Societal collapse
FISH starts to rot from the head — so do societies and nations. History tells us a lot about the rise and fall of nations and societal collapse of great empires. Events do not repeat themselves exactly in case of societies undergoing similar disintegration and eventual collapse, but there are instructions in these situations for those who would care to heed the lessons therein. History is witness to the fact that societal collapse occurs when leaders undermine social contracts. Whether societies are ruled by ruthless dictators or popular representatives, they fall apart in time, with different degrees of severity. Normally societal collapse occurs over centuries as can be seen in the collapse of the empires like the Roman, Athenian, Mughal, Ottoman, Ming and others. Therefore, it is mind boggling to see the evidence of societal collapse in a young and ideological state like Pakistan within the short span of 75 years only.
It is now an established consensus among thinkers and scholars around the world that societal collapse occurs when leaders of a society undermine and break from upholding core societal principles, morals and ideals. The potential for failure is generally caused by an internal factor that might have been manageable if properly anticipated. It is the failure of the principal leadership to uphold values and norms that guide the actions of good governance, followed by a subsequent loss of citizen’s confidence in the leadership and government that leads to the breakdown of the social contract and inevitable societal collapse.
A common factor in the collapse of societies with good governance is that leaders abandon the society’s founding principles and ignore their roles as moral guides for their people. In a good governance society, a moral leader is one who upholds the core principles and ethos and creeds and values of the overall society. Most societies have some kind of social contract, whether that’s written out or not and if you have a leader who breaks those principles, then people lose trust, diminish their willingness to pay taxes, move away, or take other steps that undercut the fiscal health of the polity.This pattern of amoral leaders destabilizing their societies goes way back. These patterns can be seen in many countries including Pakistan, as inept leaders threaten the core principles and the stability of the places they govern. Mounting inequality, concentration of political power, evasion of taxation, hollowing out of bureaucratic institutions, diminishment of infrastructure and declining public services are all evidenced in many nations today.
It is generally agreed that there are roughly five stages of societal collapse which are;
• Financial collapse. Faith in “business as usual” is lost. The future is no longer assumed resemble the past in any way that allows risk to be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out and access to capital is lost.
• Commercial collapse. Faith that “the market shall provide” is lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down and widespread shortage of survival necessities become the norm.
•Political collapse. Faith that “the government will take care of you” is lost. As official attempts to mitigate widespread loss of access to commercial sources of survival necessities fail to make a difference, the political establishment loses legitimacy and relevance.
• Social collapse. Faith that “your people will take care of you” is lost. As local social institutions, be they charities, community leaders, or other groups that rush in to fill the power vacuum, run out of resources or fail through internal conflict.
• Cultural collapse. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for “kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity”. Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources.
Pakistan is on the precipice of enormous financial and economic change and it does not seem to be for the good. Excesses and miss-allocated resources of several generations are exposed as we sink deeper into the economic hole we have dug for ourselves. The purging of these economic mistakes will be painful, it could create new conflicts as politicians attempt to deflect blame and may end up changing the political form of government….of which there is ample talk around. The corrosive nature of politics and government has destroyed the economy and the moral fibre of citizens. These issues are not insurmountable, but they are very close to being so. Their ramifications are potentially existential in nature: the average time span or cycle of a nation has been proven in history to be approximately 250 years of which Pakistan has already utilized seventy five years political shenanigans.
In order to save ourselves from an inevitable societal collapse we need to arrest the direction of societal decline in Pakistan. The national ethos needs to be nurtured in every individual in Pakistan which, is multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-lingual. National ethos is exemplary and promotes excellence and the pursuit of excellence by one and all for the good of the collective. Children should grow up witnessing hard work being rewarded; knowing playing by the rules signifies civilized behaviour; that crime does not pay; that justice rides the long road but she eventually arrives; and a hard won reputation, if abused, “will fly away in a plane and return on a tuctuc.” National Ethos is essentially aspirational and if we do not work hard for it together as one, it will elude us, like it has for the past 75 years. Today we see Pakistan grappling with, ethnic antagonism, lack of national ethos, lack of inclusivity, lack of true devolution, divisive elections, absence of security and safety, corruption, nonexistent shared prosperity and responsibility.
Indeed, the Motto and the National Anthem of Pakistan enshrine core values which should form our ethos: May we dwell in unity, faith and discipline in peace and liberty; justice; service; and, in common bond united to build our nation together. So, what does it mean when 75 years after independence we still fail to clearly define our collective national ethos? Why is it that we keep changing the order of the words in our Motto and keep assigning our own interpretations of what the flag represents? We have yet to determine what form of political governance is best for us despite clear guidance of the Quaid and the 1973 Constitution which was unanimously approved.
The Quaid taught us that resources of the country belonged to all; and that one Pakistani was for all and all for one. But where are we today, practicing the philosophy that public resources exist to be plundered by those in authority and with access. Sectarianism and parochialism galore all around, excellence retracting in the face of aggressively spreading mediocrity and a pervading culture of abuse, intolerance, hypocrisy and bigotry in the public space. In today’s Pakistan each one of us claims to be more patriotic than the other and his brand of Islam or democracy to be better than that of others, everyone calling everyone else traitor and thief and following some hideous agenda against the state. If we are ever to have a common national ethos, this has to stop and stop now.
Our curse is our politics, selfish and powerful pressure groups and other stakeholders who have corrupted and polluted what would have been our national ethos and policy priorities. The Constitution is no more sacrosanct and is used as a crucial tool for political re-engineering. What needs fixing in Pakistan is the politics. And it can only be fixed by collective participation of all and not by shutting other players out. The country needs inclusion and not exclusion, political exclusivists practicing divisive politics need to be marginalized if we are ever to develop an identifiable National Ethos leading us to Unity, Faith and Discipline, the golden principles and foundation of a strong.
—The writer is former Ambassador, based in Islamabad.
