NOTHING seems to be working, especially when it comes to character building and instilling humane traits, particularly among men. In-person congregations of millions at tableeghiijtima, hundreds, if not thousands, of urs ceremonies around the country at shrines and mausoleums, televangelists, and social media platforms with a combined following of hundreds of millions gush morality and piety 24/7, and yet men go about brutalising women, other men, and animals. Something’s got to give.

We have become a 250-million-strong, growing-by-the-minute, cursing, lashing-out mass — bent upon auto-cannibalisation. It is impossible to determine whether the brutality on display, ever-disgusting in its daily manifestations, is innate or a reaction of a systematically brutalised society. I, for one, am unable to stop imagining ways to inflict the worst possible pain on the criminal who attacked Dr Mahnoor with acid in a Quetta hospital.

The rage that is stirred within by the many instances of brutality even brushes aside criticism of ‘encounter’ killings as one finds oneself unsatisfied with the ultimate punishment dispensed by courts of law.

I may not be alone in this; many others must be racking their brains to devise........

© Dawn