“A crowd is just a large group of people, and a university should not be a crowd,” says Professor Surendra Arjoon. “It should be a community, and a community is a group of people who are bound together by love: unconditional love. We are social creatures who cannot just exist as individuals. We need to build a community.”
Arjoon, Professor of Business and Professional Ethics at The UWI, was speaking during his online seminar entitled “Psychology and Ethics: Connecting the Modern and the Moral”. The hour-long interactive event was recently hosted by the ANSA McAL Psychological Research Centre, and although the lecture was geared towards psychology students at The UWI, it was also open to the general public.
Prof Arjoon passionately touched on many fundamental and timeless ideas – some of which we hear very little of these days. Discussed during the seminar were topics such as friendship, love, virtue, and humility, as well as many of humanity's common pitfalls, including the empty pursuits of pleasure and fame.
The seminar represents just the very tip of the iceberg of Professor Arjoon's work.
“What I do is try to teach the things that we have forgotten. The ideas that I discuss are not my own, but they represent over 2,500 years of wisdom that have been used to build great nations all over the world,” he says.
Far from just seeing teaching as a 9 to 5 job, Professor Arjoon views his work as his life's calling, and encourages others to seek their own unique path in life.
“I do these lectures because I believe that everyone, during our short time on Earth, is called to a mission, and this mission is our vocation. Many people mistakenly use ambition for wealth, honour, power, and pleasure as their vocation. They think, ‘oh I can make more money if I do this or that’, and that's where they go. But, if you end up doing something for the wrong reason, something that is not in alignment with your own natural talents, then you will never be effective in this world.”
Helping others to break out of this rat race mentality is something that Professor Arjoon actively seeks to do, and many of his students can attest to the way in which his lectures have impacted their lives.
“As students, we are programmed by society to have a very specific idea of what success entails,” says Shania Ali, a second year Management Studies student at The UWI. “We are conditioned to think that there are certain material things that we must achieve if we want to be happy. Taking Professor Arjoon's Ethics class helped me to realise that there is so much more to life than material success. I have learnt that detaching from material things and taking the focus off of the self is what truly brings happiness.”
"I do these lectures because I believe that everyone, during our short time on Earth, is called to a mission, and this mission is our vocation. Many people mistakenly use ambition for wealth, honour, power, and pleasure as their vocation... But, if you end up doing something for the wrong reason, something that is not in alignment with your own natural talents, then you will never be effective in this world."
Throughout the seminar, the topic of community repeatedly came up for discussion. Arjoon believes that a sense of community is fundamental for human happiness and well-being, and it is why he seeks to actively engage with students both in and outside of the classroom:
“Many times I would just go up to a student on campus, a student who is not in any of my classes mind you, and introduce myself. I would start by saying something like, 'hey do you have a couple of minutes, because I would like to ask you something: what do you think is the most important question that we can ask in this life?' This would then normally lead to a very interesting discussion about some pretty fundamental issues.
“People might think it might be weird to approach a stranger with a question like this, but in a university setting, it makes perfect sense, and the students find it the most natural thing in the world. To date, I have never had anyone say no to my question, and that is how I know that these students are all starved for something deeper.”
“These are topics that we just don't get a chance to discuss in our other classes,” adds former student Ali. “I was honestly surprised that instead of just talking about business, we were learning about the path to true internal freedom and happiness.”
During the seminar, as in all of Prof Arjoon’s classes, he made it clear that learning should not just be a passive activity in which the students sit down silently and imbibe the teacher's ideas. He stresses that learning is a give-and-take, where both the teacher and students bring their own unique experiences to the class.
“I like to think of the classroom as a banquet table. Yes, the teacher might often be bringing the main course, but everyone has something to contribute to the feast. We all share in this and leave the classroom enriched, teacher and student alike. Teaching and learning are really acts of love at the end of the day, something that helps us to grow as human beings.”
The recent seminar was just another addition to the great banquet of learning that he believes that the university should be offering students.
Not surprisingly, Professor Arjoon ended the seminar with advice on how to truly find happiness:
“Detach yourself from things that pull you down, and attach yourself to those that uplift you. Forget yourself and be other-centred. Community is the most important thing, and thankfully, this sense of community has not been totally lost here in Trinidad and Tobago. There are many good seeds that have been planted here, we just need to water them.”
