Imagination is missing

Did you ever have to wear an orthopaedic cast because of a broken bone? I did when I was a child. The funny thing about the cast, or the plaster as we used to call it, is that it does not let your joints situated near the affected area bend. And this continues often for months. When they remove the cast and you are asked to use your liberated limb, your first realisation is of the searing pain that refuses to let your affected joint bend. That particular joint had lost the taste of bending and you have to call in the physiotherapist now.

That is exactly what seems to be happening to the imagination in the Islamic Republic. Imagination it must be noted is not an expensive quantity. To most of the less-tortured minds it comes freely. It is that which is supposed to let you think of the forms that can emerge out of the abstract. It helps you figure out how a particular need has to be met. And it helps you think beyond the immediate. But that is not how it works in Pakistan. Our imagination is out to lunch, closed for business, missing in action or simply disappeared for good.

Going about your work how many inspired works do you see around you? How many odes to the wide-eyed fascination of human mind do you come across every day? Precious few, if any. But wait. How often have you heard a breathtaking idea being tossed around in casual discussions? I have not. Not in this country, especially in this century. And this dearth of great ideas leads to subpar performance in the realm of economy. Consider this. In this age representing explosion of innovation, creativity and invention our system is so broken that not only do we not have too many commercialised patents, but we do not even have a matrix to keep count of such patents, if any. And then you think your economy will take off.

But these grand issues do not trouble me the most as do the small details. I have often pointed out that our herd mentality in investment kills off the true scope of economic growth. I have also repeatedly pointed out that in a country which has dozens of news channels we do not have a children’s channel, a decent music channel, a comedy channel or a documentary channel. In the industry of news and current affairs which seems to boom no matter what, there is no talent agency to represent you and no public relations organisation to manage a talent’s public image. For writers the situation has further worsened.

It is the very lack of imagination that prevents us from challenging ourselves; asking how things would be if we try to upgrade ourselves a bit. Consequently, the evolution of anything promising has become a farfetched idea. You know that you have this great potential and you would do great if you improve upon the gifts that you have. But the moment you try to imagine how to put that great idea to practice, your head hurts like a limb fresh out of a cast just removed. And this is not an exaggeration. That is how we embrace mediocrity and bid farewell to progress.

This is how the election season and political debates have reached their apogee. Just mute the cacophony of tirades that has become our political television and ask yourself what you are gaining out of it. Every idea that encounters has already been weaponised by the debater in such a fashion that if you subscribe to his or her thought, the meaning of reality changes for you. And these shiny screens that have become an infestation of talking heads do not offer you a system of tools to process the discussion in a scientific manner. No, the product just appeals to your baser instincts. You are compelled to fight others, behave rudely and explode whenever your views are challenged. No tabular data on your screens to help you compare the promises and reality, no fact checking, only impulsive reasoning which cascades in one hopeless direction.

And then there is the matter of the quality of your pundits. The moment you bring up the matter of manifestos your resident pundit immediately dismisses it claiming that nobody reads a manifesto. But, sir, manifestos are not quite different from the promises being made by politicians right in front of you on the television screens. A manifesto or a party programme is just a systematic catalogue of those promises. But of what use our punditry would be if you start reading the written matter and may eventually end up opening a book.

All of this and more is because intellectually we have started to stagnate beyond a given point. When we are not busy plotting to regress we invest ourselves in churning out the same mediocre stuff. Mediocrity breeds mediocrity and that is the culture we have developed. Of plain and sheer mediocrity.

But what is the explanation for this? Is it because of our colonial heritage, our culture of underdevelopment, of corruption or simply because of the rigid role of the clergy? I am sure everything has played its part in the present outcome. A colonised people with limited freedoms when freed succumbed to the mediocrity that poverty brings along and with the flight of the intellectual capital, the clergy has gotten its way into our minds. But the real debilitating influence is elsewhere. Our population is exploding and not only is the state ill equipped to stop that or to cater to the needs of an exploding population, but it is failing to even maintain the existing facilities in the face of the wear and tear that overpopulation brings with it. Without immediate planning an effective solution to this overgrowth will consume whatever remains of the edifice pretty quickly.

Author Steven Johnson in his book "Where good ideas come from" highlights the importance of shared intellectual spaces for the innovation and the imagination to flourish. He believes the internet provides such a platform. But sadly, the internet is also not the right forum for us. We lose track when we are surfing the net. What we need are physical shared spaces for the exchange of ideas. But since our state is preoccupied with the day-to-day firefighting and the population growth stymies the prospects of creation of more spaces, that is not something that you will see soon. To mediocrity then.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 19^th, 2018.

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