The three most creative minds of our times

I was looking for the three most creative minds of our times in the area of political change, social transformation and technological revolution. Here are my picks- Mahatama Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Steve Jobs. By some conincidence all three were in the news recently.

Mahatama Gandhi pioneered the use of peaceful protest- or satyagraha- as a way of changing governments which led to the departure of Britain from India and to its independance. Satyagraha, loosely translated as "soul force"or "truth force",  is a particular philosophy and practice within the broader overall category generally known as nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. The term "satyagraha" was conceived and developed by Mahatma Gandhi which he deployed in the Indian independence movement and also during his earlier struggles in South Africa. Satyagraha theory influenced Nelson Mandela's struggle in South Africa under apartheid, Lech Walesa struggle against communist domination in Poland, the civil rights movement in the United States and many other social justice and similar movements. One follower of his- Anna Hazare- is using the same tactics to urge government to tackle corruption in India today. Anna Hazare has started a indefinite hunger strike on 5 April 2011 to exert pressure on the Indian government to enact a strigent anti-corruption law as envisaged in the Jan Lokpal Bill, for the institution of an ombudsman with the power to deal with corruption in public places. Dr King was another follower who used the tactics of satyagraha to win civil rights for the African americans in the US not by armed violence but by peaceful protest. His statue was finally built and was also to be unveiled this weekend in Washington DC. Non violent resistance has been the most creative tool for fighting injustice in this century.

Mother Tereasa was creative as well but worked at a different level. Her path was a unique one. It was indicative of her success that she understood that in an overwhelmingly non-Christian India, her path had to be a unique one. So while she never deviated from her faith, she reached out to millions of her special constituency: the poorest of the poor, the leprosy sufferers, abandoned children or the hungry and dying, recognising their faces to be the face of her God. Their religious persuasion, or even its absence, hardly concerned her. In her ability to have found the middle path in an environment that could have easily become hostile, lay her genius. Author Naveen Chawla tell her story: "as a child of 14 in her native Albania, her imagination was stirred by the stories she heard from the Jesuit Fathers of their work in distant Bengal; at 18, still a teenager, her mind was made up. She took leave of her own beloved mother and joined the Loreto Order of teaching nuns, her only means in the year 1928 of reaching India. .. She had no helper, no companion, and no money to speak of. Imagine the Calcutta of 1948, overflowing with refugees after Partition, homelessness, poverty and disease everywhere. She wore no recognisable nun's habit; instead a sari, akin to that worn by municipal sweepresses, that cost one rupee. This is where she started her life's arduous mission." By the time she passed away in 1997, she had created her presence in 123 countries and ran a multinational charity with 5,000 nuns of her Order, without the help of government grants or Church assistance. . “We are called upon not to be successful, but to be faithful,” she explained. Mother Teresa exemplified that faith — in prayer, in love, in service, and in peace."As is often the case, it is the "singer not the song" that transforms into social change. 

Steve Jobs was the most creative mind of my time in the area of technology. Steve was born on February 24, 1955, in the city of San Francisco. His biological mother was an unwed graduate student named Joanne Simpson, and his biological father was a political science professor, a native Syrian named Abdulfattah John Jandali. Being born out of wedlock in the puritan America of the 1950s, the baby was put up for adoption and he was taken in by Paul and Clara Jobs, who were a lower-middle class couple that had settled in the Bay Area after the war. Paul was a machinist from the Midwest who had not even graduated from high school but they promised that Steve would go to college. In 1974 Jobs traveled to India to visit the Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi Ashram in search of spiritual enlightenment. He came back a Buddhist with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing. He founded Apple in 1978 but was thrown out as a CEO by his handpicked Chairman of the company. In 1998 he returned in triumph to the company he had founded and led it to becoming the highest valued company in the world in 2011 even topping Exxon.  In mid-2004, Jobs was been diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in his pancreas. He had a liver transplant in 2011 but on August 24, 2011, Jobs announced his resignation from his role as Apple's CEO. Steve is listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in over 230 awarded patents or patent applications related to a range of technologies from actual computer and portable devices to user interfaces (including touch-based), speakers, keyboards, power adapters, staircases, clasps, sleeves, lanyards and packages. 

His approach to life and times is summed up in a lecture he gave at Stanford. "Let me tell you three stories..you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life". Secondly, "sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle." And finally "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary...Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.. And I have always wished that for myself."