Literature – the Foundations of Human Civilization
Tika Adhikari
Winnipeg, Canada
Literature has an important role in promoting and enhancing civilization. We can look at examples from historically known civilizations such as Roman, Greek, Indus Valley and many others that have contributed in human knowledge and raised people’s awareness on human development. The work of Bhutanese Literature is a small contribution towards that path.
Literature is an important source of inspiration for younger and older generations alike to learn from and contribute towards raising quality of human and intellectual thought. Major civilizations and civilized societies have emphasized the importance of reading and writing and involvement in creative thoughts. We need to raise this awareness among our people and now we have decided to settle in these countries we need to catch up with the local people so that we are contributing members of the Western society.
In this light, Bhutanese Literature has been involving all members of Bhutanese and Nepalese intellectuals including younger generations in reading and writing creative thoughts. This is a good sign and movement in the right direction as it engages young minds in imaginative endeavours, diverting their attentions away from negativity and socially unproductive efforts. I would like to salute the editors and contributors of this important initiative among the Bhutanese diaspora and all of us need to develop a reading habit so that we can inspire the writers and readers producing better articles and reaching greater heights as humans.
Perhaps, many of you might be thinking what might be the benefit of writing and reading articles in the Bhutanese Literature. The greatest benefit for all of us is the intellectual engagement of our minds and thoughts towards such great ideas contributed by our poets, thinkers, writers and narrators. We would gain new ideas and begin to engage in intellectual discourse which is the essence of human civilization that I touched upon above. We are also building greater community of intellectuals that are instrumental in community building and it is a critical early stage in lifting our minds and spirits from the very low level that majority of the people are at this time. Literary pursuit will always enlighten us with new knowledge and that is the essence of development; be individual, family, community or the great nations that have given shelter to our people.
Involvement in literary pursuit such as reading and writing is analogous to playing music, dancing, singing, listening to great music and participation in drama and theatre activities. It is a way of life and helping us to reduce our engagement into gambling, drugs, drinking, negative gossip and such other unproductive pursuits. The more time we devote in creative efforts, we would have less time to engage in other negative activities and that is the foundation of building better civilization among our people that I discussed earlier. It is also the pillar of better human beings that we aspire to become as contributing members of various countries.It is much better and productive media than devotion into social media activities like Facebook and others.