Guilty are us, the sheep — not the wolves

I don’t know how much time has passed, but I have yet to come to the conclusion whether we are sheep or wolves. The more I thought the more I wandered. Let’s try to find the answer in the words of Erich Fromm who says: “Many people think that humans are like sheep i.e. straightforward and innocent while many others believe that humans are wolves i.e. cunning and bloodthirsty.”

The two conflicting ideological groups have strong arguments to support their claims. The group that believes that humans are like sheep refers to the fact that the man is very easily influenced by what others say and does as he is told. He follows the orders of his political and religious masters with enthusiasm. He believes in any recitation or interpretation given with fervour even if it is based on force, even if it is a loveable advice of a priest. It seems that the majority of people are easily influenced, just like semi-dreamy child because at that time, he is under your control.

In view of the herd mentality of human beings, dictators and ecclesiastical courts founded their institutions, and promoted the idea that humans are a like herd of sheep needing leaders who can make decisions on their behalf and keep them on the right path.

However, the question arises: if the majority of human beings are like sheep, then why are their lives so different from sheep? Why is the entire history of humans bloody, full of violence? Did Talaat Pasha act alone in the killing of millions of Armenians in Turkey? Did Adolf Hitler single-handedly throw millions of Jews into the furnaces and turn them into ashes? Did Joseph Stalin alone eliminate millions of political enemies from the face of the earth? Of course, none of them could do this alone. They had the support of thousands of others in all these crimes. And they did all this with pleasure. Rather, the majority of them used to enjoy this killing spree.

These are the facts on the basis of which Thomas Hobbes said: “Man is a wolf to other human beings.” Should we really believe it? The simple answer can be that among the majority of sheep, a few wolves have crept in. The wolves want to take a life and the sheep want to imitate them. It is these wolves that kill and commit atrocities through the sheep. And the sheep get no pleasure from the whole process because they are just imitators.

In the light of what Eric Fromm said, I have come to the conclusion that we are all sheep and a lot of wolves have infiltrated us. Unfortunately, they have all been in high positions for years. All of them have become very powerful and we are all too busy imitating them that we are not even aware of ourselves.

If anyone has any doubt about the truth of what I am saying, please turn your religious and political journey back to the past and start it from 1947. In this journey, you will carefully review the history of the country. Then at the end of your journey, you too would have reached the same conclusion as mine.

But if somebody still disagrees with me, I dare ask a few questions. Did Malik Ghulam Muhammad and Iskander Mirza do all the bad deeds alone? Could Zia-ul-Haq alone have done all the wrong things? Is corruption, looting, extremism and other such evils, being committed by the wolves in our country for 76 years, possible without the support and cooperation of us, the sheep? Could all this power, authority, freedom and privileges being enjoyed by the wolves be possible without us, the sheep, permitting? Were we not all silent watching state institutions being destroyed? All these evils have neither arisen nor spread overnight nor have they been thrown by any enemy. So we should stop crying and yelling because all this has happened with our own will and permission. The guilty are not the wolves, but we, the sheep.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 31^st, 2023.

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