HUMAN VALUES:

THE CANDLES OF CIVILISATION

By Moin Qazi

An award winning poet, Moin Qazi holds a doctorate and is an independent researcher and
consultant who has spent three decades in microfinance with State Bank of India, India’s
largest bank, where he was involved in microfinance as a grassroots manager and as head of
its microfinance operations in Maharashtra. He belongs to the first batch of managers of
commercial banks who were associated with the launch of India’s microfinance programme.
He writes regularly on development finance and environmental issues. He was a Visiting
Fellow at the University of Manchester specializing in microfinance.

All great civilizations have been built on the edifice of certain fundamental human
values namely honesty, piety and justice. These values are the candles that have
kept the flame of human civilization glowing in luminescence. Any attempt to
enkindle and extinguish these burning candles will only hasten process of extinction
of civilization.
Denis Goulet argues that all those civilizations that have perished had no external
threat but crumbled due to the erosion of human values. These values are the
cardinal principles preached by all religions and have been demonstrated by saints,
savants and sages to be the marrow of the bone of civilization. Hellen Keller once
said, “The best and the most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even
touched. They must be felt with the heart.”
While John Keats has described beauty as truth, William Shakespeare has related it
to the ever-shining sun, and Charles Reade has explained it as power. Our daily life
is often punctuated by small events and happenings to which we have routine
mechanical responses. The big events and the big crises absorb most of our energies
and we invest a lot of time and effort in meeting the big challenges of life. The small
things may be our daily duties at home and at work, to which we pay little attention.
It is precisely these small things and events, however that colour our lives and shape
our attitudes to the big events and crises in our lives. Says C. Shurtz: “Ideals are like
the stars. We never reach them but, like the mariners on the sea, we chart our daily
course by them.”

The history of faith as made up of small things in life, small quotidian responses
and the courage of many ‘small people’ and ‘big people’, who learned the value of
the small and the beautiful in life.
Consider a caterpillar that goes into a cocoon. If it stayed there forever, we would
never see that beautiful butterfly emerge. And the same holds true with soul. As long
as the ego runs that show, we never get to see the real person emerge, including all
the wonderful gifts that each and every one of us possesses. Instead, they get
covered up by shame, fear and ego.
We need to get our egos out of the way so our real selves can emerge. But for that
to happen, it takes hard work. I like to think of it as “psychic” housekeeping. We
have many rooms inside our psyche that are chambers for all of our truths and life
experiences. These events have become part of our subconscious and tend to
motivate our response to life.
 All great musicians, Beethoven, Wagner, and many others, who have left the world
a work that will always be treasured, would not have been able to do so if they had
not forgotten themselves (ego) in their work.” These people were able to transform
themselves just like the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. This self-
transformation happens through the annihilation of the ego from which the
magnificent new form emerges.
Now, there is no need to get despondent at the fact that human beings lack the
intelligence and yet to know their real interests. We must not forget that the human
race is still very, very young. C.E.M. Joad, in his delightful little Story of Civilization,
has computed that if we reckon the whole past of living creatures on the earth as
one hundred years, the entire past of Man works out at one month, and during that
month there has been civilization for only seven or eight hours. He also points out
that while there has been little time for us to learn things so far, there will be oceans
of time in which to learn better. Because, while Man’s civilized past has lasted seven
or eight hours, his future (till the sun grows too cold or too hot to maintain life on the
earth) is estimated on the same scale at a hundred thousand years!
Values are intrinsic to our lives. They add to the strength of our character and the
righteousness of our beliefs. All of us are entrusted with the duty of being promoters
and protectors of values.
In order to live our lives by worthwhile values, we need to be able to differentiate
between right and wrong. This is not the kind of understanding that any one of us is
born with. It is something that we learn as we go along. Institutions like family,
school, and neighbourhood help form values. In turn, our values act as a binding
force for our families and societies. They help a child become a good adult, go on to
become a good spouse and a good parent. Strong values lead to strong families,
which in turn prove to be an asset to society. These eternal values fortify all decent
people as they seek clarity and coherence in a confusing world. They provide a
compass that is god for the long haul — that our principles are good for all reasons,
good for all ages, good for all those who wish to play a role in oratory their world a
better place. So long as we never lose right of that powerful principles that are at the
soul of righteous luxury — and so long as we remain at the cutting edge of life is our
world — that we can surely be assured of divine help and grace in every moment of
our life.
Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic
with the striving and tolerant of the weak and wrong. Because some time in our
lives we would have been all of these ourselves.
— Lloyd Shearer, 1986
Consistency is value-based behaviour. Consistency does not mean repeating the
same behaviour all the time. It means behaving in the same way under similar
situations.
Character is about honour. It is the sum total of many qualities which reflect
values. It is about integrity, honesty, ethics, conscience, loyalty, mental toughness,
courage and consistency. It is a composite of qualities, not a commodity.
A man lying on his deathbed promised God that if he stayed alive and got well he
would sell his palatial house and give away the money to the poor. Miraculously, the
sick man began to recover and eventually got well. He remembered his promise but
could not bring himself to part with his house. So he devised a plan. He advertised to
sell his house for only a token sum of one silver coin on the condition that anyone
who bought the house would also buy his dog for a million dollars. Very soon, he
found a buyer. He sold the house, put the million dollars in his pocket and gave the
silver coin to charity.
 Who are we kidding? The real test of honesty is carried out in the face of
temptation. The man in the above story fulfilled the promise that he had made to
God. Even though he kept his word, he violated its spirit. Often when our conscience
tries to call us, the line is too busy.
Honesty and dishonesty are not the monopoly of the prosperous or the poor.
Either could be honest or dishonest. Dishonesty derives from poor self-esteem.
Genuine honesty is motivated more by the desire to do the right thing than the
desire to not get caught. It does not look for concealment. Some people believe
honesty restricts them. In fact, it's the opposite that is usually true. Honesty frees
people from lies and creates an environment where they can communicate openly,
take risks and be creative.
As a famous Indian guru says, the longer one lives the more one realise hour
necessary and important tolerance is. Most of the strains and tensions in life are due
to the fact that we lack this sovereign virtue. We are angry and irritated because the
other side does not think as we do, live as we live and worship before the same Gods
as we do. The tolerance is based upon respect for the dignity of the individual. It
recognises the right of every one to experiment with his life according to his own
light.
The inculcation of these noble values purifies our emotions and promotes that
inner feeling of moral and spiritual satisfaction that is the essence of a healthy and
rational life.
A contractor, who had made a fortune building homes, told his supervisor of 35
years, "I'm going to build one last house and you will build it for me because I will be
gone for a year. Use the best material — money is no consideration. Make it the
greatest house we've ever build." Having given these instructions, the man left. The
supervisor thought that this was a great opportunity to make a fortune. He used the
cheapest material inside but made the house look beautiful on the outside. After a
year, the contractor returned. He inspected the house and asked the supervisor what
he thought of the house. The supervisor replied, "It's the best house I've ever built."
The contractor handed over the deed to him and said, "This is my parting gift to
you." What is the moral of the story? Always one should do the right things even if
no one is watching him and should develop a right standard of personal ethics. Truth
is a pre-condition to justice and trust.
The great poet Muhammad Iqbal captures the true essence of this philosophy in
his famous verse:
You created the night (Man is talking to God)
— I lit the lamp:
You created clay — I moulded the cup;
You made the wilderness, I cultivated flower-beds.
I made a mirror from a rock,
and from poison I extracted a sweet beverage
He again exhorts in his revolutionary verse
An infidel before his idol with wakeful heart
is better than the religious man asleep in the mosque

At another place he says :

You do not understand it, stupid ascetic,
That a single frenzied error of the heart is the envy
Of a hundred prostration
 This is my prayer to thee, my lord---strike,
strike at the root of penury in my heart.

Give me the strength lightly to bear my joys and sorrows.

Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service.

Give me the strength never to disown the poor

or bend my knees before insolent might.

Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles.

And give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with

love.