Shifting glory patterns
People have been wearing glorious caps on account of their deeds of bravery and valour through traditional means like wars and battles, but the age of IT and the Internet have introduced new modes of glory.
Glorious life, with its celebrations and socio-political dividends, has been the dream and vision of every individual for ages.
Men have been ambitious enough to put their energy and time into achieving their targets of glorious life.
The feudals and warlords of the past time are now no more capable of delivering their powerful message for glory.
Now, the patterns of glory depend more on games, sports, making and selling products, and performing deeds of scientific progress benefitting mankind.
That’s why we see Maradona, Steve Jobs, Mark Zakarburg, Madona, Elon Musk, and Einstein.
The revolution has eliminated the glorious men of the past who came out in the limelight after the wars and battles.
The youth of the day look towards the 21st century glorious men of the age to follow and be part of the life designed by them.
Traditional patterns of glory are shunned and discarded. The focus is humanity, which has also manifested the shift in the patterns of glory.
The more a nation has such glorious men, the more cultured and advanced in age it becomes.
These people have come a long way to become the symbol of glory and civilization of any nation.
The most significant area of human life, the cyber world, is now shining with many glorious people, for example, Arfa Kareem from Pakistan and many others, because of their talent in the cyber world.
These people earned the glory everyone would wish for and aspire to win.
The cyber world has given birth to social media like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, YouTube and many platforms are in the making.
These platforms have made the life of many people glorious when they are followed by millions of people who recognize their talent and would love to learn from them.
This may seem odd, but this is the hyper reality of life in a postmodern age where even a copy of life would be as welcome and glorious as in real life.
Another area of making the glory a part of their life is the socio-financial services where the person has earned much repute and fame and helped alleviate the sufferings of poverty by empowering the people through financial support and provision of skills.
Mohammad Yunas at the international level and in Pakistan, another person Dr Saqib Amajd is the shining star of such services.
They have made the lives of so many worth living. These people provided a network of small loans to develop small businesses.
As a result, many people are standing on their own feet rather than becoming begging bowls.
Their contribution is more beneficial than a person who killed so many and became the winner of glory.
The same world of electronics has given birth to glorious men like Tariq Aziz, who spread awareness and humour and helped many find their goals in life.
The people like Tariq Aziz, and Moeen Akhtar, have claimed glorious positions in their professions.
The same has been the case with the highly qualified teachers and writers who not only produced knowledge and inculcated it in the students’ minds but also became helpful to society in many other fields.
Such men became the agents of change for positive upward mobility. Sports and games have earned much glory for many athletes, players and managers.
Many of these have turned into politicians and other professionals and have made glorious positions for them.
Now people wait and run behind such glorious men more than any other king or queen. Wherever these glorious men come to play, people wait for them and spend vast amounts of money on seeing them playing.
If some country is given the host status for sports, it becomes one of the few countries where people would love to flock together from around the globe, and all the people would love to see and appreciate their beloved glorious people.
This magnificence is not achieved through bullets, ballots, or any other force but through games and sports, which are very healthy activities.
Many other glorious men can be found in multiple fields of life. This age has created demand and amount of such glorious men scaling the heights of glory with speed, who would sustain and help others become so.
Now the glory is not being followed by 20 staff cars and many other men as escorts, but the glory is the love created among the fans which can be millions in numbers.
This calls for promoting the message of a shift in recognition and inviting people from all walks of life to participate and engage in the glorious modern patterns so that we can shed away the traditional myths in this regard.
—The writer is a Professor of English at Emerson University, Multan, and has a vast international exposure.
