Moral clarity: idealism and resistance

I ponder what meaning of resistance is when you feel that you live in an unfair world

In those ‘weak’ moments where I feel more about the tyranny of the world and I think less, and the feeling of the sheer powerlessness of my existence slowly takes over me, I feel agitated. Not sad or insignificant, but agitated. A frustration succumbs over me like a person who wants rebellion but feels has no means. In that moment, I ponder what the meaning of resistance is when you feel that you live in an unfair world where majority of the world is just consciously and systematically excluded from a decent life because they ‘ask more’ from the powerful people that live in their own time and space?

The answer that pops up in my mind is quite simple. It is to have a moral clarity unadulterated by any of the arrogance which professionalism as a bargain to its prowess brings. The answer is to voice your own moral clarity even if you know your voice is resonating in an echo chamber or falling on deaf ears or on dead hearts. The answer is also to work together with humility and with the most vulnerable side by side, and not as a saviour to form the resistance which views as to all the tyranny without any kind of tainted eyes. The answer is to lower our own lust, greed, arrogance and entitlement. The answer is to have self-reflection. And, the answer is to realise that in the current system, the poor pays the price all the time of the crimes they never committed or the crimes they were forced to commit.

For I find that there will be no peace in the world because we lack moral clarity when we don’t relate with an experience of pain or discrimination and when the mistake is committed by someone we admire or when simply our greed for money or power takes over us. When this happens, none of our degrees and knowledge from Oxford or Harvard or LUMS works. We side with our interests and more importantly our ‘loves’. That is why, it is just impossible to make Yale educated litigators to realise that providing a living wage to the people you hire is as important as filing a public interest litigation or wanting the Constitution to be never tarnished. It is also just impossible to make Western educated academics realise that one might want to be worshipped for writing papers which prove their intellectual catharsis stemming from their own personal lives but that still does not trump over another person’s physiological need of livelihood even if that person is demonised as incompetent, brainless, lazy and morally corrupt. It is also then impossible to make development consultants realise that the ‘idea of good’ you are selling might have other reasons for funding and in the guise of your trainings, you cannot belittle anything which is representative of the local Pakistani culture.

The answer is thus to have a pure eye which does not wilfully ignore the demolition of homes of the working class of Pakistanis because of the inner contempt for the poor and powerless as losers. A clear eye which does not justify the invasion of Palestine because of the love of Western Capitalism. A simple eye which views the war on Ukraine also not as a pragmatic retaliation from Russia but also simply an invasion of a weaker country. An eye which considers Western expansion, imperialism and capitalism in Americas as genocidal as the holocaust. An eye which can only relate to own pain but not to others. An eye which shall talk about the harms of racism or sexism, but not systematic exclusion of more than 100 million Pakistanis from any kind of decent life.

These words were about resistance and the idealism in moral clarity which fuels it. A resistance which has an essence in moral clarity and which is rooted in idealism. A resistance which is about continuous quest to moral perfection. A resistance which does not require us to submit to a lecture on the benefits of pragmatism. A resistance which is not bound to the love for ethnicity, religion, social class or gender. A resistance which is an ancient spiritual pray for liberation and for forming a community where everyone has their livelihoods and dignity secured and cherished. And most importantly, a resistance which not only thinks, writes and speaks, but also has the courage to take action.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 2^nd, 2023.

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