What Is More Deadly: Denials or Defeatism? - Part I
BY Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
“Difficult as it is to believe, terrorists don’t see themselves as evil. They see themselves as revolutionaries, and more than that as idealists who are willing to make enormous sacrifices in order to bring about a better world.”
- Deepak Chopra in “Peace is the Way”
Both are lethal and toxic because both have the potential to rob humans of their humanity and manliness. Curiously, both have something to do with fear. So add fear and what emerges as a compound is a perfect troika and recipe of disaster and decline. The present as well as the past history presents ample illustration of why nations and individuals fell and licked the dust. They got humbled and humiliated when they ran into a mode of any one of the three.
There may have been many causes behind the Black Death pandemic of 1348, but certainly it were not the rats alone that caused the spread of the plague and the elimination of half of the population in Europe between just four years (1348-1352); it were the edicts of the Catholic Church that earlier had declared that cats were “diabolical creatures”, refer to Gregory IX’s papal letter of 1232. In the absence of pesticides and vaccines, cats were the natural first line of defense against the real career of the plague, writes Bill Fawcett in his book, “100 Mistakes That Changed History”. The disease got a free hand once they were taken out. Wars and especially civil wars curiously enough start with similar innocent religious Fatwas, mostly based on superstitions and personal motifs.
The question is why did Pope Gregory IX’s wrath fall on this poor creature that in those days lived in every European house? The anger was perhaps misdirected. The real culprits were the "Pagan Egyptians” and they revered cats more than they revered their children, and for a very practical reason. So the onus of anger basically was against the Egyptians, and more specifically against their being pagans, the cats just became the proxy victims. Egyptians stored grain in barns, and rats loved barns. No wonder that the Egyptians declared the killing of a cat a very serious offence, punishable by death. The poor cats also fell from favor because of their peculiar habits; they love aloofness and tend to be proud and independent by nature, both anti-religious activities. They love humans if humans handle their kittens well; otherwise they act as ferociously as humans do. Once the Pope associated cats with the devil; especially if they were black, they became the incarnation of the devil. Wise Europeans as a precaution did not like themselves to be accused of any witchcraft, a crime punishable by being burned alive. So killing a cat was thought of as an easy option.
It is left to the wisdom of the readers to elicit conclusions as to who is the cat and who is the rat, and who is the Pope in the pandemic of terrorism, especially infesting Pakistan. Fifty thousand deaths still fail to define what is terrorism? Who is a shaheed/martyr? Who is a terrorist? Is it our war? The politicians first announce a “dharna”, then their workers start looting and burning, then the workers start implementing their version of religion, then comes the shootings, then come India, Israel and America as the main culprits. The country burns, and its PM comes to America to say, “We need to fix our own home first.” As a teacher I have seen students tailoring all kinds of excuses to justify their obvious failures, but never did I find anyone so naïve, telling me, “I think I should have worked hard”.
Denial is escapism from reality and from the process of self-correction. It is basically a habit, an attitude in which “one is always innocent; it is others who are at fault”. It is a psychological defense mechanism which, according to Freud, a person applies when he wants to evade the uncomfortable truths and realities, and wants to continue to live in his own deceptive world of fantasy and lies. People in this mode never clean their own pots but keep polluting even what they get as clean. Change for such people is risky, but no change is even riskier. This attitude earns people and nations their total rejection because nobody trusts liars and unreliable people.
Defeatism is the first cousin of the denial mode. In this state, a person accepts defeat even without giving himself/herself a fair trial. A person wrapped in this attitude is like a runner who feels no temptation to even go up to the starting line because he feels cock-sure that he is going to lose the race. He is like that lover who keeps burning from inside all the time, but does not pick up the courage to go to his beloved and confess his love because he thinks she is going to say “no" to him.
Genghis Khan (1163-1227) summoned some 280 richest men of the city of Bukhara in the main mosque. Then through interpreters, he lectured them sternly on the sins and misdeeds of their sultans and themselves. It was not the common people who were to blame for these failures, rather, “it is the great ones among you who have committed these sins. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.” Then he told the rich not to bother showing his soldiers the wealth above the ground; the Mongols could find that without assistance. He wanted them to guide them only to their hidden or buried treasure.
Lest the lovers of the Mongolian disciples forget in Pakistan, it may not be out of context to remind them that one of Genghis Khan’s greatest happiness was to scatter his enemy like husk, to drive them before him as the wind drives the husk, to see their cities reduced to ashes; to those who loved him, then shroud them in tears…
Three FACTORS make or mar a nation. If a nation follows THE COURSE OF JUSTICE, it becomes a Utopia. Utopia basically means, “No land”. Thomas Moore was right when he envisaged these three factors because viewing man’s nature, it just seems not possible for man to be without them. They are: GREED, CORRUPTION AND WAR”. No country on earth, now or in the past, has had people who were totally free of them. But rule of justice is the only solution. Greed leads to corruption, and it is the mother evil because it makes people oblivious to the suffering of others, says Justice Michael J. Sandel in his book, “Justice”.
The Taliban in Afghanistan and in Pakistan claim that they “live in dirt, are close to dirt and are ready to go under dirt”. Thomas Moore said a similar thing. You control greed, and gold and silver will lose their glitter for you. In those days, money was minted of these two metals. One values them more highly than their true nature deserves. In utility both are far inferior to iron. People can live without gold and silver, but they cannot live without iron, just as they cannot live without water and fire. It is greed that puts undue value on gold and silver. “In times of trouble, a good society pulls together. Rather than press for maximum advantage, people look out for one another. A society in which people exploit their neighbors for financial gain in times of crisis is not a good society. Excessive greed is therefore a vice that a good society should discourage if it can,” says Michael Sandel.
So Taliban have nothing to lose, because they never possessed anything. Their ideal of life is sadly low. Most are illiterate and are completely devoid of understanding what peace means. But they are not as naïve as they are thought of to be. They understood Genghis Khan well. In a justice-starved world, inhabited by callous, corrupt and cruel rulers, they chose what BBC calls, the course of “quick justice”.
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