Our Lexus and Nawaz Sharif Syndrome

When one system replaces another, there are likely to be difficulties and the people, organisations, institutions and the states that are part of that system essentially experience considerable jolts and tremors before the new system finally stabilises and settles down. At the end of the cold war, the world also experienced a change in the international system. The previous one was dominated by a bi-polar world created by the US grand strategy of containment, the Marshal plan, Brezhnev doctrine, Warsaw pact and scores of other ‘East-West system sustainers’ including détente that virtually divided the world into East and West with an iron curtain that permanently separated it.

Thomas L Friedman who is a writer for New York Times and author of some of the bestselling books describes this changeover of the system in his national bestseller book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Back in 1992, Friedman had visited Lexus luxury car factory located outside Toyota City south of Tokyo in Japan. He observed that the factory was producing 300 Lexus cars per day which were being made by 310 robots and only 66 human beings were engaged in their production and that too mostly for quality control. Japan in the 90s had ‘robotted’ and robots were doing almost all the work.

In another part of the world – in Jerusalem – Friedman wondered why people were still fighting on who owns which olive tree. (Olive trees in Jerusalem are some of the oldest in the world aging 900 years or so and still very healthy). Both Lexus and olive trees are symbolic but both represent the types of world that people have chosen to live in and represent. The Lexus world is driven by education, innovation, constant improvement, prosperity, modernisation and pursuit for higher standards of living and most importantly sustenance of a political system that represents such living standards. The olive tree part of the world (our world) is caught in conflict. It’s a stay behind world. It’s a world in which dreams have crashed and a world in which people still prefer to upload than to download.

The uploaders are the stealers in the olive tree societies, those who are in a constant quest of their own personal material betterment. They upload themselves with wealth, power and privileges and expect not to be questioned and want the people to bow before them and the state laws to bend for them. These people were there when Friedman was visiting Tokyo in early 90s and they are still here as the second decade of 21st century ends. They are the Sharifs and Zardaris of our politics, as deep-rooted as olive trees. Their biggest political fear for the last 30 years has been that if we didn’t control the olive tree, someone else will and eventually not only control them economically and politically but control their whole sense of belonging, their politics and their ‘built up empires’ – all will be lost.

The idea of sharing this Lexus and the Olive Tree story is to highlight how the uploaders of our country are still fighting to prevent the downloaders (the children of baby boomers) from taking away their political space. Downloading brings out truth, it provides choices and it educates. It educates you so much that like Japan you eventually transit to the robot world. Downloading brings to the desktop many versions of the truth and not a single truth that the uploaders want the people to believe. Downloading actually enables everyone to ask many questions, seek innumerable answers and serve truth and not power. Downloading bridges gaps.

This country has many gaps that need to be bridged. Such as the gap between the rich and poor, gap between civil and military, gap between security and the notion of feeling safe, and most importantly the gap between what is real and what is not. Currently this country is being allowed to suffer from a ‘Nawaz Sharif Syndrome’. While disease is a process and disorder an irregularity, a syndrome is ‘a number of symptoms occurring together and characterising a specific disease’. The unreal and fake narrative of a ‘syndromed mind’ is suggesting to this country that freedom from fear is negotiable but democracy is not. The ‘callers of the protests’, ‘the opposers of accountability process’, ‘the seekers of truth commission’, ‘the dialogue discontinuers with the military’, ‘the olive tree system defenders’ and ‘the professors of their own version of truth’ are looking for a political showdown just to divert the state’s attention and distract it from the ongoing accountability processes. What if their actions create perfect circumstances for our neighbour (much like Israel in Palestine) to come over dig up violently all olive trees and plant theirs instead? Has this prospect ever crossed their syndromed minds?

From the dawn of information age, ‘the olive tree impulse of our politicians has spoiled our political system; and what to talk of them giving us Lexus they couldn’t even give us clean drinking water, electricity or hope of living a decent life? But the beauty of this story of divided world between the Lexus and the Olive Tree is that sooner or later Lexus catches up with you.

Pakistan is on the road of catching up with the Lexus. The government and the military have joined hands and have planted a joint civil-military roadmap to take the country forward by keeping all the interests of the nation absolute and supreme. The ‘syndromed minds’ that want to pull back Pakistan from thriving economically and preventing this country from building its own Lexus on which it can drive out in future and meet the developed world are not the well-wishers of this country. They live in a fake and unreal world built on unfair acquisitions and want us to remain part of a system that cultivates and nurtures such a world. This should not be allowed to happen. 

Friedman suggested in the 90s that there is no more the First World, Second World and Third World – that there is now only the fast world. Thirty years later, we live in a very slow world captured and bossed by ‘badly syndromed baby boomers’ who continue to scheme, create and plant their narratives and their versions of truth not realising that the Y generation unlike them suffers from no such syndromes and is producing less and less power servers and more and more truth seekers and truth tellers.

To this country that we all love no harm can come from outside. The harm comes from inside – from the investors who didn’t invest in the creation of value, in creating our worth and our national identity. They remained concerned only on who owns the Olive Tree. Resultantly, the vast majority in this country still lives in absolute poverty, hasn’t ever touched a computer, owned and operated a mobile or created an e-mail account or ever sent an e-mail.

Those that will gather in Quetta on October 11 never rolled us into the Lexus world. Our Lexus options expired because the ‘syndromed minds’ stayed at the top for a very long time. If this country is poor today, it is their shame and no matter what they scheme and plan their politics is already dying. These days it is on steroids – but the end is not far away.