Pakistan, a spiritual crisis
This has been a thought that’s been on my mind for sometime now. When I meet people of Pakistan here and abroad, I find them to be some of the smartest and hardworking people in the world. When I visit forums where solutions to Pakistan’s problems are being considered, it turns out the solutions are not challenging or intellectual. They just need basic realignment.
Now why does this realignment not happen? Quite often, when we think about this we would think of institutional structures and turf wars of various different institutions that prevents us from making these realignments.
This is true, however, once we go one step deeper, we realize that the deeper issue is a lack of will from the people who have the power to make these structural changes. Now one could put all the blame upon these people in positions of power and call it a day. Pakistan is in a crooked state because of the elite especially the super-elite who control power and resources.
But, I don’t think it’s as simple as that. The rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak, are cut from pretty much the same cloth. Given a chance maybe 8 out of 10 people in our country would choose to do something convenient for themselves over doing a simple thing such as following the law. A good demonstration of this is when we drive cars on the road. How often have you seen the rich and the poor go the wrong way on the road when the road is blocked. Or can you say that the rich or the poor don’t break traffic signals. We are all united under this banner of not giving a damn about the social contract.
Hence, I propose our problem is much deeper. Our country and our people are suffering from a spiritual crisis. We can no longer tell right from wrong. And even if we can tell right from wrong, we as a majority don’t have the capacity to stand with the right and keep wrong at bay. Before we do it at a mass level, it first starts within us. If our capacity to do what’s right doesn’t flourish within us then it’s unlikely for us to come together as a group to fight the good fight. At best what we could do as a group is to be a mob and mobs don’t bring revolutions, mobs bring anarchy and mob justice.
The only way out for our people is spiritual rejuvenation. We need a resurgence of people like Allama Iqbal, we need writers and artists, we need philosophers and religious scholars to pull us out of the moral deprivation that we suffer from for us to have a chance to pull us out of the quagmire we sit in.
What do you do at an individual; well continue living a good life. At an individual level, it’s upon each one of us to do what is right and not what is easy. If enough people just focus on doing this the rest just takes care of itself. Too often we try to fix everything around us, things that we do not have control over even. But we refuse to take care of the one thing we have control over, our actions and choices.
