A reason to reason

When zest, zeal and zap overrides fundamentals of reason and rationality, situational train wrecks are matter of time

In an age of reason, there is reason enough to reason your way through unreasonable situations. Rational thinking in the midst of a sea of raging irrationality is a reasonably safe course of action to adopt in search of a rational and reasonable outcome.

And yet for us, it ain’t so.

The magnificent misery of Imran Khan and his clan unfurls itself like a shredded flag fluttering limply against the headwind of a proposed judicial commission. Thank God Khan’s passion compensates for the abysmal lack of collective smartness lumped together amongst his disciples. When zest, zeal and zap overrides the fundamentals of reason and rationality, situational train wrecks are a matter of time.

Exhibit 1: Khan demands judicial probe into Panama Leaks;

Exhibit 2: Khan leaps headlong into a long march to somewhere;

Exhibit 3: Khan abandons the march and deposits his trust sediments into the judicial lap;

Exhibit 4: Khan loudly proclaims this is exactly what he wanted and hence victory is achieved;

Exhibit 5: Khan submits evidentiary garbage to the court and is richly mocked for it;

Exhibit 6: Khan insists after every hearing no more proof is required to prove his case ignoring the fact that it’s for the judges to decide;

Exhibit 7: Khan trashes the option of a judicial commission considered by the judges and says he will boycott such a commission;

Exhibit 8: Please see Exhibits 1 till 7 and try rationalising this.



Rationality presupposes the existence of common knowledge about common things and how they commonly work in consonance with common sense which may — or in this case — may not be that common after all. Questioning the judiciary after entrusting it with your trust should rattle all senses, including the common one, but it does not rattle Khan and his clan. Rationality presupposes the acknowledgement of a modern state structure under which all things are governed, managed, and yes adjudicated. Deny the legitimacy of this structure and you qualify as a citizen of a ripe banana republic. By threatening a boycott of the commission, Khan just denied the legitimacy of the judiciary as a forum for dispute resolution. This undercuts the credibility of the court in the eyes of the millions of citizens who follow Khan. Is it possible and feasible for Khan to think through the consequential logic of his actions? Does this option even fall within the realm of a remote possibility?

Reasoning is a phased process and its starts beyond the culmination point of rage. Did Khan and his clan graduate their operational thinking beyond the obvious gut reaction so typical of those who have fallen out of love with the delicate art of rationality? For PTI, the logic should have unraveled like this:

Logic Phase 1: If we boycott the Commission we are saying we do not trust the decision of the judiciary and this amounts to imposing our will on to the judges as opposed to submitting to theirs.

Logic Phase 2: If we are ready to impose our will, this will mean we retain the option of accepting or rejecting the final verdict of the judiciary.

Logic Phase 3: If we retain this option, we are proclaiming to the world that the Supreme Court of Pakistan lacks the ability and legitimacy to deliver justice that can be acceptable to us — unless it is in our favour.

Logic Phase 4: If the justice of the justices is not acceptable to us, then anyone and everyone is also allowed to follow the same logic as ours and reject the authority of the court as the final arbiter in this land of ours.

Logic Phase 5: If this be so, we are hacking away at the root of an institution that lies at the root of a system rooted in the principle of checks and balances aimed at ensuring the protection of fundamental rights ingrained within the roots of a modern, pluralistic society rooted on the premise that societies should be organised around order and protected from the chaos of individual or collective mayhem.

Logic Phase 6: If phase 5 does not make sense, please let us go back and re-read phases 1 to 4.

It is a sad fact that the precious commodities of reason and rationality are normally in short supply here. Reasons are aplenty but perhaps one of the key ones is our social and cultural glorification of an emotional response to most challenges in life. Such a gut response is a direct by-product of the education we get in schools and homes. Emotion and passion is celebrated, reasoning and logic is not. The repercussions plough across minds and attitudes making them fertile forweird half-baked conspiracy theories wrapped in sentimental and temperamental verbiage.

If the educated elite of the PTI struggle with reason, imagine the depth and gravity of the problem amongst those less ‘cosmopolitan’ than the Khan’s clan. Such dearth of rationality and reason robs us of the ability to reach to the bottom of a problem; it deprives us of the skill to approach issues with cold calculation and it starves us of the capacity to make sense of the not-so-obvious.

What is obvious though is that the courtroom drama in Islamabad is betraying more than we would like to acknowledge. On display is the utter bankruptcy of this system and those who run it in our name. It is the legal bankruptcy of lawyers who cannot produce evidence that may stand in court; it is the moral bankruptcy of petitioners who cannot defend their credibility when weighed against basic rights and wrongs; it is the professional bankruptcy of politicians who rush to regurgitate pettiness on to awaiting microphones and it is the social bankruptcy of us all who refuse to recognise that the fundamental failings of a poor, uneducated, unregulated, un-institutionalised society are now biting us where it hurts most.

In an age of reason, science and cold logic, there is reason enough to be afraid — very afraid — of what we have become.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 11^th, 2016.

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