Familiar with Your customs, trends in community…? Have another view (Lebanese)?
Posted on: October 21, 2011
Are you Familiar with customs, traditions, new trends in your community? Have another look
I received a link, and I am sharing and discussing (I edited slightly, and sentences in parentheses are mine). You may read my post to comprehend that I am much harsher than this list of displayed complaints https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/world-community-mocking-lebanese–what-is-cultured-my-ass/
The list looks like a laundry list, though categorized. Most of the items in customs, culture, traditions, and trends are common around the world, a few are Lebanon based, but we love to revert everything as particularly Lebanese…
Picture By Ralph Hajj ( In Guinness Book of Biggest humus dish?)
General Facts:
1) On Lebanese society mutually imitates:
– Everybody is observing you and you are observing everybody. (I wish anyone would pay any attention to me, in a positive manner)
– People don’t go out to have a good time: they go out to show the community that they’re having a good time. (Not many people are that happy, even the elite 1% class is in a morose mood)
– People don’t buy goods because they like them, but because they think other people like them. (A few examples will go a long way. General statements are always wrong!)
– Fashion and collective hysteria coincide.
– Incapacity to keep up with your neighbors’ level of consumption relegates a human being to nothingness or otherness, see Hegel on otherness. (If you stumble on a section of Hegel’s notion of otherness, please forward)
– A Lebanese will go into debt to buy something he doesn’t need in order to impress people he doesn’t like.
2) On this continuing Civil Wars:
– The (I-have-a-more-expensive-cellular-than-you wars)
– The (I-have-more-SriLankian-maids-than-you wars)
– The (I-have-a-new-Mercedes wars)
– The (My-Leather-Jacket-is-better-than-yours wars).
3) On Lebanese Contributions to Ethics:
– A Lebanese has the right to break the law if he sees others breaking the law.
– A Lebanese has the right to throw garbage out of a car window if he sees others throwing garbage from a car’s window.
– A Lebanese has the right to smoke in a non-smoking area if he sees others smoking in a non-smoking area.
– A Lebanese knows that it is acceptable to bribe officials when he sees others bribing officials.
– A Lebanese has the right to run a red light if he sees others running a red light.
The Lebanese Constitution:
4) On political trends and traditions
– A politician will always pass power to his eldest son.
– A politician will always give his family members and his staunch supporters government jobs.
– Because of an outside conspiracy, Lebanon has the highest rate of useless public servants in this part of the universe.
– A politician has a duty to enter into conflicts of interest.
– A Lebanese will always vote for a candidate from his village even if he knows that he is a corrupt idiot.
– A Lebanese politician will always promise to fight corruption.
5) On Lebanese Modern Culture:
– Lebanese modern culture is about conformity to Western ideals and the careful removal of every bit of national originality.
– A Lebanese feels superior to other Lebanese if the goods he consumes do not come from Lebanon.
– A Lebanese has an inherent contempt for everything his country produces.
6) On Poverty and the Class System:
– In Lebanese society, contempt for the poor is metaphysical.
– The Lebanese class system is fluid and based on the monetary worth of the individual:
– The Lebanese differentiate themselves very rigidly from those they consider as being part of the lower class.
– In courtship, a Lebanese man will use a woman’s poverty as a bargaining chip.
– A Lebanese woman feels insulted if a poorer man asks her out.
– Lebanese society has a caste system in terms of nationalities: SriLankian maids are somewhere on the bottom level, but slightly above garbage, whereas White Europeans and French are slightly below God.
– A Lebanese will treat a world-renowned Nobel winning Pakistani astrophysicist as garbage, and will kiss the foot of a French imbecile (if he happens to have a nice Parisian accent).
7) On Conspiracy theory:
– Every single wrong in Lebanon is caused by an outside conspiracy.
– A Lebanese is not responsible for the massacres during the civil war, even when he was the one doing the shooting.
– Members of Lebanese society will condemn confessional systems as practiced by other confessions, while cheerfully practicing it with other confessions.
– It is always their fault.
8) On Lebanese Superiority:
The Lebanese are superior.
– Did you know that Shakespeare was actually Lebanese? (original name of Sheikh Zbeir)
– Did you know that the Lebanese invented the alphabet, and not those slightly above garbage morons from the Indian sub-continent? (I am not sure on this ejaculation…)
– The Lebanese have an inborn knowledge of every single subject in the universe, including medicine and philosophy.
– Every single Lebanese is a board-certified doctor. Any Lebanese will prescribe you antibiotics, anti-depressant and sleeping pills if you ask them nicely.
– Because of an outside conspiracy, Lebanon has one of the highest rates of medicinal drug addiction in the world.
– A Lebanese becomes a philosopher after he reads “The Prophet” by K. Gibran. “The Prophet” is the second greatest book in history just after the Bible. Did you know that Gibran was Lebanese?
9) On Marriage:
– A Lebanese man will never marry a woman if she is not a virgin.
– A Lebanese woman will never have sex with a man if she thinks that he is “marriage material”. (That is funny but a highly astute sexual tactics)
– All Lebanese wives were virgins before marriage. (The question is never asked anyway).
– The marriage of a woman is the affair of the entire extended family and of the neighbors, along with the varied pressures.
– An unmarried woman with a Ph.D. is a failure. (So is a man)
Note: “The UN’s Special Rapporteur on modern-day slavery is urging Lebanon to address the plight of its domestic workers. Gulnara Shahinian recounted conditions of the migrants she met in Lebanon; sexual abuse, contract violations, unfair hours, and domestic servitude regularly punctuated their experiences.
She recognized the measures Lebanon has taken – including establishing a hotline and committee to manage migrant issues – but advised much more direct and responsive legislation to curb migrant mistreatment. Shahinian classified migrants’ legal status as essentially “invisible,” unprotected from the reaches of law.
The absence of meaningful employment standards, regulation, or enforcement practices subjects domestic workers to economic, psychological and physical abuse….”
Adonis Diaries 
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