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As a rustic, we’re teetering on the precipice of financial, political, and social catastrophe. And but, the military-industrial advanced continues to thrive, elite seize stays elusive, and the juggernaut of divisive politics continues to trigger fissures in our cultural zeitgeist. A colossal quantity of black cash — Pakistan’s illegitimate parallel financial system — stays unseen, unreported and untaxed. Whether or not we’re a police officer or a choose, a petty officer or a normal, a constructing contractor or a manufacturing facility proprietor, we proceed to lie, cheat and defraud others and our nation on our option to attaining our objectives. Our financial system and our morality each are on the cusp of default. As a society, we can’t stoop decrease.
If there’s one trait that defines political management like none different, it’s narcissism. In our frenzied political panorama, knocking on the door of the Supreme Court docket has develop into an obsessive-compulsive ritual. If our flesh pressers don’t get what they need, they’re fast to strategy the best bench. No matter which occasion they belong to, if the judges rule of their favour, they’re hailed as sincere and neutral; if the judgements go towards them, the identical judges are deemed as partial and biased.
On July 22, a letter was waved as soon as once more, this time within the chamber of the Punjab Meeting. This time, it was the Hamza-Elahi face-off. We had been again to watching tv information exhibits the place uncouth tirades had been interrupted by much more uncouth tirades hurled by so-called political pundits. However right here is the gist of the issue: authorized discussions on the constitutionality of a matter are enlightening, they’re a factor of magnificence; however when polluted by partisanship, these identical discussions lose their mental worth.
Why are politicians so obsessive about hanging on to energy? The reply lies within the query itself: energy. And this brings me to the facility paradox which merely implies that we act with empathy and modesty at first however shortly flip to coercion, manipulation and exploitation as quickly as we purchase energy. Whether or not we’re company executives or CEOs, monarchs or political leaders, and even patriarchs in a patriarchal society, the facility paradox applies to all of us. Inherent inside us is a proclivity for pathological habit to energy, vainness and self-importance.
Is greed a precursor to the facility paradox? Is greed the driving pressure for fulfillment? Gordon Grekko, a personality performed by Michael Douglas within the film Wall Avenue, places it bluntly when he says, “the purpose is women and gents that greed is, for lack of a greater phrase, good.” The very fact stays that we’re rats in a rat race. Greed feeds our egos. Greed additionally divides us between the haves and the have-nots, between the exploiters and the exploited. Karl Marx was prophetic about our destiny beneath capitalism: “Cash is the common, self-constituted worth of all issues. It has due to this fact robbed the entire world, human in addition to pure, of its personal values.”
Out of hope or despair, we observe political leaders solely to be ushered to the innermost circle of hell. On the one hand, we have now political clans that remind us of the Sicilian mafia, the Cosa Nostra. However, we have now a self-aggrandising braggart who shares a passing resemblance with Mussolini. We collect in hundreds and take heed to them ship inspiring speeches similar to Hitler did a few hundred years in the past or Donald Trump extra not too long ago. They promise to avoid wasting our nation, to revive our misplaced glory, our greatness and excellence, whereas they make secret offers behind closed doorways within the lifeless of the evening.
In Botan Doro, a chilling ghost story, a good-looking Japanese samurai falls in love with a lovely lady carrying a lantern who visits his city each evening however disappears earlier than daybreak. Smitten together with her appeal, he chases her down. They start to spend the nights collectively. One early morning, the samurai’s nosy neighbour sneaks into his home and finds him lifeless in his room together with his physique locked in a decent embrace with a skeleton. The girl was nothing greater than a ghost, a seductress.
I’m wondering if we’re all chasing a ghost.
Revealed in The Specific Tribune, July 28th, 2022.
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