Enlightened hypocrisy

Read the remarks of most judges and you would find Themis and the Biblical King Solomon. Listen to the words of the clergy and you would be revealed to Moses. Meet a pir and you would get a guaranteed certificate of both worlds. Chatter for a while with a bureaucrat and you would stumble upon the personification of Prometheus. Call on or be called upon a social activist, and you would happen upon a narrowly survived and exhausted Socrates. See a politician and you would discover Augustus Octavian. Meet the intellectuals and journalists of our society, and you find a blend of Diogenes and Jesus of Nazareth.

Pause and ask what exactly they have worked towards - what earned them their epithets, their accolades, their idolisation. And should you conclude they have made no "contribution" to society. you, my friend, are guilty of a convenient naivety - one that, whether willed or unwitting, absolves them entirely and, in doing so, ratifies every transgression committed in the name of service. They have at their disposal the contributions paid by both the power and the people. They have, through their trading, merchantry and mercenary skills, solidified the agonies of people.

The powerful, for all their very nature. character, might never have hijacked the fate of millions without the help of people's supposed saviours, sages and saints. Most judges have traded justice for power; the clergy surrendered faith to it; the intellectuals, public consciousness; the journalists, the pen. truth; the bureaucracy, the people's dignity; the activists, their grievances and the public trust; the dynastic despots, the people's say and stakes; the pirs, the right to self-reliance; and the guardians, human security itself. Together, in return for perks, they have sold all rights and potential privileges: our faith, dignity and prosperity.

They use the language of progressive values, empathy or spiritual awakening to mask selfish, arrogant or predatory behaviour. This is what passes for "elitist morality" – a moral vocabulary borrowed from the emancipatory tradition, stripped of its emancipatory purpose,. redeployed as the most sophisticated instrument of control. Enlightenment, here, does not liberate - it justifies domination.

Yet the public reveres and idolises them much like slaves do their masters. For. by so doing, they tend to ascribe a divine sanction to the suffering or approve of all that people have been experiencing today. Should you idolise idols of maladies, you need not empathise with the aggrieved. Else, it's a ploy – a ploy every saviour has tried, tested, and thrived on. And you intend to follow suit. When a society idolises a malady, its serfdom seals. A malady, when fed, does not recede - it metastasises. And a people conditioned. from birth, to worship their affliction are not unworthy of better - they are, as yet, unreached by it.

Rarely do we bother to critically reflect, let alone question, the herd of saviours. champions of rights - or the quagmire of serfdom and deprivation they preside over. And when honestly and unflinchingly encountering the real selves of our society's revered icons, you would not help but scream. Oh, the staggering hypocrisy! Enlightened hypocrites, all. Robes. Beads. Rosaries. Camaraderie. Benevolence.

Though the title might sound oxymoronic, as hypocrisy. enlightenment are generally viewed as incompatible, the two, when reconciled, outlive their individual utility and transform into something that further entrenches hypocrisy. That is. unlike an ignorant hypocrite, who might have little, if any, capacity to harm a society, enlightenment greatly expands the range of possibilities. An enlightened hypocrite rarely runs out of schemes to "serve" the masses. For knowledge affords the enlightened hypocrite patrons, paisa and prey – all under the banner of goodwill. A rule that largely but implicitly governs our society.

And ironically enough, we expect and seek the remedy from the very maladies that has afflicted us for decades. What naivety! What innocence!

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