In the poem “This is Cairo” by the poet Sayed Hijab, there is a line that says, “Our life here is a hotbed… and a question has no answer.” This line sums up in its brevity the crisis of the Egyptian and Arab mind that has been exacerbating since the end of the 19th century until now, which is represented by its concentration around and in front of the paths. Closed, and searched for answers to the question: Why did we fall behind? And why did we advance, which was posed by Shakib Arslan! Dead ends! It is a closed question to which there is no answer except general, liquid, and loose answers that reproduce themselves and never answer anything because it is a static mind that seeks answers that it can rely on, while the basic problem is these feverish desires that are fond of the culture of ready-made answers, which reproduce from the religious transmission mind. The ideology – semi-liberal, semi-Marxist – is estranged from objective reality and is full of pre-fabricated illusions and myths. The mind of ready-made answers, not the mind of the culture of questions, which stimulates criticism and questioning, and denies easy answers that lead to their death, without providing open ways for Arab societies and their development, and liberating them from both inherited and contemporary restrictions, whatever their political, cultural, or mythical nature, Or a value that perpetuates complex historical backwardness.
One of the handicaps of the one-dimensional mind is to glorify the concepts of cultural particularities, constants, and originality according to their significance and past contexts in the way they are presented in transmission discourses, whatever they may be, and to consider them an organic part of the “Arab personality,” as if there is one Arab personality!
Even with the end of the concept of national personality in sociological studies! We are still reproducing a terminological device that has escaped in the social sciences in our world because we do not follow from a critical perspective the developments of global thought and its various transformations. All societies have their own characteristics, and we are not unique in our characteristics. The one-dimensional mind in control is a mind that is imprisoned and handicapped, both psychologically structurally, and politically because it sees the world through the views of the West, and not from the perspectives of multiple cultures, in emerging Asia, Africa and Latin America, and because some of it is fond of American culture and lifestyle, and that Arab forms of consciousness – according to Maxim Rodinson, in his presentation of contemporary Arab ideology, must be God Al-Aroui – “based on the social history of the West, according to Al-Aroui, and in Rodinson’s opinion, “these Arab forms of consciousness should be understood based on the social development of the Eastern world itself.”
The West’s theories of the Arab mind are dominated by simplifications, generalizations, ambiguity, and some myths that deify this mind – as if it were one -, and at the same time, the West’s hope for the non-Western world will remain for a long time dominated by simplistic myths that have many advantages on many different levels, according to Rodinson. This observation is embodied in the approaches of some experts in the region in the United States, Britain and Europe regarding the countries of the Arab region, and that their borders are unnatural, and were planned after the colonial Sykes-Picot agreement, and that they must be modified and are not final! Hence, this geopolitical and historical approach affects the Palestinian issue and the settlement expansion of Israeli colonialism, not to mention that it is considered the face of the West in the region! This is evident in their positions supporting the war of extermination against the Gaza Strip and Palestinian civilians.
From here, the objective need for double criticism appears – according to Abdelkabir Al-Khatibi – and this can only be achieved by raising the status of a free critical mind free from any shackles, whatever they may be. The mind of questions, the mind of demolishing closed mental structures, dismantling positivist myths and absolute ideas, adhering to relative ideas, and criticizing them. The mind of demolition to build, and the dismantling of negative social values that hinder the liberation of individual and semi-collective social and political consciousness from some of its false illusions!
The transition in education from a culture of memorization, repetition, and indoctrination methods to a culture of questions, criticism, and dialogue is part of the process of liberating the imprisoned mind. There is also a need to shift towards more advanced sciences, especially artificial intelligence and natural sciences, and to reconsider the large and dense numbers that study social sciences, but do not find room for them in the new, emerging, and changing labor markets in our world.
There is a need to liberate educational policy and its curricula from the value judgments of transmission, and in the lesson about lesson from the majority of unqualified teachers throughout the Arab world, and to develop religious education from transmission to reason, and from questions and answers of the past to questions of the present and the future, and to liberate the religious field from the dominance of Politics, its independence and renewal, from positive religiosity and its implications to the purity and depth of individual religiosity, and confronting the myths attributed to religion, from popular religiosity and populism in Arab societies.
Liberating the mind is the basic premise for liberating society and the individual together, and criticizing totalitarianism and authoritarianism, and their dangerous effects on the backwardness of our Arab societies. This requires studying both of them, their history in every Arab case, their social roots, and their repercussions represented in the collapse of the industrialization movement, the decline of production, and the leap into the world of consumption. Excess in countries of both ease and hardship, increasing social gaps, between those who are at the top of the social system and the majority of other social forces, and increasing poverty rates.
A free critical mind represents a necessity in criticizing discourses glorifying the past in politics, culture, and the arts because critical approaches to history constitute one of the most prominent engines of mental, social, and political development. Some approaches to glorifying thinkers, artists, and politicians who have passed away constitute a reflection of the inability in the present to transcend their experiences and achievements, regardless of their value and importance in the history of Arab societies.
Some of these discourses glorifying the historical, political and cultural heritage prevail in most Arab societies and the media, and some of them are due to the influence of “nationalisms” in the process of formation, in the countries that emerged after colonialism – Dr.
The West’s theories of the Arab mind are dominated by simplifications, generalizations, ambiguity, and some myths that deify this mind – as if it were one -, and at the same time, the West’s hope for the non-Western world will remain for a long time dominated by simplistic myths that have many advantages on many different levels, according to Rodinson. This observation is embodied in the approaches of some experts in the region in the United States, Britain and Europe regarding the countries of the Arab region, and that their borders are unnatural, and were planned after the colonial Sykes-Picot agreement, and that they must be modified and are not final! Hence, this geopolitical and historical approach affects the Palestinian issue and the settlement expansion of Israeli colonialism, not to mention that it is considered the face of the West in the region! This is evident in their positions supporting the war of extermination against the Gaza Strip and Palestinian civilians.
From here, the objective need for double criticism appears – according to Abdelkabir Al-Khatibi – and this can only be achieved by raising the status of a free critical mind free from any shackles, whatever they may be. The mind of questions, the mind of demolishing closed mental structures, dismantling positivist myths and absolute ideas, adhering to relative ideas, and criticizing them. The mind of demolition to build, and the dismantling of negative social values that hinder the liberation of individual and semi-collective social and political consciousness from some of its false illusions!
The transition in education from a culture of memorization, repetition, and indoctrination methods to a culture of questions, criticism, and dialogue is part of the process of liberating the imprisoned mind. There is also a need to shift towards more advanced sciences, especially artificial intelligence and natural sciences, and to reconsider the large and dense numbers that study social sciences, but do not find room for them in the new, emerging, and changing labor markets in our world.
There is a need to liberate educational policy and its curricula from the value judgments of transmission, and in the lesson about lesson from the majority of unqualified teachers throughout the Arab world, and to develop religious education from transmission to reason, and from questions and answers of the past to questions of the present and the future, and to liberate the religious field from the dominance of Politics, its independence and renewal, from positive religiosity and its implications to the purity and depth of individual religiosity, and confronting the myths attributed to religion, from popular religiosity and populism in Arab societies.
Liberating the mind is the basic premise for liberating society and the individual together, and criticizing totalitarianism and authoritarianism, and their dangerous effects on the backwardness of our Arab societies. This requires studying both of them, their history in every Arab case, their social roots, and their repercussions represented in the collapse of the industrialization movement, the decline of production, and the leap into the world of consumption. Excess in countries of both ease and hardship, increasing social gaps, between those who are at the top of the social system and the majority of other social forces, and increasing poverty rates.
A free critical mind represents a necessity in criticizing discourses glorifying the past in politics, culture, and the arts because critical approaches to history constitute one of the most prominent engines of mental, social, and political development. Some approaches to glorifying thinkers, artists, and politicians who have passed away constitute a reflection of the inability in the present to transcend their experiences and achievements, regardless of their value and importance in the history of Arab societies.
Some of these discourses of glorification of the historical, political and cultural heritage prevail in most Arab societies and the media, and some of them are due to the influence of “patriotism” in the process of formation, in the countries that emerged after colonialism – countries of financial ease and some countries of hardship – where the ruling political classes support discourses of glorification. To produce nationalism – except Egypt and Morocco – and with it some populism prevails, in real life, and in digital life, where the common people of what is metaphorically called “intellectuals” and others go to feed the fragile nationalism and populism by attacking some other Arab peoples, who played roles. It is important in the history of the region, in terms of its precedence in modernization, some premature modernity, and political experiments, whatever their results, which lead to the growth of a culture of hatred and anti-cultural anti-Arabism.
The dominant one-dimensional mind is still imprisoned by its lack of critical interaction with the conditions and causes of complex Arab historical backwardness, and separated from its objective reality and the reality of our changing world, because it is a “day to day” mind, and therefore it cannot produce liberating knowledge for our Arab societies, and it is still far away. About the lesson of an approach to the experiences of the Asian rise, and away from other changes in Africa and Latin America, but rather the transformations within the highly developed Western countries. The one-dimensional mind is still far from criticizing political and religious populism, and from critical engagement with Western minds, which still draw inspiration from some of its intellectual production in the current and after it has surpassed it.
There is a need to be liberated from neoliberal economic thought, and to criticize the financial mind – the public finance mind – which has exacerbated the economic and social problems in the Arab countries of hardship. Without a transition from the financial mind to the development mind, we will face major problems, because the developmental political mind contributes to criticizing the economic and social conditions. Development solutions are inspired by comparative and national experiences and the reasons for their historical failure, and they provide Arab economic thought with new ideas that are compatible with objective reality.
There is a need to liberate the Arab mind from its illusions and one-sided views in all areas of our lives, and we will not be able to get out of the dead ends without liberating the mind and the individual from the shackles.
Source: Al Ahram
Copyrights to the author
