Broken moral compass

After a perilous escape from the planet of apes the hero of the film reaches his own planet only to find out that it has also been taken over by the apes. Just replace apes in the story with the Orwellian state and society and you reach today’s politics.

Another account about hate is instructive though I have no way to check its veracity. So, let us Nazis have been vanquished. One of Hitler’s generals is about to face the firing squad after summary trial in Nuremberg. He is asked to state his last wish. The penitent general informs his would-be assassins that he wants to convert to Judaism. His wish is granted. After conversion, he is about to meet his maker. The firing squad seeing the dramatic development of character is feeling sorry for the poor soul who has evidently seen error of his ways. As the bullets are fired the general shouts, “Heil Hitler, here comes another Jew”. Hate, obsession, prejudice, and intolerance do bestial things to human souls. And yet we are there already. Again. Because in our myopic we were just obsessed with saving only what we thought was our own. And who decides what is yours and what is mine? Huntington did.

It is surprising how easy it is to use ideas as baits. When presented at the right moment you will be shocked to see their impact. During the Cold War, racial and religious distinctions were swept under the rug. It was communism versus the free world. Freedom won. And the world was left without a common enemy. Enter Samuel Huntington.

A powerhouse of divisive ideologies and a man of redoubtable intellectual integrity. To learn more about his intellectual credibility kindly look up the National Academy of Sciences controversy. The man was accused of using pseudo-mathematics to reach his favourite conclusions.

Today he is known for his Clash of Civilisations thesis. The man just looked for the cultural and religious entities with depressed identities. Many of these had seeds of radicalism in them. He just nudged them in the desired direction. Use ambiguous terms to identify a construct and employ only the definitions that serve your purpose best.

Toynbee’s reductionist definition of civilisation was lying there, waiting to be used. Hence the next threats were identified as the Muslim and the Confucian civilisations. People who fell in these categories swallowed the propaganda hook, line and sinker owing to their own identity crises. Radical elements within Muslim communities would invoke endism, eschatology, and their peculiar construct of territorial Islam to justify their future. Islamist terrorism was hence born.

But Huntington’s parting shot was far more brutal. One could at least theoretically rationalise that the West needed a career and an enemy. But he did irreparable damage to his own country by writing his last book Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity. So, the Americans are not immigrants but settlers. White, Anglo Saxon, protestants. Rest is a challenge. Globalisation is a challenge. Immigration is a challenge. So is liberal view of history. And technology. Read both books in detail to try appreciating how much damage was done by one wasting little old man.

Today America is divided exactly on these lines. So is the world. And nobody even bothered to connect the dots. Throw a bone and see them fight. Sadly, in response to the rise of white supremacist groups, the liberal intellectuals of the west are also making a revival almost impossible by leaning increasingly towards socialism. Socialism is not practical. Even for it to succeed where it did not evolve it needs remarkable energy, resources, and time that no country has. And it was defeated at the end of cold war. The world as a result is going down the sinkhole of hate and anger. Countries that you once used to look up to for example like India, nations of Europe and even America have developed these angry, reactionary cultures that undermine their own stated national ideals. Muslim countries and underdeveloped countries are being cheated out of their democratic destinies. Nations like Russia and China that were warming up to the democratic ideals are watching the crash of democracy with surprise.

To see something your eyes need fine distinction between black and white. Colours come much later. Now you are looking at a world where you don’t know what is black and what is white. Superficial arguments are everywhere. And with the broken moral compass there is no space for people like me whose life's guiding philosophy was democracy.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 3^rd, 2016.

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