The furnaces of the Industrial World have been alight for quite some time with the sole goal of aggregating more and more profit. In order to do so it was incumbent that the Industrialists transmute people into workers. Transform them into Individuals, uprooted from their indigenous environment, their extended clan networks and ultimately from their “super natural” leanings. This they had set out to achieve. Neighbourhoods were invented, schools established, and hospitals were made operational. Consumption was made the central tenet of the new age. All of this was done to rid the pre-modern superstitious human being of his cumbersome transcendent anchoring, and introduce him to a more immanent nonchalant mode of existence. Focus on what is in front of you, what is registered by the senses, and fret not about what may or may not be beyond the Seen. This became the recipe for brewing the ideal worker. Detached from everything else except his work, his work gives him the totality of meaning and his work is laborious enough that it can snatch his attention away from any metaphysical musings. However, work is exhausting, demanding, it exacts a price from the worker, both physical and internal. The harbingers of the New Age realised this, thus merry entertainment was cooked up so as to ensure that the workers, reeling from the brutal realities of work, could have a chance to recharge, refuel and once again submit themselves to the authority of the Industrialist. Yet despite the elaborate propaganda, the sophisticated edifice, the fully fleshed out details of the minutest cogs in the ever operating machine, there was one variable that escaped control. The Soul. How does the Industrialist deal with the Soul and its varied manifestations? He was successful in banishing the metaphysical from the workers’ environs but what of the vast spring that gushes forth from within every one of them? What if some day during the mechanized routine the oceans within them begin to stir up? The magic of work fades, the techno monotone complex that engulfs them begins to fragment, the mindless slumber begins to dissipate, and finally he begins to commune with the abstract. Jinns and Angels suddenly become real, the skirmishes between Good and Evil within him make themselves known. In this state his mind cannot be contained simply by the tricks of the Industrialists. The worker could potentially, at any point of his career, turn back into man, Haiwan-e-Natiq. He could lose someone close to him and contemplate his own fate after death? He could one day mistakenly glance a few seconds longer at a cloud and reflect on Ultimate Beauty, Al-Jamal. Perhaps he reflects one day on the absurdity of an infinite series of causes in the past and begins to question if the Industrialists promises of ever-expanding delights within a finite lifespan are logically possible to begin with? Thus, the Industrialists stand to lose a lot if the worker’s gaze diverts from the immanent towards the transcendent. His investments would collapse, and the very edifice that he erected to contain the soul of man would fade into oblivion. So what could the Industrialist do? How does he circumvent the ever present reality of the soul? He creates the Perfect Worker. Now who or what might this be? The Perfect Worker carries out every command it receives with the utmost efficiency, without tiring, without the limitations of the human body. It can calculate, program, write out fully fleshed out paragraphs of text, prepare reports, offer sophisticated diagnoses and much more. It does all of this without the slightest trace of recalcitrance. There is simply zero potentiality for the occurrence of any emotional outbursts. It cannot fall in love, or fall into the rabbit hole of abstraction. It has no sentimental bonds whose strength could inhibit the volume of its work. No social circle to attend to, no Transcendent Reality that it aspires to reunite with. The Industrialist now has in his hands the ultimate resource, the only resource. No longer is he bound to his obsolete labour. He is no longer required to maintain the elaborate setup to train and shepherd the lowly workers. He can merrily go on producing his profits, with the Perfect Worker assisting him with optimisation. But what of the forlorn human worker? Previously uprooted from his fitri environment now stands to be violently uprooted again. He has nowhere to go, no cave he can crawl back to nor a forest where he could find refuge. The Perfect Worker has taken everything from him. Everything except his soul.
Afkar-e-Qurtuba 