Reality Check
By Usman
Source
I just read the Friday times just now, and as always I am deeply disturbed. Known to be the upper end weekly, it lacks all charisma and originality to be taken seriously, or to even look forward to. Yet it boasts a turnover to envy.
It makes one wonder how our society is progressing. Is it right to challenge all existing ideas and accepting every contemporary argument put up without challenging it for the sake of letting everyone be ?
Considering it a voice of the upper class globally mobile well educated Pakistanis, one must strive for answers of some very serious questions. How cool is it really to be motivated by the cable channel and a fake picture of west and mold our lives and values accordingly? Does being pretty and having a bountiful career as far as men are concerned give one a regular column with pictures of her children or is it just too much “sex and the city”?
Does the glamorization of a working woman help the cause of social equivalence giving women more voice or is it just being drowned among the corporate advertisements inspiring all teenage girls to be Britney Spears? Is home making, a job so degrading that it is looked down upon by all the pseudo feminist intellectuals?
Is it O.K. to accept deformities among the society like homosexuality and pampering them to flourish when it works pretty much on the same principle as cancer? Why would one fight so valiantly against mutant cells formed in ones body without their own consent yet accept those in society? Why should one tolerate which one does not accept? Tolerance is the first step towards acceptance. This is a small step for the perverted but a major issue for a person to stop and think where we are heading. Does accepting homosexuality now not pave way for all others with twisted tastes in choosing there mates rise within a few years and ask for similar rights? Is it ok to sit back and let ‘everyone be’ if in the bigger picture it is destroying the fragments of your society?
Is it so that the whole idea of liberalism so shaky that to gain acceptance it would buy it in form of not questioning?
Is it ok to legalize abortion now and make room for child killing in future for the sake of a better life? What better life? Barring the exceptions, legalization of abortion laws with an argument that most of the pregnant women opting for abortion are not mentally capable as yet to raise a child points towards a general hypocrisy that exists among their society. Not to mention ignoring the faults among their system and paving ways which makes it easier for there people not to take responsibility of their actions. Is it really not a move towards the de-civilization of the mankind?
We do have way too many questions but not too many answers. We do know however that the move towards taking sides between liberalism and fundamentalism is speeding up. The groups are moving into a clash of beliefs which may not always pave way for a more balanced thinking.
We believe we feel the most from what we were born with. We still cherish the ghazals of Faiz and Ghalib and Iqbal and Parveen Shakir and all those who gave us the wonderful songs of wisdom. Contemporary as they maybe, the held rational which was one could relate to. A common sense and wisdom which was not just based on the theories of Nietzsche but there own interactions with life.
Our life!!
And it is more fertile than the ones we look up on!! We as a nation are not proud of our inheritance and are becoming more and more of the followers. Surely there are shortcomings in our society. But we cannot just adopt our ideals from some TV channels or the grumpy ex-pats who complain abut everything without being involved enough in it to see the other side of the coin. We must strive now to not become a generation in doubt of our inheritance as that would be the real failure of our race.
There is a lot more that can be changed without borrowing the life style from ‘FRIENDS’. Pop culture as we see today has a lot of associated evils to its backdrop. The isolation of the youth from their families, ideals and the normalization of a single parent household, not to forget the growing rate of sexually transmitted diseases, drug culture and an over all decline in the morality and wide spread clinical depression are among them.
We are once more moving into the traps to be desi goras. But we must understand that this is all we could be. A Baboon as they call it. Our western influenced pop and rock culture is doing nothing more than making baboons who would never be accepted yet wish they were. Ever heard a story of the crow who wished to be a swan? - Kawwa chala Hans kee chaal - apnee chaal bhee bhool gaya - The day is not too far away when Pakistan would be caught between a civil war of confused desi babus with no identity and war hungry extremist religions factions.
It is about time we started taking pride in our own culture. It is not very impressive to copy a redneck town’s sense of fashion and choreograph it in a fashion show. There is a lot more to explore among our attic if we would ever give it a chance. We must understand who we are before rejecting it.
This issue is dedicated to all those who did just that.
The famous folk and ghazal singers of Pakistan; The people we grew up listening to and now would dare not because it is not acceptable among their peers.
The writers of the old who identified the need to progress, not just borrow, but improve upon our faults so we could evolve.
They had in them the soul and emotion we could feel much deeper…Our very own magic…Lets give ourselves just one more chance.
A global village with no identities is a farce. It has to be a place where cultures meet and interact and create something greater. Those who move out too quickly out of there own skins could be left with nothing to contribute
It’s time for the reality check.