As an expected norm, certainty is always rated higher over uncertainty. Certainty provides the comfort of knowing what to expect and is devoid of the anxiety which comes with uncertainty. Uncertainty is considered a result of ill-conceived plans or improper execution. However, as soon as you throw in "life" in the mix, the dynamics totally changes - which is better- a certain death or an uncertain life?! <yet to complete this line of thought>
Your Thoughts?!
Long winding Background - I have in over 40 years of my life heard and interpreted discipline as a way of structured, peaceful, sophisticated life. Always called undisciplined, that was always a life I thought I will get to living someday. "Abhi busy hoon to aise hi kar lete hai...baad mein thoda time milega, discipline bhi aa jayega ...tab sukoon se ji lenge". You would have realised the use of discipline and "calm/sukoon" as one leading to the other...cause and effect wala relation tha dimag mein inn duno ka. Fir shaadi hui...to woh bhi fauji ghar mein ho gayi, uske baad to shaadi se pehle ki saari zindagi ...matlab saare kisse, experiences hi jaise in-disciplined hone ki case studies ki repository ho gaye.
Issi sooch ke saath jeete jeete kal ek dum se khayal aaya ki BC yeh discipline ki maiyaa kisne aur kyun C hogi? What I mean, where did this originate and where is it being used today? What are the avenues where it is leveraged especially in the global organised employment sector today? What are the benefits that organisations / institutions derive? What are the merits of a disciplined life for a non-corporate human?
I am no historian, nor do I claim to have researched on the topic...and that's why it is a blog post instead of a LinkedIn post :) My take is that the word discipline ( as we know it today) was introduced into Indian vocabulary with British East India Company...more notably after a few early victories and apart from better weaponry and cunning politics all they had to claim was their "disciplined life". Which soon became part of the Indian ruling class who wanted to emulate the Gora Sahab.
My recent theory for discipline is that it is useful in large scale operations where a fall-back or a equal and readily available replacement should be handy to guarantee continuity of operations. Which pushes me back to the base Q of - What is Discipline? To me with this new discovered lens, I see discipline as a factory-fication of middle management...i.e. mechanism of creating agreeable, standard skilled, conveniently trained and thus dependable workforce - across levels which can be easily replaced. e.g. As a teacher, you are not only expected to be disciplined yourself, but also expected to imbibe "the virtue of discipline" to the students. For both parties, it works to make sure the system keeps running even in your absence. i.e. Makes the individual teacher insignificant and in the process, robs them of any personalization or any special qualities. Meanwhile, the students are told how to be adhering to the set disciplined norms to become the workforce i.e. the efficient order takers / do-ers, a valuable part of the system. Similarly, as an officer / manager you are to be disciplined and you have to ensure your employees are disciplined, too.
Discipline is a systemic way to rob the free-thinking minds with the required breadth and thereby creating a workforce to take and execute orders. How many Industrialists, heads of states, entrepreneurs are disciplined? Hardly a few! And those are anamolies not the norm. However, all of them and their organisations expect the employees to be disciplined. So though humans are considered to be the highest intellectual specie on the planet Earth but the purpose of Discipline is to curb any intellect from being practiced and serve the power bearers of the land by being DISCIPLINED.
Interesting side note observation - "Is Discipline same for all?" Expected disciplined behaviour in each of the following is different from each other: for students in school, for blue collared employees in a factory, for soldiers in the army, for white collared employees in an office, etc.
