The Arab Renaissance
Appropriated authority through individual tyrannical force or institutional usurpation can seem limitless. Yet those that appropriate it are eventually brought to justice and may have to deal with the same brute force.
Ironic, when that happens, they are either on the run or hiding in sewer holes begging for precious life, like Mummer Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein.
Yet something does not seem right when those that were once the subjects of appropriated authority, become a reflection of it whilst the perpetuator is being hunted down in the proverbial rat hole.
The images of Saddam Hussein rolling out his tongue at the command of his captors for examination and the images of Gaddafi in his last moments and especially lying on the floor without a wrap covering his wounds, are going to stay in my mind for a long time. It does not auger well for the civilised world to make a spectacle of death. I agree with those that refused the media access to the pictures of a wounded / dead Osama bin Laden. There must be dignity in death.
There is something barbaric about the way that global masses and global media reacted to the death of Gaddafi. As I watched the gloating spectacle of the last few minutes of Gaddafi’s death, I was struck by how little progress as a civilisation we have made. At least so it appeared at that moment. There was a feeling of being transported back in time. Those captor cries, that mad stampede and brutal jostling of a still hated tyrant now shaking with fear at his imminent death, mirrored the decadence that has crept into human values and civilisation.
That moment in time remains a testimony to the fact that the civilised world gunning for Gaddafi stooped to the same barbaric values as Gaddafi. At that moment in time there seemed to be little difference between Gaddafi and his captors. However just their cause, the captors came across as barbaric. Yet sitting in our homes and watching television, the brutal and the vicarious seems to enthral us.
The underlying message of the Arab Spring is being overshadowed by mob vengeance. There is much more to gloat about.
Its’ the wheel of life…some would argue. Ironic that it all gained momentum in Baghdad and Cairo. Was it not precisely these and other Middle East countries that were so instrumental in igniting the renaissance in Europe? Passing on learning and new ideas to a then stagnant Europe caught up in its dark middle ages. Today the wheel has just spun back… ..the Middle East, some parts of it caught up by rulers of the past has redeemed itself and hopefully will catch up with its glorious past.
So what does the Arab spring signify for me? It signifies the same old eternal struggle of mankind…Yet how important it is to keep having these renaissance moments in every civilisation.
Recently my son came back home and said he had been asked by his school to research the similarities between Renaissance and the Wall Street Occupation. At first I scratched my head and thought, one was a social awakening and the other an economic awakening…both awakenings of some sort….what else could be the similarities?
In my mind the similarities between the Arab Spring and the Renaissance seem far more and yet on deeper thought…all such movements have similarities….some lesser others greater.
My son put it in perspective and said it’s the feudal system mom. Ah! “it’s the cry against a social structure!”. Yet the Renaissance was more about the bringing about of change through awakening, I argued with my utterly unimpressed son. The renaissance was change ignited by learning and not just a fight against a strict social order. The change in the social order was brought about by the emergence of a new class or classes including the intellectuals and artists. Renaissance was the winds of change brought about by exposure to different civilisations. Is the Wall Street protest really that? I argued with my son, that the Wall Street protest is more a protest against government bails outs and the creation of a super rich class of paid employees by the financial system. It is a revolt by those that have been left on the fringes of upward social movement.
The common link is the awakening.
Yet, while projecting the awakening, the focus on the mobs exhilarating over a dead Gaddafi, is subjugating the finer sensibilities of the Arab awakening and letting the mob rule mentality steal the show. ..
What a coincidence that Wall Street protests followed the Arab Spring. Can we attribute one to the other! Perhaps! The Arab protest may have in some way inspired the Wall Street protests. The point I want to make is that however different the underlying causes of the ongoing Arab and the western movements… the method of bringing about change has been the same…..mass movements against perceived economic and social breakdown.
Ironically in the western world, Greece triggered the protests…and the revival of Greek learning was a great influencing factor in the Renaissance….
As the world population amasses over six billion, learning may not be rewarded the way it was in the past… perhaps there are more underlying lessons to be learnt from all that is happening around us. The fear is about another future renaissance being actually dominated by sheer mob mentality, in the absence of the tapering influence of knowledge on barbarity.
