Think about the energy that goes into these activities and the emotional jet fuel that burns to keep that energy level going. Everyone is trying to do something, trying to become a writer, editor, singer, thinker, banker, or investor. And these do not include the teeming millions out there who are working in the fields and factories, pulling rickshaws, drawing carts, washing dishes, and cooking at home. Throw in the energy that goes into politics, in the processions, meetings and regular invectives. We have a great country indeed, flowing with the steam and sweat of enterprising people.

But where are we going with it? We have got corruption, chaos and conflict, all subsumed within the prospect of a future that hangs over us like a pall of gloom. Where are we heading with so much energy? Everyone is thinking, everyone is writing, singing, talking and initiating, yet we are not moving. We have got more chiefs than Indians, more leaders than followers, more singers than listeners, more newspapers than readers, more banks than customers, more TV channels (including satellite TVs) than time to watch, and more mouths than words. The list can go on and on.

We are hooked on quantity more than quality. We want to possess even though we cannot profess. We want to wear our success like a badge, playing it like a bizarre neurosis, like Cinderella, who was maltreated by a stepmother but achieved happiness and married a prince through the intervention of a fairy godmother. Many of our successful people come from a background of obscurity or neglect. Nothing is wrong with that. People have to start somewhere to get somewhere. Many of them come to their success with repressed emotions. They try to push these emotions to their logical conclusions, once they have got power and money.

So every successful man is a conglomerate story. He wants to become many in one. He is a business magnate, director of many companies, owner of a university, owner of a restaurant, and owner of a clinic. He wants everything money can buy including talent and dignity, proving that not only had he triumphed over poverty but also achieved a position in life to dispense what he could not get when he was growing up. He floats and gloats in his success, a legend in his own mind, caught tightly in the satisfaction of his glory like a madman living in his straightjacket.

This is where the great energy of our country gets dissipated, wasted like fuel leakage, perhaps a system loss that is frittering away our hope for the future. It can be compared with the governance of a river, which needs to flow, but it also needs to flow between its two banks, failing which rising water level and strong current overflows and floods the villages. That is exactly what has been happening to us, every time a newspaper comes out, a new TV channel opens, a new book is published or a new poster appears on the wall to announce a new singer, we get flooded.

One of the examples used to explain the fundamental principle of internal combustion engine is the potato cannon. Basically, if you put a tiny amount of high-energy fuel like gasoline in a small, enclosed space and ignite it, an incredible amount of energy is released in the form of expanding gas. That energy can be used to propel a potato 500 feet. In this case, the energy is translated into potato motion. You can also use it for more interesting purposes. For example, if you can create a cycle that allows you to set off explosions like this, hundreds of times per minute, and if you can harness that energy in a useful way, what you have is the core of a car engine!

We have so much energy to propel ourselves to great heights as individuals, but somehow we are collectively unable to create a sustainable cycle that allows us to set off explosions ad continuum. The writer writes because he wants to be published. The singer sings because he likes to have an album. The politician talks because he wishes to return to power. The eating man eats because he wants to satisfy his palate. The thinking man thinks because he would like to have a piece of the pie. The working man works because he has to keep his body and soul together. We have too many links, but not the chain. We have many explosions, but no plan to harness that energy in a useful way.

Every man who is successful amongst us wishes to enunciate and consolidate his isolated success; even his philanthropic gesture has proprietary strings attached to it. So every man who is doing something is an enclosed space, where the fuel of ambition ignites and releases high volume of energy that jolts him only but does not kick the engine. This country is a churning sea in stagnation, much ado about nothing, a great example of how things can be full of sound and fury yet signify nothing.

Our nation is a ringing contradiction like the sound of silence. Everybody talks, nobody listens. Everybody seeks, nobody finds. Everybody looks, nobody sees. Everybody pretends, nobody intends. Everybody owns, nobody shares. Everybody commits, nobody cares. Eric Fromm in Escape from Freedom defines power as the capacity to inflict unlimited pain and suffering to another human being. Indeed we have escaped from freedom in an independent country as we have gained tremendous capacity to inflict pain and suffering on each other. We are a nation of paranoid euphoria, delighted to scare each other yet driven by our fear of each other.

Much comes to nothing in this country, and we reap much less than what we sow. We start with a bang, but end with a whimper. Powerful politicians, popular singers, prolific writers, promising actors, profound intellectuals, prudent editors, prosperous businessmen, prodigies and prospective minds, they all somehow fail to live out their brand promises, and wither away like shrinking violets. In other countries for some mysterious reasons, gifted people last longer, their luster growing as they grow older. There they get more respect, recognition, lifetime awards, accolades, fame, and income, their investments in life chasing return at an incremental pace.

Aphra Behn, a 17th century English playwright, had one of the characters in The Roundheads exclaim. "A brave new world, Sir, full of religion, knavery, and change: we shall shortly see better days." Perhaps we also need a brave new country where we shall see better days. We want a few good ones, not mediocre many; we want quality, not quantity; we want scholarship, not sciolism; we want hope, not mere ambition. We want citizens who will believe in the institutions, not citizens who believe each of them must become an institution.

We want a brave new country altogether. Writers, restaurateurs, businessmen, singers, editors, everybody and anybody who has the energy to throw, please throw it in the direction of that change, not in the direction of the status quo.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.