Malignant social psyche

Mind is the very field where seeds of human actions, behaviour and interplay are sown, sprout and flourish. Manners and ways of social interactions are but the fruits of the seeds one sows in one’s cognition. Demeanours and actions are extensions of one’s thoughts and temperament. Since all human behaviour regardless of their usefulness and productivity are rooted into the very minds and perceptions, the negative and deviant behaviours can best be reconstructed by reshaping mental outlook and horizon. Reorienting minds would be too much fruitful than correcting behaviour. This write-up discusses the infectious and contagious ideas haunting the health and evolution of the social fabric, a next one will focus on the strategies of disinfecting and sanitising our social psyche.

It’s about the loaded minds and armed cognition that cost a society much dearer than the bodies equipped with weapons. A mind laced with retrogressive and detrimental thoughts has far more repressive ramifications than weapons. While the latter can cause harm within the bounds, the former infects a whole society for long.

Negative energy and deviant tendencies are swiftly creeping into our part of the world with costs incalculable and repercussions unbearable. As a society, we are heading towards the brink of retrogression and stagnation. We have been forgetting the past of our future: the exalted ideas and doctrines that guided our actions and behaviours for centuries. The lofty ideals of past: truthfulness, integrity, steadfastness, honestly, kindness, tenderness, benignity are being transformed into and replaced with regressive traits of dishonesty, duplicity, hypocrisy among the others.

Of all negativities blooming in our minds, intellectual dishonesty costs society dear. Most of our intelligentsia and educated class is obsessed with malediction. By all means and measures, most of us do not bother to rightly guide those looking around. We are less apt to extend genuine guidance due to our irrational fears that guiding others might abate our relative worth and value.

Moreover, corruption has been tightening its grasp in our minds and behaviours. Rather than viewing it as a social evil with detrimental economic implications, it has been turning into a prompt method of moral adaptation and materialistic triumph.

Another retrogressive trend making it into the social interplay is envy and jealousy. Instead of celebrating others success, we mourn them. Envy is the very reaction to the success of others, no matter how hard-earned and painstaking.

Living in future — in castles of air — has been tightening noose around our time and schedule. Utopianism is fast becoming an escape from horrendous and frightening realities facing us. We are getting more obsessed with scapegoating today’s realities with tomorrow’s utopianism. Henceforth, we hardly live in the moment and remain entangled in past.

Furthermore, criticism aimed at degradation and discouragement is yet another evil making it into our societal behaviour. Constructive criticism is inevitable for personal growth since it affords one opportunity to rethink one’s plans and course of actions, but censuring one with the intention of degrading them has worst repercussions. Most of the criticism these days is directed towards degrading others and generating negative public vibes against someone.

Superiority complex, overconfidence and subsequent arrogance haunt many. Most of them do not like to accept themselves as they are: most of their time passes by in what they desire to be. They deem themselves superhuman and all else subhuman or even non-entities. Their arrogance originates from their falsified sense of superiority. They are but sans the sense.

Lies, deceptions, backbiting, selfishness characterising social relations, exorbitant display of wealth and possessions, hypocrisy, opportunism and manipulation and exploitation of someone’s respect and trust are other cognitive evils making inroads in our social psyche.

We as a society have, however, failed to acknowledge that a sophisticated weapon may not cause devastations as much as a belligerent mind preoccupied with retrogressive ideas, detrimental thoughts and prejudicial attitudes. Salvation and social prosperity call for replacing our malignant social psyche with exalted ideals that our ancestors cherished for centuries.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 6^th, 2021.

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