Humans Are Not And Can Not Be So Logical, Predicament, Quotable Quotes, Stigma For Propaganda & Failure Of Political Marketing In Pakistan

Humans Are Not And Can Not Be So Logical, Predicament, Quotable Quotes, Stigma For Propaganda & Failure Of Political Marketing In Pakistan By Dr. Sohail Ansari

Conceived and worded by DR Sohail Ansari (originality of concepts and originality of words).

He believes that there can never be a zero scope for improvement and appreciates criticism if it is not for the sake of criticism.

·       Rhetoric is electrifying, notwithstanding, the source as well of misguided action for the obvious truth that it speaks to the whole person.    

·       Patience is something you admire in the person you owe and scorn in the one who owes you.

Humans are not and can not be so logical.

Persuasion through discourse

·        We humans are not merely logical thinking machines abstracted from time and space and that explains why pure logic has never been a motivating force; and it can not be unless it has been subordinated to human purposes and thereby ceases to be pure logic. We are humans, and therefore, we have the weakness to harbor feelings. Discourse can not be persuasive if directed only to our rational selves; it must deal in weakness__ a weakness that makes us different from machines. Logical argument is the plot of every persuasive discourse, yet the characterizing feature of persuasive discourse is that it goes beyond this and appeals to our desires,  actions and sufferings, recalling relevant emotional reactions of people to circumstances similar or deceptively similar to their own circumstances and indicating literally or symbolically how people must react emotionally with hope or fear to particular circumstance. Discourse can achieve little unless it takes into account the aspect of their being related to such hopes and fears. 

Predicament of adherents

·        The founder of unorthodox school of thought leaves his followers an ambiguous legacy. Founder has to reject the tendency of his followers to turn his teaching into scripture as he does not aspire to be the author of a new religion but as the interpretations of his has no hypothetical character because of his own authoritarian attitude toward them; they can not be subjected to revision in the light of evidence and the possibility of being wrong is closed for ever.

Quotable Quotes

·       We hate to have the discomfort of thought because we love to have the comfort of opinion.

·       Two people can claim to understand each other when silence between them speaks everything.

·       Freedom of expression depends very much on our understanding that no check on freedom is different from no restraint against the abuse of freedom.

·       Oratory can make people believe that there can be a bridge even where there is no river.

·       You can only be natural if you do not try to appear so.

Stigma for Propaganda

·        ‘Society establishes the means of categorizing persons and the complement of attributes felt to be ordinary and natural for members of each of these categories’. Political marketing consultant creates affixes as the label associates a leader to set of unwanted characteristics that form a stereotype so that he can put a politician into a group regardless of how well he actually fits. Discrediting effect of a stigma is very extensive as stigma constitutes a special discrepancy between virtual and actual identity.  Political marketing consultant confuses existential stigma with achieved stigma so that stigmatizing attribute is not easily undetected and person is stigmatized as long as it is not done so.

Failure of political marketing in Pakistan

Underlying the assumption for the search for the causes of the failure of political marketing was the belief that political culture of today is the result of conditioning from economic and cultural values of yesterday and same symbiosis would determine what it is tomorrow. The researcher, therefore, set the study on the twin pillars of History and Culture. The pillar of history and culture is reflected in the consensus that we can grasp the political culture of today best by seeing how it was composed and put into place step by step. In a nut shell a single thread of argument is drawn through this search: Here it is not a matter of political marketing ‘Causing’ this or that, but rather of it being one actor among others in a powerful political drama. Inadequacy of Lerner’s theory was overcome by choosing the period in which political process occurred amid urbanization to form rationale for our assumption. 

For the purpose of study various articles and books were read as the indispensable interpretative key to record the status of political consciousness and role of various forces in forging it. The original purpose of the use of history is to know what we are by knowing what we were and to reconstruct the past for our present purposes or in other words the past and future are mediated in the present. This use obviously has the major benefit of giving self identity but it has its own perils, if nation tend to romanticize the past to extent that it blinds it to its irrelevancy (of certain aspects) to present as Neustadt and May admit that history can be an enemy of vision, if tomorrow’s dreams are carved out of history before tomorrow happens or without knowing how it will happen due to being divorced from present.  Nation as a whole fell short of wining laurels; therefore, instead of identifying what is deserving of preservation from the past; impoverishment of present was compensated by drawing on rich past.  This projection of past in present subliminally subjected inhabitants to the appeal of powerful figures that could return nation to past glories as democratic rulers failed to establish the irrelevancy of monarchy or authoritarianism by not proving different;  Quaid-i-Azam’s ‘rejection of  past for democracy hence was soon rejected by the  forces of history and culture which continued to be nourished by attitude and measures of all rulers; even the consignment of monarchs to footnotes of history and universal acknowledgement of democracy as the better system could not herald a harbinger of a democratic dawn in Pakistan.

 In democracy the individual forms the nucleus of politics, therefore nation with deep ingrained tendencies of hero worship had to revise the conception of the world and man’s place in it comprehensively to embrace democracy; but due to existence of democracy as hollow concept and to exacerbate the things further the incompetence of civilian rulers; given to abusing mandate and flouting democratic norms nation took refuge in past. The latent regressive tendency toward dependence remained alive due to objective social phenomenon, and the urge to be back to the Garden of Eden was sharpened despite Urbanization from 1988 to 2002; therefore this migration failed to become the great occasions of human advance as the measures and attitudes of rulers failed to foster democratic consciousness.

Benazir’s and Nawaz could not represent departure from past and set in motion the forces that ultimately overwhelmed the country’s democratic experiment; the governments of theirs were the autocratic arrangement  ‘running the latter- day Mughal court ‘marred by intrigue, influence peddling and corruption and consequently the  country’s vice regal tradition, born in the crucible of colonialism could not be laid to rest.

Growth of political marketing was understandably not possible due to non-availability of achievement for highlighting as governments of both rulers through out their tenure spent all energies in pursuit of concentrating all power instead of delivering something to people.

Incompetence and corruption furthermore made government very vulnerable to the exercise of 8^th amendment and sudden sacking never allowed government to launch election campaign with preparation.  Failure of both rulers to demonstrate the democratic spirit when in power made ‘invoking democratic ideals’ and emphasizing ‘commitment to them’ through ads difficult.

Tendency of both rulers to seek power through heavy-handed tactics; rendered media campaign superfluous and irrelevant; efficacy of  ads was not fully tapped as they were used just as formality without conducting opinion polls Urbanization as it seems had not occurred to a extent that it could put a dent on  pocket constituency and relocate significantly the established following which needs not to be approached through any media campaign;  Consequently the ‘personality cult’; ethnic loyalties were still the bases of election campaigns and Bradari attachment continued to govern the decision to vote. sectionalisation of local initiatives by Musharraf regime obviated the need to run nation wide media campaign. Vindicating and facilitating military interventions into democratic politics drained political parties of any will to organize any media strategy. criminalization of dissent; institutionalized coercion, legalization of the use  of gun; and legitimization of arm twisting on the one hand structured the psyche of nation and militated against the evolution  of media as an instrument of change and no change in lives with change in government on the other  alienated electorates to campaign.

In conclusion, the picture is not as beak as it appears to be.  Hypotheses albeit were unsupported, the failure of political marketing was, in fact, the failure of applying political marketing; and this failure was made possible by socio-political milieu which was though altered but not altered enough. It is, therefore, to say anything regarding the basic assumption of research is tantamount to premature conclusion which can only be delivered having examined the utilization of political marketing in a real sense of word__ words that can define the role of political marketing in our political life may be spoken by any future research.