IT is the day of the New Year’s resolution, which, for those well-versed in the traditions of Western societies, combines introspection with a pledge to make oneself a slightly better person in the year ahead. A prototypical Western society ours is not, but the quirks of history have led us to adopt the Gregorian (read: Western) calendar. So dare I indulge the readership and present a new year’s resolution for our beloved land of the pure?

Over the past few years, all of our resolutions — whether at the turn of the year or otherwise — have revolved around the imperative of ‘defeating terrorism’. My scepticism about the entire ‘counterterrorism’ industry aside, it is telling that recent attacks, such as the one which took place in Mardan on Tuesday, have not generated as much alarm as was previously the case.

Are we simply fatigued? Maybe de-sensitised to political violence? Given that much of our public discourse is media-generated, could it be that the establishment has instruc­ted the purportedly ‘free’ media to emphasise the ‘successes’ of the Raheel Sharif clean-up brigade rather than spend too much time dwelling on the fact that right-wing rhetoric and violence remain facts of everyday life?

So far, all our resolutions have focused on defeating terrorism.

In any case, Mardan, Parachinar and other recent orgies of violence confirm that there is no short-term ‘solution’ to right-wing milita­ncy. Indeed, there are no short-term ‘solutions’ to any of Pakistan’s most hackneyed ‘problems’ including, but not limited to, ‘corruption’, ‘foreign conspiracies’, and ‘bad governance’.

In principle, few would disagree that Pakistani society is beset by deep structural inequalities and injustices, and these need to be addressed over the medium to long run. Yet most armchair critics consistently ignore this fundamental reality when they pronounce the Asif Zardaris and Nawaz Sharifs — and their friends and allies — as responsible for everything that goes wrong in the country.

This endemic short-termism is rife in all realms of social existence. As a university teacher, I can testify to the fact that students, faculty members and administrators alike are happy to sustain a culture of mediocrity in which rote learning, the acquisition of grades/degrees and promotions become the be-all and end-all of varsity life. Academic fraud and all manner of corner-cutting are thus the norm rather than the exception.

In classrooms, talk shows and drawing-room conversations alike, we demand solutions but are unable and/or unwilling to accurately identify the problem. The rot, in my estimation, starts at a young age — children are not encouraged to ask critical questions, whether at home, in school, or anywhere else, but instead told to put their heads down and accept the rule of the roost.

The situation is not necessarily better amongst affluent classes — this segment of society is contemptuous of the ‘ignorant masses’ and tends to ape both cultural practice and hegemonic intellectual trends emanating from the Western metropole.

One way or the other, a critical understanding of our own social mores and material contradictions is conspicuous by its absence.

I have in the past flagged some genuine issues of collective concern; the fact that published statistics and figures are poor indicators of an actually existing economy which is dominated by informal relationships and undocumented transactions; the fact that political power continues to reside in the institutions of state created under colonial rule rather than in the parties and individuals that we love to hate; the fact that our rhetorical obsession with religion betrays a cultural composition that is multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and generally far more complex than the unitary ‘Pakistan ideology’ admits.

There are certai­nly many more the­mes that could, and should, be the subject of intellectual and political debate — only when a critical mass of ordinary people become party to such debates can we start thinking about the fixes that we all want immediately but that can only be realised in the long term.

Of course, a richer culture of public criticism does not guarantee that we can all get along. It is in fact likely to confirm the divisions that run right through the Pakistani body politic, on the basis of class, gender, ethnicity or whatever else. But the sooner we acknowledge these divisions the better, beca­use pretending they don’t exist and then reso­rting to failed invocations of ‘Pakistaniat’ — along with the standard list of prescriptions to defend Islam and the country — will get us nowhere.

So on this 1st of January, 2016, I propose a new way of doing things — both for this year and for all that follow it — in which we develop the critical faculties of a young population, deeply interrogate our real history, rather than the Ziaul Haq-inspired version, and eventually get to a point where we can call a spade a spade.

It will take much longer than most of us have patience for, but for those who want this to become a more just and inclusive society it is well worth the wait.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, January 1st, 2016