When Lord Buddha said that the world was a house full of sufferings he pointed to one of the most fundamental dimensions of human existence. Prophets, saints, sages, poets and philosophers refuse to accept the world the way it is. The phenomenon is rooted in the natural process of life and in the development of human consciousness. The life of an individual is short. It’s so short that in the perspective of cosmic time it means little, even less than little in significance. In the East, the wise have emphasised this aspect. Hindu philosophers, Chinese sages, Zen masters and Muslim Sufis looked at life as being a short span that is insignificant.
Shah Husain, a 16th century saint and rebel poet, says: “False is the world/false is its vast expanse/like a dewdrop (Koodi dunya, kood psaara jiun moti shabnum da).” It’s not false per se but because of being transient, It’s like a dewdrop, beautiful but ephemeral. Human consciousness has added complexity to the situation. On the one hand, it has made individuals acutely aware of ephemerality of life accompanied by anguish of being destructible, a fate from which there is no escape. But on the other it has shown an immense potential of life which is not merely restricted by the dictates of instincts. That’s why consciousness is as much a source of enlightenment as it is of anguish and existential crisis.
The natural process of life mentioned above is further confounded by the socio-material structures that have accompanied the evolution of society over a long period of time; hierarchies. The role of hierarchies is to divide the society along the class and gender lines to perpetuate the given inequalities – physical strength – as in the case of gender, and appropriation of accumulated national wealth to the advantage of a few at the top. This means the world is a place where an individual, an ordinary mortal, can merely exist permanently debarred from becoming fully human as a free person. The world is a hostile alien territory where individuals are stalked by forces, seen and unseen, to keep them at the margins. But still it doesn’t make them love the world less. Such a paradox has been described by Bertolt Brecht in one of his poems lucidly. “To this windy world of chill distress/You all came in utter nakedness/Cold you lay and destitute of all till a woman wrapped you in a shawl/No one called you, none bade you approach/And you were not fetched by groom and coach/Strangers you were in this early land/When a man once took your hand/From this windy world of chill distress/you all part in rot and filthiness/Almost everyone has loved the world/When on him two clods of earth are hurled,” he says.
Why does one love even this miserable world when two clods of earth hurled at them? It’s not merely instinct that refuses to be ‘dust unto dust’ despite being fully aware of the universality of mortality. It’s more so because of human consciousness that shows the realisable human potential which in most cases remains unrealised in a society driven by imperatives of hierarchies. Despite all the restraints and handicaps humans have done wonders in their journey from the known to the unknown. Imagine what the world would be if it is less burdened by social systems imposed and propagated as essential for organising and developing the social life that ensures the development of each individual.
Construction of the future at an imaginative level is a rare human quality that distinguishes men from animals. And that’s why we see so many changes brought by human touch that have shaped not only human society but have also hugely impacted the nature we live surrounded by.
In a nutshell, the world made better and worse – at the same time – is the only world we have. Nature is full of imperfection. So is our human society. But we know that our love for the world can humanise it. — soofi01@hotmail.com
Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2025
recedented show of ephemerality; things tangible and intangible appear and disappear in an indescribably fast succession. Transformed situation promotes its new agenda which comprises surplus production, conspicuous consumption and atomized individual. Surplus production needs not just consumption but conspicuous one. Such consumption needs individual, not the old one of sharing type but new one of consuming variety. Now the emphasis is primarily on what you consume but not on what you need. Social success of an individual now depends on what he consumes, not on what helps him to attain self-fulfillment. In order to achieve the social ideal of conspicuous consumption an individual has to be convinced of two things; he is for himself and a consumptive lifestyle is the highmark of social achievement. Now convinced of this he has to gear up to create resources as, to repeat the cliché, there is no free lunch in a capitalist society. It means to work relentlessly and tirelessly.
Cycle of work alienates the individual and negates his self-objectification. Act of consumption disconnects him from others and creates an aura of vacuous estrangement which causes anxiety and nervous tension. Activities of such an individual, alienated as they are, boosts the process of overall alienation affecting all he is forced to interact with. Happiness, the declared objective of consumption, proves illusionary as it’s confused with pleasure. Capitalism can surely boast of its achievement as a system that has raised the standard of living of certain sizable segments of the population. But it has so far failed to produce individual who in his effort to realise his potential enriches himself by enriching others in mutually fulfilling reciprocity.
Oldies, it looks, will go down lamenting a lost way of life that is irretrievable. Contemporary society will find the solutions of the problems it’s confronted within due course and discover its own way to happiness. The irony is that humans need work as much as happiness. Work at the moment is the opposite of happiness. The ideal, if ever realised, would be that we as a species make our work a source of happiness for ourselves and others. And this will only happen when concrete measures are taken to rid our work of its exploitative dimension. — soofi01@hotmail.com
Published in Dawn, October 12th, 2020