society (32)

Revolutions are a Good Thing. Countries routinely celebrate their revolution day. Even when the spirit of the revolution has been completely twisted and turned into a pacifier for the masses, the authorities still keep up the form of celebration. Which means that to the collective (sub)conscious at least, revolutions are welcome. This is also confirmed by the marketing world, which heralds every new tweak on an existing product as a revolution that finally gives us that utopian frictionless comfort.

Humans seem to organize their thinking in terms of hierarchies, classes and levels. This particular structure is quite useful in tackling problems related to the physical world, where manifestations exhibit a natural order that is intelligible to us. Specifically, manifestations seem to exist as clusters of mostly similar patterns, with few features distinguishable across the classes. This is obviously a computer programmer talking.

Like man organized for example the order of life forms in the phylogenetic tree, it was natural for him to undertake an organization of society, the grouping of man. And thus men were organized (by man) according to their geographical location, state allegiance, ideology, bank account, favourite soccer team, and physical features.

I know, I'm guilty, I've been watching TV every night, looking for decent movies on MBC2 and One TV. ("Sucker!" I can hear you laugh). One thing I've noticed lately, before my mind goes dim, is that we're being fed American war movies every day!! What can it possibly mean?

There's a perverse relationship going on between Western media and the Arab world, and I wonder what it's causing to the Arab psyche. One of my firm beliefs is that mass media, predominantly TV, causes a feedback loop from a society onto itself directly, much like a lecture delivered to an audience, except that the media feed directly affects the whole of society, by imprinting ideas onto the individual bypassing his critical judgement. The result is society moving in the direction of the media, in a self-fulfilling prophecy sort of way.

It appears to me that the Western mind has become afflicted with theophobia, or the fear of religion. This is apparent in the speech of the scientific community, which posits rationality (aka reason) on a high pedestal, and considers both emotionality and spirituality as inferior or even negative modes of knowing.

And this attitude trickles down to the Western social and personal level, where an individual who displays any spiritual tendency will be frowned upon by his peers - a supposedly tolerant and open-minded bunch, as opposed to the superstitious and fanatic Orientals. This happened to me today, when I innocently mentioned to a friend that I was attempting to cut down on my addictions during the month of Ramadan. The knee-jerk response I got was: "Oh, are you turning religious?" in a clearly derogatory tone.

We attended the SOS Music Festival yesteday at the Chinese Garden on the Cairo International Conference Center grounds. The name chosen for the all-day, 8-bands affair reflects the opinion, shared by many Egyptians, that low-quality pop music has monopolized Egyptian airwaves, leaving nothing to the real musicians. This festival was an attempt at saving the music.

And saving it did! All the factors that make attending open-air music festivals enjoyable were there. The location is a huge garden with a big grass field, probably donated by the Chinese government, that comfortably accepted the 2000-3000 attendees. Once inside, past what looked like decent security gates, we immediately felt transported to an alternate and sorely-missed Egypt. One where you can stroll around freely, lay on the grass, enjoy the nice weather and relax to the music. Without being subjected to scolding or lustful stares, authoritarian treatment, or flea-market swindles. The crowd, mostly university students, were there for the music and the good time. Since no alcohol was allowed, there were no fights or the typical weird vibes. I did not smell too much drugs either :-)

I found this question at Madrid11.net, an interesting attempt at a rational inter-cultural dialog based on the values of democracy.

And it's a good question! With mineral water being forbidden as carry-on, it is urgent that we go beyond knee-jerk reactions towards real cures for our problems. Looking for root causes is a good start.

So what would I say the root causes of terrorism are?

Let's start with the obvious: human behaviour is guided by ideas that are implanted in one's brain and that seem to make sense. The less self-aware a person is, the more he will be prone to accept ideas without question. So young, poor, badly-educated people living in dire conditions will be more ready to act as terrorists than others.

I attended the Vancouver BarCamp. What is a BarCamp? It is a very informal conference (actually called "un-conference" to underline its informality) where geeks and non-geeks meet for 24 consecutive hours to share information and do some social networking. Like conventional conferences, several sessions are happening at the same time, but the difference here is that sessions are announced and scheduled on the morning of the conference.

I liked many things about this event. First, the subjects presented were varied and interesting: from programming to software process to marketing and social computing. There were some crazy sessions like one on creativity where the author advocated creating postcards as a form of expression, and another on yoga for geeks! It was great to experience this open mind and freedom of expression. I guess that's the hallmark of countries with a high standard of living and a democratic process. Anyway.

People of the world, we have fallen prey to a gang of thugs who have masqueraded as politicians for a long long time. They don't listen to what we have to say, in fact they go against what's best for us.

Example: check out the WORLDWIDE protests against the invasion of Iraq. Did any politician take heed? Not that we've noticed.

Did I say worldwide? Actually, the Arabs were glaringly absent from these demonstrations, even though it's their region that's under attack. Most of my friends asked the same question:

One recurrent observation I make about events around me has to do with society's unreasonable expectations and aspirations. For example, look at the relentless pursuit of convenience that we are experiencing: everything needs to be made easier, almost frictionless. It has even become the bleeding edge of capitalism as heralded by its geek prophet Bill Gates.

But I am not denouncing progress here. We seem to have an uncanny ability to learn and to apply our learning in solving daily problems, so we're just exercising this ability. What I am denouncing is the unbalanced pursuit of modernity, without consideration for side effects on humans and humanity, which after all is the most important consideration, given that we belong to one race that wants to survive and advance.