Daily Times

A professional blogger in a section of the English Press of Pakistan has roundly castigated the Pakistani society “for lacking honesty and transparency, maintaining that we are addicted to lying as an automatic reflex action.” This according to her is because “Pakistanis are afraid of facing the truth because unravelling truth requires bravery and hard work which the Pakistanis being a cowardly nation lack.” She adds that such tendencies may be seen in other nations as well, but “the Pakistanis indulge them and instead of striving to overcome them, blame others,” even though they should equally share the blame. In her spree to anathematise the entire society, she adds, “Any person who says, ‘Not me, I’m honest’ is the biggest liar of all.” The litany of her self-condemnation of the entire society of Pakistan is so sweeping that I cannot even summarise it in this brief space.

There is no denying the fact that what she says about Pakistan society contains a good amount of truth (though not the whole truth), yet the way she singles out Pakistan as the only nation on earth suffering from this “sickness” can only be termed as cruel, lop-sided and unjust. Even on issues like this, it looks odious to compare Pakistan (ranking 164th in the world for its investments in education and health) with any country in the Western Block, least to speak of the US. Writing howsoever passionately would not avail the writer if it only aims at creating a feeling of remorse, contrition, and guilt in the minds of the readers without any positive insinuation about how to make amends to improve the situation. It is not sufficient to tell the people that they are wrong unless they are also told what has brought them to their present fate and what steps are needed to improve their situation. Rather than tarring the entire nation with the same brush, the issues require a bit of introspection and research.

Let us first understand what a society is. It is wrongly assumed that society is a homogeneous whole. A society is a diverse entity. It is made up of all of us but the character of society is not uniform. This diversity means that different sub-groups within society have different needs, wants, and have experiences that are different from one another. Thus, when a sub-group blames society for something, it is because that group believes it is being treated unfairly by the rest of the system.

Preaching anything that we do not practice is the height of deception, a crime against humanity.

Society is the fundamental spiritual structure of life. It is not a crowd. It is a community with a purpose and an authority to guide individuals to serve the purpose of that society. Generally, society is classified into two classes of people. The privileged class of rulers and the deprived class of ruled. Their mutual mistrust and jealousies often result in a blame game which is harmful to society as a whole.

The main thrust of the argument of the blogger is that quite often the individuals blame society by extricating their role in the mess which is thus created. A self-blame is often a symptom of anxiety which blunts his faculty of thinking. Blaming starts when the blamer takes their attention off the actual problem and blames those who are not at fault. Blaming others for your misfortunes is an easy way to ‘outsource unwanted responsibility’. People tend to play the blame game when they can’t see a better solution to their problem or can’t handle a distressing situation.

In such situations, society must be told to stop blaming and strive hard to make the change happen. And when one decides to blame “society,” one must realise that one is blaming himself and not some abstraction used as a scapegoat for our issues for which we are all collectively responsible. All beginnings should be made by practising what we preach. Preaching anything that we do not practice is the height of deception, a crime against humanity for which we are the chief victims.

On the same analogy, hating society is a kind of self-blame that rebounds back to the blamer with double ferocity. A study of various cognitive models reveals that man becomes a victim of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) by nursing a bias to blame oneself for failure in a global way resulting in excessive self-blaming emotions, decreased self-worth, hopelessness and depressed mood.

Thus self-blame is a symptom of anxiety. People suffering from this disorder often struggle with faulty thinking. Blaming occurs when the person takes their attention off the actual problem and blames those who are not at fault. People who experience frequent panic attacks may get so upset with themselves that they “lose control” over their feelings.

The writer is a former member of the Provincial Civil Service, and an author of Moments in Silence.