Spirit of Islam, Dec 2015

The information overload has only resulted in a jungle of confusion for people. INTELLECTUAL FOG Clear Your Vision P ARTS of northern India get very cold in winter, resulting in thick fog. Trains get held up in the fog or move very slowly. To solve this problem, the Indian Railways has developed a ‘fog-safe device’ and plans to equip more than 2,000 trains with the device. These portable GPS driven anti-fog or fog-safe devices will track in real time the location of the next signal on the train’s route. It lets the driver know exactly how many metres away he is from the signal. This device now enables trains to be driven at high speeds even in dense fog and ensures they reach their destination safely. While this anti-fog device relates to material fog, there is also something that can be called ‘intellectual fog’ that hampers intellectual development. In ancient times, the means of acquiring knowledge were limited. With the prevalence of print and electronic media it has become very simple to acquire knowledge. People express themselves— through writing and speech and with new forms of communications and media, the volume and exchange of such expression have increased enormously. The internet has made it very easy to access information on any subject. But there is a problem with this information overload. Despite access to a wealth of material on any subject, many are unable to decipher a clear understanding of the matter. The information overload has only resulted in a jungle of confusion for them and it is easy to be trapped in this ‘intellectual fog’. One’s thoughts and actions will then get determined by the ‘thick fog’ that surrounds them. How do you keep yourself safe from this fog? How do you maintain right thinking in the midst of such intellectual darkness? The ‘fog-safe device’ that trains use illustrates a solution to this problem. We need to have our own ‘intellectual fog-safe device’. This device is an internally prepared mind trained in the art of differentiation. How does this device work? One should develop the capacity to put aside all unrelated matter and extract only information relevant to the subject. This technique could be