The Age of Narcissist Man

Anthropocene, or Age of Man, is what we’re calling this particular time in the history of our planet. I would like to add some granularity to that: the last 3 decades or so should be considered as the Age of the Narcissist Man. Let me explain …

We tend to assume these days that scientific advancement inevitably leads to progress. I don’t disagree but with the following caveat: the potential for progress precedes any meaningful progress. It is in that period of uncertainty that we humans are most dangerous. For example, we used nuclear power to destroy millions of lives before we harnessed it in any useful way. I believe that we’re going through a similar phase as far learning to utilize the scientific advances of our times to make our lives more meaningful. The way things are in many parts of the urbanized, highly educated populations of the Western world, one could argue that we’ve achieved exactly the opposite – made our lives far less meaningful.

Part of living a meaningful life is (1) the process of self-realization – knowing who we truly are and what we want. The other part (2) is enjoying the company of those who care about us. Today, more than ever, we have the tools to maximize both and yet those tools have tremendous potential for misuse and that seems to be the path that we’ve chosen.

Today, we can truly “invent” ourselves (a concept I picked up from a Mohsin Hamid essay). Want to be a chef? Change your social media bio, access recipes from all over world on the Internet (or travel), practice with help from YouTube, post pictures of the end result on Instagram. Viola! Everyone believes you’re a chef – regardless whether you can really cook or not. This can replicated for pretty much anything else .. including being a Jihadist (on a side note, I believe that the phenomena of the Western Jihadist is better understood as the appeal of an adopted anti-establishment identity than being inspired by religion alone).

In other words, this is a great time to “be you”. Except most of us are told to be something else. And that something else often coincides with the prevalent hyper-everything dogma of our times – the myth of achievement. Just being fit is not good enough, we all want to be tri-athletes. Being good at your job is not good enough, we must all be Steve Jobs (who wants to be Steve Jobs and why?). In school, parents and teachers alike are fixated on results, wanting their kids/students to all be  … Steve Jobs (?) Even philanthropy and self-deprivation is infused with a certain type of snobbery – this idea that one person can/will change the world. So here we are, with our inflated egos (and Twitter bios), all running around trying to be world-changing poverty-ending super-fit SteveJobs-caliber leaders and innovators. And in this process, not only have we deviated as far from (1) as possible but we’ve also lost (2) … because who has time for family and friends when you’re saving the world.

Now I can already anticipate the response to a lot this – this is after all a conversation related to identity, that most personal of things. To those who will criticize me for setting a low bar. settling etc. etc. I just want to say that I’m not against striving for something great per se. My point is that that struggle needs to be aligned with our true selves and that there are are other (more important) factors that must be considered.

(Warning: Depressing content ahead) Let’s just take a step back and think about our reality for a second. We are born alone in this world and we die alone. In this process we have a life that is punctuated by moments of joy and loss. In our lifetime we will find a handful of people (blood relative or not) who will be there for us on this journey to make us feel less alone. In order to sustain these relationships we will need to have compassion, patience and the ability to treat them the way we would like to be treated (the message of all religions). It should be obvious that that is the foundation without which no life can be meaningful. And yet, in my view, we have, completely lost sense of this idea.

I’ve talked to people from all walks of life and all parts of the world and the message is the same: life was easier when we had communities. We don’t anymore because we’re so self-absorbed unable to find time even for ourselves much less anyone else. I live in Southern California – where people walk around in athletic wear, constantly juggling between work and exercise, eating power bars and going home to dogs for company. A sign of the times – more than one person has told me that they prefer the company of dogs over human companionship because they ask so little. Now THAT should be considered the definition of “settling” but we accept that since we cannot stomach the idea of settling at our jobs or at anything that will undermine our adopted identities – because we are obsessed with ourselves – we are, after all, narcissists.

Pakistanis are Arabs

OK – so clearly that’s nonsense … but while I have your attention ..

Back in 2012, the Aspen Institute held a discussion called “My Middle East” featuring authors from around the “modern Middle East”. This included participants from various Arab countries, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Each author was given an opportunity to provide insight into their unique Middle Eastern experience. The brilliant Daniyal Mueendin was representing Pakistan. When it was his turn to speak, he started rambling about how the question was confusing to him as he was not a Middle-Easterner and so didn’t really know what to say – in other words, he missed the point completely i.e for all practical purposes (and particularly from the perspective of the audience) his cultural experience was Middle Eastern enough. I should add that the participants from Turkey and Afghanistan had no such problems. To me this brought to the fore an issue that’s been bothering me for a while namely a tendency among affluent, liberal Pakistanis to underplay Pakistan’s cultural affiliation with the Greater Middle East and instead fixate eastward, towards India, for such cultural linkages.

Now part of this understandable given the Pakistani state’s ludicrous attempts at exactly the opposite i.e. to deny any cultural connection with India and claim that Pakistan came to being the day Mohammad bin Qasim set foot here. But just because this position is extreme does not mean the opposite must be true – in fact, I would contend that truth lies somewhere in between and not quite in the middle.

Given the emotional nature of this debate, let me get some controversial things out of the way. This is not about genetics, race, politics – neither is it about the superiority of any one group of people over others. Personally, I’m desirous of peace with India and pray for peace, prosperity and progress for all the people in our troubled region (east & west). To me this is simply a discussion about the dominant components of what we call the culture of Pakistan.

Let me also clearly say at the outset – it is insane to deny the links between Pakistan and the Indian world. In fact, the very name “India” is dervied from the Indus river – the birthplace of ancient Indic civilizations and the Hindu religion itself. I would even argue that the historically proper name for Pakistan is “India” distinct from “Bharat” i.e. the region comprising modern day India. But that was all thousands of years ago and since then we’ve had some .. uh .. stuff happen what with Pakistan being at the junction of Central Asia, Middle East and modern India and people of various races but mostly of the same faith (Islam) passing through and often settling down.

Also, my point here is not that the culture of India and Pakistan is dissimilar. Instead my point is that the culture of Pakistan in it’s essence is not Indian. And so if someone claims that the culture of India and Pakistan is very similar, I would argue that that means that culture of India is, in essence, not Indian either.

Now it is obviously not possible for me to publish a dissertation on the origins of the culture of Pakistan here. Instead I hope that (in this age of Google and Wikipedia) a cursory examination of the origins of various aspects of Pakistan life that fall under the umbrella of culture – cuisine, dress, arts, poetry, literature, festivals, rituals, architecture etc. etc. – will reveal their origin in an Islamo-Persian Turko-Mongol past with a sprinkling of Arab influence. No doubt, everything has been Indianised to varying extents – but the essence remains extra-Indian.

Let’s just talk about cuisine for a second. If I throw a chicken tikka on a pizza, it doesn’t make pizza Pakistani. Pizza is Italian period. Similarly, the fact that countless people in India at this very moment are eating Tikkah and Tandoori Naan does not mean that the Tikkah (Persian), Naan (Persian), Tandoor (Central Asian via Arabia) are Indian. Spanish rice is a Mexican staple but no one calls it Mexican rice. The same should apply to the cuisine that is widely (and wrongly) recognized as Indian cuisine by the world today. Kofta, Biryani, Qorma, Tikkah, Naah, Kebab, Halwa, Qulfi, Falooda (I can go on and on) – the most clear indicator of the origin of these foods is the origin of their names (Persian/Turkish/Arabic). How can we then call this food Indian (assuming “Indian” here implies origin – as it should).

We can extend this argument to all aspects of culture – shalwar qamees (Central Asian), sherwani (Persian/Turkish), the Taj Mehal, Badshahi mosque, the poetry of Ghalib and Iqbal, the calligraphy and art of Sadiqain – all grounded in the Greater Middle East with influences from the India. Minor point: Iranian author Reza Aslan used Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s “Tablet and the Pen” as the title of his book on the literature of the Greater Middle East.

How, then, can one make the argument that this culture is Indian in character? I really don’t understand. If anything, we can argue that this is the culture of the Muslims of British India, distinct from the indigenous culture of India. In fact, wasn’t this the argument that was made to justify the creation of the state of Pakistan i.e. the Muslims elites were concerned that under a dominant Hindu majority, this “Muslim” culture would be crushed and lost (unless you believe the ridiculous idea that the purpose of creating Pakistan was the establishment of an Islamic State). If all this is true, don’t the Muslims of Pakistan due to their historical and geographical links with the Muslim world have the greatest claim to this culture?

In fact, what has happened since partition is something that was never anticipated. Instead of the resurgence of a dormant Hindu culture, the Hindu majority wholeheartedly embraced Muslim culture, rebranded it as Indian and in the process even managed to convince the Muslims across the border of the same.

And yet, frustratingly, it is Pakistanis themselves who make no effort to claim this culture and in fact attribute it to Indian civilization (go read some reviews of Pakistani restaurants on Yelp – inexplicably Pakistanis will always refer to their food as “Indian/Pakistan” – and yes – we say “Indian” first. Bizarre.)

Here I have another interesting observation. An argument is commonly made, in private and public conversations that goes something like this: “we (Pakistan and India) are the same people, same culture so why are we involved in the problems of the Middle East and they’re not?” which, in my mind, always brings up the question “but what if the opposite is true i.e. it is precisely b/c of our connection to the Middle East that we are involved in those problems and that maybe we are, in fact, not the same people”

In my opinion, much of what plagues Pakistan today is emblematic of a deep-rooted identity crisis. We need to figure out and accept who we are – pronto. I would argue that we are neither Arab nor Indian but a distinct group with a distinct culture that we can rightfully be proud of. And none of this has to come at the expense of our relationship with India. We can claim it as our’s. They can claim it as their’s. Happens all the time. Let’s just get on with it.