PAKISTAN’S CONFLICTED CLASSES…..Part 4
The Global South’s Dread and Distrust
The need for the Global North to exacerbate their ideological tensions with Russia, even if it means prolonging their proxy war in Europe’s own backyard, is driven by fear. It is a fear that reciprocates Russia’s fear. At the root of the shared fear lies values: human values as perceived, understood and interpreted by architects and guardians of cultures grown combative.
Russia and China align themselves with the Global South’s general dread and distrust of western secular-liberal-democratic system. It seemingly carries the seeds of self-destruction:
(a) the destruction of family, of social roles and responsibilities towards the greater collective
(b) destruction of traditional respect and devotion displayed towards Nature (as allies of, not obstacles for human progress)
(c) destruction of the binary perceptions that separate the essential aspects of being male and female
(d) destruction of roles and responsibilities of children towards their parents and vice versa.
…all to foster an insatiable greed for self-gratification, lust for flaunting wealth and augmenting social approval. This new power to monetize human emotions and relationships at multiple planes amounts to objectifying the plurality of human nature into a commodities-market to achieve unscrupulous and immoral ends. In other words, it’s a system that profits monetarily (or gains unfair advantages) by deliberately disadvantaging others….then luring them into participating in it to “make quick bucks” . It is self-corrupting.
Most of all, Russia and China share the Global South’s aversion for weaponizing “human rights” by western regimes. It has become their favorite whip to flog regimes that seek to balance their precarious relations with world-powers. Their’s is a well-documented history of continuing human rights violations e.g. the many excesses of colonialism, holocaust, slavery, looting of indigenous lands, suppression of non-white entitlements as citizenry, bombing of Hiroshima, declaring wars, decapitating anti-western regimes and instigating regime-changes by installing military puppets to serve western international agendas.
Set against such an apocalyptic history, the strident advocacy for human rights by its makers-n-breakers lacks the credibility needed to deliver moral punches. Why should they be excused when they themselves make, break and shake moral principles according to the needs of political expediency?
Understandably, the Global South, like the Global North, draws the meaning of “human nature” from their own lived experiences. China, India and the Arabs have been translating their own understanding of human nature into a set of human values for over 1000–2000 years. They believe that it is their cherished, deeply embedded values that helped them update their knowledge and skills to bring them at par with the West’s…in such a short time.
Global North’s Conditional Morality
The Global North’s fears are different despite a few commonalities: they fear the destruction of their secular values of liberty, individual freedom, the right to exercise personal beliefs based on conscience, the rule of Law and Justice for all. They are committed to an open-ended, knowledge-based society that can, with every generation, adapt, modify and change their values in the light of new knowledge. They abhor regimes that control, regulate and prescribe ways of thinking and feeling, for their “subjects” under the threat of persecution.
Over the past 200 years they have developed deeply ingrained social, political, financial and intellectual institutions, (now mostly technologically enabled), that support the theories and practices of their secular mindset. Products and services advertise ideals that incorporate their thinking, their lifestyles, their social/professional relationships. Almost all of it has “success” at its apex, and a continuous hum of personal and political engines run 24/7 trying to reach that apex. Success commonly equates with the acquisition of wealth and the exercise of financial power. As always, exceptions only prove the rule. The meaning of family and familial relationships keeps changing with fortunes and new circumstances prompted by new knowledge. Their attitudes towards sex and sexuality are liberal, open-ended, even experimental. However, those who rebel from within against their system, who oppose their intrinsic values… still find a place for their own growth and achievement. They are entitled to a voice, by law. Dissent becomes a means to incorporate egalitarianism and equity only when it can no more be suppressed.
The Global North’s majoritarian-minded populations do not tolerate an alien ideology that practices contrary values e.g. dictate and prescribe a binary version of a world-construct which pivots towards “the right way” for a people to think and feel. They fear such mindsets gaining ground in their own Western lands, because it would it would spell the end of all they believe in and live for. The North’s thinking classes believe that it is thanks to their highly cherished and deeply embedded secular-liberal values that they augmented the whole world’s knowledge-base at unimaginable rates (the knowledge of the world we live in now doubles almost every 2 years, perhaps less. In the early 1990’s, it was computed to be doubling every 5 years).
They acknowledge, in passing, their own historical misdemeanors and “mistakes” after qualifying them with :
“But look at what we gave to the world. If it wasn’t for the standards of development we established for the world to follow, if it wasn’t for the knowledge we proliferated through our sacred institutions, where would the world be today? We do not advocate for human rights just because of political expediency. We believe in it. Those who share our ideals and values, may end up making similar mistakes that we made, and yes, we are more forgiving and indulgent towards them. We can’t stand in judgment because we are guilty, too. But we cannot be forgiving and indulgent towards the same violations by alien regimes who are hostile to our value-systems and who, if given a chance, will destroy it. Violating human rights for them is the norm, not an exception.”
The Global North adopts an unabashedly partisan moral stand on human rights. It is applied selectively and now, quite brazenly, to express solidarity and forge alliances with like-minded regimes in the South. Their offer of assistance, financial or military, is for them a simple matter of “trade-offs” where deeper motives do not matter. But they do when they violate not just human rights but human nature itself. Torture, rape and assassinations cannot be deliberately bypassed simply because torturers, rapists and assassins share the same value system as those in the North. Can they exercise their right to sit in judgment of them but also their right to ignore them for greater political gain?
With the exception of rich nations in the global south like Australia and Japan, most others find it challenging to align themselves to an agnostic values-based secular system. It is starting to appear like a clever ruse to advertise their neutrality towards other values-based systems, religious or otherwise. By doing this they create uncluttered social space to pursue contrary policies and politics. The Global South increasingly regard the North’s “secular truths” as skewed. Their espoused values can be contested because the principles and practices that flow out of them prove to be morally duplicitous.
How this is impacting upon Pakistan’s struggle to define the movement for Justice and the Rule of Law is proving to be complicated.
Copyright © Shad Moarif , July 2023 , ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
(cont’d Part 5)
