Truth combined with words is poison.

         Religions, wars, lies, hatred, and other issues have affected human existence ever since what is known as the Cognitive Revolution, which occurred when people developed, the capacity for imagination and deceit as well as, more crucially, the capacity for communication. Many refer to it as the gift of words. It could also be referred to as the curse of language, in some circles.

 

According to Neil deGrasse Tyson, if intelligent aliens from a distant planet ever come into contact with humanity, they would only be able to communicate via arithmetic and science. Words would be meaningless in this circumstance. Additionally, throughout human history, words have caused problems in the shape of wars, cultural misunderstandings, religious dogmas, racial and national hatreds, etc. Words and numbers differ significantly in one important way: only numbers are truthful.

 

That truism, however, is actually badly misunderstood. The reason is that, although words are capable of communicating and displaying the truth effectively, we dislike accurate words. Even if we have spent our entire lives stealing, we can accept the fact that 2 plus 2 equals 4, but we cannot accept being called a thief. Nobody wants to be associated with theft. You have already heard that. You may not be aware, but 5 prefer not to be named 4. The idea is that mathematics should handle the truth and that words should only be used for narrative and entertaining purposes.

 

The truth is that to keep from feeling empty, we actually prefer to catch a scent of a lie every day. At the breakfast table, the upsetting TV news of a horrible killing is swiftly avoided by switching the channel, where we can see a commercial ad that uses glitzy language and witty motions to tell nothing but lies and that we find amusing. We only post lies on Facebook because the truth would be problematic.

 

If you've seen the Jim Carrey film Liar Liar, you know that when he is unable to make lies for even a single day, he draws the wrath and anger of others. Words and truth together can lead to all kinds of disastrous and explosive outcomes. General Musharraf outlawed a private channel that attempted to mix the two in 2007. When Edward Snowden attempted it, he was forced to flee for his life and now lives in exile. About that, not many people have altered the way they speak or make purchases, but practically everyone wants to use the newest tracking technology, the smartphone, about which Snowden warned.

 

Pakistani politician Shehbaz Gill mixed words and facts this week. For him, it didn't turn out well. Recently, several journalists attempted to combine words and truth, but they also spectacularly failed. Even the very well-liked leader Imran Khan has lost his position of authority because he ventured to play the alchemist too, and the outcome was a disastrous explosion.

 

Pakistan is a peculiar country. We may not be moved by words, but numbers also don't always tell a happy tale. The true and greatest danger to Pakistan's national security—forget about India, the PML-N, or those who engage in shadowy shenanigans—is the threat posed by climate change. Additionally, statistics have been telling us about this hazard. We are bombarded with information about how serious the threat posed by climate change is in scientific and quantitative terms. However, it appears that the ultimate poison in Pakistan is the truth. Whatever it is combined with, whether it be words or numbers, the outcome is deplorable.