Archive for April 11th, 2011
Beyond this Lie of Statehood: Lebanese youth want to earn the Citizenship!
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 11, 2011
The State of Lebanon is the most enduring lie of the UN, more enduring than Libya or Bahrain or Sultana of Brunei… This non-State of Lebanon is more disquieting to the “Lebanese” than the foreigners trying to comprehend and wondering: “Who is a Lebanese?”
The State of Lebanon is a highly conservative society for a simple reason: After a century of being called Lebanon, in one form or another, the successive governments have not yet found a good reason for their existence.
Once a central civic institution (not necessarily the government) has the power to witness and record our birth, marriage, divorce, and death, the “Lebanese” may witness a government body taking shape.
Once the power of identifying our social identity is removed from the clerics of the 18 recognized religious sects, the Lebanese may start planning for a stable future.
Lebanon is the ultimate among fictitious States, recognized by the UN. The people living in Lebanon have never been citizens of a real State: Our passports, ID cards…are a mockery, a substitute to what define a citizen in a nation.
Citizenship connote a central civic government, democratically elected under equitable and fair election laws, representing all the strata of society; a State with a stable and respected Constitution that does not practically change at every election. The State of Lebanon does not satisfy these criteria.
Can you bestow the attribute of citizenship in an absolute monarchy, a theocratic regime (Lebanon is a multi-theocratic State), a one-party dictatorship? I doubt it. In these forms of governments, you may talk of chattel, of members of a clan, tribes, feudal lord, war lord, or religious sect…but never a citizen of a nation!
The people living in “Lebanon” are living a nasty lie since the turn of the last century: Actually, if you need to attach an image to the word “lie”, you cannot be far from reality by saying: “What is the State of Lebanon?”
Clerics in Lebanon are lies; politicians are lies, traders are lies, entrepreneurs are lies, bureaucrats are lies, technocrats are lies, and university graduates are lies. There are no worthy civic institutions in Lebanon.
There are no worthy academic institutions in Lebanon. There are no worthy research institutions in Lebanon. There are no worthy planning institutions in Lebanon. There is no serious parliament in Lebanon. There is no serious legal institution. There are no government in Lebanon: Just care taker ministers awaiting the appointed Prime Minister to forming a government.
Lebanon is defined as chaos attracting lies and repulsing rational ideas. Lebanon is the ideal location to witness, study, and research the interactions of chaotic systems evolving among versatile kinds of lies, functioning in a closed structure. An exit steam valve was opened for the extremely agitated mass of people, living in Lebanon, to have the freedom of immigrating to any place, enjoying a modicum of rational balance and civic regulations.
There are no Lebanese citizens: There are people carrying recognized passport by the UN who are allowed to leave and settle among communities having learned to converse and communicate with decency and respect.
Every generation in Lebanon got to the streets demonstrating and raising the banner: “Down with the sectarian and the multi-theocratic regime.” Every generation has been chanting: “Badna nghayer al nizam al taeffi”.
Eight decades later, the new generation is back to the street demanding reforms and change: The youth are demanding the “Impossible”; they want to earn a Citizenship! The youth want to feel belonging to a State, feeling real citizens like so many other 193 States.
Would this generation make a break through and drive Lebanon to a respected State that respect the demands of its “citizens”?
The horror, the living: What is Fear again?
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 11, 2011
- In: Essays | health/medicine | philosophy | Safety | social articles
- Leave a Comment
Fear, this persisting wave battering the wall that I erected to contain it. I keep building successive walls, many layers of walls: What if the first wall goes down?
And fear is many. And fear increases in number, versatility, complexity, and intensity: a cry, a howling, a hissing, a growl in the dark…Fear of gun shots, bell tolling…Fear from a feeling of distress, a pain, a primary fear, a collective fear, a cultured fear, an acquired fear, an evolved fear… Newly emerging fears as we get married, have children, the need to survive as a family… Fear of questions, of inquiries, fear of answers that generate more questions, that require more need for deeper reflection, fear of delving in a resolution path…
The more questions the more the answers, but also the more of questions and inevitable increase of fear…
Fear of being viewed as crazy by the community, unfit among the “normal people”, fear of old age, fear of the sign ordering us to Stop from the active life, fear of solitude, of isolation, of the long night, of winter, of the cold, of mosquitoes, of the bright sunlight…
Fear of the knowledge we are immortal, that we will recombine in a stone, a raw material, uranium, a snake, a cock roach… Fear of total still silence, precursor of a cataclysm…Fear of the silence of Sunday evening, precursor of the terrible Monday morning…
I think that the energy we spend on building walls to warding off fear could move mountains.
Only those fleeting moments of complete surprises relax our overwhelming array of fear: The monotony of the living has been broken and that is proof enough that life goes on.
Surprises such as a box on the nose, on the stomach, a blow, the blowing of the wind in our face, the sudden storm catching up with us, the lightening, a sudden rain-pour as we leisurely walked…Surprises of a friendly hand extended by a stranger, a winning smile expressing openness, a memory from childhood, a brutal emotion, an awakening to a brilliant sun, a silence when we are at peace…
We all comprehend that if we were not destined to die, all our behavior would have changed. Who would care about religion, health social security, hospitals, planning, psychoanalysis,…The boredom of immortality, the emptiness of eternity! The horror of time losing its potency and constraints to achieve.
All that I want is to be guaranteed say, one hundred years of health; safe of handicapping pain and a functional life: good eyesight, good hearing…. All that I want is to be guaranteed that I may change my mind, anytime I decide at any age, to getting on the business of acquiring knowledge and get engaged for improved human development indicators or the right to life, safe of famine, curable diseases, no infantile death, education for all, heath facilities to all. All I want is to not be afraid to struggle for basic human rights for free expressions, free gathering, association…If I fail, I demand to be reincarnated as dog shit!
If I were immortal, I’ll keep jumping in the void: Eventually, I’ll learn to fly, or dive.
Adonis Diaries 