INTELLECTUAL CORRUPTION

Corruption gets a breath when we have the option to choose from right & wrong for a petty gain and you opt for the latter one. In general corruption is used as a synonym for bribe and extortion. But it's not money  alone the expense of which costs us, but also the bargaining, stealing and selling of attitudes, beliefs and conviction can prove to be lethal for the destruction of the overall society.

The only happening place in Pakistan is the TV. I start surfing from 0-100 channels and all are filled with sad stories of people, dramatic short movies, and stormy talk shows. I get truly awed by the observable fact that we all spend our days in multiple environments namely office, university, friends and family but nowhere are things so paced up like in the TV. It's like a trailer of the movie too shitty to watch. News are the trailer, country-affairs are the movie.

I am one of the pioneers in news watching lazy bums in this country. When my fellows were cramming their study material to pass the exams, traveling across the northern cities, dating their first loves, I was watching TV news. How exciting. I specifically remember the previous sequence of the guests sitting in the current affairs programs. The government rhino/wolf or some similar sort always sat next to the TV anchor and the opposition leaders were queued according to their party sizes and were boo-ed upon all along the show by the anchor. I can recall Imran Khan was a pitiful dude sitting at the last end waiting for his only minute in the show.

Times have changed. The news channels have gone through following phases.

1.   Vent out phase: since we got the MIC for the first time we were so excited that we kept on ranting the  same issues over n over without focus on any particular matter

2.    Media Under Attack Phase: One fine day Hamid Mir got a real beating inside the studio, ever since he's pissed and now has turned his guns against his guests who were his 'Rooster Fighters' earlier.

3.    Breaking News Race: The competition got stiffer and the market space kept becoming narrower. The media marketers introduced a new service; breaking the news first! With the very slogan that 'we are the ones telling you exclusively before anyone' repeating endlessly we were hypnotized.

4.    Anchors' Musical Chair: Then we observed anchors shifting channels frequently, from one to another. Dr. Shahid Masood is the champion in this saga.

During this course, we the audience kept learning a very unique form of corruption; Intellectual Corruption. With total absence from political public gatherings, and showing no interests in participating as a political societal individuals, the people of this country had only TV to learn from that there is something happening which impact their lives. Some of us were too dumb to take advantage out of this and started acting as self-appointed representatives of some channels in breaking news to our peers. Much to no one's surprise, the others became more n more dependent over the channels & sub-channels. How lazy.

We have seen people building their careers in solo TV shows proposing theories of their own and then rising back as 'analysts'. Where in this world could it be so easy?

Amazingly, there's no single agenda present in any show. Since it's an hour long duty 5 days a week, out of which 20 minutes are dedicated to dancing Ali Zafar selling Sasta Packages here and there.

So what we find today is, every opinion that runs across the TV channels is the basic source of our beliefs. If the media says that there were 200 people in a particular gathering, we believe it. And then some other channel jumps in saying they were not 200 but 2000. Left wondering, we play ini-mini-mina-mo quoting disputed figures in our intellectual sparring here and there with our peers. Due to incomplete, contradicting and unstable news which we are addicted to spread, we have ourselves become liars of the highest degree. All of us have our positions with no stronger grounds than the rest. Now as such allegations might offend anyone and cause to 'huh?' and move on, a sample dialogue hereunder is presented (hope it sounds familiar):

[In a smoking session after lunch at office]

  

Mr. Alert:	Did you get the news of PNS Mehran Attack?
Mr. Profound:	Yea, it's a real dent on our morale. I think Navy is in the line of fire these days. I think it was US and Israel.
Mr. Links:	Leave it bhai, there have been evidences that it's India & Israel behind it.
Mr. Intuition:	How many insurgents were they?
Mr. Alert:	Some say 6, others 8 and some even say they were 12.
Mr. Profound:	What? Aren't we yet confirmed about the numbers still? We're sinking. Nobody can save us. Traitors are taking away the game.
Mr. Intuition:	I think they are Talibans.
Mr. Links:	Arey I know what it's about. But can't just tell you all about it.

(what the crap!)

Mr. Profound:	There's nothing that's left away from the media eye. What is it you know different that we, the TV watchers, don't know?
Mr. Links:	I know people in Army.

(crap again!)

Mr. Alert:

This country needs to read my blogs which offer turnkey solutions to saving countries like ours.

Now what I can decipher from such non-conclusive discussions is the inability of our people to stick to an argument at a time, their lack of commitment to fortifying it by complimentary premises. We are so engulfed in proving ourselves to be intellectuals that we would just say anything about anyone to prove we're well in touch, moving in right circles and connecting the dots in the most efficient manner.

Our confused children watch us debating all confused, with switching from one argument to another with irrelevant premises. Youngsters could only make the meaning out of such headless discussions that someone is a hero and the other is the villain. Then the children label the people with right and left wings. Facebook activists create pages, post obscene comments and campaign for the ideas they heard in the debate at their backyard yesterday. Vola! The people of this country are only as much political!

Such hypocrisy and intellectual bankruptcy has caused everyone to finally have gone into a state of living without the most valuable gift we call 'faith'. Now we do not believe in anyone and in no principles of genuine change. We have forgotten that there's one mechanism of nature as well. Not everything is scripted by the puppet players.