Fanastic thread LifeH2O and about time too!
My opening contribution are my comments on this exact subject in the National Issues section;
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=551You can only talk about freedom if you can evidence a prison, mental or physical. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, the story of the Cumaen Sibyl is instructive. She had attempted to attain freedom from death by asking Apollo for a life that was as long in years as there were grains of sand in her fist. She made the fatal mistake of not asking for eternal youth to go along with it and consequently it was not long before she desired death more than anything else. Life for her became the prison.
The Hindu ideal of achieving Nirvana is based around the idea of breaking free from the endless cycle of death and re-birth. So you can see their idea of a prison.
I recently watched the film ‘Rio’ (with my young children) which is the story of a male macaw whose specie is nearly extinct. This bird has lived a much pampered life as a pet and does not know anything about his natural habitat. As a matter of fact it cannot even fly because it has no notion or need for it. When a female bird of his specie is captured in the tropical forest in Brazil, our pet bird is taken to Rio to 'meet' her so that they can make babies in order to save the specie. In the first encounter between the two birds, the female macaw that is captured from the wild is only interested in breaking out of the room-sized cage where as our pet macaw is totally baffled by her obsession. The point is that where one sees a prison, the other sees a comfortable home.
In the Pakistan context, we have yet to achieve true Nirvana from the endless cycle of poverty, exploitation, false promises, nepotism, corrupt rulers and deprivation. Guessing from the choices we make every day, it seems to me that we do not seem to understand the nature of the prison we are in. A high potency dose of religious fatalism keeps us nicely sedated, oblivious of the true causes of the daily torture that our mortal lives has become – thanks to the greed of all those who enjoy their corrupt mortal life with impunity.
Pakistani do not have the time to get philosophical or realistic about freedom because they simply are too busy queuing up for slightly cheaper sugar, flour and bananas to ever consider the possibility that it may be our own choices that have made our lives hell.
Pakistanis will only achieve freedom, when everyone has access to a fair justice system, proper education, financial security and meritocracy. Freedom is not about dressing up in a mini skirt and dancing in a night club in a semi drunk state but it is about the opportunity to free yourself from the tranny of the circumstances you are born into. It is about being able to express and opinion without the fear of a right wing or left wing backlash.