How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Our Failed Education System

Nothing of significance can be revealed when I say that here in Egypt we are artistically and culturally challenged. Anyone who has caught a glimpse of the kind of mainstream art we’re presented with can admit to that. Anyone who has met an average westerner who has been taught something or another about art, or can play an instrument or at the very least have some musical or artistic background information will acknowledge how far behind we are.

With that being said, I have nothing up my sleeve but a simple attempt to express that which we all already know. We have art deficiency and those of us who are trying or have overcome this horrid state of ignorance deserve a salutation for their hard work, for it is undoubtedly hard work in this day, age and country that we live in to appreciate art much more create it.

We don’t need ‘No Education’

In an event in Al Sawy, independent film maker and war photographer Ibrahim El Batout while on the stage was asked a by someone in the audience what we need to produce good independent films. Do we need more freedom? More resources? Less oppression?

El Batout spoke up immediately and said, “I know that they say oppression is good for art, but there’s an amount of freedom that an artist needs so as to create, without this freedom he will not be able to create.”

But then after a moment’s pause, he contemplated; and then added, “But even places like Iran face great oppression and yet they manage to produce good films.” He went on to think out loud saying that artists who face oppression around the world can create good art and at the same time artists without problems and lots of freedom also produce. He concluded, “I don’t really know why we’re not making any good films or what it would take.”

El Batout’s answer reasoned that oppression alone cannot cause us to be in this dismal state we’re in and he was right. There’s something more other than oppression that hinders us from producing art, and it’s something more subtle and more dangerous. It’s something more intricately intertwined with our culture and something more permanent and more robust; it’s our education.

Lost in Translation

Something has been lost in the translation of the word education from English to Arabic. The meaning of the word education in the dictionary is the act or process of imparting general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing others intellectually for mature life.

The word education in Arabic is Ta’leem, and the word for Science is E’lm which is the root of the word Ta’leem. The trouble is that the word ‘education’ in Arabic will therefore literally mean “the act of imparting scientific knowledge”… end of transmission. The remainder of the definition found in the English dictionary has been totally discarded and even its simple beginning damaged. The word knowledge has been replaced by the word ‘Science’ and the most important parts of the definition, such as developing of powers of reasoning and judgment or being prepared intellectually for a mature life have all been eliminated. You see, in the reality that most of the Arab world does not perceive, education is not just a matter of stuffing information into a human’s mind, but something far more delicate and complex, something so less direct than just facts and information that can easily be looked up on the internet; and in Egypt we have none of it.

In the British School that I went to briefly somewhere in the gulf I was taught to bake, draw and swim, all that just coming out of kindergarten. In an interview with Alaa Al Aswany for the art review he commented, “In France I was taken to two schools to meet the students because part of the French education is to meet writers. In France you can't complete your primary education unless you meet writers.”

Children are taught to have direct interaction with artists and art, to have an opinion on the work of someone and to even have an opinion on their character. What are Egyptians taught?

A Negative Bias

The emphasis on the knowledge of science rather than arts, history or politics deprives the average student of having a well rounded personality. In effect, education destroys our children rather than build them up. Education impedes our students rather than help them advance.

The fact of the matter is that Egyptian education does not teach its victims how to reason, and eventually they end up having no means to reach an opinion of their own; it does not teach its victims how to judge, and so they have clue as to how the process of forming an opinions works. They’re taught how to go with the flow, and effectively how to end up down the drain. They’re taught how to be led and how to follow the blind. Simply, they’re taught how not to learn. That is why when confronted by something artistic that might have an element of originality and creativity in it we don’t have enough education to understand it or judge it or like it. We only learn to reject what we have not been spoon fed.

Sarah Mokhtar, a young college student coming just out of high school says, “The strange things is that I’ve always loved art, and I believe I could have been good at it if I was able to develop it or if someone helped me out, but in School there weren’t any classes.” Sarah and many others like her are faced with the problem that art is not socially valued. In some schools art classes are elective, and rarely anyone picks them because of the social stance on the value of art, and because even if they do pick it, they won’t learn much.

Most of our children are told to first pursue a scientific career and perhaps think about art afterwards. Unfortunately creating art is viewed as doing nothing by our society, that despite the process of art production being an act of creation which is the most sublime form of activity.

Many I’ve known were very talented artists but were pressured by their parents to follow a scientific career like engineering or medicine, like my friend Mina. The social pressure is almost unbearable and the dependent youth succumb and by the time they’re done their 7 year sentence for medical school, all the passion that comes with young age would have been drained. But even those that manage to go to art school end up dissatisfied (see Learn Art or Die Trying article published in Issue x)

In an earlier interview with Alaa Al Aswany for the Art Review, he had remarked, “Our problem with the educational system is not that it’s neutral towards culture, but that it is in fact against any culture. That is why I give credit to the new generations that are interested in reading because they’ve had to do everything on their own. Everything in the Egyptian government’s education system detaches us from culture.”

One Taste

This negatively biased stance of our education system is the main reason that our taste in art has declined greatly. While sophists may argue that no one has the right to judge that a taste has declined since art is a matter of preference, no one can argue that such a lack of variety in tastes can be viewed as anything else but a sign of decline.

Looking at popular music these days, the majority of songs have very similar arrangements, very similar structure and almost always talking about love and heartbreak. The movies that are being produced are either mostly silly or with story lines taken from almost culturally irrelevant foreign films.

There always seems to be one mainstream taste manipulated by forces with enough power to turn us all into zombies, blindly heading towards an irrational common goal or idea. We’ve learnt to judge art superficially and to choke artists that are trying to break away from the mold.

Regarding the bias against people being cultured or thinking for themselves, Dr. Alaa Al Aswany remarks, “I don’t think it’s a coincidence and that this is intentional. Someone in command is clever enough to know that if people have enough information, people will turn against the government.”

Parasitism

Joseph Brodsky the Russian poet and Nobel prize winner was sent to prison for five years on charges of 'parasitism' in Russia because he claimed his job was writing. In Russia all able bodied people were to be employed until the age of retirement, otherwise they would be considered as ‘parasites’. What's intriguing is that the government considered poetry and writing so useless that they didn't consider it a job at all… unless it served their own interests.

The rejection of things that are not suitable to government tastes that we’re facing is very similar to the indoctrination of culture and art in the communist era where only art that praised the regime was accepted and all else was rejected. The permission to air only that which pleases the government in combination with the power of censorship (which might be carried out indirectly) is an adult targeting extension to the flawed education provided to youth.

Meanwhile Egyptian TV floods us with mindless series that talk about absolutely nothing, showing off expensive cars and villas and presenting drama that doesn’t reflect much of reality.

People who attempt to produce art with different ideas are put down even when they have creativity and originality. The recipient masses don’t help either, for with their deficient education and culture they cannot support something new. Effectively, nothing artistically valuable and original is produced and nothing is demanded either and we enter a vicious cycle of decline.

How could art ever work out if there are no proper channels in the country for anything much less art. No matter how brilliant your art is, it has no legal channel for seeing the light. The way that the Unknown Soldier (Algundy Almaghool) relic in Nasr City was built is almost sad. It was a design that won an award and upon president Sadat’s chance encounter with the news, he asked why is this not being built, let’s build it. That the only channel for a work of art to see the light is a presidential order upon a chance encounter provides a very bleak outlook on what’s to come.

Fear Factor

But perhaps the most forceful impediment implanted within our children through their education is fear. I know we’re not in the gruesome times of Nasser where people were imprisoned for making any comment that was against the regime, but even with all that gone, there’s a bitter residue that still won’t part.

We’re taught that politics is dangerous and we’re forbidden from expressing any ideas that seem to be political, but since most things in life are related to politics, we end up with a fear of expressing almost everything we feel in our lives. The only things we’re allowed to express are things that don’t matter. Perhaps that’s why everyone has learnt to sing shallow songs and produce and watch lusty clips.

Yes, this sort of immorality is safe, it’s safe for the decision makers and our children have to pay the cost of their safety. I’ve always thought that the government had a duty to take risks and sacrifice for the safety of its children, but it appears that I had it figured wrong.

A while back, I recall there was a news story on an Egyptian student asked to write composition along with her class. Unlike the rest of her school mates she chose to express herself genuinely and in effect criticized the government for a reality she experiences every day. The poor girl was failed and she was reprimanded. She was failed for expressing something she believes is true. What kind of education would have her fail for expressing her thoughts, is that how our children are judged? What happened to grading her on style, grammar, idea development?

She got off the hook eventually through yet another presidential intervention but only after appealing to the press and this horrid injustice was exposed. One cannot but wonder what her fate may have been had she not gone to the press, and whether there are others like her who were not lucky enough to have their voices heard.

Al Batout also confirmed fear instilled in people by the government, when asked by someone what must you do to create an independent film in Egypt, he remarked that the bottom line is that to create films you have be ready to get arrested and be imprisoned, pragmatically speaking.

Is there hope?

We live in a system that claims to know best, and rather than disowning culture and arts altogether, it embraces them in its own monocratic way. We might have been better off without the fake interest in art that serves their purpose alone, but this indoctrination presents one of the biggest and most hidden obstacles to art.

I have no conclusion as a result of what I expressed. That art has suffered a great blow and that our general public has become programmed to follow the media’s premeditated agenda is an inescapable fact. But, that the amount of youth that are trying hard to get involved in the art scene, open their eyes and break the mold is also undeniable.

Our world is full of Sarahs seeking art without having been given a chance and full of Minas who are talented but cannot put their talent to use, and many others who have not chosen to study elective art subjects, and those who have but gained nothing. But on the other hand we have artists who are trying hard to make it and present something original from within them.

So is there any hope?

First Published in The Art Review

Time and Concentration

Other excerpts from Erich Fromm, no comment of mine is necessary, but suffice to say I've felt guilty ever since reading all this whenever I haven't been able to do things with concentration.

"That concentration is a necessary condition for the mastery of an art is hardly necessary to prove. Anyone who ever tried to learn an art knows this. Yet, even more than self-discipline, concentration is rare in our culture. On the contrary, our culture leads to an unconcentrated and diffused mode of life, hardly paralleled anywhere else. You do many things at once; you read, listen to the radio, talk, smoke, eat, drink. You are the consumer with the open mouth, eager and ready to swallow everything--pictures, liquor, knowledge. This lack of concentration is clearly shown in our difficulty in being alone with ourselves. To sit still, without talking, smoking, reading, drinking, is impossible for most people. They become nervous and figety, and must do something with their mouth or their hands. (Smoking is one of the symptoms of this lack of concentration; it occupies hand, mouth, eye and nose.)"

"To be concentrated in relation to others means primarily to be able to listen. Most people listen to others, or even give advice, without really listening. They do not take the other person's talk seriously, they do not take their own answers seriously either. As a result, the talk makes them tired. They are under the illusion that they would be even more tired if they listened with concentration. But the opposite is true. Any activity, if done in a concentrated fashion, makes one more awake (although afterward natural and beneficial tiredness sets in), while every unconcentrated activity makes one sleepy--while at the same time it makes it difficult to fall asleep at the end of the day."

“All our machines are designed for quickness; the car and aeroplane bring us quickly to our destination – and the quicker the better. The machine which can produce the same quantity in half the time is twice as good as the older and slower one. Of course, there are important economic reasons for this. But, as in so many other aspects, human values have become determined by economic values. What is good for machines must be good for man – so the logic goes. Modern man thinks he loses something – time – when he does not do things quickly; yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains – except kill it.”

~Erich Fromm

Looking for Answers

Something I wrote a few years back, to my friend who's looking for answers...

Profoundly from my heart I yearn for answers. Answers that can fill those gaps of darkness dispersed amidst my thoughts preventing them from connecting. I thirst for a truth that is not relative to time and place, a truth that is immovable and absolute. I follow the questions that are most important in my own view to seek the answers that lead me there. Like everyone else around, I search and wonder as to why it's never so easy.

But what good would life be if all who were born into it knew its meaning? If this were true what joy could there be in life? As there is now no joy in knowing that the world is round, and that liquids turn to gas, so will it be if all truths were bequeathed upon us.

Would we each be so different from one another if none of us had their own personal quest for truth and mental rest? Would philosophers cease to exist, or with thinkers cease to think? What kind of life would it be?

The journey of life and character starts with total ignorance and to each his own questions which vary greatly from one person to the next. As we slowly walk through the dark tunnel of life, each of us chooses some candles that light a different corner of the dark. Each will choose questions, whose answers act like these candles unveiling parts of a final picture that once completely visible will reflect who we truly are and what truly surrounds us.

As our thoughts take form and the gaps grow less we find ourselves painting a picture of who we choose to be by choosing what to believe. This quest for answers makes life more complete and gives a change to anyone to have a vision or a dream and irrespective of anything materialistic, he may rise above all others through what he believes.

If life were a foreseen picture we'd have no real art in shaping our own portraits with choices that we've made. It's a maze with a few dead ends and never ending goals. It matters not where we end, only the path we choose. The rout that is chosen is all our life really is. It's a quest into the unknown and a chance to live. Thoughts that are still in darkness start to know the light as each time we're answered the gap that accommodates the darkness slowly loses its blackness and tries to disappear.


My heart still yearns for answers and will probably never stop, but the trick is to find the right questions and seek the right answers and rise above my own understanding and use all my senses to see the better picture and to paint the better picture and to gain the better picture of a seemingly short life.

The meaning of life doesn't seem to have an answer and will never cease to be sought after, but perhaps there is a possibility that the meaning of life resides in each of us finding his own meaning as we venture through this labyrinth of darkness that only dimly lit candles illuminate and where true light chooses not to reveal.

In the end, all will be seen that needs to be seen but only if luck works well with you to lead you to true light that devours all darkness and eradicates the need for al struggling candles.

Sea of Crap

Stars sink in the Sea of Stars

After attending the premiere of Bahr El Negoom, I pondered over how one could possibly write an honest review about this movie without being offensive. I decided it wasn't possible…not when a movie is this bad. And why should I be tactful in pointing out the horridness of this movie when its makers were so blatant in their offence to the audience while making it? No effort was made to spare us the torture of having to watch an extended, mindless and poorly implemented advertisement.

Had it not been an invitation I received with the knowledge that the stars would be present, I would not have attended, and even with all that I do regret wasting my time with this movie. Haifa was present at the premiere and I was almost stampeded by people charging at her. Had it not been for 'Gigantor' her body guard, she would have been dead meat. What's all the fuss about a talent-less Barbie doll? I'm talking about artistic talent of course, but we've come to realize that people are just looking for other kinds of 'talents'. I suppose that's what the producers were thinking of and counting on while making this movie.

It's not so much that the movie was bad, it's just that it was so damn ugly and embarrassing. It was ugly in a way that can almost scar the human soul. It was called Bahr El Negoom or Sea of Stars, and rightly so, for it is like a sea where its stars have sunk. Unfortunately for the stars, who were probably paid a hefty amount to sell their souls to the devil, the movie did nothing to increase their stardom, but in effect the little they may have had plummeted to the depth of the sea on account of this movie. I'm sure that all the fans will not take well to being tortured by their favorite artists. Even worse, Pepsi, the sponsoring company might have affected its image negatively, for after the movie, the mere sight of the Pepsi can brought back memories of this torture and made me want to puke.

I never regarded the silliness of making music videos till I saw this movie. When watching a music channel you can ignore the silly moves done by the singers and dancers in the context of watching a song, but when it's within a movie, the absurdity really shines because of all the silliness embedded in reality. All the sexiness of Haifa with her come to bed moves has been lost in the context of a real life; the nervous twitch that Wael Kafoury that looks like interesting camera work in close-ups just doesn't seem that attractive when he's talking in medium shots rather than singing. Carol Samaha was out to prove that she's capable of competing with Haifa's seductive powers, wearing a sexy skirt and top and moving her body to the music, but no amount of shape, curves nor clothes could have camouflaged the monkey dance she delivered. Lotfy Labib, while usually giving performances that I enjoyed very much has really managed to annoy me, but then again it was fitting of this movie.

The pain while watching this movie was so intense that I was worried if I shall be able to retain what remains of my manhood after completing its viewing. But instead of just relaying the pain I felt watching this movie, let me try to present analyze the movie more objectively.

At the very start of the movie, we can see a young boy, Youssef (Karim Mahmoud AbdelAziz), narrating that his story is about 'love'. Apart from the cheesiness of this start, and the fact that his story had nothing to do with love, and the irrelevance of the starting lines with the rest of the story, never has a word been so cheapened as the word 'love' in the start of this movie. There should have been a warning that this movie was not to be viewed for those under twelve, and even then I think the remaining audience would have launched some complaints.

It seems that the corporate producers were given a late tip that 'love' is a key word to lure the young teenagers in, and so perhaps after the lousy screenplay had been completed they had to insert it and found no other place but the start of the movie. The word was even more cheapened with most of the songs being about love, and during the course of the movie, after a singer would sing passionately about love, they'd just switch to the usual and practical bitch mode hence nullifying every feeling they might have tried to put across with the love song.

Youssef's parents had a restaurant that they would lose if they don't pay off their bank loan on time. In order to help them he has to revive an old music festival organized by his grandfather and another famous producer. The festival was called 'Bahr El Negoom' (surprise surprise). He moves on from one star to the other, trying to convince them to sing in the festival and is rejected, five times!! It is so apparent that all the stars will say no, but we had to endure the torture of each dull rejection scene so that each star can get his 5 minutes of poor acting on screen. Now why doesn't Youssef change the way he presents the idea to the stars, five times, just saying the same lame old crap and we have to see the actors rejecting it? Why do we have to endure this nonsense till we're finally offended by the smugness and idiocy of Ahmed El Sherif while he's rejecting the offer?

Anyway, in order to get the stars interested, he makes up two lies on a radio show; the first about a famous producer organizing the show, the second about Pepsi sponsoring the show. The Pepsi contact was apparently unaware that Pepsi was the sponsor, and he had to go to great lengths to find out that the famous producer thing was a lie. Why the great lengths? He was supposedly working in the sponsoring company, wasn't it enough for him to know that they were not sponsoring the event to figure out that all of it was a lie? Supposedly, this young man who was in his thirties it seems knew that famous producer, who had vanished 20 years ago!! No comment. It's not worth the time to point out holes in the plot, for if truth be told, it was not a movie at all.

If all the filming was outside Egypt and almost all the actors were not capable of delivering their lines with an Egyptian accent, then why on earth should you bother to do the movie in Egyptian? The actors were pathetic and I almost felt sorry for them. It's not just their poor delivery of their Egyptian lines, it's their inability to surpass an amateur level performance. The better question of course would be why do this movie when none of the actors in the movie could act for crap? But the answer to that is simple, this movie is an extended corporate ad, with infinite product placement so blatant it has reached a new all time low.

The movie is so shallow and sinister in its intent that one could go back in time to the cheap commercial eighties movies (Aflam Al Moqawalaat) and salute them for not having sunk that low. There was a masturbation of Pepsi throughout the movie and on the one occasion that a character was sipping a hot drink, there was a huge Pepsi logo overshadowing the entire shot.

Advertisements can sometimes be well made and entertaining, sometimes there are ideas that can exist for thirty seconds that make it bearable to finish watching an ad, but not on this occasion, this was the most boring advertisement and not even Haifa's feline looks and curves could change that. With advertisements at home, even though they're forced on you while watching your favorite television show, you can still switch the channel … but not in this movie, there's just no escaping it.

The movie epitomizes this day and age in one sense. It's the celebration of superficiality and consumerism. It represents a battle in the Egyptian Armageddon against bad art. The idea that a soda drink company actually produces a movie is unprecedented and incensing. It is going further down than we've ever been in the artistically void pit we've been in, and trying to get out of, for so long.

Bahr el Negoom sets a dangerous precedent; the malignancy of film making merely for profit seems benign in light of what this movie sets out to accomplish, for there something more sinister than just making money here, it's the disfigurement of art for the sake of consumerism.

Three

Something I've always wanted to point out..

Hassan & Morkos

Very heavy on the symbols, this much is true… it's what makes this movie drift so far from reality, yet in effect reflecting it. The movie had one of two choices, to elegantly move over items of our daily lives pointing to them in a suave, elegant manner, or bring down the hammer over the points we see every day and blow them up to reflect what's hidden in our society. It chose the latter, probably because of how difficult it is to do the former. In effect, the movie is a not at all elegant, insisting on delivering messages through pounding dramatic effect and repetition, mostly to the masses who prefer their movie messages delivered in this manner.

Abstractly though, the scenes when stripped of their need to reflect reality drive home very directly a message that has tried to be sincere. Its conclusion is delivered through the movie's final scene. It says yes, we do not know each other, yes there are problems, yes there is even hatred and yes we are not one and the same. We're different and we're in chaos and that will not be denied. The lines that separate us have been drawn but worse, the lines prevent us from knowing one another any further. We become our clan, and we're just a bundle of blind resentment.

We're in this battle we've found ourselves in with no hope of a mass salvation. Our masses are doomed and are in chaos due to prejudices and bad history. There is only room for personal and individual salvation. Like the six entwined together in what looks like an average road from hell in the movie's final scene, we cannot fight to change all that's around us, but we need to hang on to each other to get through it. Our salvation is through personal knowledge and through love of one another.

We are not one, but we can intertwine and we can go through the roads of hell together. Amidst this impersonal chaos we can still have each other. There's some elements of human love that transcend religion, for religion should only lead us to those elements. We can survive the violence around us knowing what know about each other.

This was expressed in the final scene that was built up by the movie. It was heavy on allegory and physically distant from reality in a seemingly surreal fantastical kind of way. (Although the choice of Alexandria where such violence took place can defend the aspect of reality) In the remainder of the movie, Hassan we Morkos reflects a hidden prejudice that has become stealthily inherent in our community. They are prejudices based on superficial labels and nothing can be as superficial as the labels presented in the movie. We have a non practicing Christian and beardless and ignorant Sheikh.

These are people under a thin cover. The cover is simply a label, a tag and unfortunately this has reflected that no one cares about anything except that tag. Some of us are labeled one way or another through our names and that serves as all the basis needed for prejudices and discrimination. Some of us with neutral names can really see the discrimination as soon as our labels are discovered. Even Hassan and Morkos, or rather their underlying characters, who epitomize religion, end up judging one another superficially. They warm up to each other based on religion and are discriminated against based on how they appear.

Hassan we Morkos is a funny comedy that has not fully grown into its potential black. Not all points were discussed and there were references to hidden opinions from both sides that rang so true that you couldn't help but laugh. The absurdity of accusations of one party to another was comical to see on screen and yet behind the comedy there was so much truth.

The whole movie of course is based on an improbable plan set forth by the government and while the actual plan of the government was fictitious, the consequences were not. The government has helped to orchestrate the atmosphere for this kind of tension in reality, and perhaps it has in fact hidden who we are from each other. At the end of the day we're left with the ugly situation expressed in the usual cheesy crowd chants but reflecting a reality that's impossible to ignore nonetheless.

The scenes that took place in the south of Egypt were comical to say the least, not reflecting at all the prejudices that exist down there. To talk about these dogmatic prejudices and discriminations would leave no room for comedy as people’s lives are destroyed because of their religion. The movie had no choice but to skip these bitter stories. Over here in the big city, we Cairenes are quick to say, there’s nothing of that sort, there’s no prejudice and there’s no hatred. In Cairo, we’re distant from all that happens elsewhere.

Whether this movie can move any prejudice an inch is not something for me to say or that can even be foretold, although, like everything else, it will just pass as entertainment. For we love our stars on the silver screen, Omar and Adel, but we don't usually extend that love to our loud or obnoxious neighbors. That is why things may fade out as does the music with the ending credits. In real life there's no Yasser Abdel Rahman's inspirational score to move our hearts. There is no camera on us to judge us and there are no lovable stars to love. We're left with one another and that may not be enough.


We need the familiar, our usual stars to love, our usual music and lighting and most of all our same kind. The only way out is through personal knowledge as the movie suggests and the only way towards this is by allowing ourselves to trust. We need to open the door we've locked ourselves in and allow love to salvage us from the utter chaos we've found ourselves in.

There's no camera to watch us but we forget that a label was never a window to the soul. I suppose it's only fair to say that there are so many who have actually moved past all these prejudices that were forced throughout our present day culture. There are some who have fought the dogma of tribalism with the logic of love. There are some whose human bonds are even stronger than that of blood, and transcend the labels that lead us to those sought after pure human qualities. So let us walk in their footsteps and put aside our slogans and hypocrisy and see each other as humans with a choice. As long as we have no choice about our prejudices, we'll always be enslaved.

Great Expectations

Expectations are dangerous. They are thresholds that define how we are supposed to feel. We’re satisfied when they’re reached, happy when they’re exceeded, disappointed when they’re unachieved. They are what make the difference between optimists, pessimists and realists.

Expectations are most dangerous when it comes to people, because on most occasions people don’t know what to expect from themselves, and mostly they don’t know what you expect from them.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that whenever you expect good things from people, you can end up being disappointed, but the worst kind of disappointment is when you realize that the people you expect most from, have nothing more to give.

The Human Problem of Modern Capitalism

The Art of Loving is the title of a book by Erich Fromm, a social psychologist, and is certainly one of the sappiest titles for a book that I've ever come across. At first glance it appears to contain some mushy bullshit about love and what have you, but after inspection, it contains some deep psychological and philosophical analysis of humans from a lot of different angles. It covers many topics I've often thought about and has expressed in words a lot of thoughts that were in my head but never made their way to paper.

This is an extract on one of the issues of the modern capitalist society that I've observed, and this was written in the mid fifties! How far along have we come along from then? Note that because the book was written in the mid fifties, I forgive its really sappy name. At that time the name would have sounded better I suppose not having been distorted by all these chicken soup for the soul and power of positive thinking corny crap.

The human problem of modern capitalism can be formulated in this way:

Modern capitalism needs men who cooperated smoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority or principle or conscience - yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected of them, to fit into the social machine without friction; who can be guided without force, led without leaders, prompted without aim - except the one to make good, to be on the move, to function, to go ahead.

....

Modern man is actually close to the picture Huxley describes in his Brave New World; well fed, well clad, satisfied sexually, yet without self, without any except the most superficial contact with his fellow men, guided by the slogans which Huxley formulated so succinctly, such as: ‘When the individual feels, the community reels’; or ‘Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today,’ or, as the crowning statement: ‘Everybody is happy nowadays.’

Man’s happiness today consists in ‘having fun.’ Having fun lies in the satisfaction of consuming and ‘taking in’ commodities, sights, food, drinks, cigarettes, people, lectures, books, movies - all are consumed, swallowed. The world is one great object for our appetite, a big apple, a big bottle, a big breast; we are the suckers, the eternally expectant ones, the hopeful ones - and the eternally disappointed ones. Our character is geared to exchange and to receive, to barter and to consume; everything, spiritual as well as material objects, becomes an object of exchange and of consumption.

~ Erich Fromm

Big J

What do you do when a friend stops to care? What do you do when you can tell that this friend is drifting, and that they aren’t even honest with themselves or with you to explain what’s going on? The problem is that you know this friend so well and you understand their every move, and their motivations and you can understand that they’re drifting away.

It’s just the little things you know. They may forget my number after a while, forget which floor I live on, forget things I’ve mentioned about myself. They’re very small things, and inconsequential, but they point to a distance that is growing within them. They can choose to act casual or forgetful by nature, but the trouble is that I’m not. I remember that during our close friendships they remembered very specific details that I could have mentioned in passing. They remember events and remind me of them. But when they’ve drifted, they act like it’s normal to forget these things, and they believe it too, because they don’t even remember that they used to remember.

When friends drift, they ask about you more casually than before, you sense it in the tone of speech and their facial expressions. Sometimes you’re not even consoled by a pathetic effort to fake interest. It’s just a drift that starts slowly and takes on a form that they might not even identify but you can clearly see.

I recall once a very close friend asked me how old I had become a few days after my birthday. A year earlier she had celebrated my birthday on time and sent me a card and bought me a gift. You can imagine the message it sends out when I get a brief phone call many days after my birthday with a question of how old I’ve become. The call meant nothing to me and I wish she hadn’t even bothered. It was more painful to be wished a happy birthday carelessly and so late, than not to have been wished at all.

It’s not that I want people to remember things about me, not at all. I’m not the kind of guy who takes birthdays, events, information too seriously. I don’t keep track of a lot of it personally, and I’ve never seen this as a big deal. I’m not into blaming people for not remembering details or events, but the inconsistency of care is what can hurt sometimes. To see someone you care about drifting away and shifting their care away is a bit like that slow painful stab at the end of Saving Private Ryan.

The way I see it, you have no choice but to let them go, only that I wish they’d drift away quicker. You have no choice but to let them go their own way, and feel their own feelings and do what they need to be doing. Friendship is mutual, and it’s based on both sides giving. No amount of giving from one side will force the other side to give again sometimes. What can you do when you can no longer get what you always wanted from your friend?

Your hand is forced and you have no choice but to let go. I’ve been accused of being cold or without emotion, and yet one of the strongest feelings I’ve had was towards friendships. It’s rather unfortunate that I’ve experienced a lot of friendships breaking. Do I need to get all emotional and broken up over someone who decided to break a mutual bond?

I adapt, and that’s all there is to it. I try to keep my face expressionless and isolated from an aching soul. I try to be strong because being weak helps no one. It’s not that I’m pretending to be strong or that I’m naturally strong by nature, that’s not it, it’s that I’ve discovered that I have the potential to be very strong in my character and all I’m doing is utilizing that potential. Needless to say that having the potential and using it are entirely different things. There’s sometimes a choice not to be strong, and it has it’s own set of returns.

I know why people call me cold, because I can hide what I’m thinking and what I’m feeling. And why should I show feelings of being hurt or troubled when it will be probably at times where the person in front of you couldn’t care less. People do reach this cruel state sometimes when they are unable to sympathize with what you’re feeling or understand what you’re going through. Friends can sometimes become less sympathetic with you than a total stranger, and you can become more pitiful than what remains of the friendship is worth.

So to all those who say I’m cold, I say, I’d rather be cold than have to deal with the mushy bullshit that comes along with expressing exactly what you feel to exactly the wrong people. I’ve seen too much psychological bullshit going on with people to believe that you should allow yourself to be vulnerable with just anyone. I was talking to one of the few remaining very good friends of mine Big J and telling him about Hisham and how our friendship was suddenly and magically severed, and then I thought I’d test him. He’s a stable solid guy who has a good vision about life, and he’s a realist, practical and easy going. So I asked him if our relationship can someday be severed in that same odd dramatic manner, and his answer attested as to why we’re still very good friends. Big J said, “In this life, anything can happen. I don’t think we can ever say that something like this can’t happen with us because we never know what life may bring.”

Thank you Big J, that’s the right answer, that’s the real one. Too much can happen that we can’t foretell. Life’s just that way, it’s full of surprises in its own mundane way. Who knows what can make people change? I try to fight it, but I do accept I can change dramatically through something I just can’t anticipate. I can end up being exactly what I’ve resented being. I can be a liar, I can change my beliefs, I can change to believe that all I had wanted to be was not worth anything.

It’s the tough equation, to care enough about a friend to be a good friend to them, because I believe that being a good friend means something, it’s worth something; and to be able to let them go when they choose to end the friendship. It’s an odd contract, friendship that is. It’s a contract whereby both parties get great benefits but any one side can unilaterally end this contract or amend it or change it.

I think we all lose people along the way, it’s not like I’m cursed or anything, but perhaps I feel I lose more because of how much I’ve valued friendships and how strongly their loss has impacted me. I really hope I’m not making it sound like marriage or the love that comes with a relationship, because unlike what people seem to want to believe, love exists outside that realm in a very strong manner that gives great returns.

Another Day

So once more it’s my birthday, and things this time aren’t looking so bad. Yet a feature of my birthday has always been being alone. I don’t mean alone in a bad way, it’s just a state of mind I’m always in during this day. I think it’s a healthy thing sometimes. The things is, being alone gives you perspective… no, let me correct that, being alone gives you a perspective. Because you’ve always got a perspective whether you like it or not, and I don’t think that when you’re alone it’s any truer, it’s just different. It can lead you to something truer, but it in itself cannot be the absolute truth.

You see, if you can’t carry that perspective with you to when you’re with others, then it means nothing, then it was just in your head, an imagination. Tonight I decided that despite everything I will go out and celebrate. In a city I barely know and a city where I barely know anyone, alone is all I could have chosen. I went to a roof top bar and let me tell you the place was amazing. It was a bit like Sequoia meets Nomad, but with great service and great atmosphere and perfect audio levels.

Anyway, I was surrounded as you would imagine with shiny people and I enjoyed my drink watching all those people. It’s nice to watch people around you, but at the same time it was good to watch with someone. Why don’t I do this more often, I thought to myself, and it seemed clear, but if I can’t feel the same when I’m back with people I know, it doesn’t become real.

I love strangers, they’re so much easier to get along with and it’s much easier to have fun with them. There’s none of that dreaded history, especially if it’s bitter; everything said is new and interesting, and everything is not as yet misinterpreted. Sometimes I wish that I can have the closeness I have with people I already know with the novelty of strangers. It’s not that I don’t want to exchange deep genuine care but it’s that I also want that superficial kind that means nothing but can give you a tingly feeling of fulfillment.

But who am I kidding? I’ve stopped feeling that I needed that from anyone a long time ago. I sometimes think I’m immune to hurt and praise and yet I know they somehow scar my defenses ever so slightly, like a vibration you feel in a concrete building from a powerful thud a few floors above you.

The point is that our ideas while being alone have no meaning if they fail to work when scrutinized by reality. The reality is that it’s difficult to apply people to your ideas, they have their own. They can’t imagine being with you and enjoying a view, and they can’t imagine a scene that’s in your head.

People you know don’t have the ability to become strangers or do things your way or even reciprocate. People are never who you want them to be when you want them to be it. In my experience, people can be who you want them to be, but not necessarily at the time you want them to be it. You can almost always count on people saying something you’ve been dying to hear just after you’ve given up hope on them saying it and that something loses its power over you completely. You can usually count on them to change into what they were heading towards after too much time has passed for that to matter.

That’s the way with people, they can only become strangers, not when they’re close and you want a certain part of that stranger to deal with you, but rather when they actually do become strangers and their closeness means nothing to you anymore.

You can’t expect people to remember your birthday when you remember theirs, or to want to communicate when you want to. You can’t expect people to want to let it all go when you do, or to talk it out when you want to. All I’m saying is that all your expectations are your perspective when you’re alone, and while in them there’s lots of hope or bitterness or just plain anything you may want, there’s lack of reality or more accurately timing.

Timing is everything in this world. Opportunities mean nothing without timing. A lovely place with great atmosphere and with money to spare means nothing if it comes at a time when it can’t be shared. A great idea can’t make it into the world if it isn’t born at the right time, or presented at the correct time. I think Thomas Hardy once said it in Far from the Madding Crowd, that it’s better to see what opportunities present themselves at this time rather than have an opportunity that requires the right time, something of that sort anyway.

Anyway, an inopportune time to celebrate my birthday, but it seems fitting what I’ve decided last year, to celebrate the first good day nearest my birthday as my birthday. Of course this year isn’t half as bad as last year nor as melodramatic, but it’s just that for some odd reason, owing to how I’m built most likely, my birthday is surrounded by way too much contemplation.

I’ve wondered why people say Happy Birthday, why is it that this day out of all should be wished to be happy? Could it be that it is particularly because of the potential of this day not to be? Or is it because you owe yourself at least one day of happiness a year?

Well, I know that for me, birth is somehow equivalent to life, and on a day like this I really have to think about what life means, and what living it is all about. It’s such an important day to split your life between past and future. It’s a day when you can say to yourself, look, you’ve been living, is that what you want to do in life? It’s a day when you can talk to a self that so lost in every day things that it has forgotten that it’s actually alive. This is all you get, these small moments that make up a life. I think we’re always waiting for the wrong things in life, waiting for life to start, though I know for sure that it is ongoing.

I’ve decided long ago to spend the least amount of my time doing things that I dislike doing. I don’t want to spend my time talking to someone who bores me, I don’t want to sacrifice my time to please another unless their pleasure pleases me. I will let things that I don’t feel like doing pass me by even if they’re things I want to do later. Opportunity cannot compensate for timing no matter what. That the things are an opportunity cannot make them enjoyable if the mood (i.e timing) isn’t right.

Lately, I’ve been losing myself in the unimportant things, the things you need to get by. But now I’ve left my other outing for a solitary drink to write this here. I really need to write it, not sure if it makes any sense, I’ve been hacking away at it continuously and the thoughts are connected a thread too thin to see for anyone but me and only me in the state that I’m in. I just want to write these thoughts and look at them and think about how silly they might have been or how true they were.

There’s not much to me is there? If these are my thoughts and I’ve written them all down… I guess that’s what I’m all about. I’ve been told that I attempt to be mysterious, and on some occasions that I am, but that’s what I’m thinking now, it’s raw and unedited. It’s my thoughts flowing directly from my brain, as fast as my fingers can type, translated in to words.

I think I’ve just taken a trip that goes nowhere inside my head. There are so many places I could have gone to, but for today, this was the trip. It’s meaningless perhaps to go around in these circles, trying to decipher life through a set of recycled words and recycled thoughts. I add nothing, but all that’s here is mine.

I’m going for a drink..

Back from the drink..

I didn’t enjoy it much. I had a drink in the hotel, and I was able to get in only because I’m a guest. That place is a nightclub with bouncers like those brutes you find in the Cairo Jazz Club. I don’t know how easy it would have been for me to get in if I were a visitor, but it seems that knowing someone is the way to go about it or at the very least have an attractive female by your side.

Isn’t it funny how we’re always evaluated and judged as we walk through life? The key to my room was also the key to my entrance, and it was the key to the really good treatment I got from the bouncer. I can understand a little of that lust for power, to have power over someone, to stand out and be recognized as someone with influence. Of course I had none, I was just an ordinary person with a room key.

How is it that people become important in life and do I want to be one of them? Glamour is fleeting, obscurity is forever. I like obscurity, and I’m not just saying that because I have no choice about it. I really think it’s valuable to hide in the crowd, not to be spotted, not to be monitored for every move.

It was really smoky in that night club. The dark atmosphere was Dostoevskian as that of a poor dark lost Russian brothel in the 1800s; the people from a cheap horror movie. They danced and drank to have fun. There was something hopeless in what I saw, very unlike the elegant rooftop bar I had been to earlier. The characters were all doomed and they did not even know it. It was as if I’d descended into a limbo.

I wonder if someone had looked at me and thought the same thing of me too. I wonder if someone things the same thing too, I’d like to meet them and exchange these odd and dark thoughts.

My birthday’s over, and I’ve gone over a lot of things, but I must return to my friends. I go through the list of friends in my life who have been close and most of them lost. Childhood friends are so easily lost, but my best friend even back then had been lost way before our childhood ended, and as time goes by, those closest drift farthest.

My friends, these will require another session altogether. I had decided to send each person a letter, a letter that he/she will never comprehend when they read it; a letter that I must write and should not be read by its alleged receiver. I should send it to my friends, those who exist and those who don’t, and to those who don’t even know I exist. I have letters to those whose hearts have been hardened, conscience killed, faith destroyed. I have letters to the merciless and the deaf and the blind. I have letters for everyone whose life or decisions have affected me.

It was a good birthday, I’m alive and not doing much of what I don’t want to do. That will suffice for now… until the next time I’m reminded I was born and I’m now alive.

Mark Twain in Egypt

Was Mark Twain in Egypt when he wrote this?

You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions, or its office holders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags--this is loyalty to unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was invented by monarchy; let monarchy keep it.

"...all political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their benefit; and that they have at all times an undeniable and indefeasible right to alter their form of government in such a manner as they may think expedient."

Under that gospel, the citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth's political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor.That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay does not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate, anyway, and it is the duty of others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does.

And now here I was, in a country where a right to say how the country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each thousand of its population. For the nine hundred and ninety-four to express dissatisfaction with the regnant system and propose to change it, would have made the whole six shudder as one man, it would have been so disloyal, so dishonorable, such putrid black treason. So to speak, I was become a stockholder in a corporation where nine hundred and ninety-four of the members furnished all the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves a permanent board of direction and took all the dividends. It seemed to me that what the nine hundred and ninety-four dupes needed was a new deal.


Needless to say I share this view and my loyalty can be expressed in the same manner as his. It's funny though that by his standards we're all traitors, or at least most of us anyway.


This was an excerpt from 'A Connecticut Yankee In King Yankee In King Arthur's Court' in case you were wondering

On a Treadmill

Being alone on business is not so bad, it has its perks. I won’t consider travelling itself a perk in my situation because it really does depend on where you’re travelling to, and in my case there’s certainly no joy in where I’m at. You’d really have to see the silver lining and examine it with detail if you want some sort of benefit from my sort of travel. Perhaps this detailed examination or quest itself is what I gained out of this trip.

I’m no stranger to living all alone, and I’ve always found it enjoyable. There’s more clarity in things I see and I always have more time to observe and contemplate. On this trip I’ve been trying not to waste my time too much and I decided to do something I’ve never done before in my life, which is run on a treadmill. Oh how I hate running, it’s one of the most mundane things anyone has to endure. Ironically running for a long time is about endurance as well. So being a novice at running for a boring span of time just under an hour, I had to figure out ways to fight this boredom.

I decided that an MP3 player would help so I stuffed it with some of my favorite songs that I haven’t heard in a while and got started. The amazing thing is that when I tried to focus on the songs to get away from the utter boredom of just running, I actually noticed some lyrics with more clarity. One of the songs is called Keep Talking by Pink Floyd and it starts with a mechanical voice saying,

For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals

Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination
We learned to talk.

Irrespective of how long mankind lived just like the animals, I suddenly recognized the importance of words. Words express things that were never meant to be expressed in such a manner, they express feelings and emotions that go on inside us internally and really have no way of being communicated to someone else. It’s just that we can never tell what exactly is going on through an animal’s mind, and to be so isolated from feelings we can express today is a little scary. It’s such a great gift to be able to express that which exists in a non audible realm, that’s why it’s important to keep talking, to communicate, to understand that we can understand what goes on inside us and that we share a lot of it.

I'll sit in the corner
No one can bother me
I think I should speak now
I can't seem to speak now
My words won't come out right
I feel like I'm drowning
I'm feeling weak now
But I can't show my weakness
I sometimes wonder
Where do we go from here

How many of us sit in the corner, feel like they’re drowning and just can’t seem to speak now? I’m not saying anything new, but I was visited by a moment that showed me how to appreciate words.

After my successful attempts at distracting myself from the boredom of running using old songs, I began to tire. I looked for new music, but couldn’t accumulate enough music of great quality to last me the sessions, so I turned to television as a catalyst while listening to the same old songs. The interesting thing is that I started to notice the picture and the scenes; devoid of sound, the camera says a few things of its own and even in a lousy action film, there’s a lot of work done by the camera that’s just aesthetically appealing and greatly overlooked. It seems that sometimes art slips us by distorted by things around it.

On a related note I’ve realized for the first time how brilliant the shots are in the movie The Aviator when watching it in a loud noisy café with a big screen unable to hear clearly the music or words. The scenes with the planes were so well done and particularly that of the crash was so well constructed.

I know it’s crazy taking note of these details just because I’m on my own, but they’ve become clearer for some reason. The interesting development though was when I decided to watch television and listen to what they were saying. In the hotel gym the television is placed behind the tread mills and you can view it by looking in a mirror. As I struggled to watch the shows I realized I wasn’t able to read the translation or listen to the sound as my legs pounded heavily on the noisy treadmill. I realized everything was inverted; the American movies looked like the English movies and the English ones looked like they were American. Everything was off, everything was distorted audibly and visually.

I couldn’t help but wonder if this is how we let life pass us by in a similar manner to how I observed the television; running constantly on a mindless treadmill, observing our lives in an inverted manner, the sound of our lives clamped and distorted by the pounding of our feet in a mindless chase. I couldn’t help but wonder if that’s the reason we can’t read any of the signs we’re presented with, like the translation on the television they’re inverted in our eyes and we’re constantly running in the other direction looking at things that matter in the rear view mirror of our gym.

Our lives are in the background and we’re content to look at our lives through a mirror rather than confront and give the things that matter our full attention. In the back of our minds we’re satisfied to look at a reflection of our lives, but we don’t really realize that while we can see things clearly in a mirror they will always be inverted. We spend half our lives trying to re-invert things in our heads to make sense of them, all the while running on the treadmill. You see, when you’ve seen things clearly once, it may be easy to spot the distortion, but if you’re on a treadmill all your life, how can you be sure that what you’re seeing is true.

We look at ourselves through mirrors and I can no longer be sure how well we can see ourselves. I don’t think I can trust mirrors that much because while it’s true that I can see myself with clarity looking at a mirror, I have to stop and wonder how much of that is inverted.

Pill

What’s up with the government? They’re sabotaging the country, not that they haven’t been sabotaging the country for so long, but they’re expediting its doom, perhaps they’re trying to reach this goal before the president dies. It seems like a few people have decided to take it down once and for all.

Where do I start? Oil prices, all prices, bread, cars, education? Which of these can I start with? All the government wants to do now is put a tax on everything, tax on schools, stock market, cars… so much so that they might even apply tax on the damn polluted air that we breathe or for the crap covered ground that we walk on, or on our miserable existence that they’ve allowed.

That’s it, there’s just no hope, we need to take a piece of land and declare our own country because the bozos running this country aren’t running it the way it should be. I think we should also rely on google for education since they can no longer provide decent education nor at the very least allow those who go to private schools to have an education either.

I don’t think that such measures could have been taken except if sabotage and malice was intended. If you put yourself in their shoes, and want to punish everyone for the strikes or for existing, what would you do? You’d look for terrorism law that deprives you of humanity… you’d tax everything and ridiculously so… you’d increase prices and cancel subsidies. You’d have a thought police, violate human rights routinely, give people those bones of football, religion to chew on. I think all this has been done. If I could think of all this while thinking of sabotaging a country, what could they have been thinking?

The sad part is that we’ll swallow this pill. I wish one of them would some day grow a conscience. I used to feel sorry for Kings of the past when their enemy conquers them and gives them the worst of deaths… but now…

Sad Old Sorry Tales

It hurts to have those you cared about
and have given to turn their backs on you.
It's a sad old sorry tale of the bitter life we live.
Each time we complain we're told to grow up,
it's a sad and worn out tale to complain.

Such naval gazing it may seem to look upon your state
and curse your wretched fate
for having been given this lousy hand from life.
Grow up they say, and I say too
when words like these I see written on pages like these.

These words seem to me as virtual as the medium which they occupy,
but when at once that feeling visits you with force, you need to say it too.
You need to sound worn out and juvenile,
telling the same old tale as though you've found some profound truth.

Yes, the world is filled with many a Brutus, and we've all had our share of knives,
where is the profound truth in this?
Truth it may be, but new or profound? I think it not.

It seems to me the world tricks us sometimes
or people themselves deceive us into thinking that such is not the case of the world.
But those who stand by us ever so constantly are forgotten.
We care about those who stab us when they falter in their usual supporting love.

Yet all these are words
and words I care not about if I were to read
out of the hands of other players in this life,
yet it's our right to curse our fate
and look upon the world with dismay.
It's our right to ramble and victimize ourselves
as though none of those who read have been wronged as much as we.
And men like me will mock these tired old tales,
not for being above them, but for having experienced them all too well.
I fail to sympathize even with myself in normal times
when thoughts like these don't visit me.
How then can I expect to sympathize with others
whose naval gazing seem more shallow than my own?

It's a sad old sorry tale of being wronged, forgotten, neglected or rejected.
Yet when I think of those who have offended me with these wrongs,
my cocky arrogance and snobbery are humbled and set aside
and my heart lets out a sigh, nostalgic in essence emotional as a child's.

I think on them with sorrow and joy,
for having given me so much, enough to hurt me this much.
I think upon them with love and fond memories
and regret that is not my own.
A regret with no guilt from me,
a sad and happy thought that is hard to explain.

Yes, even one like me can stop my self mockery for a time
and realize that behind these sad old sorry tales of bitterness,
there is some truth to be felt not known.