One day, not long ago, I saw a group of MBA students coming out of an insignificant Private College in Pune. The sight was rather painful for me to watch because it reminded me of the failing state of our Education System. I suddenly realized that there is a clear similarity between these educational Institutions and religious institutions, for both provide an oversimplified version of a higher truth.

Many MBA colleges, along with other coaching institutions, work on the promise of “Job by mere Study”. These institutions, which broadly include coaching institutes for difficult examinations or coaching for direct jobs in the Government Sector (such as Banking or Civil services), the Private Sector, are highly focused on clearing the examination hurdle by means of study rather than teaching to produce entrepreneurs who can build businesses. As a result, many of these institutes are continuously producing pupils with few marketable skills, and hence more prone to being at a disadvantage due to the ever-changing nature of the market economy, which hardly gives a damn about bookish knowledge and GPAs. Yet many people line up to be part of such institutions, and this mentality is quite similar to the people’s affinity towards religious institutions. A lot of humans don’t care about the true answer; they just need a simple, believable answer.

Religious institutions focus on a single isolated truth while the rest is ignored, like believing that this god sacrificed for you, or believing that praying is the answer to all your problems, or just chanting his name, to make things work for you. These steps may sometimes work like placebo drugs, but the same institutions won’t focus on all the lies they have propagated over the years, such as Earth being the center of the universe or evolution being fraudulent. If they were wrong then, how could they be correct now? My analytical and procedural brain doesn’t buy such unprovable fables, and yet the business for such institutions is booming. In today’s time, people claiming to be the men of gods have a higher earning potential than skilled entrepreneurs. For the masses, this business model works because it relieves them of responsibility; they only need to hold on to one belief or one lie.

The higher truth is always anything but simple. In order to develop marketable skills, one needs to understand current technologies, consumer behaviors, successful businesses, domain knowledge (e.g., Healthcare, Retail, Banking, etc.), and more. One needs to be excellent at negotiation, communication, and conflict resolution. One has to be skilled at sales and marketing, which in turn requires an understanding of human behavior. All of these skills can only be learned through practice in the real world, which many coaching businesses ignore. What is actually taught through books is more graspable to the pupils, which leads them to make over-simplified assumptions that bookish knowledge will get them a job. A few cares about the placement data and base rate. I personally know many folks who have completed their education and are currently doing even more study to get a job. What kind of society are we going to create if key tasks are handed out to people with little practical knowledge? The magic of producing food and resources through book reading is a mere illusion and not real magic.

Similarly, understanding god and the nature of the Universe is never simple. With the advent of modern science, the analysis of gods transcends the realm of logic and ethics and goes into the world of quantum physics and molecular biology. Creation, previously thought to be a god’s work, is now performed by scientists in laboratories. These truths are simply ignored by the proprietors and consumers of these gods’ businesses all over the world. The simple critical thinking in the direction of analyzing one’s god will free them from the senseless actions and appreciate the true value of culture.

The higher truth may be difficult to understand, and it is very well possible that we may never understand it through our ephemeral life, and yet the quest to understand it brings freedom which is otherwise unattainable. By conforming to a narrow truth, one can only achieve illusory peace, which is yet not the worst outcome of this approach. The worst is the creation of mindless followers who are subservient to the whims of their political or religious master. Simplified truths give comfort. The higher truth gives freedom. We must choose which we value more. The choice, at least, is simple: be a puppet or critically evaluate.