Let's talk about Bullying- II

Bullying involves even a demonstration of power or inducement of fear when there is a percieved differential in status or power between two or more individiuals. The bully always percieves him or herself as being relatively stronger then their victim hence chooses to engage in such behavior towards them. Where percieved equality exists, bullying becomes a very rare occurance. Sometimes this demonstration of power that comes with bullying can involve use of brutual force or extreme violence, which can result in serious injuries or the worst case scenario 'death' inflicted upon a victim. That is exactly what happened this past weekend in the city by the sea, as a young soul lost his life under unfortunate circumstances.

Hamza Ahmad was the name of the 17 year old teenager who was allegedly shot dead this past weekend by the body guard of another teenager who was an acquaintance of his. Reports circulating in the press and on social media suggest, that the fight was over a girl or whether it was about one boy harassing the other's girl friend. Regardless of what the dispute was about, one young soul needlessly lost his life, because the other young man whose guard shot Hamza did not value Hamza's life as a human being, it is entirely possible that the guilty young man in question percieved Hamza's worth as mere bug splat or himself as some one supreme   ofcourse speaking in relative terms.

I first heard about the death of Hamza when I got a message on whatsapp from a friend of mine saying that a teenager has been shot and killed by a classmate of his on Khayaban e Sehar in DHA Karachi. She herself came to learn about these events through Facebook status's that kept popping up condenming the act and showing signs of solidarity to the family of the late Hamza Ahmad. On the risk of sounding borderline insensitive I would like to suggest that we should have all seen this coming, especially those of us in our 20's and 30's. With the amount of easy access weapons and people with weapons roaming our city, it was only a matter of time before our degrading of the life of another human being became a reality. There was widespread apathy towards the lives of others when we were growing up, those of us who grew up in the 90's or the past decade, it was a ticking time bomb waiting to happen before we felt no ifs and buts about extinguishing some one's life altogether.

The root cause is our apathetic behavior towards others, towards the lives of other people, be it the actual life itself or everything else that people hold dear to their lives, such as personal belongings, loved ones or even social relationships. I would like to go out on a limb here and assign some blame to my generation, the lot that grew up in the 90's, that the amount of apathy that we demonstrated and the culture of apathy towards the lives of others it created, has lead to issues such as the untimely deaths of Hamza Ahmad and Shahzeb Khan before him. The generation after us have become even more apathetic and this has given a lot of fire power to the bullies and how they go about treating those they percieve as below them. What I mean by the bench mark was laid in my time was that it became a widespread trend when I was in school that we on a collective scale would indifferent or pretend as if nothing was happening when our peers were being bullied, harassed, socially ostracized or beaten up. I myself have been on the recieving end of such violence as a teenager in high school, I still clearly remember the apathy and insensitivity of my peers, who would blindly look the other way with the attitude that this does not concern. Refusal to intervene in conflicts or disputes that your peers are caught up in, because you all have only your life is your concern attitude. Infact, I am certain some of you people take great pleasure in being distant observers of those being abused in front of your very eyes. How many of you have taken pictures of it or made a video of it and uploaded it onto Social media?

 You people were silent, absolutely stun silent, and I am certain even children and teenagers now a days are stun silent and caught up too deeply in their own selfish individualistic pursuits, that even today they would look the other way when some one in their school is beaten up, molested, mocked, ridiculed or character assassinated in front of your eyes. For a lot of you pathetic apathetic and insensitive types, instead you guys see the victim as a potential possible loser of the class hence every mistreatment warranted at them is justified and you further damage their survival chances by keeping yourself at Bay from them. Most conflicts start off as petty and small, not managing them timely and in a proper manner triggers all sorts of things.  People see for yourselves what your culture of apathy leads to, are you people satisfied or are you people just shedding crocodile tears? If your in your 20's and you feel sad about Hamza Khan, just how genuine is your sadness? Think about it, are you sad because an innocent soul lost his life, or are you guys sad because of the messages pouring on social media. If you can watch some one like yourself get beaten up right in front of your eyes and not feel a thing, how is it that you feel so much empathy for some one you probably have never met in your life. I am by no way condoning what happened to Hamzan, I am just giving you people something to to think. So Jut Think about it, just some food for thought.