Do
you often think of the world? Of the human race? What of life? More
specifically, how do all of these things collude in the modern context?
Modernity,
with all its power and majesty, is – to use a modern term – plastic. I do not
know for sure if it is this way because it might be that we have simply jumped
on an exponentially large number of times in the past 1000 years (and
especially the last 100 years) in all physical terms; we might have simply not
had the ample time to evolve into accepting all our progress as a race.
That
being said, however, the emptiness of life as we know it is astounding once we
take a moment to absorb our actions and the mentalities behind them. It is the
very fact that we have accustomed our being such that we do not examine our
activities that prevent the majority of us from seeing the very depressing
situation we are in.
Think
of your daily routine and what makes you do it, right from the simple act of
waking up at a particular time down to our extremely complex human interaction
protocols and you will understand that almost everything we do, we have no real
reason to do; we just do things because that’s how things are done and because
things ‘need’ to be done.
The
Imam, al-Ghazali – possibly the most influential figure on Islam since the
Prophet Muhammad himself – realized this around the age of 30, when he was
already one of the most important scholars in the Islamic world, and his
thoughts and doubts regarding the purity of his deeds climaxed to a point where
he walked out in the middle of a class he was teaching, not returning until
some 10 years later after spending a tremendous amount of time in the vast
deserts in seclusion from his 11th century world.
What
took a spiritual expert 10 years, 1000 years ago, to grapple with would take
the average person of today an eternity. The dilution and desensitization of
the entire spectrum of the human experience into a mainstream monoculture, as
well as its condensation – in terms of relative importance and purpose, through
popular and social media – into a couple of minutes long sexual experience in itself is a
dilemma beyond what most of us care to comprehend. When we add to this the
modern perception of success – that of belonging to an elite, international and
wealthy culture – we see the extent and seriousness of this crisis.
It
should be noted, at this point, that by referring to ‘modern’ or ‘modernity’, I
do not mean to contrast this with some sort of nostalgic classic age where all
was well with humankind. It is, in fact, my understanding that the extension of
time did not corrupt us, so much as it peeled off many layers of life that kept
us busy. In a sense, the advent of today’s science and technology is that which
gave us the luxury of enough spare time to further scrutinize our basic human
instincts and their relevance to our intelligence.
Our
experience with our advance so far is akin to that person who climbed the
tallest of mountains only to discover that he is blind and incapable of
witnessing the view from the top. The only reasons possible for this is because
we either climbed the mountain in the wrong way, or we have simply climbed the
wrong mountain altogether.
In
the first case, the solution is facile, even though it is demanding. That is to
say, all our knowledge and experience can be looked at or utilized in a way
that changes us from the state we are in into something more favorable. The
simplest example of this type of a solution is what is known as a ‘motivational
speech’, where a charismatic person delivers a hearty speech which invigorates
us for (usually) a short period of time. This is generally accompanied with
audio and visual effects, to boost effectiveness, then disseminated on popular
video-hosting sites like Youtube, much like mass-produced drugs.
The
second case is a much hairier state of affairs, primarily as it involves
understanding which theories are, at their core, incompatible with a meaningful
life that is more ‘organic’ than ‘plastic’. Examples of such a case would
include capitalism, consumerism and other ideas that measure positivity based
on ‘physical’ values like money which contribute to ‘outer’ wealth that does
not intrinsically change our value in terms of ‘morality’.
After
the identification comes the far more challenging aspect: finding a real
alternative; that is, one that contributes to our ‘inner’ wealth without
sacrificing our ‘outer’ wealth. Generally, such solutions are attempted by
religions and spiritual movements and have historically had an entire spectrum
of results with, unfortunately, no honorable mentions of success in our modern
times.
All
this said, we must understand that, as the great Arab poet, al-Mutanabbi, once
said, “Matching the fortitude of the people, crises befall them.” In other
words, our problems are only as big as our ability is powerful or shrewd enough
to solve them.
Big dreams, toughest path and best burger cook in history
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