By: Syed Shahzaib Haider
Media in today’s world is becoming an intricate entity. It’s tough to live without it, but it’s getting tougher to live with it too. If we go into the past there were a lot of different things that we don’t have now, for instance if I say almost every human being then use to take a power nap in the afternoon time they were all early risers. After six to seven hours of continues work in the morning everyone used to have a power nap, for an hour time. Everything was going well and then someone named Charles Francis invented television in around 1931, and people realized that we don’t have to sleep or take rest in the noon instead we should spend your time watching television and people started doing it from then onwards and the power nap almost ended there in the entire world.
Human brain over almost a thousand of years of research advanced a theory that after seven hours of continues work a human body need to have a break, but the television didn’t take too long to tell humans that no! you don’t need any break you need entertainment as an alternate to that. I am going to give an added example of how imposed narrative can change your life. I think many of my valued readers know that no one in the entire world before 1938 had a clue of what toothbrush is all about but again when television says that you have a bad breath and you need to brush twice a day, we all are easily convinced. I mean no questions asked and that’s called imposed narrative.
You are doing exactly what you have been told to do. We need to understand it with another comprehensive instance. Not everyone in our country knows that the owner of any of the local market clothing brand may only have to invest around rupees five crores to get his cloths in market at its finest, but when it comes to the matter of advertisement he may have to spend around twenty to twenty-five crores to have it properly advertised across the country. Keeping this instance in mind I ask myself why would any good businessmen spend hell a lot of money almost four times a bigger amount then the actual cost of the product only to get it on television. The answer is simple they do it just to get people convinced that all you need is that specific product for you and your household. That’s how the imposed narrative works.
However, if we see the greater side we can easily understand that it works the same way when it is about the hierarchy of the countries in the world. Say for example US is the super power! and you anyway have to obey America. It is television who articulately make us accept as true that there is a country name Iraq and there are chemical weapons in it which needs to be possessed or to be destroyed in time or else the whole world will be in danger. It tells us that there is a man named Col.Gaddafi in Libya who needs to be dead within no time or else Libya under his regime will destroy the whole world and the amazing part is that each of us bought it with no questions asked.
After the time of television and its imposed narratives we now have another invention in our hand and that’s mobile phone with so much in it that never ends. Daily when surfing on your phone you will have a lot of feeds that can easily destroy your mind. The social media in fact is way more dangerous than television because it is now in everyone’s hand to make news or to build narrative of his own wish. It is reshaping our lives every day. It can simply pollute your mind with every single click, which makes it more unsafe for the human brain than anything in the world. We see people across the globe are so full of fear now that no one is living the life in its full wisdom only because of the uncertainty that has been spread deliberately by some fanatics.
Likewise, unfortunately there are countries who are in continuous animosity to Pakistan. They are sponsoring and promoting their hidden agenda in our country mainly with the help of social media. Because we have no brain to countercheck that, they think that the people in Pakistan are so clueless that they will never go after the fact, but will trust whatever will be shown on the screens of their phones through social media.
I feel downhearted when I see so many of us foolishly trolling our very own dignified institutions for instance Pakistan Army. We don’t realize the fact that our mindless tales and trolling on social media will do no good to this country but will make our rivals happy. We are indirectly pleasing the anti-national forces and making them to function effortlessly in Pakistan. As responsible citizens of this country we should now understand that enough is enough we cannot be the puppets of someone who is against our country and our army. We have to end this nonsense of making fun of our own warriors they have lost innumerable lives in the battle to save this country ever since Pakistan came into existence. Before promoting or believing the imposed narrative or the hidden agenda of the enemies of Pakistan on social media, we have to reassess our country’s interests and its security situation. For the reason that Pakistan is not just our motherland but the homeland of our future generations.
The writer is special correspondent and columnist at The Dayspring. He can be reached at [email protected]