, it is so easy to forget that the most important measure of a policy should be the consequences of the policy — not the intent.
Yes — we need to protect the rights of the surrogate mother. What best protects her rights? Does mandating that she can be a surrogate mother only if she is not recompensed for it protect her? Who will be a surrogate mother if we ban monetary compensation? A childless couple will have to rely on the generosity of a friend or a family member. In close knit extended family settings, like we have in India, could women be pressured to be a surrogate against their will? Whose right are we really protecting then?
These are questions that must be answered. And these are questions that can be answered only if policy makers focus on consequences and not intent. Because while we need to protect the rights of a surrogate mother, we should not be thinking of protecting her. We need to think of her as a person who has agency and can make her own choices. As Gandhi said, we need to give her control over her own 'life and destiny' and not take her choices away.
