A little bit of everything all of the time

 

Apathy's a tragedy and boredom is a crime

The world is already infested by makoras if you cut through the rind. We need not make it worse.

I met a woman recently who couldn’t get vaccinated because she simply didn’t exist. This woman which I could see and hear, and touch (if she were okay with it of course) was a non-person. Because she didn’t exist in any official database and to the government, she was just another missing data point among countless others. It happened because her parents refused to get her registered into the database, whether because they didn’t want her to have been born in the first place (ah yes infanticide) or because they were simply illiterate or not privileged enough to be on the radar. And so she had lived most of her life as a non-citizen; still living by all definitions of biology, physics and sociology. She couldn’t get her national ID card made though, because when she realised the blurry state of her being, her parents had died. And the assholes at Government registries require parental proof of your existence. Imagine you were a nihilistic edgy teenager with daddy issues. If your parents wanted they could deny your existence. So she couldn’t get vaccinated because she didn’t have a national ID card because she couldn’t get it made because her parents couldn't prove her existence because they had died before they had registered into any government database. Kind of fucked up.

Here’s another depressing anecdote. I was at the local market, I think I was going to get myself something to drink. A kid and his father, holding a couple of shopping bags passed in front of me and I heard the kid say in the annoying squeaky voice that seems to be integral to every child’s life during one point or another in their (I couldn’t really think of a good adjective here, hence proving my inadequacy as a writer) existence. He said:

“Abu saray paisay kharch ho gaye?”
“Jee”
“Agar main apni cheezain na laita tou paisay bach jatay?”

“Did the shopping cost all of what you paid them?”

“Yes”
“If I hadn’t bought my goodies, some money would have still been left, right?”

Curtain falls. Fin. Because then they were out of my earshot. I initially thought it was a clever story; the kid proving how he was aware of the knowledge of economics and how he knew the repercussions of his purchases. Then it hit me like a truck. The depressing aspect. This knowledge of economy and bartering is almost instinctive and reflexive for kids who are always in pursuit of sweets. What made this anecdote remarkable (for me at least) was the kid commenting on how his purchases may have left the household income a little dented and if he hadn’t done it (which he must’ve considered when he said that), then they would’ve more money. I don’t know what their socioeconomic status was, or really how mature kids are these days, or even what the age of the kid was. But I remember this one-off event as a slightly sad side effect of our country’s economic disparity.

Now that we’ve established that the world is utterly fucked eventually. Which I hope is not news to anyone. My climate change anxiety has been acting up lately. If a single cat named Tibbles can ‘accidentally’ wipe out an entire species (the Stephen Island wren), imagine the havoc we’ve wreaked on the ecosystem for all the years we’ve smeared the dirt of this planet. 

If you know me, you know how I once read the "Sixth Extinction" and since then I have not failed to tell anyone I know about how the coral reefs and frogs and insects are going extinct at an alarmingly fast rate. See, you might’ve picked up on the fact that I am occasionally a nihilist. But when I am not a nihilist, I am dabbling in the murky art of existentialism and the chakras align so, and I start on daydreaming about the day I’ll have kids, and then my bubble of pleasant thoughts is broken in a Horrid Henry-esque fashion by the bubbling of the oceans due to acidification, the climate weirding and the fact that the Jaman tree in my garden doesn’t give as much fruit as used to, even though nothing has really changed in its care. I know it’s all memes and fun, but all the world multimillionaires pursuing space travel with such zest and not doing anything about the current state of this world should not give rise to conspiracy theories, but point out a fact to us. No, not that the world is fucked, we already know that. I literally told you that less than 500 words ago. In fact, it tells us about the conquering nature of humankind which prefers to sully new horizons with its benchmark presence and conquistador flag, instead of fixing what it is breaking. Maybe they’re smarter than me and have already embraced the fact that there’s nothing we can do now to reverse the damage that has been inflicted. Maybe this is destiny, and inevitable. Maybe this is death and eventual. Maybe I am still in the first stage of despair; denial. I still think I am processing grief better than the group of scientists who want to bring the woolly mammoths back because they think they’ve the technology to do it, and because they’ve the bones to do it. I hope they realize this can only lead to two possible scenarios. A Jurassic world scenario but with Manny the mammoth who isn’t as congenial as he looks in Ice Age. Or an animism cult. I think the latter is more probable and they would probably give the ancient Egyptians a run for their worship of Bastet.

The other day we had to perform some experiments on a rabbit’s ileum, and we’ve disassociated so much from the subject we are studying that it is easy to not wonder where or how the ileum came to us for use. Well, we saw it all that day. The attendant had forgotten to prepare the sections of ileum before we came and we ended up looking at its dissection. I do not want to go into the details because mainly I am writing this for a small boost of acknowledgement in myself by ticking this entire piece off of my to-do list and any extra detail would be needless and perfunctory in nature. Plus I am lazy, and dare I say not skilled enough to really write a good description. What hurt me the most were a couple of students making videos of the entire process for whatever morbid curiosity. I think the rabbit deserves respect for its sacrifice, not to be ridiculed because you think it’s edgy to have witnessed such an event by incorporating it in your other works…Did I mention I am my own greatest critic? And has the irony yet dawned on you? Anyway, the world is fucked. I think I’ve said it three times now. Yeah well, it’s still not enough.

Maybe the way out of this existential quagmire that I seem to fall into with every step down the stair of melancholy is an interest in trans-humanism. I had read about it in science fiction and articles over the internet but I first started taking it seriously after Dan Brown’s Origin, which is also a science fiction novel at its heart and doesn’t read any different than a cheap, sensational article. Apparently, some people are way ahead of all of us. There’s this person, Neil Harbisson if my memory serves me right enough (and if I choose to not edit this after writing by looking it over the internet// Editor Mehwar here, I ended up looking at his name and correcting it from Borrisson to Harbisson.), he’s got an antenna stuck in his head. It is for more than just cosmetic purposes as it is connected to his brain. I am not sure what it exactly does, but as they say in Germany, I bet it is “cool shit” (cool shit is apparently looking at UV rays, admittedly it is still cool shit).

Now that we’ve got my angst out of the way, let me begin to say what I initially wanted to write it for. Surprising as it may be, it wasn’t to write about how I witness depression on the fly, existential crises, climate change, cat worship, rabbit guts or even cyborgs. Not even how fucked the world is. I wanted to write about what it takes to be enough.

It’s funny how this random guy from a slightly privileged family, who’s won a cricket world cup, and done some charity work can become the prime minister of a nuclear state solely based on his fame, or infamy depending on the group you belong to. What is even funnier is him promising change and failing to bring any sort of really positive change or at least flailing to bring about any appropriate execution of his plans. It gets even more fun. Because the people who voted for him, aren’t exactly satisfied now, and yet the other options are still worse. And here’s the punchline: He’s still enough. Because he could’ve lived abroad with his so-called wealth and ‘Oxfordian’ knowledge, and close to his other kids (though you really have to ask yourself how much of a family man he is when he has married thrice) but he did neither of that. While his competitors choose to phase in and out of the scenario whenever it is convenient for them, or whenever they’re paid enough, one way or another. And so just because he’s done the bare minimum, he’s enough.

I was thinking the other day about how there are a lot of heroes in Pakistan. A day doesn’t go by when we don’t see a local ‘hero’ saving the day by rescuing a kitten or rescuing someone they see drowning in a canal. You’d think with so many heroes, our society wouldn’t be, to put it elegantly, so shit, and yet it is. It is, and there are all these heroes but they’re good for nothing because, in truth, most acts of heroism are people doing their duty as a fellow human or living organism. If you see a man drowning, you have to dive in and help it you can swim and if you can’t then alert the concerned authorities. It is not heroic if you are a policeman and you see a man collapsing in front of a train and protecting him. Colour me strict, but when you dawn that suit and belt and make that oath you forfeit all privileges of calling life sacrifices as heroic. It is simply your duty. Is it courageous? Yes, but it is not something to give a medal for. On the contrary, a student, stopping a suicide bomber and sacrificing his life to protect his classmates or a soldier not yet trained in combat, sacrificing himself to protect state secrets against traitors, is heroic. Doing your basic duty and what you signed up to do, is not heroic. It is barely enough.

The problem with calling all men dogs is that when one behaves like a human being, something they’re genetically coded to do, fortunately (if it weren’t so, would that make any difference?) you start lauding him as astoundingly respectful or decent or just chivalrous. By setting the default state of that social group to a demeaning status, you term even the slightest of improvements and what should be the normal as exaggerated greatness. A man should not be rewarded in any way for respecting a woman. He should be cursed and punished for persecuting women. He should be praised for going out of the way to protect women in ways that he isn’t bound to do. And this goes both ways. By misandry and misogyny, you binarise the morals of an entire gender and risk deifying simple deeds that should not be worth mentioning. A man teaching his wife how to ride a motorcycle should not be the peak of equivalence. Is it a respite in the face of the overwhelming patriarchal monstrosities? Yes. Is it something that should earn him headlines? No. He’s just making sure his wife is well cared for and independent. He’s making sure she’s capable of doing as much as he is. He’s levelling the playing field and practising equality. Colour me stringent yet again, but he’s not the champion of women rights. He’s a man who’s holding his family together as witnessed in a single act without context, and that in my books should be just about enough.

What am I leading up to?

The next time, like me, if you ask yourself the question, am I enough? Am I sleeping too much, and doing too little? Am I doing too much and sleeping too little? What traits do I not have that X, Y or Z do? and what traits could I cultivate more? The next time you feel jealous or in any way that you’re not sufficient for any label or role in society, or the next time you’re filled with regret, tell yourself that you’re enough. Because you’re doing the bare minimum of living, eating and going through your daily routine. No matter how variable and laced with relaxation or ease it is. You’re enough because you exist in this world that should be inherently anti-natalist. You’re enough because that leader, that ‘hero’, that paragon of human rights are enough for the society at large. Heck, you’re more than enough if you can barely eke out your existence.

After all, isn’t this world absolutely fucked?