Written By : Waseem Ali Shiekh
When man hears of word “dogma” he usually thinks of it in terms of old out-dated belief system that has been rejected centuries ago. Refuted on the bases of its useless and deceptive views about man and his place in the world, universe and society But in modern terms it can be substituted for indoctrination where different controversial ideologies are competing to dominate the society and state in particular. Ideologies like, Liberalism, Communism, Authoritarianism, Anarchism and so on. The state uses these particular ideologies and induces it into the mind of masses through use social media, schools, universities and literature, In order to make them obedient to the state and authority of politician i.e. statesman. On this road to control and manipulation through literature a doctrine or more appropriately, dogma would be produced where literature will be used as a substitute to religion. Who made this mark? Certainly there is no such thing in reality but little move was made by Mathew Arnold who proposed that literature can work as a religion. How? That requires little bit of explanation.
When any religious man wants to escape the painful reality of this world, in terms of, financial crises, trials and tribulation, suffering and hopelessness, He or She turns his face towards religion and reads those religious stories to get peace of mind. He gets motivated because of those supernatural accounts of heaven, hell angels and demons, virtue and evil. In this regard, What Plato suggested to do, was to produce a new class of state sponsored religious clergy who will write similar tales which are in favor of state and obedient to state-machinery, in which state is shown or to speak bluntly, is substituted as a god who sustenance, listens and fulfills all your wishes. Beside fulfilling wishes these can also be manufactured by market, another aspect of state.
The sole purpose of such state would be to concentrate wealth and keep the mob busy in pleasure, Where Pleasure principles of Brave New World are applied at new stately indoctrinated mass of people. Though this mass of people will slowly and gradually will be guided and brainwashed by state institutions like, media, schools and universities, but it is not clear that through this affective method we might come to oppress and outcaste religion from that particular society. Because all those moral values provided by religious tales would be fed by substitutive literary stories but what about the laws that are derived from the texts? That might be a problem. But with the slogan of bringing prosperity and betterment mixed with science, it can be made possible.
What type of Prosperity and betterment in society? The Answer is to provide great amount of pleasure and amusement that would boost the economical and technological state of society where most of our works are done by the machines and where freedom of moment and pleasure is available in its truest form i.e. No kind of moral restrains would be there to stop you from any immoral acts (in terms of religion) right and wrong, moral and immoral would function in a way that a state wants them to be. Literature will construct stories and scientific novellas backing actions which are immoral, illegitimate, made moral by state discourse; it will create a narration of its own.
Let’s shade light on it from existing society, For example, the monopoly of internationally companies like Google, Facebook, and so many others like these can work in coordination made possible by big-fishes who want to control and coordinate the flow of information and it can also function as a powerful tool for the single side. These can make laws which, certainly would benefit, the owners and order givers. The suppresser might keep all other anti-company or anti-owner information blocked and in the dark. Information shared in movies and dramas of today are more prone to secularization and like this slowly and gradually things would reach above proposed conclusion. Another example, literature in hands of political party or institution becomes a tool of politicization, like communist party literature, Nazi party literature, and Conservative literature and so on. This is where literature inters into the zone of propaganda and acts as preacher of political dogma.
Though given fragments of thoughts might be just speculation but still these arguments hold some water that might manifest itself in front of us in future. The present secularization of world, its laws and literature is a sign of it. Beside these what kind of future awaits us is unpredictable.
