That you cannot step into a river twice is well known. It simply means that conditions of life constantly undergo changes whether you are able to realise the reality of it nor not. Such changes had been slow, so slow that they had been imperceptible. But with the advent of Industrial Revolution the process picked up pace. And now in the wake of IT Revolution the pace has become threateningly so fast that traditional society is faced with the prospect of total elimination.

The advanced societies have lost even the vestiges of traditional life. The biggest victim of such a historical development is the erasure of community instinct and community practices spanning thousands of years. The result is the emergence of a new kind of individual that has no parallel in human history. This individual is a product of specific socio-economic and politico-cultural structures generally known as capitalism. Its current form called corporate capitalism, lays inordinate stress on what it calls the rights and choice of an individual. It means individual’s rights to possess possessions and what it entails and to make choices regarding the kind of personal life he/she wants to adopt but all this has to be conducted within the capitalist framework where possession in the shape of private property has to be treated as inviolable.

We can detect the presence of private property in some form in most of human societies we come across in history but the phenomenon of individual rights and choice as practiced under corporate capitalism dominated by hierarchical and bureaucratic corporations is something new. It is somehow pitted against our community instinct and community practices. That I am for myself and things I inherit or possess are solely for my personal consumption have become a social and legal norm.

Our society which awkwardly tries to negotiate between the pulls of tradition and pushes of modernity is fast turning into a poor carbon copy of advanced capitalist societies which are distinguished by their similarities rather than their differences. “When it comes to money, everybody is of the same religion,” says Voltaire.

But still a large number of our people especially the non-privileged retain their age-old sense of community. Our middle and upper classes in the urban areas, however, are becoming increasingly alienated. Being conditioned by global capitalism, they simply cannot resist the lure of individualism displayed by the metropolitan world of the West. They love to emulate what they find there that falls within the domain of glossy individualism. Let’s see how you fare in this test.

Can you spontaneously start conversing like a traditional individual, say, a villager and an organic urbanite (born and raised in the old quarters of a city) when you are traveling in a bus or sipping tea at a roadside café? The latter can. He can do it effortlessly. He without formal introduction would start talking to you. He would tell you not only about himself but also about his family. He would not feel shy of narrating the problems his family faces. He would prod you to share the details of your life. If you look pale or have bruises on the visible parts of body, he would offer you handy tips to cope with the situation. In short, he would be open and not hide things from you. If you can’t do such interaction, you would be most probably from our new urban middle class that has lot of pretentions of being more cultured i.e. less intrusive.

The community instinct of the former prompts him to share things; sufferings and dreams. Free of petite ego, he can open up and discuss with you any problem under the sun. He doesn’t suffer from a lack of closeness with the people he meets. But you would find him intrusive who needs to be kept at bay. Your fear of being close to the strangers springs from the dread of becoming vulnerable.

You may say he is from another class whose cultural habits aren’t compatible with yours. But what about your neighbour? You hardly exchange greetings with him. You know him as someone living in your neighbourhood, not as someone you know. He is of course human like you but practically an abstract human being or to be more precise, a human seen as an abstraction. But on the other hand this abstraction is so concrete that you perceive it as if it is more threatening than a concrete being. Hence you maintain your distance though a bit discreetly. Why such an unnatural fear? Most probably because of the unnatural society you have built where you are conditioned to perceive your fellow being as your competitor. And competitor is by definition someone who is determined to outpace you in the race of social and material life. He is an emblematic figure of concealed inveterate hostility towards others. So you don’t share anything with him thinking that any personal story if narrated could be taken as a sign of your weakness that would be used against you at some point in time.

Secondly, living in society that’s a poor carbon copy of the advanced capitalist world which lays sickening emphasis on you, you the individual trained as someone that has to protect and promote his interests while being unconcerned with the interests of the others. Others in a world marked by ideal of possessions and individualistic consumption are taken as little more than rivals. That’s why the idea of sharing that has sustained the human society since millennia is misconstrued as an invitation to the others to trample on your so-called personal space and privacy.

Contemporary society suffers from the confusion between the personal and the social. In an organic society even the personal was treated as social. It is the other way round now. The social is now treated as personal in the sense that individuals engaged in a collaborative act remain detached from one another as if it is something done by individuals each of whom is unconcerned with the holistic picture.

This new individual wrapped in a cocoon of ego is condemned to live with the speciousness of his/her defence of rights of individual as a result of not sharing what is shareable by choice. One may say; loneliness, thy name is individual. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2024