We Need to Imagine a Brighter Future Written by Mohsin Hamid

The article “we need to imagine a brighter future.” is Written by Mohsin Hamid. Mohsin Hamid was born in 1971 in Lahore, Pakistan, and moved to the US at the age of 18 to study at Princeton University and Harvard Law School. He then worked as a management consultant in New York, and later as a freelance journalist back in Lahore. https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/mohsin-hamid. Mohsin Hamid is the author of four novels, Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, and Exit West, and a book of essays, Discontent and Its Civilizations. His writing has been featured on bestseller lists, adapted for the cinema, and translated into over thirty-five languages. http://www.mohsinhamid.com/about.html. His essays have been published in New York Times, the Guardian, the Paris Review and many other publications as well. He had delivered lectures in many universities across the globe. The article under consideration was published by the Guardian in 2017. In this article he addresses directly to writers across the globe. Although, Hamid presents the need of radical political engagement with future in the storytelling by effective use of diverse examples, personal anecdotes, emotive language and structure of the essay itself, but insufficiency of evidence makes it less convincing for the audience.

In this article Hamid states that nostalgia manifests itself in our day to day activities, entertainment industry and artistic culture. Nor even technology made it easy to resist nostalgia but it is other way around. The rapid change in technology has made us more adaptive to change but we experience change as stress. At the meanwhile, the tools like family, nation and religion which we have to deal with upheaval are being undermined. Thus, current situation makes us resistance to the future, profoundly angry and dangerous to such extent like a suicide bomber. So, the storytelling has great opportunity as profession because it offers an antidote to stress caused by nostalgia.

Hamid starts his article by recalling ever changing phenomena of human life. Nostalgia, a terrible potent force, develops with these changes which produce a strong desire to return to the glories of the past and resist to the future. Hamid gives evidence to his claim about manifestation of nostalgia in our political activities from different geographical location. He gives example of motto of Islamic state and al-Qaida which help writers from these parts of community to get it related to themselves and their society. The Brexit campaign which promise a return of glories of pre-EU Britain captures the attendance of those readers who have experience to this campaign. The chanting of words “Make America Great Again” in the recent US election which envisions a return of victorious America in second world war hooks the attention of American reader as well. Furthermore the discussion of India and China also help residents of Asia

...