Cultural Invasion

In a previous article, I questioned the general effect of the Internet and whether it facilitated too much exchange of ideas and how this resulted in the boundaries around local communities around the world disappearing. I questioned whether this is raising the potential of diluting our cultural difference and making us too much of the same and resulting in a higher entropy and less colorful world where innovation will ultimately suffer.The previous analysis has not even considered the reality of the internet as it exists now and how the exhange of information and ideas is not equally balanced between the world's different civilizations and cultures. The flow of ideas has clearly favoured the flow of ideas from western civilization to other civilizations. Through this lopsided exchange, or rather single sided flooding, of ideas, these non-western civilizations are becoming more of a fake image of a western movie. Some societies have faired worse than others which is probably indicative of less self appreciation of their identity.

You can see this cultural invasion in the infiltration of western traditions into the daily lives of these societies and the dilution of native languages with hundreds of mispronounced english words. I have personally witnessed this in a recent visit to the Middle East where I was surprised to find that English was the most widely spoken language on the streets in some arabic countries. I have attended so many official meetings that were often conducted in English in countries that once prided themselves on their Arabic and Islamic heritage. Celebration of once western events such as Valentine's day has become very popular. Parents are more interested in how their kids speak foreign languages, mostly western, than the original native language. It was actually disturbing to hear some Islamic scholars intentionally insert English words into their speech as a sign that they are in tandum with the young generations. Are all these changes a result of the internet alone, probably not, but the internet has accelerated the pace of flooding of these societies with an idealized western culture especially among the younger generation. These societies do not even seem to realize the danger being posed to their culture and identity.

Spring is Here

Spring kind of snuck up on me. I guess I was too busy to notice the parade of colors developing outside the windows of my house. Today was not the sunniest of days, but I just happened to set in a chair facing the big glass window and as if it happened overnight, spring was painting the world with the bright, vibrant and energetic colors of youth, colors that starkly contrast the gray palette with which the winter has covered our surroundings. The blooming trees are coming back to announce to us the start of a new cycle of life.

It is easy for us to love spring as it brings as much hope to our lives as our children carry. The blooming flowers are the giggles of their happiness, the budding trees announce their first steps in life, the green hardy grass declares their readiness to to tackle the future with all that it brings.

Summer is also an easy favorite, for many, for it is usually associated with our care free time as kids and young adults. It was a time for walking or playing on the beach, enjoying true and innocent friendships, laughing till we cry and crying as we learn to tame our emotions. It was time for falling in and out of love, venturing into maturity and learning to be and to be on our own. For those of us who are deep into adulthood, summer remains as a time to relive those memories again with the young in our lives. It is the season for dreaming and reliving the best of your dreams over and over again.

Unfortunately summer does not last forever and soon we start noticing those beautiful colors appearing in our surroundings, marking the season of Fall. It is not one of those seasons that is as easy to love as we did the spring and summer for despite the beauty that easily matches, if not surpasses, that of the spring, for many this is analogous to our late adulthood. A time when we are most capable of loving and giving. A time for our most creative and productive work. Yet, it is time when we see the brightest and most colorful leaves around us fall into the ground and fly away of our sight and lives. It is time we progressively feel the coming of the cold and lifeless winter. The beauty of the sring and fall maybe both breath taking, yet they cannot be more different in the emotions they stir in us.

Along comes the cold and gray winter. Trees look lifeless, the grass is brown and the sun seems too old to rise high in the sky. To many it is the least favorable of the seasons, yet it has its beauty. It is the time to get close to those dear in our life. It is time for families to get together, to huddle around the fire, to talk and laugh and talk some more. It is a chance to appreciate what we had and look forward to the future for soon the spring will sneak up on us again!

Economic Lessons from a 3rd World Country

Let me start with a disclaimer. I have no credentials to give financial advice. My only credentials are growing up in a third world country and watching my parents maneuver our family through economic difficulties similar to those that loom on the horizon. Although my dad is an economist, a lot of the success of our family to weather the economic storms should be credited to my mom and to the heritage from thousands of years of training in which Egyptians learned the needed skills to survive under unfavorable economic conditions. I did not think I would need these skills anymore, but given what the country is going through, they may come handy after all. I thought writing this article maybe an opportunity to brush up on the basic skills of survival in rough times. Here is some of the wisdom of the Egyptian society:

Learn to rough it up for good times do not last forever. Save what you can today for tomorrow is always insecure. Be content with what you have, work hard to earn what you want, and never borrow to indulge yourself. A very popular adage in Egypt was "Stretch your legs as far as your blanket will cover" which really translates to "live within your means".

A coping strategy that Egyptians used to help those that are in need of relatively large sums of cash may provide some insight. Most Egyptians do not borrow from banks for it is against the Islamic faith to profit of someone's need by collecting or paying interest on a loan. Egyptians rely to some extent on informal cooperatives to raise cash. A group of friends, neighbors or relatives (10 - 20) would form an informal cooperative that is limited to the initial set of members. Each of the members commits to paying a small monthly installment (e.g. $100) with each member of this small group receiving the sum of all the installments in one month. This process lasts for number of months equal to that of the number of members (~1 Year). The cooperative is dissolved after each member has once received the lumped sum ($1000 - $2000). The order in which members receive the lumped sum is agreed upon in the beginning with priority given to those in need. Those that are not in need or are more financially capable usually agree to receive late payments. This is a form of equals getting together to help each other. Those that have today, agree to willingly lose a little, for they know they might be in need tomorrow.

Is the Internet helping or hurting Innovation?

The most precious of human intellectual activity, in my opinion, is innovation. Innovative ideas are hard to come by. The Internet has been widely touted as one of the most influential inventions in the history of mankind. It is hard to disagree with this assertion. However, I cannot help but wonder whether the Internet revolution will have a positive or negative impact over human innovation.

The world was made up of thousands of local communities with different conditions, traditions and ways of living. The variances among the communities were a sure source of a welcomed inconsistency in human thoughts, emotions and ideas. An inconsistency that added color to the intellectual products of human intelligence. Over the years the boundaries among these communities kept falling, but never like today. The Internet has destroyed the protective boundaries around societies in a way that has never been experienced before.

Does the inter-sharing of ideas from all over the globe help us create new ones, or does it just dilute our uniqueness as humans such that we cannot identify or differentiate, any more, our ideas from those of others?

The Internet is a great forum for exchanging ideas, but could there be too much exchange of ideas? With the world becoming a small village, do we run the risk of creating a uniform intellectual environment that could hamper our ability to continue our vibrant intellectual innovation that has relied for so long on our differences as much as our intelligence? Is the Internet driving us towards becoming a blend of humarnets who can finish each other's sentences?

The Internet has made it possible for many to voice their ideas and to interconnect with other humarnets. Is this interconnectivity creating too much chatter that is burying innovative ideas in a flood of worthless and repetitive ones? Is the chatter making it hard to hear even our own voices?

These are questions worth asking even though I am not sure what to do even if the answer is affirmative for I am as addicted and connected to this MATRIX as any of you reading this Blog!

My Plan for Energy Independence

With the news about oil surpassing $106, it is important to think about our energy policy. Environmentalists are against drilling for oil on our soil. The government has demanded changes in the fuel economy for vehicles. These are good objectives, but they are years away and technologically challenging. There sure are some incentives for energy efficiency, but they are voluntary and not yet economically rewarding. Moreover, there will always be many who want to drive the gas guzzlers, overheat their homes and no matter what we do we will get punished for their choices as the price of energy keeps going higher. For that I propose to develop a system for fair energy distribution. Under my proposed plan each family would be given a fixed amount of gas credit, coal credit, etc. based on the number of dependents and how abundant this fuel is in the US. Families that use more of one fuel than alloted would be penalized through an energy tax which is the opposite of the tax credit. At the end of each year, a tax would be levied on families that exceed their quota. This tax can then be used to develop alternative energy sources. This energy tax should be a progressive one. If you are so addicted to energy, you need to pay for it without punishing me for your lifestyle. What do you think?

Middle East Violence - Part II

This is part 2 of my answer to the question of why the consistent violence in the middle east if Islam is a peaceful religion. In the first part I merely gave an account of the major 4 wars in the middle east to which Egypt and Israel were parties and how from the perspective of Egypt they were mostly nationalistic wars. Religion was not completely absent from the picture, however, with the religious claim to the land of Palestine by Israel, but let us continue with discussing the recent rise of radicalism in Egypt.

Sadat, the Egyptian president who made peace with Israel was in some sense responsible for the rise of religious militancy in Egypt. It is said that he encouraged religious groups to emerge and flourish in order to control the tide of communists' movement in Egypt. They were allowed to be active, to recruit within universities, unions, etc. These religious groups were mostly moderates, but the environment was ripe for radicalism to emerge. Sadat's economic policies, long years of wars have made large segments of the society poor, illiterate, desperate and hopeless; creating a fertile ground to incite hatred for the society and to create radicals. These radical groups adopted obscure religious books written by unknowns, at least to the moderates, within the society. By the time Sadat was realizing, the side effect of his plan to fight communism, things were getting out of hand. Radical groups that condemned the whole society have emerged. Those that were not with them were against them. They were willing to kidnap, kill, bomb innocents Muslims and Christians alike in Egypt to try to create public anger to topple the government. Sadat fought back hard, thousands were jailed, tortured and probably more than that. His last days were dark for anyone who dared to disagree with him.

Sadat's demise came on the anniversary of what he considered as the day of his glorious win over Israel. He was assassinated by one of the militants that his policies helped create in Egypt. His death brought emergency laws to Egypt in 1981. Egypt is still under control of these laws until this day. The enormous crackdown on the religious groups, moderate and radical, did not eliminate terrorism and its dangers within Egypt. Terrorist attacks within Egypt occur sparsely and hit any targets especially tourists in order to embarrass the government. In recent years, I have observed that the Egyptian society has slowly tended to become more conservative and more religious. Most women are now wearing Hijab; a scarf covering their hair. Many try to learn more from the Quran and about Islam. This, however, is more of a self-guided return to the religious roots that can actually help fight radicalism within the society.

To sum this part up, political manipulation, economic conditions, hopelessness, oppression and ignorance were and still are responsible for creating radicalism all over the world and not an inherent message of violence in Islam.

Middle East Violence - Part I

I was asked the question if Islam is such a peaceful religion, then why all the wars and terrorism in the middle east. Although I am not a historian or a professional politician, I have lived in the region long enough to understand some of the dynamics that can be linked to its problems. Nothing I would write here could be novel for this issue has been over covered, but I will try to lay it down from the perspective of a regular Egyptian American.

It is hard to know where to start as it started a long time ago when the Egyptian empire that was the envy of the world at that time was getting weak enough for all the greedy neighbors to forcefully snatch part of the Egyptian treasures. Egypt fill victim to numerous invaders that ruled for thousands of years. The latest of these were the British who stayed in Egypt from 1882 until 1954. The same fate was that of most the countries in the middle east, but I will keep the Egyptian perspective as much as I can. Egypt during the period of the occupation was a very secular society. There was always the religious class, but adhering to the religious beliefs did not seem to be that wide spread among the middle class. Although I am not that old to have witnessed this era myself, books, stories and movies do reflect these previous observations. The modern era of wars in the middle east had already started before the British army left Egypt with the 1948 war. This was the first war with Israel. Israel was a newly established country sanctioned by the British on the Palestinian land that was controlled by the British at the time. This war cemented Israel in the area. The second war was in 1956 and it was a reaction to the nationalization of the Suez Canal by the young nationalistic president Nasser. There was no religious roots to that war in which Israel, France and Britian attacked Egypt to regain control of the canal. The war failed to achieve its objectives and established Nasser as an Arabic nationalistic hero. Nasser's second war with Israel was the 6 days war in 1967. A war that was and still is a disaster to the Arabic countries. Israel took control of the west bank, Gaza, Sinai desert and Parts of Syria during this war. Apart from Sinai, Israel still controls this seized land until today. This again was not a religious war, but rather a political war. This is when it starts getting more interesting as religion is mixed with politics. Israel now seized control of the holy city of Jerusalem. A city that is claimed holy by all the 3 religions of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. From the perspective of Egypt, it was a big insult to lose this miserably and have the Sinai desert under occupation. There still was no large religious movements in Egypt during this period 1967 - 1973. Nasser died and Sadat became the president. He continued the efforts of building the Egyptian military to avenge the disaster of 1967. In October 6th, 1973 the fourth major war erupted as Egypt tried to win back the lost land and the Egyptians were on the move. They were winning the war against Israel, but with the help of the US and mistakes from the Egyptians, the tide was turning and the Egyptians had to agree to a call to halt the war. Sadat realizing that militarily it does not seem possible to win back the land, he started negotiating with Israel. A step that eventually returned Sinai to Egypt, but was also a move that isolated Egypt from the Arab world. Sadat was a hero in the western world, but was a very controversial figure within Egypt. It may not be known to many that Sadat may have been the main mentor for religious radicalism in Egypt which led to his eventual demise in 1981. This will be discussed in part II, but to sum this part, it can be seen that the major wars in the middle east were driven mostly by nationalistic drives, self-defense and self-preservation rather than religious beliefs.