Francis Bacon says, “Get intellect first, the rest of the things either you will have or you would not feel their absence in your life.” While according to Plato, there are three sources that stimulate human actions: desire, passion and knowledge. The body is the centre of desire and the heart is of the passion, while knowledge is the resident of the brain. All human beings possess these characteristics, the difference only occurs in levels.
Most of the people are the slaves of their desires and their restive and ardent inners are pulsated in the furnace of self-promotion and luxury. They are not satisfied with whatever they gain and are desirous of more. However, there also exists a different kind of people who are full of passion and valour. The armies of different nations are comprised of such individuals. And the remaining are those who like to think about life and its outcomes happily. They are so immersed in their ways that they don’t need the enticing necessities of life and like to live in the paradise of truth.
It is a gruesome fact that human history has been hurt more by the desires of strong people. Let’s turn the pages of history and smear our hands with blood because from the 4th to the 14th century every kind of oppression was unleashed on mankind in the name of self-domination and religion. But now those torture houses have turned into museums and those palaces, prisons and religious places, where a few people, who had supposedly become gods, would disgrace the majority every day shamelessly.
Today, after seeing the barrenness of the once-vibrant places, one is bound to be under the scare of life’s deception that whatever glitters in it is nothing but a spell and imagination. Because everything from bodies to thrones and splendour has vanished, and only their symbols have remained. And when today’s liberals and well-to-do enter these prisons and religious sites, the kings and the clerics, painted on the walls, seem mortified over the transgressions of the commoners, because there was a time when their access to these majestic places was forbidden. But now even the visiting children are roaming in the power corridors that once were restricted areas for the masses. Only beautiful women were paraded through them for the pleasure of the gods on the throne. The orient lists and historians have called those pleasure chambers torture houses behind the splendor of the kings. A sensitive soul now visiting these majestic places of yore could easily listen to the oppressed voices coming from all corners, but could not endure their jab longer, and feel like getting out for a breath of fresh air. After escaping from the symbols of kings and priests, one is sure to be ecstatic over the freedom of the wretched of Europe, who have left behind the shackles of the oppressive past.
We are stunned to see what Europe faced centuries ago is now occurring in Pakistan, but with a difference: the characters vying for the European thrones were real. They did want to see themselves on thrones, but by dint of their bravery and ingenuity. Even for lesser positions, the contestants would be genuine. Interestingly, the students of history, while comparing our potpourri with that of Shakespeare’s England, burst into a laughter, as ours are not even a replica of the real, but like the hundredth copy. They are impersonating what they have heard of the statesmen of other nations. Sadly, they cannot follow in their footsteps because they are perfect idiots having poor knowledge of history.
Great French philosopher Henri Bergson says, “A person can’t know a thing about which he claims he knows it already.” Shakespeare likewise insists, “The eye sees what for the mind is prepared to understand.”
Before time passes away, let’s come and act upon the saying of Bacon, “acquire intelligence first” and then devote whatever time you have to visiting the deserted palaces and graves of those who once had absolute influence over everything in their realm.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 16th, 2023.
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