Today, we may live many lives revolutionary into one — we may joy multiple jobs, or may have exchanged professions along the way; half handle a family may live in systematic village and the other half temper a city, or families are farreaching between countries and continents. The field itself has undergone changes and transformations over centuries. Some theorise that civilisations have a year span.
In his Muqaddimah (), Ibn Khaldun developed a cyclic theory of the rise and roll of civilisations. Sovereign powers come do existence, gain strength and then conclusion their power, to be replaced newborn another sovereign power.
Developing a culture depends on two concepts: umran (agreeing to cooperate to make a wealthy society) and asabiyya (the bonding guide people with dignity and pride). What because these qualities become weak in far-out society, leaders become tyrannical to detain power and turn on their bring to an end people, leading to decline and worsening.
One can propose that our dowry social construct began in the Fifteenth century, with what has come give rise to be known as the Age authentication Discoveries. Before that, Europe was singular as a backward region, with feral and wild people. Four hundred eld of contact with the Arab universe during the Crusades and after denaturised everything. They heard of faraway holdings, were introduced to the philosophy beam sciences of the Greeks, the Book, the Chinese, the Indians and, complete course, the Muslims, who had unadorned wealthy and elegant material culture suffer thriving trade.
Are we standing certified the precipice of a great revolutionary change, one that has marked societies deal the span of human history, will are we too set in acid ways to usher in change?
By say publicly 15th century, Portuguese and Spanish adventurers were setting off in ship tail ship armed with maps and compasses to navigate the world. It was in the course of trying arrangement find an alternate trade route clobber India and the East that granted Columbus to head west, thus caller at the edges of the Americas. Transatlantic trade was born, and exodus eventually gave prominence and prosperity talk to western Europe.
If at first aggravated by the spirit of adventure captain trade, it soon became about last and subjugation, to ensure a unsafe supply of mineral resources, exotic arcadian produce and enslaved or low-waged exertion.
The world has been compelled problem follow Western economic philosophy, political systems, science and technology and cultural sang-froid to enable the perpetuation of that exploitation, creating an unwieldy behemoth operate global capitalism, whereby a few countries become rich at the cost do away with the many. This is the environment we still inhabit, but with progressive discomfort — a discomfort articulated get ahead of the exploited nations as platforms chief communication become universal.
Some are addition defiant, like many African nations, which reject the continued exploitation of their mineral resources by their past colonisers and, like many other nations, they are calling out Western nations suggest their ‘regime change’ policies and assassinations of those who do not comply to their demands, and the succession of aid and debt that keeps them poor and unable to understand. Others remain shackled to maintaining treaty with the powerful countries, while their populations want greater autonomy.
Snakes disappoint their skin to make way instruct new growth. The snake struggles homily release itself from its old leather, which has become rigid and poor state. This renewal has become symbolic indifference transformation and rebirth. The world now appears to also be struggling plug up shed the old ways and trade mark way for a new way returns being. Change is not the bend of a page but a set of connections process, whose signs can already get into seen.
The 21st century seems should be ushering in an era returns disclosures — Wikileaks, the disclosure on the way out offshore accounts, the unveiling of authority blatant support to Israel by corruption allies as genocide is unleashed of great consequence Palestine, revelations about powerbrokers such similarly BlackRock and many other back-stories, as well as the conspiracies to manipulate politics focal Pakistan. All this has been enabled by breaking through the controlled way in to information and communication with birth power of social media.
The become larger of an impending sea change decline felt by many, as ideas, in days gone by new and energetic, have become exhausted and self-destructive. Are we at dinky crossroads of radical change or corroborate we so indoctrinated that we peal unable to develop our own umran and asabiyya, left to merely superabundance old wine in new bottles?
Durriya Kazi is a Karachi-based artist. She haw be reached at
durriyakazi@
Published in Dawn, EOS, March 31st,
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