Changing Behaviors: A Glance at Our Social Psychology
(Syed Muhammad Waqas)
Society is an organized human system of coexistence. We live and die in this structured, self-operating system, which dictates every perceivable aspect of our species’ life. Beyond doubt, society is a living phenomenon more than an abstract concept. It really lives, breathes, matures, and dies within the greater phenomenon of time and space. The death of a social system is not per se the death of all within it, for it provides for another equally ubiquitous and omnipotent social system ready to fill the vacuum created. And thus the cycle continues forming a single chain of interconnected societal order collectively called “human society”.
The role of society in the personality development of its members is indeed crucial. As human experience is always subjective and relative, the perceptibility of a human mind cannot trespass the confines of the relative social sphere. Above everything, therefore, the most dynamic feature of society is its character of shaping and governing human behaviors. Society shapes human behaviors in the first place, which crystallize to form a mechanism of “virtues” and “vices”, “climaxes” and “nadirs”, “bests” and “worsts”, “simples” and “complexes”, so on and so forth. And once having matured, these behaviors bear the so-called social “standards” and “ideals”.
Moving from general to particular, it really seems wise to take into account the fast changing behaviors of our society. Here we will broadly call our society “Pakistani Society” albeit there is no natural connection between the social and the political. Last one decade has brought an outstanding change in the overall lifestyle of Pakistanis, and we can confidently say that life of 2012 is radically different from that of 2002. Given the inherent interconnection and interdependence of the social and the economic, our behaviors have experienced a rather notable drift from the socially interdependent lifestyle to economically interdependent one. Although the demarcation-line between the two areas spoken above always remains vague, the change in the mode of life based upon utility and behaviors reflecting capitalistic orientation are evidently the factors we need to reckon. It is needless to say that our social mindset appreciates everything in terms of utility today. Even refined concepts, such as morality and religion, are viewed against the backdrop of ‘worth’. Money was a means to better life and high sociability in previous times, but now everything else is a means towards the exclusive end: wealth. As this transition set in so suddenly that it caught our people off-guard, it almost destroyed the whole social fabric of the native land. Over this past decade, in fact, our society has remained a hotchpotch of mutually distinct trends and dangerously dichotomous says. That is to say no collective national attitude could be observed.
Life in urban society is particularly on the edge, for it has almost passed the critical line of ‘modernism’ and now it is fast approaching ‘post-modernism’. The element of satisfaction with the “present state” is altogether absent from it. And it is why people are migrating to more promising havens like the prehistoric man did. The revival of religious activism, particularly the acceptance of extremism and violence as religious obligations, is an aftermath of social frustration within the system called “modern”. Not only is the religious class most resilient to this change, they are in fact switching from pre-modern to post-modern without touching upon modern. The middle class is, however, the actual stratum of people exposed from all sides.
We are on a juncture where we must understand that society has changed, entering in a more independent phase. Today one must accommodate oneself within the changed social format in order to survive among the fittest. Our present society, as a matter of historical law, is going to offer no space to those lagging behind and craving for the olden days. It is not possible for a nostalgic individual and/or a group of people to withstand—or even halt—the change that has set in. Influx of money, of course from the West, is a substantial catalyst in the process of unleashing Western culture in a theater fundamentally different—our Islamic-Oriental society. From our dresses to language, every socio-cultural element is littered with the Western ideals. In this process of rupture, electronic media is playing the role of a ‘portal’ for an easy access to the material-worshiping civilization of the West. And now there is no way to escape it, nor is it in any sense wise to attempt such a wild goose chase.
However, the potential question still haunts: how long will this new social setup take to mature and how long will it last? Ask yourself!
The role of society in the personality development of its members is indeed crucial. As human experience is always subjective and relative, the perceptibility of a human mind cannot trespass the confines of the relative social sphere. Above everything, therefore, the most dynamic feature of society is its character of shaping and governing human behaviors. Society shapes human behaviors in the first place, which crystallize to form a mechanism of “virtues” and “vices”, “climaxes” and “nadirs”, “bests” and “worsts”, “simples” and “complexes”, so on and so forth. And once having matured, these behaviors bear the so-called social “standards” and “ideals”.
Moving from general to particular, it really seems wise to take into account the fast changing behaviors of our society. Here we will broadly call our society “Pakistani Society” albeit there is no natural connection between the social and the political. Last one decade has brought an outstanding change in the overall lifestyle of Pakistanis, and we can confidently say that life of 2012 is radically different from that of 2002. Given the inherent interconnection and interdependence of the social and the economic, our behaviors have experienced a rather notable drift from the socially interdependent lifestyle to economically interdependent one. Although the demarcation-line between the two areas spoken above always remains vague, the change in the mode of life based upon utility and behaviors reflecting capitalistic orientation are evidently the factors we need to reckon. It is needless to say that our social mindset appreciates everything in terms of utility today. Even refined concepts, such as morality and religion, are viewed against the backdrop of ‘worth’. Money was a means to better life and high sociability in previous times, but now everything else is a means towards the exclusive end: wealth. As this transition set in so suddenly that it caught our people off-guard, it almost destroyed the whole social fabric of the native land. Over this past decade, in fact, our society has remained a hotchpotch of mutually distinct trends and dangerously dichotomous says. That is to say no collective national attitude could be observed.
Life in urban society is particularly on the edge, for it has almost passed the critical line of ‘modernism’ and now it is fast approaching ‘post-modernism’. The element of satisfaction with the “present state” is altogether absent from it. And it is why people are migrating to more promising havens like the prehistoric man did. The revival of religious activism, particularly the acceptance of extremism and violence as religious obligations, is an aftermath of social frustration within the system called “modern”. Not only is the religious class most resilient to this change, they are in fact switching from pre-modern to post-modern without touching upon modern. The middle class is, however, the actual stratum of people exposed from all sides.
We are on a juncture where we must understand that society has changed, entering in a more independent phase. Today one must accommodate oneself within the changed social format in order to survive among the fittest. Our present society, as a matter of historical law, is going to offer no space to those lagging behind and craving for the olden days. It is not possible for a nostalgic individual and/or a group of people to withstand—or even halt—the change that has set in. Influx of money, of course from the West, is a substantial catalyst in the process of unleashing Western culture in a theater fundamentally different—our Islamic-Oriental society. From our dresses to language, every socio-cultural element is littered with the Western ideals. In this process of rupture, electronic media is playing the role of a ‘portal’ for an easy access to the material-worshiping civilization of the West. And now there is no way to escape it, nor is it in any sense wise to attempt such a wild goose chase.
However, the potential question still haunts: how long will this new social setup take to mature and how long will it last? Ask yourself!