Living beyond moral, ethical values

Islamabad: Standing along a busy road and pondering on messy traffic sparks an immediate reaction to any sensible Pakistani’s mind that are we a responsible nation? With rare manifestations of respect for other’s rights, we are most often in a senseless hurry or looking for a short cut creating an imagination not of a sensible nation but a crowed running towards an unknown destination.

Teachings of our noble religion, philosophy of Quaid-i-Azam for emerging as a responsible nation and respecting the laws of our land, all seem missing from our lives. Except for a few, especially the elderly people who grew up in a peculiar environment of respecting elders and honouring laws, the rest take pride in trampling down ethical values.

Different laws, rules, and regulations formulated for a peaceful and respectful co-existence fell like the most ridiculed entity as seen at roads, banks, hospitals, government offices, and other walks of life, even the Parliament. But still, we are surviving as a resilient nation though plagued by menaces like terrorism, enmities, intolerance, nepotism, lies, short measuring, adulteration, and much more evils. It really pains when I see our conduct today.

“Our respect for religious norms, teachers and parents, and above all the law of land - all is lost somewhere,” said a retired professor Abdul Shakoor. “We are impatient, cannot wait for our turn in a line. We are always in hurry zig-zagging on roads not caring for ourselves and others. We are plagued with social menaces like superiority and privileges,” he said. “Our culture and norms faded away gradually with the replacement of different other cultures,” Prof Shakoor stated.

“I do not argue to live in isolation but globalism cannot mean that we do away with our noble customs and traditions. In our early age, he said, the educational institutions were meant for both teaching and training. Right from the laps of our mothers to mosque and schools, we had to be under strict vigil of our parents and teachers. But, he said, the changes in the educational environment and the curriculum in the name of making it internationally compatible, affected out traditions. As the race for money became fierce, our noble culture is lost in its dust somewhere.

As ethical norms have a trickledown effect right from reformists, political elite, parents, preachers, and teachers it seems like that they all have to revisit their conduct.

It is a common question in the mind of every sensible and responsible Pakistani that are we preparing a good nation? Analysing ourselves personally as well as in view of international ranking of globally recognized organizations, we continue to suffer deterioration on indexes of nobility, purity, honesty, fairness, truthfulness, righteousness and so on. “In our daily life and dealing with one another, it seems like that we have stopped hating social evils and opted most them as our life style,” remarked Allama Abdul Hafeez.

“We are gradually detracting from our religious teachings. Instead of making our Holy Prophet a symbol of life for ourselves, we have indulged in variety of sins. I remember my childhood when our fathers used to have complete control on family affairs and mothers commonly used to help them in maintaining discipline,” he stated. But, the situation changed over the time due to obliviousness of our male and female folk to their rights and duties to themselves, their kids and the society. Allama Hafeez, however was confident that still our religion is a panacea to all these evils.

“Even today our religious teachings are not a bygone dogma for creating a noble society. But, for this we need good parents, good teachers and good preachers. Seldom sense of responsibility and respect for other’s rights, impatience, intolerance, conspiracies, back biting, character assassination and many other social evils permeated to our lives leave the responsible citizens with nothing but a deep regret,” he added.

“Our professionals have become machines running from pillar to post to earn more and more money and this race leaves them with lesser time for their kids,” stated social worker Chaudhry Muhammad Saleem. “When we would compromise discipline for love for our kids, how can we raise responsible nation. Therefore, whether it our own negligence or the influence of exotic cultures, our social fabric is shattering,” he added.

Saleem said our mothers keep busy on social media and Tik Tok when they had to be with their children and fathers forced to work in shifts or double jobs to earn living. “This non-availability of time for children is a serious issue. But, people cannot help it because they had to spend extra time on money making to fight unbearable price hike,” he stated. This situation also calls upon our rulers and policymakers to devise strategies for addressing these challenges.

We are also too free as a nation to indulge in others affairs, taking revenge and hatching conspiracies against our relatives, colleagues, and friends. Work shirking and shying away from responsibilities are other menaces plaguing our society. Therefore, it is our collective responsibility to protect our dying noble norms and political leaders, religious scholars, teachers, and above all parents will have to revisit their social conduct and responsibilities to the nation to save it from complete disaster.