The social slavery

Everyone aspires to freedom of thought and action in life. Although humans are born free, they hardly live as such. This is because society expects individual and collective conformity to a sizable amount of norms, standards and rules. This conformity is widely believed to be critical to maintaining social order and harmony. However, history testifies that social orders and their underlying norms are hardly structured around collective well-being. Most times, the social orders and psyches are manifestations of planned agendas aimed at sustainable service to the powerful few. Such societies, therefore, barely produce inclusive benefits and holistic social development. Ours is a glaring example of such a society.

Since the functional aspects of institutions and practices are dictated by structurally underlying norms enjoying implicit or explicit assent, the outcomes should surprise no one. The cordially adopted colonial legacy, distorted history, state-sponsored fallacies and rhetoric, chronic elite capture, classical and divisive educational and pedagogical culture and a pliant bureaucracy have borne the fruit and rendered our society an epicentre of the poly crisis. Thanks to carefully crafted toxic narratives and retrogressive socio-economic as well as religious and political systems, virulent mental tendencies have crept into our social psyche that keep on cutting to size the dreams of an inclusive society. Jealousy and fanaticism; judgmental mindset and intolerance; hypocrisy and intellectual corruption; insecurity and compliant public behaviour and duplicity have turned out to be the underlying norms of our collective societal mindset.

Therefore, each individual and society conspire against anyone willing to break free and undertake an independent voyage to life. Even for a few who dare to escape systematic social and mental slavery, the toxic gossip confronts and constrains them. Most of our institutions, laws, leadership, curricula, media, academia and intelligentsia dictate blind submissions to the elite-centred social psyche. Questioning of or any defiance to historically peddled half-baked narratives are treated as delinquents and hence defied at all levels. Anything that threatens the underlying norms of the status quo is treated as taboo. This is how critical thinking, civilised debate and dissent, anthropology, philosophy, logical discourse and creativity hardly find due space and appreciation.

Contrary to civilised nations, most of our society conspires against us when we want to achieve something great. The commonly prevalent talk of “what four people would say” is a little manifestation of this. Though the socio-psychological constraints might work at their fullest, these metaphorically four people act as self-appointed characters that police others’ lives through toxic commentary and discouraging gossip. Their dictating behaviour seldom emerges from their unmatched cognition, selflessness or altruistic spirit. They are instead the products of a self-created sense of worthlessness, social slavery, inaction, envy and inferiority complex that they try to impose on others. They are extensions and the brand ambassadors of the systematic social slavery that the country has been reeling in for seven and a half decades now. Though these characters might vary in number, they assault everything that goes against ill-founded conformity.

Unlike the metaphorically three, the one who keeps on commenting on our thoughts, strategies and behaviour is the only real entity and leader of the four people. Instead of constructively criticising, such people resort to ridiculous gossip aimed at discouraging, if not degrading, the struggle people put them through.

The toxic talks not only diverts our energy from what matters for us to what does not but also wastes our time and drains our intellect. At the individual level, we should ignore toxic social gossip. A holistic escape from the shackles of social and mental slavery demands extensive social reform. Altruistic leadership and institutional and educational reforms would go a long way in ridding us of the rusted chains of social slavery.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2023.

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