Flawed vicegerents: on the station of fatalism

Do we not wish to make lives better for ourselves, for our daughters, for our sons? The recurrent rounds of tragedy dominating our news cycles may be testament that we do not. We gratify ourselves with the degenerative pleasure of an excessive fatalism, of falling victim to its alluring sirens, ones that make us forget that beauty and life is found not in acquiescing to fate but by negotiating with it, by asking it gently to also let us present our case, to let us raise one leg, even if we may not raise the other. Despite the flurry of promises hurled by those in power, why can we not overcome trials that we should have put to bed years ago? We may say that it is all structure, that the state is just too entrenched to change, that those who hold reins of power are immoral, or that we are just cogs in the grander vision of politics or even of the universe. That may all be true, but another harsher truth may just be that we are too rooted within patterns of thought that have put our consciences into a deep unpeaceful slumber—thoughts that cite the enormity of our trials as reason enough to relinquish personal accountability.

We often hear about our collectivist ethos, of how we are better than societies ridden with plague of liberal individualism, but how often do we think or care about the public good? We forget that there are other ways of thinking about the sacredness our individualities. The only collectivism we truly abide by is our coming together in circles of moral abdication, where we hold hands and ecstatically sing: “not my problem, my friend, let me be, my friend, let me be.” In this perverse dance, God’s would-be vicegerents slowly comply to something less than divine.

Absolving ourselves of the moral obligation of standing straight against wrong, we caress our souls with the belief that our minds define the limits of our experience, that only they define the possibilities of life. Our minds, constrained by empirical inputs from the outside world, colored by socially produced perceptions, think that they represent the totality of knowledge, and if that were not enough, we also supplement these casuistries, these faulty logics, with a potent brew of religious fatalism. This fatalism marks our foreheads by an ink that reads: “Come aboard this majestic train to heaven, come, hurry, my friend, let us not worry about this degraded Earth, for our journey will take us to a land unblemished, a land that demands of us nothing.”

The land beyond is indeed unblemished; it is where obligations of exacting moral discernment, of constantly exerting to tell right from wrong, fall away into a newer reality. Yet, perhaps due to paucity of space, our foreheads fail to mention that terms and conditions still apply, failing to mention that crossing into this promised land is predicated upon action within our broken realm; they carelessly omit that peace beyond is never guaranteed, that, in the divine gaze, our actions are not judged in separation from our intentions. Let me be clear: there is a marked difference between the state of rida, of being content with God’s plan, of knowing that history is held in good hands, and the state of excessive fatalism I describe. While the former signifies a sound heart, the latter makes us bury our heads into the sand under the pretense of having faith; it is mere cowardice masquerading as virtuousness.

It is possible that we may arrive too early at the station where this train without any set departure time lies berthed. We come prematurely to our enclosed compartments, waiting impatiently for the conductor to appear, to announce the commencement of our sojourn towards our kingdom of heaven. Our chambers blunt the noises outside: the burning, the pleas for help, the divine calls asking us to not come before having done our due.

We can never know when this train departs but we wait anxiously, looking at each other in frustration while mindlessly ruminating about the unearned fruits waiting for us, and yet this nihilistic anticipation of pleasure is not enough to assuage the voices in our hearts that call us to look out the window, to look at a world that looks back at us longingly, telling us how we left too early, how God expected us to stay a bit longer, to sow the seeds left unsown. So, let me ask of you something you may not like, let me ask you to stay and live, my friend, to stay for a bit longer, to do the work left undone.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 31^st, 2022.

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