Human society is largely based on social values such as being polite and friendly towards the elderly and children, speaking the truth, and respecting relationships. These core values have existed in almost every society at every age of human experience at this earthly home, be it the age of the Renaissance, the Romantic age, modern or post-modern age. However, during the modern and postmodern eras, these values have been under stress and consequently must fight back for their survival.
The wars of massive scale and conquests caused destruction and damaged long-time established values of life, for example, following moral and ethical codes for the civic success of life took a negative obstructive turn causing further frustration and anger. People started to look for a solution to their frustration and confusion. They did not find a collective solution and everyone found his, mostly destructive, way of finding a cure for mental pressures. Postmodernism created further pressure when it amalgamated almost everything and the words of philosophers, life was more a copy of the copy rather than being original. It too treated the age of old values of humanity as redundant and even obsolete and advocated a valueless way of life.
These core moral and ethical values must survive because, in the absence of these, the social set-up remains constantly at odds because of corruption, dishonesty, cheating, artificiality and absence of genuine relationships. People remain fearful and distrustful of each other. The human love for doing good and noble deeds disappears and it is instead supplanted by hate, dislike, and prejudice. Society seems like a scattered fabric instead of an integrated whole. Social evils begin to spread in the absence of any conscience and the social set-up must exert more energy and time to keep them under control. The environment of apathy and disinterestedness develops further, and human beings refuse to share the suffering of their fellows.
In a country like Pakistan, the casualties of social values are responsible for the rampant moral bankruptcy. We are the best model of postmodern society which has taken more of the unhealthy side of postmodernism and has ignored the positive aspects. Consequently, neither religious nor social pressure has ever found a cure for our misdeeds. It has allowed evils like hoarding, undue profiteering, nepotism, favouritism, cheating and malpractice of all and every kind. It has further created demigods, big and small, who attempt to grab and manipulate power and resources for their personal benefit. Class consciousness and class divide become a norm and cause divides in the society.
This situation in Pakistan calls for a quick fix because once the ruin of social values is embedded deep, it becomes hard to revive the society. People are venting out their anger as and when they wish to even at the slightest provocation without regard to any socio-moral codes. Just a cursory look at the social media account can show the value of bankruptcy among its users. Very blatantly and brazenly, abusive language is employed to undermine the ones who are not part of the game. Once a user uses abusive language, a chain reaction begins, repeating itself and causing a mountain of abusive words. The political intelligentsia is equally responsible for this because they instead of curbing this tendency helped flame the environment for their petty gains and political glory.
The value system and discussion on it are of vital nature because of the age we currently are juxtaposed with. For example, the 1940s witnessed war, death, bloodshed and destruction when colonialism was taking its last breath. This influenced literature and values all around the globe. The war literature itself contributed to creating postcolonial and postmodern literature and social values. Since the inception of postcolonial values, postmodern values have overlapped each other and have contributed further to making a new set of the value system which put a multidimensional strain on the indigenous value system. But most of the postcolonial values were related to the othering of the other and postmodernism demanded more from the third world and other societies to strive to survive in this system. So, a lot of values were destroyed in the name of modern and postmodernism meaning that the socio-moral values are already facing challenges for their survival which has put multifaceted damage to the social setup in the third world countries. This calls for attention to the preservation of the same in Pakistan, at least that of the core values.
Consequently, we are the socio-moral collapse of our social set which is stressing for reforms to cure the situation. The education set-up must come forward and inculcate social and moral values among the children. All responsible at the helm of affairs must reflect the value system in their walk and talk. Besides, dramatization through written words, the revival and popularity of these social values must be ensured. Alongside this, we must run a system of reward and punishment to discipline human behaviour even better. If this is done, almost half of the socio-political crimes would die out and we may be able to establish an egalitarian society.
—The writer is a Professor of English at Emerson University, Multan, and has a vast international exposure.
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