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Comment by Chris Mounsey.
The Middle East is highly technically advanced, but does not seem to have developed the same political and civil freedoms that we in the West tend to take for granted. This situation is something of an anomaly: but why has it happened?
An Outline of The Culture
If you have never read the Culture novels of the science-fiction writer Iain M Banks, can I heartily recommend that you do. The beauty of these novels is that The Culture themselves are effectively omnipotent and thus, unlike many low-grade sci-fi novels, the technology becomes utterly unimportant in terms of narrative. The stories always come down to the nature of the people involved and politics, however many of these characters that are proactive are not Culture citizens themselves.
Most significantly, they deal with the Culture organisations known as Contact and Special Circumstances. These organisations might be roughly equated with the Foreign Office and Foreign Intelligence respectively; they are organisations that, logically enough, deal with the "contacting" of civilisations that are usually but not always less advanced than The Culture's own.
The Culture and Star Trek's Prime Directive
The Culture's usual principle can be broadly equated with the first part of Star Trek's Prime Directive, which states the following1.
“The Prime Directive dictates that there be no interference with the natural development of any primitive society, chiefly meaning that no primitive culture can be given or exposed to any information regarding advanced technology or alien races.”
Where Contact (C) and Special Circumstances (SC) differ in this philosophy is in the second part of the Directive.
“It also forbids any effort to improve or change in any way the natural course of such a society, even if that change is well-intentioned and kept totally secret.”
In contrast, C and SC will interfere to try, as they see it, to improve societies. The subtle way in which they occasionally do so, often over the period of many years, can be easily illustrated in Inversions, a novel that would only be recognised by those who have read other Culture novels and who would recognise the protagonists as being from that society; at other times they are less oblique, as in The Player Of Games or Use Of Weapons. And very occasionally – despite the Culture's sophistication and the almost limitless ability of the Artifical Intelligence “minds” who plan SC's strategies the development goes hideously, disastrously wrong: in Look To Windward, SC's well-meaning intervention leads to a bloody civil war on the planet Chel. Whatever happens, the Culture – unlike Star Trek's Starfleet – believes that active intervention is better than benign neglect. They will intervene to mould a society in the way that they think is best for that particular culture. (It is interesting, from a political point of view, that the Culture should be described as anarchist socialist civilisation1)
Real-world political systems
To come back to modern politics, with a few exceptions, the most powerful and richest societies on earth are capitalist democracies, with democracy (in whatever form) being the operative word. The main societies that buck this trend are China (which I intend to discuss in a later post) and the oil-rich nations. These are, in general, the nations of the Middle East, which incorporate Iran, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, amongst others.
All of these nations are – or in Iraq's case, were – essentially dictatorships, totalitarian governments (which dictatorships always end up being, even if the original aim was not to be so, e.g. the Roman Caesars) as rich as these are rare. Why should this be so?
The politics of innovation
In "free" countries, which are generally represented by democracies of some sort, the dissent that leads to innovation is allowed. Since there is a mechanism for removing an administration politically, that government has little to gain by oppressing its people; the people would simply vote them out of office (fingers crossed for the next British general election). Therefore, it is in these governments' interests to ensure the relative happiness of their peoples, which in capitalist societies generally means ensuring that individuals have enough money to buy those things that make their lives more pleasant.
In order to be able to buy those things, innovators must invent them. Innovators are often mavericks, people who do not conform to societal norms (or at least their views do not). Think, for instance, of Gallileo or Newton. Is it any coincidence that the greatest technological and scientific advances – the ones that lasted – were made in the most "free" societies: Britain, one of the first European democracies, led much of the technical, scientific and engineering innovation for a couple of centuries.
The economics of innovation
And it is not enough to allow the innovators to innovate: there must be freedom of people to invest in those innovations as well. Isembard Kingsom Brunel, an engineering genius, would be almost unknown had his financiers not had the freedom to back him. If you want an example of how this might affect the development of a society, ask yourself how many totally original concepts were actually brought to fruition by Stalin's USSR.
Totalitarian regimes, in contrast, cannot allow this questioning of the status quo: once people start to question the nature of the world around them, they then start to question the way in which they are governed; and then, of course, whether those that govern them are the most suitable people to do so (again, China seems to be unusual here, as Boris Johnson MP discovered on his recent trip2). Thus, totalitarian regimes are pretty much characterised by their suppression of free speech as a tool for attempted suppression of free thought (a concept thoroughly explored in Orwell's 1984, especially as regards NuSpeak. The theory was that, if one removed the language of rebellion, eventually the rebellious thoughts themselves would become impossible to express and would cease to occur at all). When unorthodox ideas cannot be communicated, let alone financially backed and developed, then innovation does not – cannot – happen.
The end result of this is that, in Europe at least, technical innovation has had to go hand-in-hand with political development. As people have become more free, so more inventions have been realised, the easier (and cheaper) people's lives have become and thus the richer they have become. To tie this together in the most elementary sense, in the West, how rich people have become has been intimately tied in with how "free" they are.
The Middle East
In the Middle East, this has not happened. Why?
The Middle Eastern countries that I have cited are all, in essence, totalitarian regimes. These regimes should either have been toppled years ago, or they should, much like most of Africa, be living in the direst poverty. Why are they not? And how is it that these regimes are not only poor, but are also strong players on the world stage, rather than political and economic irrelevancies like the majority of the African nations? The answer is simple: oil.
The West's reliance on carbon fuels started with the industrial revolution, and was initially predicated on coal. However, with the expansion of the British Empire and the discovery of oil – which was not only easier to extract than coal, but was also easier to store, transport and use – those coutries with oil reserves were suddenly sitting on vast reserves of what was known as "black gold". When the Empire contracted and, eventually withered away, the regimes that took over those reserves were suddenly immensely rich. And those riches they obtained power.
Power, control and innovation in the Middle East
It is not difficult to prove the maxim that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely", and this is what those potentates now had. With a bastardisation of Islam to use as a tool of easy populace supppression, the ruling parties were able to entrench themselves in their towers; but this was only possible as long as the flow of oil continued.
Furthermore, however, they have not had to invent anything. The Europeans have done all of the inventing, and the oil-rich countries are able simply to buy all of the innovations that they need. Thus, in these countries, technical development has not had to go hand-in-hand with societal or political development. People have things to buy and, largely speaking, they have the money with which to purchase these goods. Where they do not, Islam's promise of a better future (or after) life in return for abstinence in this one – a principle largely shared by Christianity but more harshly proscripted in the radical forms of Islam, such as the Wahabiism endemic in Saudi – is able to keep the people subjugated, if not happy (although it could be argued that what religion actually does is to make people happy with what would otherwise be considered a rather inadequate lot).
In relation to The Culture
How does this relate to The Culture of Iain M Banks? In this way: the West's thirst for, and reliance on, oil could be considered equivalent to a catastrophic intervention in a totally separate culture, thus entirely affecting their development by artificially accelerating their technical advancement without forcing upon them the need to develop either culturally or politically. Thus we end up with totalitarian regimes that are effectively all-powerful within their own spheres of influence and, by virtue of the fact that the West is reliant on their oil, immune to anything but the most stringent, i.e. military, action by the only power that might practically remove them. One could look at it as being similar to an alien culture giving the atom bomb technology to the Nazis in 1936 or, more pertinently, to William the Conqueror.
Oil and the failure of political development
In conclusion, the failure of the Middle East to develop the "freedoms" that we, generally, take for granted in the West, is entirely down to the fact that we need the oil that comes out of their ground. This is, surely, one of the most compelling arguments for finding alternative sources of power; for as long as we need oil, the Middle Eastern countries will not develop culturally or politically because – and I apologise for borrowing a biological term here – there is no selective pressure for them to do so.
What we in the West must face is that our continued thirst for oil will keep on advancing the ability of these countries to be able to buy the technology that we invent, some of which may well be a threat to us or those we attempt to protect, e.g. the current worries over Iran's nuclear development and the concomitant threat to Israel.
Securing freedom
If we truly wish the peoples of the Middle East to be free (and always assuming, of course, that they wish to be so), then we must divorce ourselves from our oil needs. Simple military intervention, as has been clearly demonstrated in Iraq, will not work. No, we must totally eliminate, or at least severely reduce, our oil consumption.
With the oil props knocked away, those societies will start to collapse into economic ruin. At this point, we must employ the Prime Directive and not influence the way in which the society develops. Or in this case implode.
By that point, our strategy for rebuilding these countries must be clear. It will mean a more subtle intervention, with the West playing the part of The Culture rather than that of George Bush's Star Wars Empire. Let us simply hope that we have learned enough by that time not to end up having to Look To Windward...
Chris Mounsey is a freelance graphic designer living in Edinburgh who writes as angry alter ego The Devil's Kitchen.
An Outline of The Culture
If you have never read the Culture novels of the science-fiction writer Iain M Banks, can I heartily recommend that you do. The beauty of these novels is that The Culture themselves are effectively omnipotent and thus, unlike many low-grade sci-fi novels, the technology becomes utterly unimportant in terms of narrative. The stories always come down to the nature of the people involved and politics, however many of these characters that are proactive are not Culture citizens themselves.
Most significantly, they deal with the Culture organisations known as Contact and Special Circumstances. These organisations might be roughly equated with the Foreign Office and Foreign Intelligence respectively; they are organisations that, logically enough, deal with the "contacting" of civilisations that are usually but not always less advanced than The Culture's own.
The Culture and Star Trek's Prime Directive
The Culture's usual principle can be broadly equated with the first part of Star Trek's Prime Directive, which states the following1.
“The Prime Directive dictates that there be no interference with the natural development of any primitive society, chiefly meaning that no primitive culture can be given or exposed to any information regarding advanced technology or alien races.”
Where Contact (C) and Special Circumstances (SC) differ in this philosophy is in the second part of the Directive.
“It also forbids any effort to improve or change in any way the natural course of such a society, even if that change is well-intentioned and kept totally secret.”
In contrast, C and SC will interfere to try, as they see it, to improve societies. The subtle way in which they occasionally do so, often over the period of many years, can be easily illustrated in Inversions, a novel that would only be recognised by those who have read other Culture novels and who would recognise the protagonists as being from that society; at other times they are less oblique, as in The Player Of Games or Use Of Weapons. And very occasionally – despite the Culture's sophistication and the almost limitless ability of the Artifical Intelligence “minds” who plan SC's strategies the development goes hideously, disastrously wrong: in Look To Windward, SC's well-meaning intervention leads to a bloody civil war on the planet Chel. Whatever happens, the Culture – unlike Star Trek's Starfleet – believes that active intervention is better than benign neglect. They will intervene to mould a society in the way that they think is best for that particular culture. (It is interesting, from a political point of view, that the Culture should be described as anarchist socialist civilisation1)
Real-world political systems
To come back to modern politics, with a few exceptions, the most powerful and richest societies on earth are capitalist democracies, with democracy (in whatever form) being the operative word. The main societies that buck this trend are China (which I intend to discuss in a later post) and the oil-rich nations. These are, in general, the nations of the Middle East, which incorporate Iran, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, amongst others.
All of these nations are – or in Iraq's case, were – essentially dictatorships, totalitarian governments (which dictatorships always end up being, even if the original aim was not to be so, e.g. the Roman Caesars) as rich as these are rare. Why should this be so?
The politics of innovation
In "free" countries, which are generally represented by democracies of some sort, the dissent that leads to innovation is allowed. Since there is a mechanism for removing an administration politically, that government has little to gain by oppressing its people; the people would simply vote them out of office (fingers crossed for the next British general election). Therefore, it is in these governments' interests to ensure the relative happiness of their peoples, which in capitalist societies generally means ensuring that individuals have enough money to buy those things that make their lives more pleasant.
In order to be able to buy those things, innovators must invent them. Innovators are often mavericks, people who do not conform to societal norms (or at least their views do not). Think, for instance, of Gallileo or Newton. Is it any coincidence that the greatest technological and scientific advances – the ones that lasted – were made in the most "free" societies: Britain, one of the first European democracies, led much of the technical, scientific and engineering innovation for a couple of centuries.
The economics of innovation
And it is not enough to allow the innovators to innovate: there must be freedom of people to invest in those innovations as well. Isembard Kingsom Brunel, an engineering genius, would be almost unknown had his financiers not had the freedom to back him. If you want an example of how this might affect the development of a society, ask yourself how many totally original concepts were actually brought to fruition by Stalin's USSR.
Totalitarian regimes, in contrast, cannot allow this questioning of the status quo: once people start to question the nature of the world around them, they then start to question the way in which they are governed; and then, of course, whether those that govern them are the most suitable people to do so (again, China seems to be unusual here, as Boris Johnson MP discovered on his recent trip2). Thus, totalitarian regimes are pretty much characterised by their suppression of free speech as a tool for attempted suppression of free thought (a concept thoroughly explored in Orwell's 1984, especially as regards NuSpeak. The theory was that, if one removed the language of rebellion, eventually the rebellious thoughts themselves would become impossible to express and would cease to occur at all). When unorthodox ideas cannot be communicated, let alone financially backed and developed, then innovation does not – cannot – happen.
The end result of this is that, in Europe at least, technical innovation has had to go hand-in-hand with political development. As people have become more free, so more inventions have been realised, the easier (and cheaper) people's lives have become and thus the richer they have become. To tie this together in the most elementary sense, in the West, how rich people have become has been intimately tied in with how "free" they are.
The Middle East
In the Middle East, this has not happened. Why?
The Middle Eastern countries that I have cited are all, in essence, totalitarian regimes. These regimes should either have been toppled years ago, or they should, much like most of Africa, be living in the direst poverty. Why are they not? And how is it that these regimes are not only poor, but are also strong players on the world stage, rather than political and economic irrelevancies like the majority of the African nations? The answer is simple: oil.
The West's reliance on carbon fuels started with the industrial revolution, and was initially predicated on coal. However, with the expansion of the British Empire and the discovery of oil – which was not only easier to extract than coal, but was also easier to store, transport and use – those coutries with oil reserves were suddenly sitting on vast reserves of what was known as "black gold". When the Empire contracted and, eventually withered away, the regimes that took over those reserves were suddenly immensely rich. And those riches they obtained power.
Power, control and innovation in the Middle East
It is not difficult to prove the maxim that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely", and this is what those potentates now had. With a bastardisation of Islam to use as a tool of easy populace supppression, the ruling parties were able to entrench themselves in their towers; but this was only possible as long as the flow of oil continued.
Furthermore, however, they have not had to invent anything. The Europeans have done all of the inventing, and the oil-rich countries are able simply to buy all of the innovations that they need. Thus, in these countries, technical development has not had to go hand-in-hand with societal or political development. People have things to buy and, largely speaking, they have the money with which to purchase these goods. Where they do not, Islam's promise of a better future (or after) life in return for abstinence in this one – a principle largely shared by Christianity but more harshly proscripted in the radical forms of Islam, such as the Wahabiism endemic in Saudi – is able to keep the people subjugated, if not happy (although it could be argued that what religion actually does is to make people happy with what would otherwise be considered a rather inadequate lot).
In relation to The Culture
How does this relate to The Culture of Iain M Banks? In this way: the West's thirst for, and reliance on, oil could be considered equivalent to a catastrophic intervention in a totally separate culture, thus entirely affecting their development by artificially accelerating their technical advancement without forcing upon them the need to develop either culturally or politically. Thus we end up with totalitarian regimes that are effectively all-powerful within their own spheres of influence and, by virtue of the fact that the West is reliant on their oil, immune to anything but the most stringent, i.e. military, action by the only power that might practically remove them. One could look at it as being similar to an alien culture giving the atom bomb technology to the Nazis in 1936 or, more pertinently, to William the Conqueror.
Oil and the failure of political development
In conclusion, the failure of the Middle East to develop the "freedoms" that we, generally, take for granted in the West, is entirely down to the fact that we need the oil that comes out of their ground. This is, surely, one of the most compelling arguments for finding alternative sources of power; for as long as we need oil, the Middle Eastern countries will not develop culturally or politically because – and I apologise for borrowing a biological term here – there is no selective pressure for them to do so.
What we in the West must face is that our continued thirst for oil will keep on advancing the ability of these countries to be able to buy the technology that we invent, some of which may well be a threat to us or those we attempt to protect, e.g. the current worries over Iran's nuclear development and the concomitant threat to Israel.
Securing freedom
If we truly wish the peoples of the Middle East to be free (and always assuming, of course, that they wish to be so), then we must divorce ourselves from our oil needs. Simple military intervention, as has been clearly demonstrated in Iraq, will not work. No, we must totally eliminate, or at least severely reduce, our oil consumption.
With the oil props knocked away, those societies will start to collapse into economic ruin. At this point, we must employ the Prime Directive and not influence the way in which the society develops. Or in this case implode.
By that point, our strategy for rebuilding these countries must be clear. It will mean a more subtle intervention, with the West playing the part of The Culture rather than that of George Bush's Star Wars Empire. Let us simply hope that we have learned enough by that time not to end up having to Look To Windward...Chris Mounsey is a freelance graphic designer living in Edinburgh who writes as angry alter ego The Devil's Kitchen.
Useful links:
1. Wikipedia, The Culture
2. Wikipedia, Galilleo
3. Wikipedia, Newton
4. Wikipedia, Brunel
5. A Few Notes On The Culture
Leave your comments for this post.
6 Comments:
I believe this article deals with, and should be approached from, a foreign policy perspective. Thus, I would simply like to leave some factual imprints for people to consider here by summarising Laura Neak in order to balance the point of view.
In a book called Foreign Policy Analysis: Continuity and Change in Its Second Generation, Laura Neak, Jeanne Hey and Patrick Haney deals with relatively new and popular lines of research on state type and foreign policy behaviour. Neak speaks of issues of political reasoning and the implications of politicised assumptions. She asks us to consider how much countries are influenced by their image when constructing foreign policy.
Analysts frequently assert that certain types of states act in patterned, predictable ways, therefore the foreign policy of a state is linked to the kind of state it is. These expected relationships can guide individual and collective decision making, serving as explanation or justification for particular foreign policy behaviour.
Three research efforts try to link state type and foreign policy behaviour:
1. Nation-Types and Foreign Policy Behaviour.
2. Pacific Democracies.
3. Middle Powers.
James Rosenau mainly initiated study in ideal nation-types(1966), hypothesising that three national attribute indicators are associated in some way with differences in foreign policy making/behaviour. The purpose of his 'pre theory' article was to propagate research in foreign policy, and following this, Maurice East and Charles Hermann concluded that physical size accounted for foreign policy behaviour. However, much of the work by East was inconsistent and dependent upon how the nation-types being studied were delineated.
More successfully, "pacific democracies" relied on more empirical evidence. Where ideal nation-types was atheoretical and deductive, "pacific democracies" was well grounded in theory, based on Kant's proposition that democracies are peace-loving countries. The first version of "pacific democracies" theory stated that "democracies are less likely to go to war than non-democracies", and later versions stated that "democracies do not fight other democracies" (Gleditsch 1992; Weede 1992). That is, peaceful conflict resolution techniques learned in domestic politics are transferred onto foreign relations. Additionally, the structural arrangements of democracies create impediments to decisions for war (Morgan 1992).
Neak states that only unenlightening conclusions from the research can be drawn by disregarding the substantial analytical discrepancies between and within research efforts; including restrictive and elastic definitions of "democracy" and "war". Furthermore, the claim that "democracies do not fight each other" disregards aggregate-level and case evidence that directly contradicts the claim. The proposition that "freedom inhibits violence" of any sort has been most loudly advanced and confused by Rudolph Rummel (1979). Melvin Small and J. David Singer concluded "[freely elected governments] rarely fought one another; but they did become involved in quite a few wars, and not always as defenceless victims of a dictator's aggression" (1976).
Steve Chan (1984) and Weede (1984) suggests that the claim that democracies do not fight each other is true only for a relatively short period of time, historically speaking. Weede concluded that democracies did not fight other democracies only in the period of the late 1970s. Chan concluded that there was a positive association between democracies and war from 1916 to 1973; that is democracies were more prone than non-democracies. Chan found that Rummel's assertions about democracies held true only from 1973 to 1980 (1984). Weede and Chan both concluded that all findings depend on the context of the study - i.e., on assumptions about causes of war and about how to combine them.
Nils Petter Gleditsch criticised pacific democracies research as too simplistic. David Forsythe's intensive case studies on intervention provide evidence that some democracies do use violence against other democracies: "The USA has repeatedly acted covertly, sometimes with threat or use of force, against political regimes that were not only elected but which could be accurately termed partially or basically democratic. In political and somewhat hyperbolic terms, there was a war between the USA and these elected governments" (1992). That is, according to Neak and Forsythe, the United States does not use violence against other democracies, since the targets of US interventionism have not been democracies in the truest - read "Western" - sense. In order to excuse intervention in these democratic states, the United States can offer as justification its own perception of the target states (as less than democratic), as well as its own perception of what would happen around the globe if it did not intervene in the affairs of the target states.
Additionally, such "western" democracies, it is claimed, perpetuate and exacerbate civil and interstate conflicts. Robert Latham's criticism states: "Islands of liberal democratic peace have not only waged war on non-democracies, they have also been responsible for - and are uniquely successful at generating - high levels of global militarisation and have contributed significantly to militarisation in, and conflict among, non-democratic states, conditions that can help undermine the successful spread of liberal democracy in the long-term" (1993). Latham continues by relating military force and international liberal relations. He states that the two phenomena are linked in two broad ways.
The first involves the macro construction of the post-WW2 liberal economic order that absolutely depended upon the continued presence of either a single military hegemon (the United States) or a collective military hegemon (NATO). Latham contends that the West never required that other countries be liberal democracies, just that they be committed to the liberal economic order together and stand with Western states against Communist world's challenge to that order. The "common denominator" holding members of the liberal economic order together would be Western and Western-linked military alliances. Thus, we can explain Western support for nondemocratic regimes such as those in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
The second broad way in which military force and international liberal relations are intertwined involves the more immediate contributions that liberal democracies have made to continued armed conflict in many developing states, which includes the "evolution" of warfare techniques, including dramatic advancements in weapons systems and technologies, the creation of modern air force, the development of the military-industrial complex, and even the arms race (UK/France) (Latham 1993). Furthermore, the likelihood of any random dyad of nations going to war is zero (Weede).
John Rothgeb points out Western democracies successfully created a postwar international system in which they would all stand to benefit, this was the spoil of war that fell to the victors.
The "middle power" theory embodies a more complex model involving contextual variations such as the nature of the international system, the countries' perception of opportunities and dangers in that system, and national self-perceptions (such as international responsibilities, historical legacy, and so on). Good examples of "middle poweres" are Canada, Australia, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, Algeria and India. Understanding of the linkages between state type and foreign policy behaviour is enhanced when we adopt a multifaceted, contextual role.
Thus I conclude my open debate.
Very informative. Thanks for this!
Wanabehuman Team
Anon,
Thanks for that: I shall read it more carefully and assimilate later on. As you may have realised, my comment is -- as is my wont -- based entirely on my own opinions and the conclusions drawn simply from my broad-brush thoughts about situations, as I perceive them, amd without any real research having been done.
It is always nice to have someone who is actually informed adding to one's ideas! For me, this is one of the most valuable aspects of blogging.
DK
Hi all, it is really encouraging to see such debate and participation in Wanabehuman!
Thanks to Chris aka DK for writing a heart-felt article that especially exemplifies thinking among bloggers about real-wrold issues and not just their own private lives - although the two can be interwoven!
I hope DK writes for us again so we can share in the diversity of his opinions, and open the flood gates for others to do the same. The editorial process is harmless!
Thanks again to Anon (why not Nemo?) for the informative paraphrasing too, which no doubt slides the discussion up to a more academic level.
Just a quick note - a lot of the dictatorships in the Middle East in the immediate post-colonial period were secular Arab nationalist states. It was these regimes' crushing of any dissent or pro-democratic leanings that led to the rise of political Islam (the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Khomeini in Iran), and allowed the Islamists to paint themselves as an alternative.
Otherwise, a very thoughtful and considered piece. Thanks for sharing.
Chris,
Thank you for sharing your opinion, it is certainly interesting to know about.
It was obvious that this is your perception and interpretation of what you think and know, still, a statement explaining this at the beginning of the article would have been better.
It also probably (and let me underline that I am guessing here) represents the opinion of many around the world’s populations in the younger and older generations. Provided the intense media coverage about the Middle East and the heated and conflicting matters arising from the region, with no opposing neutral and objective sound, it is no wonder more and more people are thinking along the same lines of your article.
Simply, because this is your own idea and thoughts towards the Middle East at this point in time and in relevance to how much you know about it all, as much as this is your assessment and judgment, it is understandable that it will probably provoke or offend many Middle Eastern and North Africans should they read it and for that matter; any of the historians, scientists and those who are more specialised in knowledge around the west and east, this is due to the depth of the issue you tried to cover, the lack of factual presentation and acknowledgement of the long history and civilizations of the Middle East and North African regions and the factors which have made them become what they are today? And where they are heading?
Not only this, but also the idea of how innovators came to exist in the west due to a free world is almost non-existent, most if not all, innovators of the west suffered abuse and proactive resistance to their ideas when it first came to live, take Galileo, Einstein, Darwin, even Leonardo Da Vinci and many others and till now the efforts of innovators in many areas of science and arts around the world are still opposed and repressed by many religious systems and not supported 100% by any political structures necessarily, this comes along with many factors which impact on the innovation process and almost what could be referred to in few defined contexts as the echo of renaissance in our world today.
Also, when talking about the Middle East and North African regions, they hold the most ancient and empowering civilizations in the world and which caused many innovations and innovators to be inspired, create and innovate and be.
Whereas the majority talk about the Middle East and the power of oil, it is equivalently important to highlight that; “Although the Middle East contains about five percent of the world’s population, it contains only one percent of the world’s renewable water resources. The per capita regional renewable water resources are less than 1,400 cubic meters, compared with 7,000-8,000 cubic meters per capita worldwide. Water availability in the region ranges from near “zero” cubic meters of internal renewable water per capita in Kuwait to 4,000 cubic meters per capita in Iraq.” (Resource: PRC, AKA; PRD). Ultimately, bottom line is that power is really nothing without a demand. It never have been and never will be the case.
Therefore and let me stress here for the rest of the readers; an opinion is not a fact, because opinions are not falsifiable, the way you represented it within the context of your personal view was like a normative analysis of what ought to be. The way you made links between start trek, culture and Middle East in your title was somehow gripping though.
I think if anything, it is certainly a healthy indicator of how freedom of speech facilitates the space to present our thoughts and opinions. You certainly provoked thoughts, opinions and created an interesting dialogue on the comments section, so I look forward to reading more of your opinions not that I agree with this one and maybe also the ones to follow and not that this is necessary at all…but the way I see it is that opinions in their abstract form allow a platform for knowledge to intervene as a response to a an obvious presentation of a need within the context presented.
This article even more highlighted the importance of an initiative like that of ‘Wanabehuman’ and many others who share the same mission and how knowledge can fill those gaps and re-build those bridges, which will bring the benefits of virtue to citizens.
It is proving more important by the day that it is survival need to create the balanced, objective, neutral, factual, constructive, creative knowledge about others, the world, where we came from, what we became and how we did it all?
Without this type of knowledge, it is becoming an even more strenuous task to inspire citizens of our world today regardless of their backgrounds, belief systems and nationalities to think out of the box, be creative, be brave to know or even say I don’t know and want to learn and engage in a dialogue that capitalizes on the similarities and allows constructive learning from the differences, a content that ultimately achieves and brings to citizens the values of more understanding, peace and tolerance…hence, “Virtue”.
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