A sea of ignorance

Perhaps because we have achieved so little in real terms, we have chosen to blind ourselves to reality. It takes courage to face the truth. It is much easier to instead set up a kind of fantasy world, put up on the pillars of ignorance and the fantasies which have a place in the world of fiction but not outside it. We today live within the walls of this world we have created to a greater and greater extent.
The world is made up of myths, fables, superstitions and the bizarre conspiracy theories that we now specialise in. We use these theories to explain all kinds of events, ranging from those at the international level to mundane day-to-day events. There are for example those in the country who apparently believe 9/11 was not the doing of Al-Qaeda or that Osama bin Laden was not killed in May 2011 in Abbottabad. The ‘Malala conspiracies’ too go around, each more absurd than the other – as do accounts built on tiny segments of truth, such as those about events in Balochistan.
Trickling down from these are the other conspiracy accounts, about vaccines causing sterility, about tunnels being dug into schools or about fortified foods being used by ‘enemies’ to cause harm. The paranoia that feeds these theories also promotes the curious idea that we are surrounded by enemies.
Of course, some of the stories are fed by the realities under which we live. The possibility of an attack on a ‘soft target’ of one kind or the other is real. But feeding this fear by posting rumours over social media, presenting them as fact and spreading them as widely as possible amounts to either ignorance or deliberately malafide intent. By doing so people everywhere are in fact playing into the hands of terrorists, whose purpose of course is to create fear and generate uncertainty. Armed with their mobile phones and tablets, people are helping them along. Exaggerated accounts of incidents are circulated and people appear to revel in creating as much panic and pandemonium as is possible.
This psyche is one that needs to be examined. No nation of healthy people would go about causing anguish or deliberately igniting anxiety in this fashion. Yet we see this happening on a daily basis and too many people seem to believe even the most outlandish stories, putting their own powers of reason aside.
As the Nazi Minister for Propoganda Joseph Goebbels said, if you tell a lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. Social media helps in the task of ceaseless repetition and, like a game of Chinese Whispers, the ‘truth’ tends to become warped and distorted as it shifts from one device to the next.
It would be a fallacy to believe ignorance is linked to a lack of education. The manoeuvring we have spoken of above involves perfectly literate, often well educated persons who are ignorant despite the degrees that follow their names. In the same manner as the unfounded stories they disseminate vague references to religion are used to take forward other notions which make little real sense.
Social media is in fact filled with nonsensical notions about eating certain foods to achieve specific purposes or about how selecting a particular colour from a set given on a website can determine your personality and your set of beliefs. Thousands of such ‘quizzes’ and ‘tests’ float across cyberspace and in other places. Of course, they can be undertaken simply as a ‘fun’ way to pass the time – but there are too many who hold faith in them and insist they are as valid as scientific proof. Horoscopes, followed religiously by huge numbers, fall essentially in the same category. Superstition that stems from these horoscopes is widespread and is spurred on by the pirs and fortune tellers that so many choose to visit on a regular basis, allowing their daily activities to be dictated by what they are told.
Some of this can be downright dangerous. The ‘remedies’ for diabetes or other incurable diseases spread through ignorance simply mislead people. Following this advice, which also comes in over television channels, could have very dangerous consequences. People have been known to abandon their medications on the basis of such information – or rather misinformation. It is of course their lack of good sense, and perhaps their desperation, which leads them to this.
In other cases, the lack of literacy and knowledge of people is exploited. Faith healers are one manifestation of this. So are those who have set up ‘magic machines’ in poor localities in Lahore and other cities, claiming they can diagnose any sickness under the sun and suggest how they can be cured. The output is essentially gibberish. More sophisticated scans, which people also believe focus on fertility and claims of sophisticated technology to treat a variety of diseases that require expert medical intervention.
On the same note, it is quite shocking to see quite how many people believe in the power of ‘black magic’. People one would not expect this from on the basis of their education, seem to earnestly believe in voodoo and that pins stuck into a doll could cause them, or those close to them, harm. The same kind of realm of ignorance expands into many other spheres of life. Education clearly does not always help remove it from the mind.
The problem is that this lack of ability to discern fact from fiction, truth from lies, has led us into all kinds of trouble. We simply do not see our own faults as a society and in fact blame their existence on ‘evil’ forces working against us. Why these forces of darkness should have gathered in such large numbers to torment us is unclear. The problem is that believing this prevents attempts to tackle our problems and prevent them from growing. This accounts for our mounting set of difficulties in so many different areas.
We would be well advised to raise our vision to other places and accept that there is a great deal that has gone wrong. We need to find ways to put it right. This is a difficult task. It could involve years of endeavour. Our inability as a state to handle these issues has contributed to the state of mind people find themselves in. But more and more damage is being caused by this. We can see it happening every day, and there is no sign that the age of ignorance is growing to an end. In fact, the darkness seems to be growing denser and it can only be brushed away through collective effort which involves the media, the education system, clerics and all other who have influence on society.
We need to build a more rational place to live in. Without rationality and reason, the human mind is stripped of much of its power. We have acted to take this power away and leave behind a kind of mindlessness which makes it harder and harder to perform useful function. Leadership by the government could help clear the path to be followed and make people more aware of what they need to do to prevent ignorance from spreading and discovering the value of light.
The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.
Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com