Dialectic vs dogma : Opinions

IT suddenly occurred to me the other day that I have been writing a weekly column in exactly this space for some 20 years now.
By my calculation, this works out to well over 1,000 op-ed pieces. And by anybody’s reckoning, this translates into a lot of words.
This is not because I find injustice and hypocrisy any easier to stomach now. But I do recognise that harsh words put off readers more than they convince them.

However, there’s nothing I have found I regret having written.
Friends and well-wishers have often suggested that I put my columns together in a book, but frankly, I am much too lazy to compile all of them. In addition, thanks to changing computer memory storage media, many columns are now gathering dust in floppy disks nobody uses any more. And having just finished writing a book, I found this to be much more intellectually rewarding than resurrecting old columns about issues and arguments long forgotten.
Almost everything I have written when I first began contributing here is lost in a haze: I must confess that very often, even what I wrote a week ago has slipped my memory. But whenever I have had the rare cause to go back into my archives, I have found little to be ashamed of. True, I might have chosen my words with greater care, or been more temperate in my criticism.
But at the end of the day, I have to ask myself if any of this pontificating has done any good. Or has it all been about me holding forth to likeminded readers? I have always believed that the role of the columnist is to challenge widely held beliefs, and not to pander to existing prejudices. Above all, he should speak truth to power. To strengthen this position with another cliché: only dead fish go with the flow.
Thus, when both left and right, liberals and extremists, adopt a stridently emotional position, I like to step back and look at the issue dispassionately. I have long ago shed the ideological baggage I grew up with. Indeed, I hate being defined in terms of any particular dogma, and prefer to analyse problems with the intellectual tools I have developed over a lifetime of reading, thinking and learning.
Muhammad Ali, the iconic boxer, was recently quoted as saying: “If you still think the same way at 50 as you did at 20, then you have wasted 30 years of your life.” This strikes me as being of great relevance to any writer. I recall being far angrier in my earlier columns than I am today.

Reason and logic are far more effective for the communication of ideas than dogmatic rigidity. But in my experience, once people have made up their minds about politics or religion, it’s a waste of time trying to convince them to accept new ideas. So as a rule, I avoid discussions about issues related to faith. And although I am often sucked into political arguments, I generally try and avoid them.
I was lucky to be educated in France at a very rigorous school in my early teens. Here, a teacher instilled in her students the virtues of the dialectic in developing an argument. This demanded that we state the thesis, counter-pose the antithesis, and then conclude with a synthesis.
Thus, we were taught to look at both sides of an idea before coming to a conclusion.
This early lesson has stood me in good stead over the years. While this approach may not offer the certainties of blind faith, it does impose a mental discipline, and avoids the lazy shortcut of the common assertion: ‘I believe in such-and-such because I was taught to since I was a child.’ This tempts one to ask what this person’s beliefs would be had he been born in another culture, and been raised differently. Surely a guiding philosophy should be too important to leave to chance.
In today’s Pakistan, it is becoming almost impossible to hold a rational discussion about any important subject. The level of polarisation is such that people now hold forth without bothering to understand the other point of view: more and more, we talk at each other instead of to each other. This is paralleled by a progressive dumbing down of the public discourse, the inevitable result of a failing educational system.
More and more, watching political chat shows on one of our many TV channels is becoming a painful experience: the intolerance for other opinions, and the lack of common courtesy, are faithful indicators of Pakistan’s downward spiral. In this environment of loud sermonising and strident opinions that lack coherence and logic, is writing a regular column relevant at all?
Perhaps not. But for entirely selfish reasons, I suppose I’ll continue until ill health or an editorial edict stops me. Writing forces me to read and think about current affairs, and imposes a certain discipline and structure on my day. I suspect this is especially important as one grows older, and is no longer bound by a nine-to-five routine.
Above all, having an online presence brings me into contact with readers from all over the world in a way I could never do in the old pre-Internet days. Over the years, I have always tried to respond to them, even if briefly. Some readers have become friends, even though I have never met them.
One downside to having my articles published in cyberspace is that they never quite disappear into the ether.
But the essence of his thought lives on: political columns are mostly written in response to specific events, and all too often, these are swiftly pushed aside by fresh crises. So the columnist has to scramble to make sense of a fast-changing scenario for his readers. If a majority agrees with my take on events, I’m glad. But with the bouquets go the brickbats.


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