Daily Times

We live in a country where a physicist hogs sociopolitical issues, medical doctors host talk shows, and the army lectures on economy. Our dictators were democratic, politicians are dictators, journalists become administrators, and teachers deal in property. Why and how long do we plan to remain imprisoned in this gridlock of national contradictions and live fake narratives?

Life can be full of contradictions. We try to mould it into either following our dreams or adjust with the society’s expectations. Contraction itself may not be a bad thing because it is one of the ways we affirm ultimate liberty. However, if we know the truth but tell carefully constructed lies and ditch morality while laying claim to it, the contradictions cannot be creative. They are akin to a delinquent seeking attention; divergence for the sake of divergence can only be a futile exercise.

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was disqualified after months of legal wrangling in the Supreme Court where the most expensive lawyers represented him at public expense. He is now going round asking why he was sacked. It seems either his lawyers did a bad job or it is difficult to get a man to understand something, if his salary depends on not understanding it.

We contain contradictory forces of pain and pleasure, and darkness and light while possessing conflicting and harmonising thoughts and feelings. As human beings, we reflect within an unlimited reservoir of self and choose the path to glory or the boulevard of mediocrity. Sometimes, ideologies also melt into rigid doctrines and lay claim to exclusive possession of the truth.

The society has come to a point where the truth troubles people. This journey started with fake claims and fake identities in 1947 and, under the patronage of the former PM and his ilk, has over the years brought with it fake elections, fake medicines and fake degrees

One should be extremely sensitive to the difference between literacy and ideology. The former PM has suddenly discovered, after being disqualified, that he has become ideological. We were digesting this revelation when his talented nephew alleged that he has ideological differences with his female cousin. I am sure they have no clue what their ideology is or should be. To spare the blushes of the gods of conservatism, they very simply need to know (and practice) the ideals of individual liberty, personal responsibility, and merit. They also need to comprehend that we are governed not by armies and police but by ideas.

We cry wolf all the time. We blame India, Israel, the US and previously accused the USSR of causing all our problems. There is a real danger that the wolf is going to eat us now; we are that wolf. Through a profound lack of appreciation of all that is wicked within us and being devoid of a sincere willingness to follow global trends, we have callously written off the value of our own life. By engaging in self-destructive behaviours for short-term gains, we have become a pawn in our own game. In this journey of ignorance, corruption, superficiality and hypocrisy, the culture promoted by former PM and others since 1980s, we got lost.

The society has since become so fake that the truth actually troubles people. It had started with the fake claims and the fake identities in 1947 and, under the patronage of the former PM and the ilk, has resulted in fake elections, fake medicines, fake degrees and more recently fake universities. The truth is hidden behind a wall of lies; each lie was another brick in the wall until we stopped seeing the truth. For example, Shaheen Air had a crash in 2015 resulting in several lives lost. The inquiry found that the pilot was drunk, and had made several mistakes — he also had a fake degree. But the airline and its owners went scot-free. One of the owners is none other than our current PM — (sorry) fake PM (because he proclaims that the real PM is the disqualified PM). We are now the passengers in his new plane (called Pakistan).

A few years ago, I was stopped by a desperate looking middle-aged man in the Chief Minister’s Secretariat. He was looking for any grey-haired man he could discuss his problem with. The issue he said was that the young officers seemed to know everything; it was one thing to be clever and another to be wise. I agreed with him that the superficial couldn’t discover the deep, because both live at different levels. We are churning out clones in all walks of life that can just about process information but are not reflective and able to give consideration to the information that matters most. The B-teams have always prevailed in the country.

We have become strangers in our own lives. Even in these times, undergoing national change to a desired self is difficult but not impossible. The heroes are not always the people who do things; they can be those pointing things. We need to start by celebrating the meritorious instead of the victorious. The defence measures of a paranoid country should not turn out to be the agents of its self-destruction. We also need a paradigm shift — an equilibrium between the Islam of truth and Islam as an identity. Heaven and hell may be searched in the present first. If we manage to love, and be fair and honest without expectations, calculations, and negotiations, we are in heaven. When we fight or hate, hell is upon us.

The writer is a Consultant Psychiatrist and Visiting Professor based in London. He tweets @AamerSarfraz

Published in Daily Times, October 24^th 2017.