Intellectual Poverty

There is a distinct pattern to the workshops, public discussion and lecture series that take place in Kathmandu. Firstly there is the speaker or pundit or whatever name they are called by. They are supposed to have mastered the issue in question. In most situations the experts live up to their name. And in a rare case scenario the ‘expert’ clearly demonstrates a lack of understanding to the extent that they ‘boldly’ or ’shamelessly’ allow someone else in the audience to take control of the discussion. Then there is an audience which is diverse and has come to attend the discussions for various reasons. Some come there with the sole purpose of listening to the speakers with no strings attached. They are there to learn whatever they can. Another kind are cynics. It doesn’t matter if their knowledge of the issue is nil: they are there to criticize and will not leave unless they have done so. The third type of attendees are the flamboyant ones. They are there to show off what they know. If the speaker utters a single word which they know of, their response will not stop until they’ve finished narrating the entire history of that term. The weapons they use will be jargons and sentences quoted verbatim from a book or else theories that the person in question knows by heart.