In the midst of a desert a car rushing towards a particular direction to set a new world record, or an athlete, during his sprint, who sees nothing but the other end of his track, or a speed boat gushing through the waters in pursuit of the finish line… These are the things that usually come in our mind when we hear the word “Race”. Can we link these examples with our real life? For that we'll have to assign different characters to life in the scenarios stated above. Life is like a car running in the midst of a desert which does not seem to end, or it’s like an athlete who is constantly running but does not see the finish line, or a speed boat going against the stream.
Let us study the life of the common man of, say, our country Pakistan. See the daily routine of that man. He gets up in the morning, goes to work, comes home tired, and sleeps. This is how he follows this cyclic schedule throughout his life and upon his death these responsibilities pass on to the next generation. As generations pass requirements increase and so do the responsibilities, with lives becoming busier and more hectic. Now what do we mean by 'requirements' which are increasing? The requirements are actually to live better lives, earn more, and raise living standards. And what do we mean by 'living standards'? Well, definitions do vary from person to person but in this particular class, quite a few things are common amongst all. We are used to hearing things like ‘I am working on my LAPTOP!*’ (Or in some cases ‘on my VAIO’**) and ‘my BLACKBERRY is not catching signals here’ instead of a simplified form ‘my phone isn’t working’. And yeah! The most interesting one! ‘I don't like CNG, I prefer running my car on PETROL’ when the question of preferences is not even raised by anyone.
This kind of behavior is mostly seen in middle class and in the lower classes who, in their opinion, are trying to progress. Their mentality and other societal pressures force them to think that expensive items add to their status and are always better than cheaper ones.
Now the most important question that arises here is that why are these people doing this and being so materialistic when almost all of them belong to faiths that promote simplicity? Actually these people are taking part in a race (and that too voluntarily!). The race for living a better life, achieving a higher living standard, getting more material, property, and money and more and more and more……. Hundreds of new lives enter this race each day, hundreds come to an end. But the race continues...
That was the basic idea of the type of lives middle class people "pursuit”. By now, you must be wondering who the middle class people are racing with? My mother once told me "riches of poor countries are worth being observed". I have found that to be true. Believe you me! If you do that, you will find one answer to the question that has just been raised. Upper class in any society is the kind of people whose lifestyle always remains a desire of their followers. And there is also a kind of people who have newly achieved enough wealth which in their view is necessary to enter the upper class. Such materialists (I am talking about a specific chunk of this class) act as if they have never suffered through poverty or bad times. They are in habit of show off which makes weaker persons feel that they are the only unfortunate ones who have seen (or having to see) bad times whereas in reality everyone suffers through crisis at some point in time in their life, whether financial or non-financial. This is how the whistle of the game is blown and the new participants are invited into the swamp of pomp and show, desire to get more, and towards unnecessary expenditure. Unnecessary expenditure in the sense that the ‘chasing’ classes try to spend the way riches do in their weddings, Eid, Christmas, and other customs. Some drown in the sea of debts in that struggle, and those who manage to escape the need of loans lose resources which could be incurred for real necessities. In simpler words these following classes enter into a spiral of worsening conditions.
One must know that it’s not just the riches who should be blamed for such conditions of the weaker classes. One should blame the follower classes more because they are trying to follow what does not really suit them and what’s not really required by them. These people are like inter-school level athletes who wish to jump on to national level before the right time and without the hard work which is required for that.
This can be stopped by the ruling class, the politicians. They can easily handle such things. And NOT surprisingly most of the times they do handle the situation. It is in fact a competition within the ruling class. Those who are better than others at handling of situation take the lead. It wouldn’t be wrong if we replace the word ‘handling’ with ‘manipulation’ in this case. Be it the upper class or the lower classes, everything is being manipulated by them. Upper class is used by them as a set of strings to control the lower classes and in this way the lower classes are further used to get success in electoral races. And for that they have to win the race of sympathizing, with victims of prejudices between ethnic races. Then the race between media begins to report those prejudices and sympathies first. And, you know, it doesn’t end here. It goes up to the international level with each level of the hierarchy triggering race amongst the lower levels. It’s a race inside a race. Each race triggering a new one.
Material cannot buy class. Boundaries of classes are not defined by money, but by mentality. Just pretending to be something is not the key to actually become something. It’s not as if these are some secrets that are being revealed to the general public for the first time in this article. We are all aware of these things. We all know that we are being controlled, manipulated and being forced to become participants of unnecessary contests. We know how it feels to be manipulated, still we have those amongst us who manipulate. Why becoming participants just because someone else is taking part? Why taking part in the competitions in which the destinations are not known? In which the promised checkered flags are never seen? And most importantly, does any one of the contestants know where exactly are they heading? No one probably knows the answer yet. But for those who want to know, these questions might trigger another race.
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