Children of Slaves
We love our politics in Pakistan. We love news, we adore conspiracy theories and we are obsessed with a sense of activism. We are all experts in current affairs and incompetent in our respective lines of work.
What good is a doctor who is an expert in international geopolitics but lacks clinical competencies?
The difference between news and science is that science always looks for a conclusion when faced with questions, whereas news in always inconclusive, and owes its survival to the next breaking news item.
The mainstream and social media industries bombard us with information; most of which is of no practical value to us as individuals.
The level of engagement of all information increases with the sense of urgency and anxiety it can create.
The advertising and media industries flourished, mostly based on Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychoanalysis.
Freud’s nephew and public relations expert Edward Bernays after readings his uncle’s basic lectures on human psychology, merged the fields of public relations and psychology.
In the 1920s the media industry figured out the power of psychology to engage and control the masses, without them even knowing it.
The Torches of Freedom campaign, which convinced American women to engage in smoking on a public scale, is a clear proof of how media has always been used to control the minds of the masses.
Mother Aisha (RA) reported: Some people asked the Messenger of Allah (PBUH), about soothsayers.
The Prophet said, “They are upon nothing. ” They said, “O Messenger of Allah, sometimes they speak about things that come true.
” The Prophet said, “Those are the words snatched by the jinn, who whisper it into the ears of their friends and it is mixed with more than one hundred lies. ” (Sòahòi? hò al-Bukha? ri? 6213, Sòahòi? hò Muslim 2228).
I believe the same is true for the media industry today. We can never completely believe what they tell us.
After all these are they the same people who compel our children to consume unhealthy foods, who sexually objectify our women and who exploit our differences.
The great Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, “Every victory is a funeral, when you win a war you celebrate by mourning.
” Whatever has been happening for the past few months on Pakistan’s political front is in poor taste.
The display of toxicity from all sides has been odious and distasteful. We can never truly imagine what actually happens, when these influential people confront each other behind closed doors, to decide our fate.
We might remain nothing but children of slaves, while the powerful prepare their next generation to rule over our children.
Imran Khan is right about the American conspiracy, but the thing is that this conspiracy did not happen overnight.
The consumerist societal structure created by the west has only managed to reshape colonialism and imperialism, into a position of moral high ground that old white men enjoy; by telling the people of color, how to behave.
A recent example of this the mandingo fight between Will Smith and Chris Rock, the only difference now is that the masters do not simply enjoy the spectacle of violence, they enjoy their position of moral policing.
They have the audacity to do that despite the enslavement and apartheid of African nations, after causing the destruction of the Native American people, after polluting the culture of the Indo-Pak subcontinent and after killing millions of Arabs, Persians and Afghans.
Why is the idea of regime change so difficult to comprehend? Our political and administrative structures are nothing but remnants of our colonial past.
Unlike the colonial structure enforced in many African nations; where the masters decided to keep most administrative control to themselves, our colonial masters trained and bribed our own people to keep the brown masses under control.
A clear proof of this is, how our police behaves with the public. After all they have been historically trained to keep a slave nation under check.
Same holds true for the Babus in our bureaucracy, courts, political establishments and armed forces. We have had too many poets, and not enough historians and scientists.
This explains our obsession with fancy and exaggerative words, while on the practical side of things we are empty.
We need more freethinkers and open minds. We need leaders not followers. And if the sheep don’t wake up, it’s time to wake up the other lions.
The writer is Assistant Professor, Public Health, Islamabad Medical and Dental College
