Of Knowing Men to Remain Human

“Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor - all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked - who is good? Not that men are ignorant - what is truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.” W.E.B.Du Bois, Souls of the Black Folk
The idea of know thyself as the highest good offered by Socrates and immortalized by its inscription at the Delphic oracle has always been an easier said than done axiom of human existence. How do we know ourselves? How do we know others? Do we meet the other beyond good and evil or we always compartmentalize human capacities into ostensible yardsticks developed by time-ridden ideas born to be transitory? Compartmentalization of other individuals and groups into black and white, into true and false, into good and evil, making it easy to issue verdicts but very difficult to do justice. In such quests for righteousness we always forget that all the ideals human beings follow are destined to decay. Ours will have the same fate. It is humanity alone that survives.
Humanity is the most oft- and yet ill-defined precondition of our existence on this planet. Now how do we define humanity? Is there a certain way, a method? For many there is, but for a few there isn’t. Let us talk about those who defy the orderly definition of humanity. Who think being human is the greatest good unto itself. Living human and letting others live a human life as the ultimate act of humanity. This very emotion gives birth to the noble human capacity to do good to the point of sublimation, of achieving the greatness to forgive and forego. To forgive the mistakes of others, mistakes that might be a simple difference of perception, or even something not easy to digest within a given time and space dispensation, the environment in which we are born and brought up, the culture, our heritage and our identity.
From this point onwards the journey of sublimation enters the phase of foregoing. Of unlearning what we cherish as heritage, as culture. Every humane movement in the history of mankind has this distinct feature as the cornerstone of its development. Those who cannot unlearn are incapable of innovation. And those who can’t innovate perish. They cling to worn out ideas till the ideas have worn them out. Iqbal prophetically said in his lectures “worn out ideas are never risen to power in a society that has worn them out.”
Now the dilemma of our nation also lies partially in this crisis of identity. Though no single factor could be cited as an ultimate reason for good or evil even for a single individual, let alone for a society. Each reason constitutes the fabric of the whole. From the very onset Pakistan has been a battle-place of ideas. Vertically grafted ideas, ideas developed by a small elite from the figments of their imaginations, have become the test of loyalty for the nation. Every individual or group, no matter how original or large it might have been, has had to fit into the frame. People with distinct cultural identities and histories were declared enemies of the state, because they were not able to remake themselves into the imaginary national identity. The irony is that this class never believed or practiced it, but still vigorously imposed it upon the masses through the media and education. They did this is a soft manner while the writ of the state was often used to decide such conflicts of identity. The ones who dared to differ with the mainstream being the ones in conflict.
Preconceived notions of national identity damaged the organic growth of the state and society. Thus, the absence of leadership and grassroots democracy. Democracy cannot flourish under preconditions. Indeed, the greatest precondition for democracy is the absence of preconditions. As Bernard Shaw aptly put it: “There is only one golden, rule that there is no golden rule.” Looking for golden rules drives a society into ideas of utopia and utopias are never human. The common good cannot be predefined, because the common man acts most, thinks least. This is why Freud once said,” Civilization is best served by people who don’t even know the meaning of the word.”
If we start talking about the mistake we, as a nation, made and continue to make, it will become an unending tale of woes. Let us not talk about it. It will bring nothing but leave a bad taste in our mouths. Let us be positive and talk about what we can do. We need to reorient ourselves. First and foremost we need to unlearn the compartmentalization of others into boxesof ethnicity, sects, creeds, and language. A multi-threaded social fabric like Pakistan’s cannot exist with such pretentions. Tolerance is not a natural, inherent human capacity. It is developed through the use of the faculty of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not offered as a favor to anyone; it is respected as the right of other not to be harmed by our prejudices. When we forgive someone we should always keep in mind the fact that we are sublimating our own beings to a higher level. Not simply letting a culprit lose.
Our society needs this soul searching immediately. It is already late in the day, but it is never too late to do good. This is the only way we can save ourselves from the “tragedy of our age…of knowing too little of men”

Media For the Commoners

"It was that simple. Chou En-lai knew that he was addressing lonely men, men whose mentalities had been branded with a sense of being outcasts. It cost him nothing to make such a gesture, to speak words of compassion. He offered no programs of industrialization, no long term loans, no mutual defense pacts. To the nations smarting under a sense of inferiority, he tried to cement ties of kinship." Richard Wright, The Color Curtain.
This is the voice of compassion we direly need from all quarters. The have-nots of this country have become a city within the city, the city of the poor. Marx’ words about being two cities within a single city, one of rich and one of poor, can easily be generalized for the whole Land of the Pure. What does the city of the poor, that part of the nation that is the dominant, silent majority, reeling under abject poverty or a minority among them (the so called middle class) ready to go down the spiral to be devoured by it, need to become part of the scenery rather than being the spectator?
What can we offer and how can we do it? The how becomes more important than the what because we have to look for venues of compassion. The only compassionate partner of modern men and women, no matter how backward he/she is, is the media. What type of media might bear the word “compassion”? It is community media. What is community media? Even the present day mass idiot boxes pose to be community spokespersons through giving local tickers and making a mockery of people's miseries by claiming to be “the first on the scene”. They don't qualify to do it. There is no question about it.
Community media is a media that develops out of the needs of a smaller human denomination and responds to its needs, answers its questions, and advocates for its needs. Corporate media, the media running on fear and favor, to be precise, do not qualify to do it at all. The needs of the impoverished and those "smarting under the sense of inferiority" can only be met by something more altruistic. Here again many will object that such an arrangement is impossible in the world of cut throat competition. This is also what we call mediated reality. If good schools are possible, and good hospitals are possible, than why not an altruistic community media? The need of the hour is to understand the meaning of this important phenomenon. To understand how it operates.
First, community media is a patient, audience-based enterprise. One should have the patience to listen to stories and also the acumen to tell stories. One can never tell a story if one is not positive enough to listen to one.. Our mainstream media malaise of stuffing people with preconceived questions is not of any use. Questions must arise from the very soil and souls that are being presented. It is their version of reality that is important, not what we decide is important in our cozy (and not too cozy) drawing rooms. Our being "knowledgeable" is the worst qualification for the job. We need to "come to" them "with the trust of a child," borrowing the words from Peter Gabriel's famous song “Red Rain”.
The very word community media means it is their media, not someone else's. The second most important step is to give the people their voices back. It should not transmit messages in "packages", giving the name of the reporter and the channel that streams it. The person and the community should get their name acknowledged. It is important to build confidence and develop a horizontal system of communication. People should get their views back in a form where they can see themselves; individuals as well as communities should be able to identify themselves. It is the same with movies and drama all over. And those with the tall talk about objectivity know well that there is none. The most objective is what helps the people who lay claim to it the most. That doesn't succumb to narrow, vested interests. If we make this the yardstick there don't exist many. So, enough of the objectivity chirping. And still it is objective. It is never based on fables. It is the truth of a people. Let it be in the open, let it see the light of day.
There is need to develop a network based upon community radio (the most effective), newspapers, or even TV that uses reporting methods in a humane manner. The above picture is one such example. The little guy is feeling comfortable with the camera. He is interacting. The kids are not afraid. They are enjoying being part of the process. All this comes after a patient hour or two. The reporters roam in the area with their elders, listening to their stories, the little ones watching the whole process. Then comes the moment that they let themselves play around in front of the camera. And all this ends up in a photo (also a video clip) where the media is no more an outsider.
The need of the hour is thus to develop a network that lifts images, without bias and prejudice, from the simplest level of human existence (and these shouldn't be social outcasts, exceptional problems), to the mainstream. Every part of the country should get its share of presence on the national mainstream. This can only be done if we learn the art of reporting for the poor, understand the need of "cementing ties of kinship", to give the silent, dominant, unrepresented, but never honored majority of this country, a voice.

Empathy Design for the Water Struck

"Nothing can describe the Confusion of Thought which I felt when I sunk in water; for tho' I swam very well, yet I could not deliver my self from Waves so as to draw Breath, till that wave having driven me, or rather carried me a vast Way on towards the Shore, and having spent itself, went back, and left me upon Land almost dry, but half-dead with the Water I took in."
Daniel Defoe in Robinson Crusoe defines a very pertinent human condition. A condition we can sympathize with, but can not fathom. We need not to fathom it. Our responsibility is not to analyze how much pain one (or all) felt when they suffered at the hands of water. This is done. People are left "half-dead." Don't need our analysis. They need our understanding. The question is how to understand. The instrument of understanding is naturally our heart and mind. It is being fed through information. Information that comes through different sources. One being the modern mass media. Media brings sorrows and pleasures from distant, and also not so distant, lands into our immediate presence. But media always brings in bias with it. It prioritizes one happening over the other. It helps and blurs our vision of reality at the same moment.
There are but other human faculties that help us understand the sorrows of the ones who are "left upon the land almost dry." The best instrument is identification. Identification is the human faculty of putting ones being in other's position. We cease to remain human once we are unable to empathize ourselves with the ones whom we consider our own.
The people who are left in the lurch by the existing disaster are a resilient genre, since "Pakistani society is a pain absorbing society", a German TV channel commented at the very beginning of the disaster. The aids to our perception, namely the media of mass communication, are but an important instruments in this struggle against the inevitable. Natural disasters can not be stopped. These are the testimony of power of nature over the struggle of man to survive. But disasters could be managed. This could be done through preemptive training or post disaster management efforts. The time to preemption is no more. It has already been lost. reasons are numerous: inability of state and society to understand the meaning of interactive, community based, responsible, humane structures could be cited as the main reason. All the talk about corruption, inefficiency, and many many other ills could be brought to one point: non-participatory, vertical system of social interaction, in simpler but more elusive terms absence of grass root democracy; democracy whose natural outcome is responsible attitudes, not only in the political sphere, but more importantly at the social level, down the very grassroots.
This is the problem lying at the heart of all problems of relief and reluctance of the world to come forward with hearts and minds to help a disaster clearly accepted by the world as one of the worst in recent history.
Media could be used in two ways in the present crises. One is the mainstream media. This could be used in a proper manner to cover the disaster. Here, despite the intensive debate on the issue, a coherent understanding of the issue is absent. Anchors with urban bias reaching a devastated site, camera focussed on them most of the time, their will be done all the time, people shown as third world miseries, while the guy sympathizes with them, isn't any service to the people at all. Now if we turn to the other side of the equation, we see the same overdressed, unpreparedness in the newsroom. Guys this is no Eid transmission. Be human. Try to empathize. Your images are being floated for years and all the viewers appreciate your appearance and mannerisms. This is ensured. Now let humanity flow through your body, your word and your body language. No training can teach it. It is you who can unlearn pretensions, harmony with the hapless will naturally flow through you and become an integral part of the image world. And believe me you all will look much prettier, once you become more humane.
The other important media is altogether missing in the present episode. Not that it has been snatched away or swept away by floods. It never existed. This is community media. We do have FM channels, FM radio. The anomaly between cheap and handy broadcasting and community service has shown itself at the worst moment of our history. The times when this country needed this mouthpiece of the poor it doesn't have it. FM community radio stations went through many phases in Pakistan, but never reached the destination. From hobbyists, to militants, to the money mongers, to aid aspirants; but never to community journalism.There is a dire need to instal FM radios in the camps or in the immediate vicinity. Many would think of this idea as a mad man's dream amid such a situation where people are suffering in all possible ways.
I can understand this and also empathize with the feeling. But at this moment of dearth of resources we should not underestimate the role of this cheap and handy instrument of communication, this voice in the neighborhood, the voice next door. At a moment when we have least resources, this handy media could help managing them through bringing awareness among the affected people. Health and hygiene, helping the people through trauma, information about what is available and what is not, and why, wether updates, and update on conditions at the homes they left. All this could be done most easily through interactive broadcasts on community channels. How will people listen to them, how will they respond? Mobile phones helped people to keep in contact with their near and dear. Every villager buys a phone that could catch FM radio. This job has already been don. What is left is the government's (PEMRA's, to be precise) earliest decision to draft a contract structure for issuing community radio licenses. PEMRA can do this, They are neither struck by the disaster nor are busy in relief. Their bit would be to make it possible for the ones left high and dry to get a taste of grassroots democracy. To get the best gift in the worst times.