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
First Contradiction
Competition and
success
Brotherly love and
humility
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 HUSAIN
Director
Teachers’ Development Centre
129-G Block 2 PECHS Karachi 75400
http://www.tdc.edu.pk
E-mail: [email protected]
Tel: 021-4310217/4392949