I look at the world around me and question the motives of people on acting a certain way under certain circumstances. Bewildered I try to rationalize it. Hypocrisy I ask? Corruption? Perhaps my perceptions are guided through my beliefs and values which according to a universal code can never be uniform. After all,this what the ethical dilemma is all about.
I guess we are just offspring’s of our society. We operate under pressures which we have to succumb to. Our values are guided by societal norms, which we have to abide by.We are members of the Social Contract being born free but everywhere in chains.
Do I make sense?Let me do the honors of knocking some sense into the otherwise confused comfort zone of yours. We have always lived in a state of confusion. A state which undeniably has been imposed on us by none other than ‘us’ and if there is anybody to be blamed for it, it’s‘us’. We complicate our lives, let our possessions define us and to make it worse, we believe the capitalists when they convince us that we are what we consume. Now the question is that are we that worthless that we need material support to prove our worth? The British left the subcontinent but unfortunately left behind a nation of highly confused people who did not know who they were because they really had no idea of what their history was. Tampered, manipulated or fabricated or whatever our history is, but did we ever make an effort to know what the truth was? I don’t think so, however, what we did was that on an individual basis we tried to recreate our identity on the basis of an amalgamation of influences, and made a complete mess of it. Hence, despite claiming to be free what we didn’t realize is that we are still followers, trying to live the European/American/Indian dream in a nation which claims to be the Islamic republic of Pakistan. Contradiction right? This is exactly where the problem lies, beautifully explained in the following words by Iqbal:-
Am I confused myself? Oh yes I am. Miracles are what we are waiting for with our hands tightly folded. So why not do ourselves a favor by asking the question of who we really are and what we really want from our lives. We might not have an answer right now, but maybe we can figure out something or at least be well informed,which I believe is better than ignorance. So let’s steal some time from our busy lives to remove the superfluous, to keep things a bit simpler, a bit realistic, and a bit sensible. Let’s take some time out for ourselves to think who we really are and what we want from our lives