Darwinist interpretation of culture

ISLAMABAD: ‘Meat in the room’ is a term used often when events are ‘fattened up’ with personalities of certain repute in order to add more weight to them, the relevance of said individuals, sometimes inapt, sometimes perfunctory.

When called upon to speak, these august personages either treat one to scripted declamation or aloof extempore. One does not wish to be excessively captious or flippant but when there is a veritable laundry list of names to buffer the main speaker, ones attention wanes and the main event itself, overshadowed.

This is particularly grating at book launches when the writer himself is in attendance, more time given to commentaries rather than insights.

The book launch in question was held yesterday at the Pakistan Academy of Letters, launching the translated version of ‘The System & Human Consciousness’, written by Italian ambassador to Pakistan, Vincenzo Prati.

The book originally written in Italian was translated into English by the ambassador’s daughter, the Academy of Letters having the honour of publishing it in Pakistan. The launching was held in collaboration with the Italian Pakistan Business Association, an organisation promoting bilateral relations between the two countries.

The book written in 2007, is in its own words a ‘Darwinist interpretation of cultural evolution’, charting human history, socio-political change and even extending into the psyche to foreground the modern age in light of its antecedents. The work does not strictly belong to a particular niche; it contains and comments upon very varied subject matter, its appeal lying in its erudition and its sheer ken.

The writer demonstrates particular eclecticism with this work, the intention to study change in all its facets and to see its affects on the present day.  Embarking on this, the book puts forth its theory of historical impetus, the relation of the past affecting the present, exemplified, as its states in one instance through the demise of the Qing dynasty in 1912, prompting or at least influencing the fall of the Ottoman empire a decade later.

This downfall of the Ottomans led to the fissuring of most of Arabia, the resulting period in the Middle East’s history, considered to be the source for much of the region’s present day woes.

This theory is then further extended and connected to the rise of fundamentalism and terrorism in the modern age and the unrest in the Muslim world.

The book, however, is not only historical in its view, it is personal as well in that it is borne out of the ambassadors many travels and assignments and also quite individual. Society being founded upon the individual, finds in man a microcosm and the resulting dynamism that emanates has far reaching influences.

The book studies the individuals own evolution, through his faculties and his philosophies and examines the results.

For a full time diplomat, one must appreciate the labour and study that has gone into this work. The book in itself is a very commendable effort, its extensive scrutiny adding to sociological, political and philosophical theory.

The ambassador’s reflections on this opus were insightful in that they explained the motivations behind such an undertaking and its intended message and reception.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 21^st, 2010.