Pakistan in the Year 3000

Will Pakistan ultimately be able to provide prosperity,
freedom, and human dignity to its citizens? Or is it
destined to land into the dustbin of history as a failed
state? Which of the two paths we travel upon will be largely
determined by the extent and speed with which modernity and
science are accepted as part of culture. At the turn of the
century there is cause for worry. Today, like most Arab
countries, Pakistan combines insatiable greed for the
gadgetry produced by Science together with a profound
antipathy for the method and philosophy of Science.

The "trouble" with Science -- as seen by many both in this
country and elsewhere -- is that it is predicated on the
primacy of reason on the one hand, and experimental
verification on the other. It recognizes no authority except
its own internal logic, has no sages or prophets, and its
truths transcend geographical boundaries, cultural divides,
and faiths. Finding these facts distasteful, some have
insisted on pursuing the chimera of "Islamic Science" even
at the end of this millenium. Readers may be aware of yet
another fruitless conference on this subject, hosted last
month by the International Islamic University in Islamabad.
Progress becomes difficult, if not impossible for peoples
who mistake the past for the future.

Many take comfort in arguments seeking to prove that Science
is limited, incomplete, and lacks permanence. Yes, it is
certainly true that Science, as it progresses, keeps
imposing limits and constraints upon its own power.
Einstein's theory of special relativity forbids any material
particle, and even information, from travelling faster than
the speed of light. Quantum mechanics forbids exact
knowledge of the microrealm. Chaos theory, a relatively new
development in physics, forbids certain phenomena (like
weather) from being predicted with certainty. Kurt Godel's
famous theorem forbids asking certain questions within any
defined mathematical framework. And evolutionary biology
forbids us from assuming that we humans have a purpose any
different from that of apes or green peas.

I am sure these frank admissions must please quite a few
readers, reassure others. Some will triumphantly cry out
that they knew this -- doesn't everyone know already that
Science is incomplete and insufficient? Nevertheless any
admission of weakness by the enemy is, of course, considered
welcome. Thanks to propaganda disguised as education, and
the relentless efforts of Pakistan Television, Science finds
few defenders and still fewer practitioners in this country
to take up cudgels on its behalf.

Unfortunately for those who think that the self-limitations
imposed by Science show up the soft underbelly of the beast,
exactly the opposite is true. Unremitting honesty and
objectivity, and strict respect for law, is precisely why
Science is so absurdly strong. A Deity is certainly free to
violate any law of nature, but woe to the poor physicist who
disrespects, for example, the law of conservation of energy.
It was the uncompromising demand that this law hold always
and everywhere that made possible lathes and locomotives,
lasers and lunar landings. The law-abiding nature of Science
separates it from magic, which knows no limits, as well as
the supernatural.

Whether we like it or not, Science is getting not just
stronger, but immensely stronger. Societies that refuse to
concede this are fated for marginalization in the centuries
to come. Darwin told us this a long time ago and it is time
we listened closely.

Humans and apes, the smart and the dumb, come from two
branches of the same evolutionary tree. Please don't for a
moment think this tree has stopped growing and branching; if
anything it is speeding up. Human intervention is
compressing eons into millennia, centuries into months.

Comes the year 3000. How then shall the world look? The
Smarts will be merrily flying around the solar system,
occasionally taking a vacation to Mars, establishing contact
with distant civilizations, and perhaps travelling by way of
worm-holes and time warps to distant galaxies. The primitive
Internet that existed a thousand years ago will have been
replaced by a vast system of distributed quantum computers
with protein molecules serving as memory chips. The Smarts
will have conquered disease, modified the aging gene,
devised beautifully nuanced modes of expression far subtler
than exists in the best of today's poetry and music. With
minds symbiotically connected to massively parallel systems,
they will create ever more beautiful systems of mathematics
and resolve problems of physics much too deep for us to even
imagine today.

And the Dumbos? They will be the neo-Taliban of all faiths,
religions, and countries. This bunch of fragmented and
fractious groups, consumed by hatred for the Smarts as well
as each other, will fight out blood feuds and disputes with
origins thousands of years into the past. They shall be
helpless in the face of global pollution and drug resistant
microbes because their education shall be no more than
singing of past glories and safeguarding ideological
frontiers, even as the rest of humankind is crossing
frontiers of outer space. Like the present ones across our
western border, who shoot down supersonic aircraft with
American Stingers and run jeeps fuelled by Shell gasoline,
the Dumbos will continue to live off what the Smarts invent
and are willing to part with. Their morality will continue
to centre on matters related to procreation. As always they
will blame fate, believe the cause of their misery is
deviation from the True Faith, energetically purge
unbelievers from their midst, and revel in the past.

The logic of Evolution is unforgiving, merciless,
terrifying. Apes don't have much of a future on planet
Earth. Nor do Dumbos. Isn't it time to wake up to this
reality and get Smart?