Four levels of Discipline

A person has 4 aspects of life often compartmentalized from each other – individual, family, society and the profession. Even if, all the four are not compartmentalized and isolated from each other, three of these need be kept isolated from each other for better performances of the individual in family as well as in professional spheres of life. Whatever may the situation, a person is expected to observe discipline in all the four aspects of his/her life.

Individual Discipline

In the individual life, the foremost focus must be on synergy of convictions, words and actions, to ensure right projection of his/her image in the family, profession and the society as a whole. This results in better results by the person in all the four aspects of life through his/her image which keeps on working for all the 24 hours a day, 7 days a week while the person works for limited duration of the day and the week.

Next point of individual focus is personal health through adequate nutrition, physical activities, intellectual pursuits and, most importantly, rest and recreation. A person who can’t take good care of his/her health and remains sick or dies earlier than usual expectations can’t be called a disciplined member of the society. He/she often lives on the society as a parasite – fulfilling his/her living needs, necessities and luxuries without being productive. For this reason, i don’t consider Vivekanand as a great person but a social parasite who pursued his luxurious lifestyle mostly in America and Europe to mislead people, particularly women, in the name of Vedic religion without knowing anything essential about Vedas. These things expect the person to have a personal space of him/herself free from the rest of the world. 

Family Discipline

In the family, the most important expectation from a person is to keep a balance between respect to elders, love to equals and affection to youngsters in the family without any bias towards anybody. An important issue arises when a meritorious person in the family is liked more than others. Though this is necessary to provide an incentive to all others to be the same, this should not be the reason for neglecting those less meritorious. Indeed, such persons be paid more attention to bring them up with the best in the family. When a person is neglected in his/her family, he/she develops an inferiority complex in his/her personality affecting his/her professional and social performances. 

Discipline at Work

Since working life of a person ensures his/her economy, the person is expected to pay much of his/her attention to this aspect of life.  Because, the person’s conduct at work affects in both good and bad ways many other persons, the person must observe a high level of discipline at work.

The beginning of discipline at work may be made through punctuality of time as a respect to the time and for the least inconvenience to others concerned. If someone can’t be punctual, he can’t be disciplined. After the punctuality of time, there comes the duty followed by responsibilities. Duties are related to morality, while responsibilities are related to productivity.

Duties and responsibilities provide to the person with some attached authorities. Neglect duties and responsibilities but asserting on authorities is again indiscipline because every authority has fulfilment of duties and responsibilities as preconditions.  All wars, mutinies and even small protests are caused by neglect of duties and responsibilities by those in authority. Most of the failures of government and administration are results of such neglects.    

At last but not the least are the person’s rights for which alertness and some struggles may be necessary. It is often observed that so-called nice persons perform well at their duties and responsibilities but fail at exerting for their rights. This way, they allow others to be undisciplined, which too is as bad for the society as is being undisciplined by oneself.

Social Discipline

As an element of society, the person is required to have an approach of coexistence and cooperation with all like-minded persons ensuring that nobody in the society gets exploited by the person. This is easily ensured if the person lives within his/her legitimate means of livelihood.

A large part of the social discipline is embedded in disciplines at work and in family of a person. That means if a person’s conduct is disciplined in his/her family and at work, he/she may be expected to be disciplined in the society, for the society being formed largely through family and the work for livelihood.

Additionally, the society demands a fraternal feeling for everyone in the society. This additional demand arises from the fact that persons don’t treat others at par with their family members due their difference in the blood relationship.