Westernization has deeply
seeped into our roots, especially amongst the young generation.Jean’s culture is
the norm of today. Fast mushrooming fast-food chains have acquired a niche in
the market. English language has gained international recognition but here it is
predominantly spoken to make an impression. Identity crisis faced by the youth
of today is worrisome. It is the period in the psychological development of an
individual, causing distress and disorientation due to conflicting pressures and
uncertainty about one’s self and one’s role in the society. VJs on TV channels
and RJs on radio could be heard speaking with colourful, fake accents as if they
have lived all their life abroad. It is indeed difficult to decipher the
speaker’s original accent. Why blame Indian channels or English channels for
destroying our generations when our mainstream channels are using words of other
cultures. The easy availability of food through home delivery has deprived
families of sitting together at meal times and discuss matters. Teenagers would
prefer eating pizza sitting in front of the TV. The number of hours spent in
front of the mindless zombie has made youth obese. The term ‘couch potato’
defines the lack of interest shown by teenagers in sports. To make matters
worse, chat rooms and websites like Facebook and Twitter have further aggravated
the problem. The slang used on social networking websites andSMS has destroyed
the language of the youth. The slow poisoning of globalization has taken away
Pakistan’s national language, dress, values and is succeeding in creating
hollowness. The young population has to fill the gap by retaining the culture
and yet modernizing the country through enlightenment.Isn’t our love for arts,
culture, literature and our own aesthetic identity fading away? What was the
last time you went out alone, or with your friends or family to an art
exhibition, a Lok Virsa show or to any of the Alhamra concerts on ethnic music?
If we look around our immediate surroundings and closely observe our collective
psyche, it would not be wrong to say that we are rapidly losing the artistic
thought, the softer brain and the very essence of cultural identity. Today, the
only entertainment considered entertainment is a Bollywood movie screening at
cinema or a western rock concert.What conclusion I wrap from these events is
that surely we Pakistani's have lost our IDENTITY. Our country the Quaid's
Pakistan came into being on 14 Aug1947 it was the result of colossal sacrifices
that at last the independence was uphold.Presently what Pakistani's are
generally documented by are theft, corruption and Terrorist attacks or suicide
bombings. Is this the image we are swollen with pride to carry around the globe?
These are surely not our identity elements we really need to get up and stand
for what is ours and recoup our true identity which is missing undoubtedly. One
of the main tasks of adolescence is to achieve an identity not necessarily a
knowledge of who we are, but a clarification of the range of what we might
become, a set of self-references by which we can make sense of our responses and
our decisions and goals.We may not realize this now but in due time this
realization will come and hit us hard when the damage to our unique cultural
identity and the youth’s attitude towards it will be irreparable. And that would
happen even without the help of extremist ideologies whether they be from the
mullahs or the government.