Stages of change

 Sunday 22 December 2024

Islamabad (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 12th Dec, 2024 ) Whenever past traditions take root in a society, these traditions benefit the elite by using their privileges to look down on other classes. They do not tolerate any change to maintain their family’s dominance over caste property and state institutions.

Religion is also used to stabilize the current situation, that is, it is argued that it is not the job of the common people to be proactive for change. That is, change will come through the Messiah or the Mahdi. Therefore, people should generally wait for that time in silence.

When the current situation becomes a crisis and religious traditions fail to find solutions to the problems, revival movements emerge in this environment to go back to ancient traditions, and to remove the contamination that has come to institutions and traditions over time.

An example of this was the preacher Girola Savonarola in Florence, who raised his voice against the corruption of the Pope and the Church and also made the majority of Florence his allies. But the Pope used force to suppress his movement and hanged him. The Italian philosopher and poet Niccolò Machiavelli said about him that if the Prophet is unarmed, he is easier to defeat.

Savonarola's followers used to place flowers at the site of his execution every year.

When France changed due to the French Revolution, they abolished old institutions and traditions and advanced the process of change. On this, Edmund Burke, a member of the House of Commons of England, strongly criticized it in his book "Reflections on the French Revolution".

His argument was that the revolution had destroyed centuries-old traditions and institutions and created a vacuum in France, and this vacuum could not be easily filled. Because in order to form a new system, it is necessary for society to have mental development and to make the best use of time.

But it is also a fact that when the old system becomes obsolete and ineffective and only the elite benefits from it and deprives the people of their rights through political and economic domination over society, then the coming generations do not tolerate it.

Because they want to make their own place in society with the energy and ability they have. Then they break the domination of the elite and demand their rights through movements. At this stage, a clash arises between ancient and modern ideas. As a result, the structure of society is changed. Change is inevitable. But change is brought about through reforms and sometimes revolution leads to change.

Therefore, change comes both peacefully, as exemplified by British politics, and through bloodshed, as in the French Revolution.

In this context, when we analyze the society of Pakistan, we come across a situation where the elite has gained control over all the resources of the state and has expanded its privileges to the maximum. While the common man is suffering from deprivation.

The elite uses law, education and religion to maintain the current situation. Due to restrictions, neither new thinking is being born in the society nor has there been any development in the field of social sciences or science. Outdated traditions have destroyed the creative abilities of the society. For the same reasons, the majority of the youth in Pakistan follow imitation instead of creation in science and technology, which has made them mentally slaves and destroyed their honor and dignity.

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