Read the remarks of most judges and you would find Themis and the Biblical King Solomon. Listen to the words of the clergy and you would be revealed to Moses. Meet a pir and you would get a guaranteed certificate of both worlds. Chatter for a while with a bureaucrat and you would stumble upon the personification of Prometheus. Call on or be called upon a social activist, and you would happen upon a narrowly survived and exhausted Socrates. See a politician and you would discover Augustus Octavian. Meet the intellectuals and journalists of our society, and you find a blend of Diogenes and Jesus of Nazareth.

Pause and ask what exactly they have worked towards - what earned them their epithets, their accolades, their idolisation. And should you conclude they have made no "contribution" to society, you, my friend, are guilty of a convenient naivety - one that, whether willed or unwitting, absolves them entirely and, in doing so, ratifies every transgression committed in the name of service. They have at their........

© The Express Tribune