Will go with the wind?

Commenting on Madame Bovary, Baudelaire said: “Flaubert has achieved in his first novel what his contemporaries could not in their entire works.” These impressions from the maverick poet should not be incredible for those who know about France’s raucous situation post-revolution. Following this, many a masterpiece of literature came out, further extending its impacts on French society.

Amid those tumultuous times, people suffered loneliness; and in Emma Bovary’s character, Flaubert depicted one such woman who is caught up in village life and who, to escape the banalities of that, crosses its forced societal limits. Regardless of her compulsions, French society which itself was suffering from a moral breakdown was not willing to feel for her. At last, what happened to her is both sad and heart-wrenching. Because during that disastrous time in France, people loathed everything which even had a smell of virtue. On the other side, Flaubert believed that hating the rich was the first step toward goodness.

Before him, Diderot had told us that our circumstances and societal backgrounds are deeply inter-related and we cannot keep our familial lives away from their influences. While strengthening the impotence of these notions, the precedence was assigned to them so that common folks might understand them against the larger perspective of society. Particularly, the French literature of the nineteenth century may be found brimming with instances of the description of social experiences, historical events and national as well as racial characteristics which not only affected people’s lives but also brightened the dark corners hidden from their eyes.

If today French society is an example for others, it is because of its writers and thinkers who for it sacrificed their days and nights. And, if the great embittered Balzac called the human being a social animal, he did so because he expends his life in fulfillment of desires and attainment of self-interest which ultimately cast him into a particular shape. Social scientists of present times also subscribe to his advanced thinking that there is a vital relationship between society and the economy. So, when the economy of a country becomes steady, people get financially stable, and the state becomes stronger. In history, great events happened due to economic factors, and not political ones. For instance, the Marathon War, the Murder of Julius Caesar and the French Revolution were turning points which modified life from hunting for survival to tilling to industrial production.

While moral issues such as corruption, immorality and falsehood are not the causes, consequence of indulgence of our aristocracies in their self-seeking ways, if not stopped, would keep Pakistan in emergency ward for good. Unfortunately, they seem to have forgotten the recent happenings around us. Or they do not want to know what happened to the Soviet Union which was ruled, unchallenged, by a few members of the politburo who had a ferocious control over the economy, and common people were devoid of its advantages. Thus the Union could not keep itself afloat when the existential challenges came and disappeared without a requiem. Thus people thus heaved a sigh of relief for they had no share in the cake.

There is a lesson for our ruling elite in the dismemberment of the superpower: they should immediately steer themselves out from isolation with the common people or whatever they have will go with the wind. And what Isocrates, the great Grecian rhetorician, wrote centuries ago about the heartlessness of the nobility of Greece may also be subscribed to ours, outright: “The manners of the nobility have become so inhuman that instead of giving it to poor people, they throw away their excess things into the sea. While the needy are not pleased even if they get a treasure from them, they are overwhelmingly happy when they take away a tiny object from the nobility.”

Is it not true that similar scenes are on the display in Pakistan today? While the shameless display of wealth by the affluents is on, the needy are running from pillar to post to have a loaf of bread. But who is going to take care of that? This can be done by people themselves for sure.