Does Pakistan have what it takes to be a strong nation?

[Zornix]

That's the thing. Achieving a functional society needs again a warrior soul.

Not true, it needs brains and guts in order for the oppressed to stand up against the rulers. Violence never helps in achieving gains and forcing a revolution.

 

[Horse_Rider]

Historically speaking, all the nations which were aggressors in the Past, are powerful nations today. Does it have to do with the DNA? Maybe, but attitude is definitely the key. The character of people of Pakistan is more inclined to be parasitic rather than hunters.

By looking in the mirror of the past, can we predict that Pakistan will ever achieve any status in world affairs, I mean more than what it has now? What is our ultimate destination?

@Mentee @Irfan Baloch @others

@HAIDER @SIPRA

Thank you for opening a thread based on critical thinking. Threads like these are needed to create awareness. I feel like our nation is way South of where the world is at. In my opinion, there is no DNA here. Throughout the history, we had various civilizations and empires that ruled the world. What we need to see is, what were the common traits for a nation or ethnicity to grow and whether they ruled the world or were glorious with importance:

1) Responsible Work Ethic - This is critical. You have good work ethic, you'll produce well. Because you believe in hard work. Today, we have the Americans (the Europeans say we work to live, the Americans live to work), we have Turks, Indians, Koreans, Japanese and Chinese as recent examples. The Indians have learned their work ethic from the US and that's why they are in everything big lately.
- Koreans and Japanese, both Island nations and both top economies, punching WAY ABOVE their weight. Why? Hard work!!
- Chinese: A nation that was riding bicycles just 40 years ago is the TOP 2nd economy today, second ONLY to the US. Very hard working.
Turkish: Growing economy above expectations, especially the hi-tech sector and the defense industry specifically. Again, hard work.

So, the most common denominator here is hard work. You work hard, you produce better, whatever it may be. I think the Work Ethic drives the second part below. The education. Note, I put it as number 2. Why? There are A LOT of top notch educated people who can't work hard and thus fail. The book knowledge goes to grave with them. But, if they worked hard realized they didn't have the right skills, they'd go get educated because of their work ethic, they can't compromise on a substandard deliverable so education will be acquired to produce a satisfactory product.

Education: It goes without saying. The Christians used to travel to Iraq and other Muslim nations to get education. They transferred that knowledge within their systems, built institutions and today, they are the epicenter of knowledge and education.

Does everyone want to be educated? Yes, if it's a "status issue" like it's in Pakistan (sadly) to have Western degrees but people having them are still working with their fathers in the same 50 year old business they owned. Why? because it's easy, predictable, provides the lifestyle and essentially it's what a lazy man dreams of, fat salary, cars, homes, etc! But is "high end education" necessary? Not really, if you are passionate about a field, say making fork lifter, you can buy parts and assemble them yourself. You need education ONLY limited to that operation. Not a PHD or an MBA required. India is an example here. Millions of their people go to the US and EU, etc for technical work. Not everyone has a BS or MS in IT. Majority first generation had done many computer courses. But they produced highly desirable products all across the globe with "required education" not top notch education.

Now if you work hard, your dad's old school stuff won't satisfy you. You'd want to build better stuff seeing the world today. For that, you'd get purposeful education to apply those skills in your craft and produce it better and put the hard work in it or acquire people with the skillset. The hard work requires education to be acquired directly or indirectly (Western schools now test their children early on to find what it is they'd like to do and then craft their education according to that child's dreams). Now this acquired education will produced better end products or services and that's innovation! The ability to critically think and solve problems effectively by "thinking out of the box"!

Innovation: The ability to "critical thinking" flourishes innovation. Innovation runs the world. The Brits long left, but left the slave mindset behind. Innovation is the third largest factor in national growth. Countries who flourished with outside the box thinking, created the Railroad, Telephone that went from wired to today's IPhones, airplanes, X-Ray / Imaging, GPS, Disease Cures, Genetics, etc, etc.

Strategic Direction and Investments: In above examples of the past 150 years, it's obvious that people were driven to produce via innovation, they realized the "problems" in their line of work and used critical thinking in solving them. Today's technologies exist because of that critical thinking and resulting innovation. Microsoft thought they needed to allow people to manage financials (whether individual or businesses), MS Excel was created. Someone thought the World can be divided with Mathematical coordinates and provided to people for directions, GPS was created. Someone thought let's be able to see the hart blockages and tumors, Stunts and Cardio By-Passes were created saving millions of lives annually and Cancer cures doing the same! So when a problem was found during one's passionate hard work, further education was acquired or educated people were brought in regarding that subject. Who, then made the choice of solving those issues. For that innovation to take place, Strategic Investments were done to create a hard working educated pool of people as "center of excellence" to solve whatever issue needed resolution.

We don't have much to show here as a nation, but in recent times, Pakistan acquired knowledge and made strategic investment with China on the JFT program. It's upto us to grow that center of excellence and really start to build a military industrial complex through out of the box thinking and innovation done on JFT as a starter to start an industry within Pakistan! That was the goal.

 

[fitpOsitive]

Not true, it needs brains and guts in order for the oppressed to stand up against the rulers. Violence never helps in achieving gains and forcing a revolution.

Yes, that brain and guts are all I am talking about.

 

[313ghazi]

Let's start with stable before we talk about strong.

I think we have most of the the ingredients, but we also lack some important ingredients.

1. Leadership.
2. Discipline.
3. An education system that encourages creativity.

Go to a back street mechanic or repair shop, you'll see uneducated men doing all sorts of jugar.

Get an engineering graduate from a Pakistani University and ask them to make something or think of something new. The creativity has been squeezed out of them.

 

[Mentee]

Achieving a functional society needs again a warrior soul.

Functional society cannot exist without administration of justice. How many Muslim academic institutes stresses on rule of law ? Even how many chapters of Hadees are concerning justice which is Fundamental to Al Quran ? None?


The promise of Devine protection and blessings is directly linked with justice.

 

[fitpOsitive]

Thank you for opening a thread based on critical thinking. Threads like these are needed to create awareness. I feel like our nation is way South of where the world is at. In my opinion, there is no DNA here. Throughout the history, we had various civilizations and empires that ruled the world. What we need to see is, what were the common traits for a nation or ethnicity to grow and whether they rules the world or were glorious with importance:

1) Responsible Work Ethic - This is critical. You have good work ethic, you'll produce well. Because you believe in hard work. Today, we have the Americans (the Europeans say we work to live, the Americans live to work), we have Turks, Indians, Koreans, Japanese and Chinese as recent examples. The Indians have learned their work ethic from the US and that's why they are in everything big lately.
- Koreans and Japanese, both Island nations and both top economies, punching WAY ABOVE their weight. Why? Hard work!!
- Chinese: A nation that was riding bicycles just 40 years ago is the TOP 2nd economy today, second ONLY to the US. Very hard working.
Turkish: Growing economy above expectations, especially the hi-tech sector and the defense industry specifically. Again, hard work.

So, the most common denominator here is hard work. You work hard, you produce better, whatever it may be. I think the Work Ethic drives the second part below. The education. Note, I put it as number 2. Why? There are A LOT of top notch educated people who can't work hard and thus fail. The book knowledge goes to grave with them. But, if they worked hard realized they didn't have the right skills, they'd go get educated because of their work ethic, they can't compromise on a substandard deliverable so education will be acquired to produce a satisfactory product.

Education: It goes without saying. The Christians used to travel to Iraq and other Muslim nations to get education. They transferred that knowledge within their systems, built institutions and today, they are the epicenter of knowledge and education.

Does everyone want to be educated? Yes, if it's a "status issue" like it's in Pakistan (sadly) to have Western degrees but people having them are still working with their fathers in the same 50 year old business they owned. Why? because it's easy, predictable, provides the lifestyle and essentially it's what a lazy man dreams of, fat salary, cars, homes, etc! But is "high end education" necessary? Not really, if you are passionate about a field, say making fork lifter, you can buy parts and assemble them yourself. You need education ONLY limited to that operation. Not a PHD or an MBA required. India is an example here. Millions of their people go to the US and EU, etc for technical work. Not everyone has a BS or MS in IT. Majority first generation had done many computer courses. But they produced highly desirable products all across the globe with required education not top notch education.

Now if you work hard, your dad's old school stuff won't satisfy you. You'd want to build better stuff seeing the world today. For that, you'd get purposeful education to apply those skills in your craft and produce it better and put hard work in it or acquire people with the skillset. The hard work requires education to be acquired directly or indirectly (Western schools now test their children early on to find what it is they'd like to do and then craft their education according to that child's dreams). Now this acquired education will produced better end products or services and that's innovation! The ability to critically think and solve problems effectively by "thinking out of the box"!

Innovation: The ability to "critical thinking" flourishes innovation. Innovation runs the world. The Brits long left, but left the slave mindset behind. Innovation is the third largest factor in national growth. Countries who flourished with outside the box thinking, created the Railroad, Telephone that went from wire to today's IPhones, airplanes, X-Ray / Imaging, GPS, Disease Cures, Genetics, etc, etc.

Strategic Direction: Since people were driven to produce via innovation, they realized the "problems" in their line of work and used critical thinking in solving them. Today's technologies exist because of that critical thinking and resulting innovation. Microsoft thought they needed to allow people to manage financials (whether individual or businesses), MS Excel was created. Someone thought the World can be divided with Mathematical coordinates and provided to people for directions, GPS was created. Someone thought let's be able to see the hart blockage and tumors, Stunts and By-Passes were created saving millions of lives annually and Cancer cure doing the same! So when a problem was found during one's passionate hard work, further education was acquired or educated people were brought regarding that subject. Who, then made the choice of solving those issues. For that innovation to take place, Strategic Investments were done to create an hard working educated pool of people as "center of excellence" to solve whatever issue needed resolution.

Pakistan did this knowledge acquisition and strategic investment with the JFT program. It's upto us to grow that center of excellence and really start to build a military industrial complex through out of the box thinking and innovation! That was the goal.

All we have achieved so far is due to the competition with India. We made the atomic bomb, we get the JFT program done.
What about clean water, justice, and infrastructure? That's the thing. We are not taking these things into account due to, maybe the lack of that brute force and willingness to get the job done.

 

[Horse_Rider]

All we have achieved so far is due to the competition with India. We made the atomic bomb, we get the JFT program done.
What about clean water, justice, and infrastructure? That's the thing. We are not taking these things into account due to, maybe the lack of that brute force and willingness to get the job done.

Did you read my entire post? Take a look at the examples covered. Clean Water would be an example for where it's needed. If we had what is explained, someone would be working on solving that problem. Kindly read through to understand.

 

[fitpOsitive]

Functional society cannot exist without administration of justice. How many Muslim academic institutes stresses on rule of law ? Even how many chapters of Hadees are concerning justice which is Fundamental to Al Quran ? None?


The promise of Devine protection and blessings is directly linked with justice.

See, the thing is, Arabs rose from the dust to the level of great powers in the leadership of Nab e Pak SW.. What happened after that? Arabs returned to their pre-Islamic behavior as far as social justice is concerned. The same happened with Mongols and Tatars. Even if Europe today accepts Islam, will they be Muslims like us? No? why? That's the thing I am talking about.
I cant explain what exact factor is that, but I am talking about more or less about the character of a nation, a group of people.

Did you read my entire post? Take a look at the examples covered. Clean Water would be an example for where it's needed. If we had what is explained, someone would be working on solving that problem. Kindly read through to understand.

Yes. Actually making progress and adopting certain tools like Education, innovation and other such things is the second step.
I am talking about the first step or let's say the ability or even willingness to do these things.

Do we really want to achieve something, do we have that in ourselves? Or we should stay calm and keep and keep looking what is happening with us?

 

[fitpOsitive]

The USA solved this issue of intrinsic laziness by attacking other nations. Continuous wars made USA, the USA.
Now, my question will be what can we do on a social basis to handle this, let's say, human factor with us? How can we turn Pakistanis into more disciplined, visionaries as far as national causes are concerned? How can we make the people of Pakistan more proactive in national affairs?

In addition to these pointers, which I already mentioned, what else do you think is the root cause or cause of anarchy in the social fabric of Pakistan?

 

[fitpOsitive]

Yes Pakistan has what it take.

Copy the Chinese governing system.

Do you think copying systems will help? I mean its been more than 70 years that we are copying some system and it's really not working.
What do you say about it?

 

[MultaniGuy]

Do you think copying systems will help? I mean its been more than 70 years that we are copying some system and it's really not working.
What do you say about it?

Yes but Japan copied the Imperial German system.

Likewise we can learn from China and copy their governing system.

 

[fitpOsitive]

@PanzerKiel @ghazi52

 

[ghazi52]

Pakistani never think about themselves as a nation.
A very sad statement by me. Hope they will realize.
They think inward, few lot think outward.

 

[313ghazi]

Even if Europe today accepts Islam, will they be Muslims like us? No? why? That's the thing I am talking about.
I cant explain what exact factor is that, but I am talking about more or less about the character of a nation, a group of people.

I can't speak for all of Europe but the great social advances came in the UK when the parliamentary system was opened up to allow the concern of the businessman rather than the aristocrat and that then extended to unions and working class leaders.

Since the fall of the unions, the representatiion of the working man in UK politics has fell backwards and ultimately the quality of life for the working man too.

In Pakistan we can only move forward at speed when the concerns of the masses are represented in the halls of power.

 

[Abid123]

What exactly is a "strong nation"?