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Dealing with Social Pressures
A Presentation by ABBAS HUSAIN
Director Teachers’ Development Centre
• The 21st century is a good time to be young…
• As well as a very hard time to be young.
Today the entire knowledge of the world is available at a single click…
And yet there is an enormous ignorance of the basics of good decent living.
Why is this so?
MODERNITY ITSELF MUST BE SEEN
AS A SOURCE OF THESE TENSIONS
MODERNITY• COMPLEXITY
• INTERCONNECTEDNESS
• UNCERTAINTY
• DESTRUCTIVE POWER IN THE HANDS OF AN INDIVIDUAL ON A LARGE SCALE
1. COMPLEXITY• WE ARE PARTICIPANTS TO A
LAYERED COMPLEX WORLD
• SOCIALLY• POLITICALLY • ECONOMICALLY• INTERNATIONALLY• ECOLOGICALLY
2.INTERCONNECTEDNESS
• A WIDELY CONNECTED WORLD
E.G. INTERNET
…A VIOLENT STIR SOMEWHERE ELSE…
3.UNCERTAINTY
• No more are there pockets of relative certainty
• The speed with which new jobs are being created for new niche markets is remarkable…
4. GREAT CAPACITY TO HARM
• One virus can wipe out years of data from an entire range of computers
• One person can influence thousands …for good and evil together…..
THESE ARE TO ME THE FOUR FEATURES OF MODERNITY
• And young people must do twelve things in this intense fast changing culture which is defined by Stephen Covey as
“PERMANENT WHITEWATER”
The Young Person Must:
1. Adjust to a new physical sense of self
2. Adjust to new intellectual abilities
3. Adjust to increased cognitive demands at school
4. Develop expanded verbal skills
The Young Person Must:
5. Develop a personal sense of identify
6. Establish adult vocational goals
7. Establish emotional and psychological independence from his or her parents
8. Develop stable and productive peer relationships
The Young Person Must:
9. Learn to manage her or his sexuality
10. Adopt a personal value system
11. Develop increased impulse control and behavioral maturity
12. Develop a keen interest in the spiritual resources of our own traditions
You can see that is a daunting checklist for the most balanced and normal young person…
What to speak of people like us?
This brings us to the
confrontation of modernity
with youth and I will present
it as three contradictions.
Three Contradictions
Competition and success
Brotherly love and humility
First Contradiction
Second Contradiction
Stimulation of our needs
Factual frustrations in satisfying them
Third Contradiction
Alleged freedom of the individual
All his factual limitations
The twelfth point in the checklist was awareness of spiritual traditions
And I now wish to turn to our traditional response to the four points of modernity
So here are the resources on each point
Islam offers a modality of thinking about each of the features of modernity
Against complexity it offers a metaphysics of such marvels that mankind has yet to appreciate its breadth and depth
PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS….
For interconnectedness
It offers a picture of the human family and the worth and value of each human being as a creature of God with remarkable consistency
walaqad karramna bani Adam…
For uncertainty
It speaks of the certainty of the human experience against the drifting nature of the media images and the onslaught of novelty
And about the capacity to harm
Islam makes a democratic appeal for spirituality by inviting each person to realize the spiritual quest, and then saying:
Whoever saves a human life saves all mankind
A Recipe for Self-Management
Focus on sharing
Focus on language
Focus on time
FOCUS ON SHARING
• Young people need to understand that the most powerful influence on their lives is from other young people. So they have to take over and take charge. This is a focus on sharing.
FOCUS ON LANGUAGE
• The fluency of speech by which one is able to express the intention of the heart.
FOCUS ON TIME
• Put your time to good use, improve your skills.
The decades ahead will be extremely unforgiving of people who do not have the skills.
I would like to conclude on two powerful thoughts
Surely Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change that which is in themselves
---Surah Ra’ad, 13:11
And help you one another in in righteousness and piety, but help not one another in sin and rancour
Surah Maidah, 5:2
THANK YOU
ABBAS HUSAINDirector
Teachers’ Development Centre
129-G Block 2 PECHS Karachi 75400
http://www.tdc.edu.pkE-mail: [email protected]
Tel: 021-4310217/4392949