Heartbreak, Grades, or Expectations? Institute Suicides Unveiled! || Acharya Prashant (2023)
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00:00Hello Acharya ji, I wanted to ask about the recent suicides, multiple suicides which happened
00:11in top institutes of the country which included our institute as well.
00:16So I wanted to know what is the reason behind these suicides which are occurring in the
00:20country and is it due to societal pressure or academic pressure?
00:25You see a kid is a very dependent being, very dependent so the kid is heavily exploited.
00:40You tell the kid that your life is worthless if you do not attain such and such goals and
00:52then you keep the goals so unrealistic and make the competition so severe by telling
01:03the same thing to every kid that practically only 1% can attain the goals they have been
01:15conditioned to attain.
01:17What will happen to the remaining 99%?
01:25One of the most fundamental needs of the mind is to know itself, who am I and why do I exist?
01:35Parents and educators never bother to address this question let alone answer it satisfactorily.
01:46They let this indirectly, unconsciously supply you with a ready made and junk answer.
01:53They say you exist to achieve, achieve what?
01:57Stuff that we tell you to achieve.
02:00Who told you that working for some MNC and earning fat dollars is the purpose of life?
02:09Left to yourself, would you have ever come to this conclusion?
02:12Please tell me, any of you.
02:16In fact, left to yourself, most of you would have never bothered to appear for the JEE.
02:24But you have been told that such and such things are non-negotiable.
02:28You need to have these and everybody is telling you the same thing.
02:36And even that would have been alright.
02:39Had you been helped to awaken your own capacity to inquire and know, if that capacity is awakened
02:54then it does not matter what the entire world is telling you.
02:59Then you can keep everybody's opinion aside and say I know on my own.
03:05I do not need to believe because I know.
03:11But the constant bombardment of propaganda is accompanied by an equivalent dehumanization
03:24of consciousness.
03:28Your consciousness is turned mechanical and animal, dehumanized.
03:34So these two things happen in tandem.
03:36One, you are told what things are all about.
03:40Secondly, you are actively discouraged from knowing on your own.
03:47If you know on your own then you become some kind of a renegade, unacceptable, an uncontrollable
03:57rebel or something who needs to be straightened.
04:05So now the fellow comes and he has been given impossible targets to achieve.
04:15And he has been told if he does not achieve those targets then life is meaningless.
04:24Some of them buckle, very sadly.
04:30All links in any chain do not carry the same strength.
04:33There are weak links.
04:37If you put undue pressure on the ends of the chain, some link will break.
04:44The fault does not belong to the link.
04:47You must question those who put the pressure.
05:00Great talent, great talent and what is that talent being told to do?
05:04That talent is being told, you know, you go somewhere and write code, random code.
05:13And if that random code is for one of the top companies, then you are successful.
05:20What success is there in this?
05:24Somebody is being told you go and work in a bank and you just do data all your day.
05:30What success is there in this?
05:32Had you not been paid those big dollars, would you ever choose this kind of work?
05:38Please tell me.
05:43What success is there in all this?
05:47Somebody is selling shoes after doing computer science B.Tech from IIT Madras.
05:52What success is there in this?
05:55It's just that the company is a footwear giant, MNC footwear giant.
06:08And then you take pride.
06:09You don't take pride.
06:10Your parents take pride.
06:13Your parents take pride and the entire society takes pride.
06:17And then a few girls can come to you or their parents rather.
06:26The fellow is earning so, you know, how about a match?
06:34From all the directions, the message that is coming to you is there is this particular
06:39definition of success.
06:42If you cannot measure up to it, then life is not worth living.
06:52Some of our friends, unfortunately, take it very literally.
06:57They say if life is not worth living, why should we anyway continue living at all?
07:02You could say they are more logical than the rest of us.
07:09Culpability has to be fixed.
07:14Everybody who has been continuously teaching you that life exists just for the sake of
07:20material gratification is the culprit.
07:24Catch him.
07:27Justice needs to be done.
07:29Otherwise this kind of trend will continue.
07:31It's not just about your campus.
07:32It's happening everywhere.
07:39Pressure by itself might not be necessarily a bad thing, but pressure for such nonsense.
07:48One fellow gave up his life because his elder brother was a super achiever.
07:53The elder brother was actually from an IIT.
07:55This fellow did not manage into an IIT, he was at some other place and there too he was
08:00not getting the desired kind of job offers.
08:06He quit.
08:09On one hand, I commiserate with the parents.
08:12On the other hand, one needs to have a straight word with them.
08:20What exactly are you feeding your kids on?
08:26Do most parents even deserve to be called parents?
08:31For any small project, you require at least some qualification.
08:37But for the project of raising a kid, you require zero qualification.
08:43All you need is one night of physical encounter and then you say, I am a father and she is
08:51a mother and the two of us are qualified to raise the kid.
08:55How exactly are you qualified to raise the kid?
09:03This is nothing but symptomatic of a society where inner education is considered dispensable.
09:12Where we say that if you teach the student in history, geography, math, science and the
09:21languages that is sufficient.
09:24The student does not need to be given education in life, education of the self.
09:30That is not necessary.
09:31If that is not necessary, this will be the outcome and sadly this outcome might keep
09:38getting repeated.
09:43And that inner education, mind you, cannot come just naturally from the family or somewhere.
09:51Just as you require expert professors to teach you maths and physics, similarly you
09:57require experts to deliver life education.
10:04If that is not there, then the mind will remain very cluttered, very confused and ultimately
10:12sometimes suicidal.
10:16What a wastage.
10:22And what makes the wastage worse is that the lives of those, even those who survive are
10:31rendered waste.
10:33We talked about the fellow who is working in a footwear MNC post his electrical engineering.
10:41Why should that not be considered an equal wastage of life?
10:48Or the fellow who decides to sell fizzy drinks.
10:54If you look at the IIMs for example, they attract a lot of crowd from the IITs.
11:00And what do these ITNs do passing out from the IIMs?
11:06Somebody is selling fizzy drinks, somebody is selling home loans.
11:16That's an equal wastage, but we don't want to talk of that.
11:20We talk of that as gainful employment.
11:22In fact, we gloat over that.
11:25We say, you know, this is heroic.
11:29My journey has attained a three crore package and that sometimes comes to the newspapers
11:38as well.
11:44That should indeed come to the newspapers as a thing of tragedy, not as a matter of
11:51celebration.