The Third Pasture

Dear Nadeem,

It`s great to have you back. I see that you`ve stuck true to the old themes from Instep circa 1993 (any way you can publish your Simon and Garfunkel review on the web?).

Agree with all you have to say, would claim to have been brain-washed by you at an impressionable age, so will simply proceed to drop links:

www.monbiot.com
the sections on corporate power and economic justice are relevant; the mailing list can be pretty interesting too

http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles1.htm
one of the most honest articles from the days after the World Trade Center bombings; of course, I hope this prompts you to read the others at the site

http://pilger.carlton.com/
Australian war correspondent and human rights campaigner

on the truly academic side, there`s Chomsky and even Naomi Klein (yes yes, one can contest that classification).

http://discuss.fogcreek.com/newyork/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=2160&ixReplies=17 interesting, knowledgeable, opinionated discussion on software off-shoring, which is just another symptom of the general trend towards using 3rd world labour

http://www.globaljusticemovement.org/subpages_thirdway/intro_be.htm
bad design, some good articles, still haven`t explored it properly

plus, a concise leftist revisionist post-independence history of Pakistan by Tariq Ali:
http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR25301.shtml
Please note the second footnote on Zia`s surprisingly well-documented involvement in Black September

best

p.s. never understood why `anal retentive` always beats out `constipated`... is it just me?

dear mr. catfischblues,
all economic activity is generated by wants. and if you want something and are willing to and able to pray a price for it, there will be someone willing to produce it or you. simple demand and supply. if you didnt want a computer, you wudnt be willing to pay a price to aquire it and hence no one would pay for it. so when i say that without wants we would be in the stone ages, i mean exactly that. i mean that if the people didnt want better clothes, we`d be wearing bear skin today. if we didnt want a toilet nobody would have put the effort to make it and produce it and market it because there would not be any profit. this is the realoty we live in. just because something is right or good or hygenic is not reason enuf for production and economic process. it needs to produce a profit.
and when i said that you would be `dragging your female by the hair into your cave. And where would you answer natures call` i was speaking of a generality. the point was that we would still be in the stone ages. it is true that people still answer natures call in the roads, but its only because the cannot afford what the want.
so my point, which is stated earlier is that, without want(which is desire for something `plus` the willingness and ability to pay for something) their would be no incentive to produce the products we take for granted and we would still be living in the same conditions as our prehistoric cousins.
and people drag their women in their castles but its only to torture or abuse. it used to be that dragging women was a norm and it wasnt torture or abuse. then women started wanting to not be dragged and thus we are here. generally women are not dragged.
thanks

mr trashman.
you are studying currently at lse. why?
is it because you want to be enlightened or to be a better thinker. if so then you have every right to call me a capitalistic pig.
but if you are studying in one of the most prestigious and i think expensive schools in the world to be able to have a better financial position in life... well you and me both are the same. both just trying to get a degree and make something of ourselves to be able to buy the things we want. and thus perpetuating the cycle.
the only way you can escape it is by becoming amish.
bye

>>>If there was not any `want` you`d be in the stone age, wearing bear skin, dragging your female by the hair into your cave. And where would you answer natures call?<<

well, you really need to rethink that one as in your free market economy showered in wants... we still witness men publically displaying their natures call, and women are still being dragged by their hair-fair enough not into caves-but into their huge houses spread across the country.

whats your point?

#37 by ahmedmk

Capitalist Pig!

ahmedmk :~And lastly, if it werent for us yuppies and mindless drones of the elite, and because of our narcissism and our unquenching thirst for material things, you wouldnt have the convinience of writing this piece in you airconditioned home, sitting in front of your `personal computer`, because it is the very `want` of things that drives our economies.
If there was not any `want` you`d be in the stone age, wearing bear skin, dragging your female by the hair into your cave. And where would you answer natures call?~

Thank you for a desperate lesson in anal retentive economics, ahmedmk. In future I promise to be a bit more sympathetic to the ``mindless drones of yuppies.`` Have a nice day. :)

First of all, if it were not for the extremely annoying fragmented sentences, this piece would have been barely readable.
Second of all, what crazy notions you have about big brother and the economy. If you look at the history of man, this is how it has always been in the best of economies. The British Empire, the American Empire (which it was for a while) and many others only had, and still have, a small ruling class and a huge working class. And trust me, if you were one of the elite, you would call us workers `sick`.
And what with all the bad things you say about todays youth, and the MBA`s and yuppies following the ruling class mindlessly, you are not saying anything new. Nor is it appealing philosophically.
And lastly, if it werent for us yuppies and mindless drones of the elite, and because of our narcissism and our unquenching thirst for material things, you wouldnt have the convinience of writing this piece in you airconditioned home, sitting in front of your `personal computer`, because it is the very `want` of things that drives our economies.
If there was not any `want` you`d be in the stone age, wearing bear skin, dragging your female by the hair into your cave. And where would you answer natures call?

Thats whats sick.

ZaraJ # 26, NVP2003 # 18

I agree with you both. Your points about culture well taken.

At times, I also feel like migrating to Newzealand & live a peaceful unevenful existance. The pressure of being simply a sensitive Pakistani is getting too much.

Quite a strange effect, after seeing this piece on different places, every place came up with their own cynicism. Starting and ending on ilog, contemplating against ilogs, hmm sounds interesting. But on a non-personal note, I would say, lets misuse the word “I”.

#32
~n a more personal note, do you think that some of us who write ilogs are part of this pathetic `me` generation? is it not possible to be creative and individualistic when writing about ourselves, or the issues that affect us? ~

The ``I`` this piece was suggesting is the ``I`` either peddled in young minds by corporate advertising and ``ethics``, the relegious cults, etc. The one which writes I logs IS most probably YOU, and/or it is the `I` which most capitalists, traditionalists and relegious crusaders consider ``useless`` and ``impracticle.`` Keep loging.

NFP
Reminds me of that old Simon & garfunkel song, ``Still crazy after all these years.`` Or should I say, ``Still angery after all these years?`` 34 years old and still raging your wars against the ``powers that be.`` Agree with yellow3, impressive.

nadeem,
this article captured my attention from the moment i read it, but my first instinct was to question you on certain issues because of the lumping that tends to occur when you write something like this.

i agree with a lot of what you`ve said. and it makes me wonder, who are the youth of today. . .and who are some of their parents? and if this article is about the youth in pakistan, then yes, atrophy continues in pakistani society, and atrophy has been going on for such a long time that the mind numbs just thinking about it.

the `old` in pakistan have not been a roaring success in pakistan for quite a while now. . .there are exceptions of course. but i agree leadership for the youth has to come from within the youth. how many of our elders felt the same way we did as youth about what our ideals were. . .and understood our passion and fire?

some of us have all that we want, the hell with the rest. the `let them eat cake` attitude has been prevalent not just among pakistanis, but in other `great` lands of freedom and democracy as well. some of us are indeed numbed, unable to look at anything outside of our own daira, unappreciative of the social revolutions (which will still not be televised by the way) in front of them. and it`s amazing how so many of us are and have been unaware, not necessarily deliberately on our part, but just unaware of continuing revolutions, or even past ones for that matter.

so your critique is valid to some extent yes. but it leaves open a whole lot of questions. the thing is, who`s doing the questioning. are the youth reading this?

on a more personal note, do you think that some of us who write ilogs are part of this pathetic `me` generation? is it not possible to be creative and individualistic when writing about ourselves, or the issues that affect us?

******

yellow3,
for some. . .once a militant, always a militant! thirtysomethings still have plenty of fire, anger and passion. perhaps you should ask him this question thirty years from now. . .if it is possible to look that far ahead. : ) why wait that long? ask him again next year.

Excellent point, rozaiba. ye fauji hazraat aur mullah quam sub bigaar dey thi hai.

Paracha,
Wow! Your reply (#27) should`ve been part of the article. The funny thing is you still seem to have more anger, fire and passion as a thirtysomething former militant than a twentysomething man of this generation. How do you do it?

Nice hard-hitting piece.

The point I liked most was the ‘disconnect’ shown between the ‘current’ individuals desire to change and trash-talk the system on one side versus the complete inability to somehow start the wheels of change from turning.

However, this disconnect is mostly apparent in the posh areas of cities. There are plenty of aspiring youth in the non-posh areas who want to throw themselves in the thick of things but usually the only option they have is to do it through the very system which they cannot stand as they have not the material financial or security strengths to take everything on. Thus they settle for limited successes.

I’ve felt that only a continuous process for allowing some form of system to work will be the best option. Military rulers disrupt any form of process to take shape. There was a time when I really was duped by the ‘devolution plan’ as it brought in so many menial laborers who made less than 4000 rupees per month into the political system. Partially for entertainment partially for just feeling ‘part’ of and ‘involved’ in a system, we’d go around posting flyers and posters of our candidates. But as usual the manipulative and conniving faujiz combined with the menace of provincialism has ruined this opportunity as well.

#28...
Thanks but no thanks for the solace. There is something else that needs to be either further explored or studied. And, at no stage we can say that we have seen everything in life. In spite of the fact that we may claim to have been there and seen that there is a lot more to it....It all depends on how open you wanted to keep your mind to absorb, grasp and then interpret.

Nazar:
Also, the close family units have nothing to do with our culture. I love my parents not because they are Pakistanis or Muslims. I would have loved them equally if not more had I been a Ugandan or Timbuktooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon. This wasn`t a very convincing argument by you. Please come forth with a more convincing argument and I will love to be enlightened. Probably my own senses of observation and analysis are picking wrong signals. And, I need to charge my neurons...But that should be a frequent process. Thanks for the reminder. I will capture that on my ongoing things to do list.

Regards.

#24
~perhaps what is missing from your scenario is the older generation has failed and continues to fail to provide sustainable leadership...) ~


The youth rise when the old fail. But why isn`t it rising today? The old aren`t such a roaring success today, are they? But then maybe they are (a success) ONLY in finally managing to keep their young comfortably numb.
Leadership for the youth comes from among the youth. From within its own minds, ideals and passions.

#25
The youth movements were systematically polersied, then demonized. One way the old finally managed to keep the present generation numb.