Feature

Building a better future by learning from the past

Tanvir Manzoor Hussain

As we lead our busy urban lives, it's surprising how rarely we find time to think deeply about the society we inhabit, and hence put our beliefs, customs and lifestyles in context. How often do we realize, for instance, that we are a member of the 'priviledged few' living in the usual urban third-world scenario an environment which constantly reveals the stark differences between the lives of the haves and the have-nots. Here, there are always a lot of lessons for everyone, a lot of hard truths to digest, wherever one looks. It's a place where glossy foreign manufactured cars with tinted glasses often drive past roads bordered by the crowded slums of the desperately hungry and the desperately poor. There is always a gap, always a distance to be maintained, and always an unwritten law emphasizing discrimination based on social status or background. A tension exists forever within such a society, where the rich fear the poor because they turn to crime, while the poor hate the rich because they turn to oppression and discrimination. And there is a distinct lack of moral and ethical concern. No one stops to ask the question 'why'. Or 'why not'.

Why is there so much distance between the people on either side of those tinted glasses? Is it a purposeful effort on the part of the rich who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, or is it their complete inability to appreciate the values of openness and diversity and simple moral rationality? And if it is their inability, then what is to blame for that? Perhaps it is an ignorance of the lessons of our past, which abounds with so many warnings for us to guard against rigid attitudes, meaningless surrenders to mysticism and the preferential treatment of groups. Whenever humans have rejected pluralism and embraced efforts to elevate themselves to a privileged position in relation to others (on whatever basis), they have ended up stagnating our socio-cultural and scientific progress. The causes might differ (from gender and race to wealth and profession), but the effects are strikingly similar.

All we need is to look at the missed opportunities in our civilization's history. For instance, why did the Ionians, who almost 2,500 years ago had revolutionized free thinking and open enquiry, and who were also the first to propose a heliocentric world and discover the first methods of empirical scientific research, have their insights suppressed? Because the then leading Greek philosophers and astronomers were obsessed with a world where humans and the Earth enjoyed a priviledged heavenly position, in a geocentric universe. But more importantly, they were disdainful of all other nations and believed the Greek elite had a priviledged societal position. Yes, it was ironic.

Similarly, why was the library of Alexandria, the citadel of research and cultural & scientific works of the ancient world, burnt down by a mob in 415 A.D., leading to the destruction of the finest collection of knowledge the world had ever known until then? Because the new findings of the library were never shared with the general populace, let alone used to improve their lives. The library meant nothing to a crowd fueled by emotions, although it should have. But they had been considered too low in status by Alexandria's elite; the same people who had gone so far as to challenge the very existence of God somehow never managed to think of challenging the discrimination which permeated their own selves, and hence never opted for diversity. The result was a loss of literary, scientific and historic works which were never recovered, throwing back the progress of human civilization by a thousand years (which came to be known as the Dark Ages).

This is exactly why separation, suppression and segregation have always been cruel. Cruel not only to those who are the immediate sufferers, but also to the generations who follow who are deprived of a better world. The people beyond the tinted glass today are proof of that.