Daily Times

The phobia of self-inferiority is surging due to an obsession over me, myself and I. Even worse is the bubblier self-belief guiding this captivation. Bound to burst, it is not Iqbal’s self, rather an attitude thriving for superiority while demeaning others. It is self-worship. Far from individualism that is collectively beneficial, it is a struggle thrashing the due rights of others. Me, myself and I is limitless egoism. It is communal fiasco preventing collaboration and harbouring estrangement.

From formal meetings to casual conversations, quite often participants indulge in self-praise. Meaningful and result oriented exchanges are rare. Made-up and exaggerated curriculum vitae are unrolled and thrown at the audience expecting endless applause. Terming the self as an ideal and hurling jargon full of conceit at the audience to create followers is common. This produces irrational arguments revolving around egos. Participants argue only for the sake of argument, further intensifying their biases while ignoring logical reasoning. Inconclusive debates are not detrimental, however uncritical support of biases is.

Followers of me, myself and I bury logical sense behind the cover of freedom of speech and form bias-dependent yet self-proclaimed independent opinions. It is common during social media debates and elsewhere that people enter and defend their inclinations with a pre-argument verdict declaring their positions as factual. Instead of rationally assessing events and positions taken by their associates, they dutifully and exhaustively guard their stances. Abundant with praise for that segment of the media voicing their opinions, they merely censure the rest that oppose them. Some people forget their awareness is restricted to what is projected, usually only supported by hearsay evidence. At a responsible viewer and listener’s end, this information must receive critical attention and vetting. Recurrently, alarming news is reduced to being only rumours. Deriving opinions based on the catchy but dodgy phenomenon of ‘sources’ reflects irresponsibility.

Mammoth trust in self-opinions and judgments refrains most people from learning. This attitude is unreceptive of varying opinions and self-selects information conforming to personal biases. Defending one’s stances hardly limits discussions but the absence of critical thinking does hinder innovation. Society then moves on a confined and isolated route. Out of the box thinking gets discouraged. Research and development and think tanks lose their purpose. Their output fails to incorporate various realistic scenarios worthy of attention. Formed on biases and partial information, the resulting national narrative becomes shaky. Furthermore, as decision makers refuse to pay heed to varying opinions and mostly only welcome flattery, their verdicts get compromised. Regardless of immediate outcomes, in the long run, results get skewed in favour of the privileged few and remain disconnected from global postures.

Boasting about ‘contacts’ is routine. Relying on phone calls made to saviours in times of need is preferred under me, myself and I. This need varies from being caught by the police to getting a license made to ganging up for a friend’s fight to availing due public welfare facilities. The shocker is that everyone from a high profile bureaucrat to low profile labourer links to a saviour in the contacts’ chain. Relying on rescuers instead of letting systems develop gets priority and creates innumerable blockades during the process. The solution lies in a simultaneous endeavour to design efficient systems and disconnect links with saviours. Otherwise, those obligatorily or voluntarily delinked from saviours will continue to be exploited at the hands of the linked.

Obtained undeservingly and sometimes forcefully, VIP protocol is considered a fundamental right. Different protocol levels are priced differently however; at every level there exist vacuums for both important and not-so-important VIPs to exploit. The important get a wild card entry based on their power while the not-so-important pour in bucks to obtain this privilege. The ‘system’, on the other hand, is tailor made to nurture and protect me, myself and I. The downside is the emergence of two queues; while the protocol-protected steers through, the other remains stuck forever. The parallel and rampant protocol structure only slows, defects and corrupts the existing system. Instead of invoking this so-called right, these privileged few should instead focus on strengthening the system. Revoking protocols benefits everyone, including advocates of me, myself and I, as the system converges towards efficiency.

Furthermore, pursuing me, myself and I fuels feudalism. The formation mechanism of feudalism is cyclical. In the absence of efficient public service mechanisms, feudal lords rely on their subordinates for executing their desires while juniors in the hierarchy in turn rely on their feudal lords for receiving their share of protocol. As me, myself and I gets obliged, feudalism solidifies roots. While the lords rise to power, the penetrated feudal mindset gets reinforced among their subordinates. As proponents of feudalism gain at the country’s expense, the rest, a vast majority, suffer.

Individual attitudes, resonating from drawing rooms to kiosks, amalgamate to define a national direction. Well-defined rules and their observance are central to developing a globally connected and internally optimal society. Setting guidelines provides an opportunity to maneuver citizens towards achieving their country’s targets. However, serving me, myself and I hampers both the framing and observance of rules. Critically approached constructive discussions with the elimination of by-passing protocols are essential. The solution lies in the integration of self and community, a transformation of me, myself and I into us, ourselves and we.

The writer is a Lord Dahrendorf Scholarship holder and a Pakistani Young Leader for a Comparative Public Policy program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst