Rafia Zakaria: New Year - Dark Thoughts
The philosopher Thomas Hobbes describes man’s original state of nature as a state of complete conflict or anarchy. This state of nature is a point of existence prior to the social contract, prior to the construction of the state that imposes order and reduces conflict. Hobbes says: “that the state of men without civil society (the state of nature) is nothing but a war of all against all; and in that war, all have a right to all things.”
Hobbes’s extrapolations are part of a treatise on political philosophy, a necessary theoretical step to arrive at the necessity of proving philosophically the ubiquity of the state and its power in mediating what would otherwise be a state of constant conflict devoid of security and bereft of certainty.
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The state of anarchy, the constant and unwavering realisation of humanity being stripped to the state where persecution of another is not only warranted but required has taken an incredible moral toll on Pakistanis. When a car left unlocked is a car foregone, where walking out alone even on one’s own street is unthinkable, where a child picked up late from school is an invitation to kidnappers, where surgery must be carried out under a naked light bulb and women can bought at the market, the very concept of normalcy is skewed beyond recognition.
Trapped thus in a contradictory web of denial and self-hatred engendered by the country’s lapse into brute survivalism, Pakistanis lapse schizophrenically either into the heights of bravado or the depths of despair. Survival is a tricky commodity, lending itself into prudish rationalisations that paint mere existence itself as a victory against odds, yet at the same time defining the very minimum of possible achievement.
Much has been said in recent days about the need for national soul searching, for a stance against extremism and a disavowal of terror. Yet all of these words fall on ears benumbed by the very pain of survival, by the necessity of embracing ignorance and the requirement of indifference toward the want or need of another in the face of the more acute need of saving oneself. In anarchy, there is no morality and there is no empathy. Pakistan in 2009 embodies just this condition. Rafia Zakaria
Hobbes’s extrapolations are part of a treatise on political philosophy, a necessary theoretical step to arrive at the necessity of proving philosophically the ubiquity of the state and its power in mediating what would otherwise be a state of constant conflict devoid of security and bereft of certainty.
***
The state of anarchy, the constant and unwavering realisation of humanity being stripped to the state where persecution of another is not only warranted but required has taken an incredible moral toll on Pakistanis. When a car left unlocked is a car foregone, where walking out alone even on one’s own street is unthinkable, where a child picked up late from school is an invitation to kidnappers, where surgery must be carried out under a naked light bulb and women can bought at the market, the very concept of normalcy is skewed beyond recognition.
Trapped thus in a contradictory web of denial and self-hatred engendered by the country’s lapse into brute survivalism, Pakistanis lapse schizophrenically either into the heights of bravado or the depths of despair. Survival is a tricky commodity, lending itself into prudish rationalisations that paint mere existence itself as a victory against odds, yet at the same time defining the very minimum of possible achievement.
Much has been said in recent days about the need for national soul searching, for a stance against extremism and a disavowal of terror. Yet all of these words fall on ears benumbed by the very pain of survival, by the necessity of embracing ignorance and the requirement of indifference toward the want or need of another in the face of the more acute need of saving oneself. In anarchy, there is no morality and there is no empathy. Pakistan in 2009 embodies just this condition. Rafia Zakaria
posted by temporal at 1/10/2009
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