Appeared in The News on Sunday

Mass scale distortion
Man’s quest to find better ways to subjugate his own kind is only surpassed by his desire for immortality. It is therefore not a conundrum that man would employ every bit of his mental capabilities to transform yet another benign tool such as a word into a device that is capable of bringing devastation to mankind

By Nadeem Akram
The word intelligence, as in ’power of seeing, learning, understanding, and knowing’, ought to be declared as an insult, so as to put everyone’s mind at ease. This act would definitely put a lot of intelligent people out of their misery. After all one can only take so much.
In today’s world of clutter and incessant noise, which resembles more of a crowded bar, where everyone can hear everyone else without actually listening to what is being said, it is highly unlikely that anyone would mind this subtle change in meanings. At a time when words are losing their meanings quick time and are replaced with nothing words, redefining the word intelligence is the need of the hour. Who would have imagined that one day Oxford dictionary would have in its folds a word like Bling-Blang, which in real terms may amount to a nothing word, but for all practical purposes has a meaning.
There cannot be a more opportune time for this switchover. The civilized as well as the uncivilized world is busy grappling with various threats, assumed or otherwise, redefining intelligence could placate many a boggy minds. These troubled minds which, mind you, run into billions, need a well-deserved respite, in order to brace themselves with yet another menace, which very much like the Evian flu is on the verge of an outbreak of catastrophic consequences. It would be premature at this point in narration to define this threat. It is as real as it gets yet it is shrouded in vagueness. Its severity cannot be captured in words, since words tend to have more than one meaning, and with so many buzzwords and acronyms flying around, there is a chance that realization could be lost in words. It is therefore imperative to trace its origins and identify the factors leading to its buildup before attempting to define it in so many words.
Conventional weapons of mass destruction are a product of doctrine of necessity where a state chooses to invest time and money in upgrading its arsenal either to avow moral terror on the world at large or to deter any threat to its sovereignty. The few exceptions, to this rule of thumb, are instances where men aspiring to go down in history as revolutionaries subscribed to this doctrine for ideological reasons. On a few occasions, weapons were amassed to avenge historical humiliations. Whatever the reasons, mankind’s obsession with inventing new and improved methods of self-destruction is probably as old as the man himself.
It all started when man figured out a way to chisel a stone. Since his first kill as a hunter-gatherer, man has never looked back. From an innocuous falling of an apple to an anodyne discovery of a busted atom, man’s ability to transform good into evil remains unsurpassed. Man’s quest to find better and meaner ways to subjugate its own kind is only surpassed by its desire for immortality. It is therefore not a conundrum that man would employ every bit of his mental capabilities to transform yet another benign tool such as a word into a device that is capable of bringing devastation to mankind.
A total decapitation of human mind, beyond anyone’s imagination, is in the works. It is no longer about preserving one’s way of life or maintaining sovereignty, it is about mental hegemony. The villain in this case is neither a state/confederation of states nor a group of revolutionaries. On the contrary, it happens to be a process, a transmutation of human mind, which over a period of time has acquired a mind of its own. This evil that will soon bedevil us has the potential to maim mankind’s power to see, learn, understand and know things. Largely unnoticed by the populace, this happens to be one of the most destructive weaponry ever acquired by mankind. Speech: A human’s capability to pass on information, feelings, emotions, ideas and concepts through words rather than gestures. This useful discovery, which at one time was considered to be the key to his survival, is turning out to be his worst nightmare. Still in its infancy, Information of Mass scale Distortion (IMD), happens to be our next biggest nightmare.
It is believed that speech co-evolved with the making of simple stone tools, 60,000 years ago, during a process now referred to as ’human revolution’. The time when, inexplicably, humans left Africa to spread all over the world, with nothing but simple stone tools and of course their ability to speak. However, technically speaking not all who left the motherland were ’anatomically modern humans’. Some of the people who moved away from the motherland were less developed; Neanderthals, undoubtedly able tool makers, yet slightly more intelligent than other primates.
Chris Knight, a researcher/author, believes, on good authority, ’[that] Europe was populated by Neanderthals until a mere 40,000 ago’. The furthest the man moved the more isolated he became. Survival took precedence over everything else. The division of mankind therefore is not a recent phenomenon, as some would like us to believe. It all started some sixty thousand years ago.
This division is not about religion, ideologies, way of life, values, etc. It is all about evolution or lack of it. Man’s refinement of speech, which provided the foundation for culture, arts, and society, was neither gradual nor universal. That is where the problem lies. The people who drifted furthest from the motherland, found themselves in a hostile and unmanageable environment. In order to tame the nature they need to improve their rudimentary tool making skills leaving little room for improvement in other areas including speech. On the other hand, the drifters which ended up in relatively comfortable environments had plenty of time at their hands to brush up their communication skills which paved the way for the development of arts, culture, society, and ultimately civilization. Life would have continued unchanged, had it not been for an accidental reunion of the two groups.
It was at the point that the first SWOT analysis in the human history took place. Once again the two sides parted ways, only this time one carried resentment and the other pity. And the world hasn’t been the same since. This historical meeting of minds was not limited to the motherland and its distant cousins. Over the next few millenniums similar reunions took place elsewhere in the world.
One good thing that came out of these accidental meetings between the brain and brawn was a realization by the latter that whilst the sword earned him food and short-term recognition, letters on the other hand will not only bring more food and better recognition, his deeds would be immortalized. Napoleon Bonaparte remarks sum this up: "There are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind. In the long run the sword is always beaten by the mind."
Colonization of words was the natural reaction by mankind following its realization of the importance of mind over matter. Words, so to speak, became man’s most trusted weapon. Those who possessed it ruled the world. That, in essence was the real clash of civilizations.
The less privileged section of the humanity, harboring a well-trenched resentment against the holders of words, realized that they had a lot of catching up to do and catching up they did. Words became the most sought after commodity. It was stolen, traded, bartered, borrowed, bought, sold, used, misused, twisted, replaced, and exchanged. Protection of information as a strategic asset and its deployment as a strategic weapon in conflicts grew in stature with the passage of time. Words became man’s foot soldiers in combats, both on and off the battlefields. New and improved ways were devised to augment and shield one’s own store of information while trying to limit and penetrate the adversary’s.
Ever since words fell prey to human envy and greed, they have lost their meanings. No longer are the words a unit of human vocabulary; instead they serve as an end to justify means, all part of Information of Mass scale Distortion or IMD. A useful weapon to ’deny, exploit, corrupt or destroy an adversary’s information, information based processes’, and cognitive process while protecting one’s own, opines Dr. Ivan Goldberg. Unfortunately, unlike the conventional weapons, which are used against an adversary, under the ISD doctrine, the adversary, in modern times, happens to be the intelligent human beings irrespective of their cast, creed or national origin.
From dawn to dusk every intelligent man, woman and child ducks and dodges volley of Information of Mass scale Distortion with barely managing to maintain his or her sanity. The intelligent one’s may be winning these battles, however they are destined to lose this war as IMD grows in sophistication. With the invention of every new gadget capable of processing information mankind’s chances of survival as an intelligent form of living gets slimmer and slimmer In a not very distant future, it is highly probable that man’s intelligence would become a curse; an unwanted burden, too cumbersome to handle. It is therefore necessary, that as a first line of defense, every symbol, word, gesture attributed to intelligence be removed urgently. A weapon can only be used if the enemy is there, with intelligence incognito the IMD would be as elusive as the WMD’s in Iraq and equally harmless.