10
ADMITTEDLY, ‘stop eating’ is perhaps a harsh term to use for curtailing consumption, but while complete starvation as a remedy for past gluttony is impractical, neither can a comfortable lifestyle be a solution.
“In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose,” are some extracts from American president Jimmy Carter’s speech to the nation on July 15, 1979. It has been dubbed ‘The Malaise Speech’.
This was a time that America was rapidly becoming a consumer society, guzzling imported energy that obviously resulted in trade deficits, with increasing dependence on foreign oil. Mr Carter’s strategy to tackle the situation, laid out in this speech, in brief is this: “From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed.”
Energy is a major component of our gluttony.
Further, he warned: “We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.”
In my opinion, the speech was right on the money since dependence on anyone for anything is not really freedom. So what did Americans do? Well, figuratively speaking, they shot the messenger and kept guzzling; in fact, Americans have still not discovered that ownership and consumption is not satisfaction, and that the piling up of material goods does not give purpose.
Are Americans better off today, with national debt at $20 trillion, still dependent on others for their consumerism, and at war with more than half the globe? Let us sidestep this; it is irrelevant to us as we are not a developed nation, are nowhere near being the world’s only superpower, and our currency is not the international currency. That understood, let’s move to Pakistan.
We have a record trade deficit of over $30 billion for 2017 and till March 2017, we had borrowed a record sum of $77.6bn for enjoying a happy life. This was obviously far more than we could afford. And, yes, energy is a major, if not the only, component of our gluttony; there seems to be no end to Pakistan’s wanton desire for even bigger and flashier cars.
Despite having achieved records in trade deficit and external national debt and liabilities, we believe we have an energy crisis and we want more. So, also ignoring Mr Carter’s advice of conservation, we are happily contracting to buy more imported energy for the foreseeable future in one form or the other — coal or LNG.
The end result of all this rabid consumption is that we may have a democracy, but we are not free. Should our oil supplies be blocked for any reason — perhaps it is impossible, but not improbable — do we have a contingency plan? Can we even survive such an eventuality? What if our lenders suddenly wanted all their money back; how would we pay them? Sell them Gwadar or perhaps Thar!
We may have one of the best armies in the world, which a particular segment loves to criticise all the time, but if we are economically or financially dependent on others, there’s hardly a leg to stand on when asked to do more. Yes, that hurts, but the truth always does; the path we are on is a certain route to failure. And I am an optimist!
I feel that the time has come for a leader to deliver ‘The Malaise Speech’ in Pakistan, simply because we also refuse to understand the implications of an endless desire to own and consume things. In our case, however, the speech does not come with a choice — it comes with harsh policy initiatives designed to curtail consumption nationwide.
Yes, most definitely we will also shoot the messenger, which is why none of the democratically elected leaders, knowing very well that they should, will never deliver the speech. Inevitably, though, someone will have to bell the cat; sooner rather than later, we will just have to stop eating.
The writer is a chartered accountant based in Islamabad.
Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2017
