How our system fails the invincible many

By Muhammad Ali

Ray Bradbury in his famous novel Fahrenheit 451 through the musings of his fictionalized antagonist Guy Montag asks a potent question ‘who takes it out of you?’. The same question is answered under different words and tonalities by Sadat Hasan Manto when he says, ‘the first murder of an individual is done by the society’. Largely, our mainstream society, media, literature, ethos and pathos of the prevailing social order tell us that individuals are to blame for it all; for the rotten smog filled air, the lack of basic drinking water, decent health facilities, saner narratives, good parks, decent educational institutions, livelihoods that enable the person to at least meet the basic needs, or just to be considered a human being with her needs and requirements met and fulfilled. But we live in a society that has failed so many to an unimaginable extent that it can’t afford to have an honest open audit about the countless miseries it creates on a day-to-day basis. Take a stroll on the streets of Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Quetta, Peshawar or any other part of the country and you would observe walking talking vestiges of our combined failure. The old have no safety nets, the young can’t make needs end, the women and children find no safe spaces from the monsters we have created, and inflation wrecks all possibilities of a brighter saner future for the vast majority barely surviving.

Our society likes to portray the good, shiny, and glittering parts, the veneer that is shown – a cosmetic glossy picture that covers the rotting and bleeding gashes in the shape of a suffering majority. The success stories – the ones who were bound to win, the privileged few – We see them plastered across the media screens, good looking, capable, educated, with filled bellies, skilled and those with a healthy amount of inheritance and references.

I remember when I told a young individual that there is scholarship programs offered by universities, the individual was perplexed, for they were the first in their family to go for higher education and had no idea of how to apply for programs, or what sort of options are available for financial support and scholarships. The individual couldn’t give up their full-time job which they had to keep to barely keep his family afloat on a month-to-month basis.

This is the sad reality we like to brush under the carpet, because our combined failure is so bleak, so raw, and so potent that it is too ugly to put on the screens and to show to the world. But it is there, it is in all the individuals deprived of their humanity by a society that flourishes on human misery and deprivation; it is in the eyes of a child begging on the street, it is in the hopeless faces of countless women earning peanuts to clean the toilets of the babus and maim sahabs, it is in the eyes of all those deprived of  education or skills, it is in the vacancy of hope of all millions of children out of school, it is in the radicalized minds of the monsters we created in the guise of “strategic depth”, it is reflected in the meaningless, bullshit jobs 1 (as anthropologist David Graeber puts it) of those told to send 500 emails or make hundreds of calls each day, begging, lying, conning some white men in far away worlds to buy their services or sell them a phony product, it is in the blistered hands of all those who work the fields, factories, mines, and still go hungry at night or see their loved ones deprived of basic humanity. It is in the tears of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters of all those who have lost loved ones to extremism of one form or the other. We collectively have failed many a soul and the way things are, I don’t see any changes happening anytime soon.

I remember when I was young, there was no guidance, no wisdom to absorb, no path to tread on. Like all those born in not so affluent families, I had to find my own path in a society that was facing Martial Law, terrorism, conflicts, radicalism, a broken education and health system, a war of narratives. I remember looking at the previous generation and wondering how badly have they failed us. And now, as I look at the ones next in line, I feel the gravity and weight of how we have failed them. We have given them nothing and robbed them of their birth right to freedoms that should be a given. Crumbling economies, curtails on all kinds of flights of thoughts imaginable, an exceedingly stifling environment that is bent on removing what little freedoms we had.

In hushed tones and behind closed doors the youth talk about how they’re scared of voicing their opinion or asking questions for the fear of being lynched or accused of blasphemy. Students able to afford to go to the many poor institutes that provide scant services at best are stifled to become vacant vessels of obedience, the ones that do speak up, voice their opinions, or to the dismay of the powers that be, pick up politics, are suppressed by the right wing thugs propped up in every campus by the establishment or silenced by the administration of these institutions.

Furthermore, the looming threat of a blasphemy accusation stifles all those expressing their voices. Given the circumstances, especially the recent few months – it’s not an unfounded fear. The dreams of those who can afford it are to ‘escape’ Pakistan, anyone with sufficient intelligence or awareness considers herself a prisoner of conscience, those unaware, well, they’re even more miserable. One wonders, if the amount of taxes our generation and the future ones pay is worth the services we get? Isn’t society supposed to be in equilibrium? Our rulers want to gag any dissent, criticism while painting a rosy picture of how things are. You are not supposed to even voice your concerns or talk about how public spaces, work environments are absolutely unsafe with rampant harassment.

If a few youthful individuals sit together in a university campus, the whole state apparatus seems to lose their mind, internet sites are blocked, our livelihoods are snatched by the disruptions of gig sites, and old, grumpy, gloomy policy makers and ‘rulers’ sit on their comfy sofas, in air-conditioned halls, and create thick documents, with moronic assumptions and detached understanding of the most common issues. Or sit at cozy high teas given by international donor organizations that are filled with drawing room revolutionaries lecturing on how radicalism is a problem. If you treat someone inhumanly, you can’t complain when they start acting inhumane. And given the situation, the collective frustration that is being expressed by the students in campuses throughout the country is scaring and shaking the corridors of power and rightly so. They have suppressed and gagged us for far too long. The reverberations of a coming dawn can be felt in the shape of chaotic expressions. Yes, they will fall for charlatans, charismatic demigods, for radicalism, they will express their anger, misery, failures, and the lost dreams with violence.

But I have utmost faith in them. The old lot fears them, criticizes their every move, and suppresses them with the PETA’s and all the absurd laws and regulations. They want to tell us who to criticize, in what way, in which fashion, and who to follow, who to like, who to dislike, what clothes are appropriate, who is chaste and divine, and us, our sisters and brothers, the sweat drenched so-called illiterate workers, are creatures of lesser value. They want to dumb us down and plaster stupidity all around us with their stooges. They want to turn us against each other, spreading their filthy propaganda, and Double Thinks and absurd conspiracy theories. They want to suppress dissent by fear, they want to take away our art, our expression, and our emotions. They want to tell us that we don’t have rights; that they can shred our trees for profit, poison our wells on the behest of international conglomerates, land mafias, and desecrate our heroes, cultures and languages. But rest assured the youth is keeping score, and they are learning, and they’ve started to learn fast.

It is the duty of those sincere to the people, to the layman, to go to them, to show them a path of collectivism, of creating safer spaces and better worlds where all can have their needs met, without conditions, without discrimination, where none are declared person non-grata, where no individual is failed by the system. The youth is oozing with the potential, and it is about time that they politicize, organize and reject all those that do not speak of their wills, wishes, wants and needs.

1. David Graeber. (2018) “Bullshit Jobs.” Simon & Schuster. 

Muhammad Ali uses various mediums, including music and writing, to articulate his thoughts.