Things I can’t understand
A story is told in the essay “Being a teacher”. There was a teacher, who as teachers do, was teaching. One of the students said something like: “I saw a brown big spider.”
The teacher responded: “No, it should be ‘big brown spider’.”
Not satisfied with the teacher’s advice, the student asked back: “Why”?
Not only did the teacher not know what rule of English said that “big” should come before “brown”, he had never imagined that anyone would ever think that the statement could as well be said as: “I saw a brown big spider”.
Sometimes we are so used to things ourselves to the extent that we do not even think there are other ways others may think are the right ways. And when we know something and believe this is right, we are also not able to explain what we know to people.
If you attended regular secondary school in this country and you learned physical science or science, you may have learned about light. Light as we know it, can be defined differently depending on what you know.
In religion or theological studies, one can easily refer to the statement by Jesus that he was “the light of the world”. In this regard, light has a specific meaning different to the concept that we learn in physics.
Depending on the level of study that one is at, light can be defined as a “stream of tiny particles given out by a light source”. So in this case, light is identified with particles. However, in another physics class, the teacher can tell you that light is a wave.
“Forget about particles,” the teacher may say. See light as waves. I could go on and on trying to demonstrate how one term can be perceived differently depending on an individual’s background and prior understanding.
I grew up thinking that government expenditure must always be tamed. Government must be as small as it can get. I was also cultured to believe that the size of Cabinet is an indication of how prudent and frugal a government can be.
However, I believe that such kind of thinking needs to be challenged. Let me start with reducing public sector spending. Should government spend as little as possible? May be not. In many countries government spending generates a lot of jobs and wealth. For instance, we cannot pray for reduced government spending when we are also gearing up on enhancing the numbers, sizes and scope of infrastructure in this country.
All the universities (public) that have been lined up means increases in government spending. All the roads and the subsidies that the people have been promised are all pointing to increased expenditure. When the economy was squeezed in Europe, governments reduced spending. When the economy was squeezed in the United States, government increased spending. Expenditure cutting cannot be a one-size-fit-all solution to economic woes.
The other point I want to challenge is whether a smaller Cabinet is always better. If there was so much work to be done, would we not want more workers and more servants (oops, I meant ministers?)
