The Ultimate Human: The Nine Layers of Relationships

After reading the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People I was literally wowed and thought this is what a complete human would be like. I went on putting the ideas into action and started to observe the principles at work in society. But then I learnt it is not enough. Something was missing. Then a new search began and finally I developed a model which I feel is more complete and true in nature to complete the picture of what it means to have human relationships.

The model comprises of 9 layers, with the level of development on the innermost affecting the outermost layers. The more you invest on the core, the better the outlook in the other layers will be.

Core 1/Layer 1: The Relationship with his Lord/God
This is perhaps the inner most core of the human relationship, his connection with his God. This will impact the second core.

Core 2/Layer 2: The Relationship with his Own Self
This is the outer core of the human relationship paradigm, how he relations to his sense of self. This derives strength from his first inner core. Together the cores now impact the external relationship layers.

Layer 3: The Relationship with Parent
I consider these the most sacred and scarce relationship for any human. Imagine, amongst the 6 billion people on the planet, only two are your biological mother and father.

Layer 4: The Relationship with his wife/her husband
The other half relationship. Enough said.

Layer 5: The Relationship with his Children
The most joyous or painful relationship with generational impact.

Layer 6: The Relationship with his Relatives
This includes brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, second cousins and first cousins.

Layer 7: The Relationship with his Neighbors
Perhaps the most neglected of all relationships

Layer 8: The Relationship with Friends and Brothers in Cause
The ones who help us cope with the world’s issues and to stand by us in good and bad times

Layer 9: The Relationship with Community/Society
How we interact and impact humanity

The way the layers have been placed over each other is how I think the relationships in terms of Islam are prioritized to the best of my knowledge. Different people will value relationship orders in different ways. But this is what I believe the ultimate model. Even I feel I don’t follow it properly. Let’s pray we all come to terms with it soon and learn to change ourselves accordingly.

Educational Systems of the Subcontinent

For those amongst us who think that by going into the Cambridge system or the Federal Board we are “better” than the average educated student, here is a wake up call for you….those systems were STILL designed to make you cogs in a machine. Here is a little history to make things simply and clear.

Our educational systems find their roots not in 1947 when we gained our independence but in 1883 under the British Raj when the Education Commission was established. Its prime purpose was to educate the Indian colony in such a way that the communication gap between the British and Indian civilians be minimized with a mentality to serve the Queen (which explains the God Save the Queen anthem). The education systems were DESIGNED in such a way (that is, course materials, teacher trainings and examination standards) that India and its people are a colony subjugated to the critical thinking of a foreign ruler, not to critically think on their own.

The system acted as a massive fishing net. Spread out the matriculation educational net onto the whole of Indian population and the ones that rise up in it join the civilian companies and keep the British Raj machinery in order. Spread the specialization net (read Cambridge or Federal system in our modern period) and the ones who rise out of this are to become officer grade locals who will manage the locals in the armies and the offices. But NOT to get them thinking as a nation or an empire in their own right. No such history, no such emphasis on language, no such emphasis on culture. Just get educated enough to run the machinery and never create your own massive machinery.

In short, we inherited an education system that did not promote critical thinking in its truest sense. Even after independence we are, by mentality still colonies.

In educational terms this is called the River Model of education. The students are like droplets in the river and as they continue to flow down towards the sea, the pick energy and pace and are “worth” something. The weakest amongst them fall towards the banks and disappear. It presumes every student is the same by nature with no natural talent.

On the flip side is what we call the Garden model of education. Imagine the teacher is the gardener and the every individual student is a flower or a plant. Each flower needs a special form of attention, nourishment and care. Each will grow according to their own personality, just the gardener has to trim and make sure the environment is conductive for its growth and the flowers individual beauty will show. This is how the best educational systems work now.

We need to shift out en-masse educational systems to the Garden Model. Also we need to invest in educationists that can redesign or create new educational systems that are RELEVANT to our unique people and cultures and make it bloom in its different periods of development.

Frameworks to Understand the World

Everyone wishes to know what is the best tool, the best idea, the best perspective to use in ALL situations. The truth is, every tool, or idea or framework works in a PARTICULAR situation. We live in a multivariable world where A doesn’t necessarily lead to B, and more than A would be needed to get B. Our understanding of the world needs a restart on its paradigm.

The primary aim of life is to make every minute of it a prayer and do righteous deeds with righteous conduct. Now in order to do this we need rules and guidelines of the highest levels, standards so high that we can keep on working at them till the end of time. We do have such perspective and frameworks. Here are a few that I share and periodically add to.

End of Nationalism, the Start of the Human Identity

We all come from one Adam and one Eve. In that case we are all brothers and sister of the same father and mother living in a little home that we call Earth. So why have we made these imaginary and dangerous boundaries? We should be following the Qurans’ guidance on this that we have been divided into tribes and nations ONLY TO IDENTIFY each other, not to prejudge each other. There are bad eggs in every good family and good eggs in every bad family. So let us not mark people off because of the tribes’ or family’s reputation. There is hope in every corner. And usually it’s the converts from these families that turn out to be the staunchest supporters.

So imagine in your mind, that we are no longer countries. We do not have provinces and states. There is only one huge fenceless Earth and everyone is connected to everyone. Just because of the distances and time, we have developed different habits of interaction. These are the laws and rules of the ‘land’ as we call them. We can observe our brothers and sisters privacy and interact with them within these guidelines.

We are not one global community; we are not one global tribe or global nation. We are one family.

By the way, we share existence with three other families; Angels, Jinns and animals. Learn to share it and aim for peaceful co-existence.

Universal System of Existence

I propose three universal laws for Systems Thinking. Law #1: Everything has providence for its growth in its particular amount at its particular growth or decay stage in order for it to continue on its life-cycle. Law #2: Everything exists for more than one reason and has multiple usages. Law #3: The results of good actions is only good results, the result of evil actions is only evil.

These laws are consistent with the three Divine attributes of Providence, Benevolence and Justice. These are what makes the world go round and helps existence to ‘exist’.

Think deeply about this. It will answer a lot of questions about how the universe works.

The Ideological Division

As much as we would like to think that it’s a clash of nations and countries that decides world fate, it is actually a co-existence of religions. With ALL of them leading to a God, just in different ways. Our task is to be on the Straight Path and keep improving on our way of walking on it.

Here is a prediction; The worlds ultimate language will be Arabic. English became a ‘global’ language in the past 200 years only. Before that it was Persian. Before that it was Latin. That too only from the Westerners perspective. Go to China and we have dialects of Chinese replacing each other over centuries. But Arabic has been there from the start and its growing tremendously. Here are my reasons for believing it will be the major language of the world.

1.It’s the language of Heaven. We will also be asked questions in the grave in this language and it will come intuitively to us.

2.The final Caliph will rule from Makkah and Madina. The seat of the world power will shift there, so Arabic again.

3.Millions of Muslims convert every year. All of them try to at least read in Arabic. So it will effectively be the most read language.

4. Intuitively, we relax when we hear Arabic. Of all the languages in the world that spark different kinds of emotions in us, Arabic brings out the calmness in all of us.

5.The spread of Urdu and Persian will only make the conversion to Arabic easier for the Asian regions.

6.The internet will now have scripted addresses not necessarily in English. Therefore Arabic and other languages will now have their own databases on the World Wide Web.

7.Nearly every new software and some hardware have Arabic script compatibility.

I would like to be a trilingual now. That would be English, Urdu and Arabic. I would recommend others do that too.