Our Culture, What’s gone wrong?
By Engr. K. Shahzad • Aug 31st, 2010 • Category: Worth A Second Look • 11 CommentsI would have ignore it if Sialkot incidence stand alone in the current history of Pakistan but unfortunately it’s the cluster; killing of Pakistani’s in a bus on Punjabi ethnic basis, target killing in Karachi on regional politics basis, evacuation of non-Balouchi settlers in Quetta and if we go back in time burning a suspect thief alive in Karachi, the list goes on and on.
It’s not the mob response only; intolerance has creep into the society from individual to collective level. It might be labeled as religious intolerance (Self righteous mullahs), political intolerance (Jiala culture), ethnic intolerance, lingual intolerance and ideological intolerance, but the basic is lack of atmosphere to encourage the plurality of views.
It’s not intolerance only, its hatred for others. And the circle of others is getting bigger and bigger every day. If we sit back and analyze the situation with cool, clear mind, we will trace the roots. It’s the culture; the collective mind set, the informal education, the unconscious method of living, is at the heart of our instant responses to the incidents.
Normally most of the people won’t do lot of calculation when it comes to momentary decisions. These decisions are like blinking of eye. The everyday chatter, the impulsive actions and their stimulated responses, these all are programmed into the individual through collective will, wisdom and direction of the society. For example, with whom you will be sided when it comes to debate, with member of your family and other, with member of your sect or other, with member of your cast and other etc., unfortunately the decisions are obvious in most of the cases. The relations win the battle against logic, sanity and justice most of the time. To add the misery, increasing selfishness narrowed down the sphere of relations, family size got smaller, sect increased and so does the geographical divisions. Hence the number of hostile groups increased and so does their hostility.
The stereotypes added lot of insane things into the society like in accident of bicycle to motorcycle, motorcycle to car, the motorcycle and car owner respectively would be held responsible, without analyzing the matter on facts. On the same token, the police is always wrong, clerks always take bribes, and government is responsible for everything.
The culture of torture, manhandling and beating is not the trait of police only; the domestic house hold issues between husband and wife, coming to discipline children at home and school alike, the training of workers at workshops, settling issues in the streets and campuses, political rallies etc. hardly any sphere of life left from this aggressive behavior of our society. Many people use the word of emotion to label this; however, we should have to call its correct name the insanity.
The case of protecting honor doesn’t reflect only in honor killing; also deprive education and working opportunity to discriminated gender. Honor comes in the way to help in trivial house hold work for men, to do odd job for literate, to spend less on ceremonies and worse of all not to take revenge by own hands.
Education and awareness blessed mankind to look things beyond black and white, the zillions of gray shades between pure black and pure white, however, major chunk of our society is far from this education. We want to see things in totality, total good or total bad. Our leader is totally good in everything; your leader is totally bad. Musharaf regime was only evil; Nawaz Sharif government was far from any mistakes. The searching of ideals in figures, events, regimes lead to the extreme views. Why not to praise the good aspects of individuals, events, governments and curse bad ones. But we still have to develop this processing capacity.
The own processing capacity and not own the ready views on news as most of us do. Just to watch the talk show and side with the views of TV anchor person. It’s good to get news from media but to get instant views and form it one’s own opinion is not comprehendible in mature society.
Mixing rumors with facts and to base not only the opinion but also the action on the rumor based facts is another curse. The rumors propagation is so fast that if you send sms to 10 people, its most likely that you will get your rerouted forwarded sms back in less than a day
It’s a high time to revisit our culture rationally by promoting; love on hatred, pluralistic views on intolerance, rationality on stereotypes, facts on rumors, pardon on revenge, discipline by convincing on discipline by beating, merit on blind faithfulness to blood relations, real honor on so called traditional honor.
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I am lost. It’s quite abstruse to get your mindset. What exactly are you enounciate. You began with high lightening all the atrocious activities that have been taken place on our mother land then swiftly went on to our own perception and of course the malefic media and so ends up on a typical spread love not hate note.
Embodiment of perplexity I must say.
Our culture has been hijacked by Mullah’s and religious extremists who wanted us to become mindless zombies. Since we resisted, they have injected elements in us which are trying to destabilize and stop the liberal minds of ours. We must not let them take our right to think away from us.
Our culture and the people of Pakistan have become numb to aggression and gradually this increases. It is important that we help each other with tolerance and affection so that the terrorist loose in their goal of making our societies horrific.
People make the culture. Need of hour is to be united and promote secular and open minded ideas wherever possible so we can get out of this 18th century mindset.
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You are right, I could have been much clear and precise.
All I am saying is that the latest brutalities are the outcomes of sick culture. Where culture set the standard procedures of analysis, thought and action. It works like second instinct, normally people act as per “cultural dictates” without questioning its sanity.
If culture is healthy, it automatically results into lot of good things unconsciously by the society. And if if it sick then……….
This bring us to cure, revisiting culture and cultural driven courses of actions.
The author has rightly pointed out that it’s high time to revisit our lost traditions and cultural values, because the intolerance is at an all time high. Perhaps there are multiple reasons behind it, with exploitation of the religion being the top most reason.
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Shehzad .. Thanks for taking it in a positive spirit. But now I feel it was only me who felt this way. As you other readers dont even seem to notice that.
Anyhow… looking forward to read more articles from you.
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Thanks for coming by and comments.
I hope one day we will build a consensus toward better culture and act upon. It would be like sowing the seeds, the fruits of which will be reaped by our generation to come.
Surely, we face a culture that has been manipulated by the mullah to their benefits or otherwise they would be broke and well out of job.
One day we will build a consensus to stand against militancy and fight the atrocities of Taliban and lascar-e-jhangvi. That will be the day of freedom from terrorist.
Mr Shehzad, a great effort of a concerned mind. Congrats