Online trip to an oasis of knowledge

There are ways in which retired people can find a sense of purpose in their retirement years, while adapting to the stressful events prompted by changes in their social roles and status, and eventually to physical illness and disability. All this typically occurs as one starts entering the greyer phase of his or her life.
At times it is difficult for some elderly persons to find those ways, where they could find a 'sense of purpose'. One such person who does not find a work to do, or does not have enthusiasm to find a reading or listening material to delve into, reflexively indulges in a kind of idle introspection. He feels an urge for self-analysis and soul-searching and tries, in most cases to no avail, to find the meaning of his own life. He gets puzzled when the time to say goodbye to this world seems imminent.
Mere idle introspection is painfully frustrating, unless you have prayers to perform, books to read, songs to listen to and have works to do that keep you a little bit busy and make you feel tired and drowsy enough to enjoy a good night's sleep. There are, of course, smarter people who find a middle pathway in pursuit of happiness in both the worlds: they chase butterflies in the woods as their worldly hobby, and they also pave their way to havens as their worldly duty.
Some people, in such a critical situation, engross themselves in religious studies and practices to avoid punishments and to avail rewards on the Day of Judgment. And some splurge in leisurely activities in order to derive as much satisfaction as possible from whatever days, weeks or years that are left in their temporal life in this world. One such activity is studying.
I was feeling empty. Nothing pleased me. I was not getting my kicks from the sort of reading I am used to. Neither did I get much pleasure from songs, music or movies. I was just mulling over the moral degradations that have engulfed every facet of life in Bangladesh.
I felt helpless as I could not contribute anything to help our people upgrade their moral values or to lessen their sufferings. I rather enjoyed blaming my people for all the ills that are crippling us. Our politicians, I stubbornly reasoned, have no qualms about cheating others. Once they grab power, they don't mind depredating our nation as long as they can torture their foes and plunder the public resources to satisfy their egos and to meet their greed. They don't care about others' welfare. Deaths of people belonging to opposition camps are, to them, like games killed in a hunting competition. They are, to me, pathologically psychopaths. There seems nobody around who could rise and navigate the nation to free us from the grips of these elements and arouse the people from their state of torpidity to fight against injustices. Leaders who could navigate us seem to have been stupefied. I was perhaps trying to offset my empty-headedness by blaming our country, our people and our leaders - except me. Who am I to blame?
Sensing my predicament, my niece Saria showed me a unique way that would divert my mind from the sufferings of our people due to our moral degradations. Now that I am retired and can't contribute my time and resources to help mitigate the sufferings of the people, she suggested me to enroll myself in any of those online courses that are offered for free where I could learn why people are so morally degraded and how we can improve our moral values. She cautioned me that just reading newspapers, journals, books or encyclopedias does not help a reader reach the depth of any branch of knowledge. A classroom environment coupled with structured lessons, along with periodical examinations, is the best way for one who is serious to learn.
At precisely the same time, Yale University offered a free online course on psychology through an organisation called "Coursera". The topic of the six-week-long online course was "Moralities of Everyday Life". I leaped at the opportunity to be a student at the age of 62, though it was the kind of a leap in the dark. I found myself not equipped with enough basic knowledge to learn something about psychology from the professor of an American university. I felt a bit 'squeamish'. But, once I signed up to start my online course in the First Week of my classes, I was amazed by the friendly way the course was tailored in for anybody who knows a little bit of English and who has a little bit of patience. You don't need a degree to show, you don't need to pay any fee, you have no fear if you fail in an examination, and you have ample time to study the lessons in such a course.
The course has opened for me a deep and sweeping vista, an oasis for free knowledge where I could quench my thirst for learning without those fears that used to grip me in my school days. I have already finished the course. I have also earned a Statement, a verified "Certificate", from Yale on successful completion of the course. Now I can take up an extended course for a credit version of "Moralities of Everyday Life" this summer. This extended course covers the same issues, but is far more intensive - more readings and essays, and weekly face-to-face discussions. It is unfortunately expensive, and I have to pay US$ 500 for this more intensive course on the same topic. And, moreover, it's only for students who are either in college or are in post-college studies. At 62, I have, however, no interest to do a college course in America.
The course started with the First Week lectures and readings on January 20 and finished with the Sixth Week lectures and readings on  March 03.  There were 37 lectures by Paul Bloom. Some lectures were short and brief and some were pretty lengthy. The duration of lectures ranged from a few minutes to more than an hour. There were guest lecturers too. In addition to following the lectures minutely we, the online students, had to delve into a lot of reading materials. Additionally, we had to read a few books to prepare ourselves for appearing in the Quiz Test at the end of each week. One must have an average of 70 per cent in the six Quiz Tests to qualify for earning a Statement of Accomplishment or Verified Certificate.
Paul Bloom (Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology at Yale University) was our teacher and Kristina Starminst was the teaching fellow for the course. Learners of all levels eager to explore their interests, prepare for new careers, or to build on existing foundations of education and experience, can choose from a plethora of online free courses offered not only by Yale, but from courses offered by many other reputable universities in the world.
Students from Bangladesh who are serious to augment their academic knowledge on different disciplines at their respective colleges and universities and retired people - like me - who just want to satisfy a craving to learn something old or something completely new can enroll in any such courses and earn a credit, or at least a certificate.
I thought I was the oldest student among more than 11,000 students from around the world who enrolled themselves in the course on "Moralities of Everyday Life" and didn't perhaps drop out before finishing. But in his Office Hour lecture Paul Bloom informed us, to my sheer ecstasy that the youngest were five 12-year-olds from Singapore, India, and the United States and the oldest was a 95-year-old from the United States. I was amazed how I could manage to secure an average of 76.7 per cent marks in the Quiz Tests at my mellowed age! Had I not secured a poor mark of only 11 out of 20 in the First Quiz Test, my average could have gone up pretty much higher with excellent marks that I secured in the subsequent Quiz Tests.
Now I realise, after completion of the course, how ignorant I was, and still I am, about moralities in our everyday life. But the course has opened my eyes to the concept of morality and the roles of genes and environment that are responsible for our moral behaviour. Earlier, the word 'morality' used to convey to me merely a quality to be virtuous. I didn't have any idea how morality developed through an evolutionary process. Paul Bloom has taught me and thousands of his students all over the world what kindness is and explained to us how and why people are so cruel; how we sense 'right' and 'wrong'; how people form ideas and opinions on controversial issues like abortion, gay marriage, affirmative action and torture; how evolution, culture and religion contribute to shaping our moral nature.
During the six-week-long course, I was searching for an answer to the cruelties we find all over the world, especially in poor countries like Bangladesh. I was craving an explanation as to why our business leaders don't care about the consumers' welfare. Why our political leaders cannot tolerate people who belong to an opposition political party or who subscribe to a different moral philosophy. Why religion is not tolerated in our politics. Of course, I found the answers to my huge satisfaction. The course has taught me how one should maintain humility while finding faults with others and why we should not look down on others' cultures.
But among dozens of lectures I heard from Paul Bloom and other guest lecturers, and among scores of papers I had to read, one topic has drawn my special attention. The topic titled "Caring about Others" with sub-topics 'Compassion' and 'Empathy' struck a sympathetic chord in me. I found in Paul Bloom's lecture on this topic some persuasive relevance as to why we are so envious and why we don't care about others' welfare. Why many of us, especially some in our community and politics, are psychopaths.
A psychopath is highly intelligent. He or she has normal set of emotions and desires, but totally lacks compassion and fellow-feeling, other people do not matter to him or her. They may not be a sadist, but when they want something they will try to get it without any regard for other people's feelings. If he or she wants money or sex or power they will try to get it and they do not care who is hurt along the way. If you say to such a psychopath, "Look, you know when you harm people, when you do such things to people they hate it as it hurts them."  He or she would reply: "Yea". And you say: "How would you feel if other people do that to you?" They will answer: "Well, I will hate that." And you say: "So, you recognise the symmetry" and then he or she would respond: "Sure, I am not an idiot. I am a highly intelligent psychopath. I recognise this. I just don't care."
It is not surprising that five persons out of one hundred people we come across are psychopaths. Democracy has taught us to elect those persons who are kind and compassionate and who are not psychopaths. Thank God, among the elected leaders in the world, there are perhaps not many psychopaths like Hitler or Mussolini. If five per cent of the present-day world leaders were psychopaths, the world by this time would have turned into a hell.
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