There is always this talk about "What's wrong with us?"
Every Egyptian knows this theme, the ever mystical question and the quest to find the hidden answer.
And I'm not talking metaphorically; I even saw a blog-post that was actually titled:
"
What is wrong with us?"
It seems Egyptians consider it a Holy Grail to dissipate the mystery that these set of words are so shrouded in.
Theories and theorems and corollaries, drugs and potions and pills, all promise to answer the question and make it all go away.
It would appear that the only thing anyone needs to start discussing this issue is the Egyptian ID card and well........sometimes not even that.
So... since I do have the above needed documents, I therefore qualify to present my views on the matter.
And in the all pre-eminent "Monkey see, monkey do" spirit, I think it's about time that I took a shot at it.
To get things started, some of the problems so commonly proposed by other authors are the following:
Religion
Irreligion
Passiveness
Cowardness
Tyranny
Stupidity
Greed
Corruption
Close-mindedness
Prejudice
And the list goes on...
Before continuing, I would like first to get one thing clear....
We are not unique, we are not snow flakes.... and yet we are not monsters.
We are people like any other set of people, thinking that we - Egyptians - are special in some way is but a romantic gesture, the world has seen it all before... countless times.
There is an unjustified notion that the average Egyptian somehow possesses a soul which is unlike any other, that there exists something - be it good or evil - distinguishable in nature from all humanity, most cultures encourage this type of illusions.
This mode of thinking is unacceptable.
That being said, I can go on to say that while all these traits mentioned above might truly be our problems, they are not unique problems in any way, and cannot be explained with the complex analysis of our culture.
It might be tempting to delve into complicated analysis of our situation and our special circumstances and our peculiarities.
But the truth of the matter here, is that we are in no special situation, we are but a poor third world country (and I'm not using a developing nation label, because it's deceiving) suffering from the same malice that seems to affect all other third world countries.
Allow me to give the first two points special treatment as they are fundamentally different from the others, and it can proven with little effort that they are not the real motivators behind our decadency.
Hypothesizing that religiousness or irreligiousness is to blame is easily refuted by observing that there have been nations, us amongst them, that have been doing well during the course of history while being fundamentally religious.
In fact, there are countries at the present time that are religious and faring better than us, and there is little doubt that there will be countries that will be both religious and developed in the future.
The same methodology can be applied to irreligiousness, as there have been civilizations that have been at their height without the backing of religion, and most of the developed counties today are undoubtedly irreligious in nature, and I can see no reason why there wouldn't be irreligious countries still in the future.
The rest of the list made above consists of elements similar in nature, meaning that they all have one thing in common, they are outcomes and not causes, and if we need to understand rather than just find any set of answers to the title question, we need to deal with root cause problems and not just with secondaries.
If we can stop entertaining the notion that we are somehow uniquely different from all the other nations, and that our problems are somehow not those faced by everyone else, then we can move forward and find the root cause problems....
i.e.: the ones that are the roots of all others, the ones that if cured, the others would cease to exist.
I mean to deal with two of these:
Ignorance
Poverty
We are in a country where 30% of the population are illiterate, and this is a huge improvement from the 50% ten years ago.*
These are the official figures, but anyone in Egypt knows how these things are, this is does not represent the real literacy rate.
I'm here studying the case of a population where not more than 40% can actually read and write adequately.
Those we sometimes refer to as our "educated" middle-class.
But we have to be careful now as to whom we call "educated", as educated implies a different thing altogether, these 40% are simply literate.
And when those who read and write well, hardly ever actually choose to practice the two trades, you have to ask:
How many of them are truly educated?
How many read books - any kinds of books - on regular bases and what good is literacy if you choose not to use it?
I can say with confidence that no more than 2-3% of Egyptians are truly educated.
Meaning they read regularly a variety of books on different subjects, and maybe even write something every once in a while.
That being said, I would like to go back to the different educational levels in our society....
First Let us discuss those who can't read and write.
In a world that is wrapped in global immensity and complexity, how are they supposed to understand the world around them and interact intelligently with it?
What are their sources of information, the T.V., the movies?
Maybe watching "Noor and what's his name" will give them some perspective?
Or maybe after watching "7a7a we tofa7a" they will more wise and thoughtful?
No... They are simply missing the essential tools to educate themselves, they can't open a newspaper and see what news there is, and they can't even read a simple book and reflect on its meaning…
Their concerns revolve around finding their next meal, and maybe how many goals did "El Ahly" score in the last match.
As for those who can actually read and write but are hesitant to do so, I consider them not without some ignorance, for will the mind grow and compare between all variety of things if it has been denied its juice?
As for the merciful rest.... they are too "few" to make any big contribution to society.
Yes, they are not "few" in numbers, we are a big country and even a small percentage equates to a lot of people, but they are relatively few to cause any major change.
As for poverty, it's even simpler.... with 44% of the Population living below US$2 a day, how is it that we demand from them to act in good manners?
'Ali Ibn abi-talib' was a great man; he understood a lot about life...
Speaking about poverty he says:
"law kan al fakr ragollan, lkataltooh".... "If poverty was a person, I would kill it"
I imagine he said this while he had the devastating effect of poverty on people's morals, manners and personalities in mind.
I'm not being judgmental, I'm making observations on the population as a whole, the same outcomes cannot be assumed with singular cases.
A poor, illiterate man might well be lacking all the negativities I have cited above, and a well to do, educated man, might posses all of them.
But based on the rules of societies and populations, that is not a practical outcome.
It cannot be the dominant outcome in any form of society; it's rather a peculiarity, something that isn't so common.
Now, is it any wonder that a poor, hungry, uneducated society would have, oh, let us say the following maladies:
Passiveness, cowardness, tyranny, stupidity, greed, corruption, close-mindedness, and prejudice?
As you can see, they are nothing but a disease that appears in the society only because it has been weakened by ignorance and poverty.
Governments, colonial foreign powers, tyrannical regimes.... all understand this basic fact, the population ceases being any real threat when it is sufficiently ignorant.
That is why we were kept uneducated under British colonial rule in the past and that is why we are being kept uneducated till this day.
No imperial rule or occupation has ever been known to evade this pattern.
It is a troubling prospect, an action and it's set of consequences.
But fact is, there can be no separation between action and reaction, one may well bring the other, and we are stuck in this mud-hole.
We cannot aspire to have a better country and a better government with the masses being ignorant, yet at the same time the regime will never allow the people to get educated.
It's a closed circle, we can drive around in it all day, but until we can break this cycle of ignorance there can be no hope for us.
It is nothing more than a loop in the much observed rise and fall of civilizations.
It has been said before, "Don't criticize something, without offering a solution"
The solution presented here is like many others, to change from the top of the pyramid.
The reason for this not being the impossibility to actually change the society without executive power, but because executive power will not allow society to change except if it is itself changed.
*figures taken from the CIA - World Factbook.
