Ignorance or denial?

An old Pashto saying goes that you can find a way to make the deaf hear or understand what you are saying but if the listener is pretending to be deaf, there is no way you can convey your message. Civilisations before us and the world we live in appear to have one thing in common: a suicidal tendency.

If we look at the threat that climate change poses to our survival, it’s as though we are racing toward destruction with ever-increasing fervour and excitement. David Wallace Wells’ book, The Uninhabitable Earth, highlights this very important aspect. The rate of carbon emissions is 100 times faster than at any time since the beginning of Industrialisation. The damage to our planet increased ever since climate change has been known than before it. We have been destroying our planet knowingly more than we did unknowingly.

That is a remarkable kamikaze trait we humans have collectively. A suicide bomber takes his own life and those of others around him. Climate change is not only going to take human lives, but rather wildlife and marine life as well. Furthermore, it will destroy many livelihoods, if it hasn’t already done so. Our grandchildren may not have a planet they can easily breathe in. Lo and behold, we continue to drill and emit.

Denial is observed in almost every aspect of human action. Ever since Israel has been created on the foundations of falsehoods and force, it has maintained one national habit intact: the denial of Palestinians as a people. Every Israeli leader has kept this at the heart of his or her rule that Palestinians — whether those who are Israeli citizens or those living in open air prisons of Gaza, West Bank, and elsewhere — do not exist. When the nation’s only female prime minister said “there were no such thing as Palestinians”, she only turned the volume up on a general consensus inside Israel. The entire ideology on which Israel is based is not nationhood or something similar but rather the denial of a people. Israelis know that conflict wouldn’t end at the end of a barrel, but they continue to take more land and lives, adding fuel to the fire knowingly.

India’s treatment of its own citizens of low caste or specifically the Muslims, demystifies one unmistakable conclusion: the denial of their existence and their rights. India’s denial of the Kashmiris’ freedom is another illustration of this textbook suicidal trait. The problem wouldn’t go away but rather boomerang harder. The terrorism around the world, while despicable and condemnable, is mostly a reaction to aggression. Repeating the same actions and expecting different results is only going to exacerbate global conflicts. India would have to stop denying that Kashmiris are human beings.

American democracy is another interesting example. The concept on which the electoral college vote is based is the antithesis of democracy. In order to control the “excess of democracy,” this system has been put in place to prevent people’s impulsive desires in electing a president. It’s designed to deny the people’s wish in electing their leader; the core idea behind the ballot and democracy. It’s a system based on a denial, a wilful rejection of a right. Donald Trump is the president not because he received more, but rather less votes from the American people. The American democracy revels in the denial of people’s vote and acceptance of an anti-democratic system.

Covid-19 has spread faster and stronger after it was known to the world than before. While lockdowns have been imposed by many governments around the world, there are still many out there in almost all countries who defy the truth and science and roam around exposing themselves and others.

The world doesn’t need more knowledge as much as it needs the truth. Denial of knowledge can be more dangerous than ignorance.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 18^th, 2020.

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