The last year can be described as one filled with collective trauma for all Pakistanis, regardless of which side of the polarised political aisle they stand. The information highway in Pakistan is chaotic, with newsbreaks unfolding at bewildering speed. How can a nation cope with this unrelenting stress?

It seems it is not Pakistan alone, but nations across the world, that are facing this uncertainty. As journalist Elizabeth Berg puts it, our crazy world is making us stressed and sad. A corrosive culture is eating away at the values that we built our social structures upon.

The poet and mystic Baba Fariduddin Ganjshakar wrote, “I thought I was alone who suffered. Then I went on top of the house and found every house on fire.”

This asks the question, why is the world so sad? Reliefweb International reports that nine out of every 10 countries have regressed on metrics measuring health, education and standard of living, and “a totally overwhelmed global society is staggering from crisis to crisis.”

The global challenges confronting all of us appear starker due to the inescapable presence of social media. As these issues increase our collective stress and sense of dread, how best can we navigate these extraordinary times?

The world has always faced crises, some even more devastating than the ones we have witnessed. But today, social media brings the chaos straight into our lives. In Pakistan, listening to podcasts by exiled journalists now counts as bedtime literature.

One hears from ordinary bloggers, “It’s quite an unpleasant world. It hurts. It truly aches to be here.” Highly Sensitive People (HSP) feel the pain of others with a greater intensity.

There is grief about what’s been lost, anxiety about what’s going to happen next and a disillusionment with the people in power. Most individuals feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems facing us today. These issues are too large for any one person to solve, leaving many feeling guilty for not being able to do more to help remedy these crises.

As world leaders fail to find solutions, people are finding their own ways to help manage this floundering ship. Citizens across the globe gather together and form groups in an attempt to address the issues of climate change, economic inequality and institutional reform. These are as intense as the escape rooms popularised by video games: a room in which people are locked and have to solve a series of puzzles within a certain amount of time in order to unlock the room and be free.

Finding ways to release emotions is important to feel calm and reassured. Many young people turn to video games, with video games seeing a 63 percent increase in sales in recent years. They encourage players to cope with failure, develop emotional resilience and feel in charge of the action.

Humour has always played a pivotal role during social upheavals, from the mediaeval court jester to former Mishi Khan’s tweets. George Orwell said, “Each joke is a tiny revolution.” Dark humour, while more disturbing than funny, diffuses overwhelming grief and anxiety by bringing in other emotions."

From the verses of Shahr-e-Ashob [A Grieving City] and Shahr-e Gholghola [The City of Screams] to the poets of Kashmir and Palestine, whose main concern is how to defeat death, poetry, novels and memoirs have voiced collective trauma and provided a much needed, if temporary, sense of calm.

In between gruelling forced labour and harsh living conditions, the prisoners of 30,000 gulag camps across the Soviet Union from 1918–1960 developed theatre, opera, music, dance, visual arts and literature rivalling the quality of Moscow’s cultural scene.

According to Simeon Vilensky, a gulag survivor and a human rights activist, “It helped people to remain people.” The prisoners were inventive with the materials they used for paint, costumes and stage props. They used whatever was at hand, from flour bags for canvases, clay and pig’s blood for paint, to cotton waste for wigs, thus creating an escape from the reality of their imprisonment.

As the world once again finds itself in a similar situation as the one described by Mathew Arnold in the 19th century, “Wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born”, it awaits with bated breath the expected seismic shift in the balance of power.

In the meantime, ordinary people try not to panic by building bridges over troubled waters as best they can.

Durriya Kazi is a Karachi-based artist. She may be reached at durriyakazi1918@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, April 30th, 2023