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Lebanese stupidity

By Joseph Codsi

 

In the same way as there are today angry Arabs (http://angryarab.blogspot.com/), there are also angry Lebanese. The deadlock between the two camps that are at war in Lebanon, the camp of the government (pro American) and the camp of the opposition (pro Syrian), has caused a great harm to the country. A campaign was launched a few months ago bearing the title: “End the Deadlock”. The problem is that our political leaders are the cause of the deadlock. How can we expect them to end it? Have they not shown so far how incompetent they are?

 

The ease with which the Lebanese people side with one camp against the other, and engage among themselves in passionate debates that are one-sided and highly emotional does not help. Even the civil community that is well educated, open minded, secular in its orientation, and opposed to all the forms fanaticism can take has been unable to resist taking sides. All the sectors of the Lebanese society have become highly polarized. The national crisis that has started more than a year ago has become highly ideological, therefore passionate and very irrational at times. Something has to be done. Lebanon is falling apart. The major State institutions are paralyzed or totally vacant (Parliament is out of order, and we have been unable to elect a new President for the Republic).

Our political leaders have made it perfectly clear so far that they are at the roots of the crisis, and that they are radically incompetent to resolve it. We, the people, and more specifically those of us who consider themselves as part of the civil society, have two possible choices: either we remain passive and pray for some divine intervention, or we act on our own.

 

“What can we do?” – I hear you say in a timid voice. The answer is “A lot”. Instead of following our blind leaders, we can become the light and the sure guidance Lebanon needs today to find its way out of total dissolution. The ability to think on our own is all we need. We do not need to be experts in political science or in political theory. Common sense is all that is required.

 

Those who are the misguided followers of our good but blind leaders are not invited. We simply urge them to recover their senses and decide to think critically.  A judge has to be impartial in order to reach a just appraisal of the situation. In our case, impartiality means being equally critical of both sides. But, in order to be just, we must be able to recognize whatever is justified in the respective demands of each side.

 

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How can the deadlock be ended?

 

I think that there are things that can be resolved through dialogue, but that there are other things that cannot. Stupidity begins when we insist that dialogue can resolve all the problems. The dialogue of the deaf is a good illustration of what I mean here. When I get frustrated, I use harsh words. I speak of the impossible dialogue between “sacred monkeys” and “scholarly donkeys”. I know this is not very nice on my part, and that I should amend my language. Here I do not mean to heart people’s feelings. I use those images in order to stress that there are things that cannot be resolved through rational dialogue. No matter how hard we tried, there will always be differences that cannot be overcome. In order to illustrate this point, I take our religious differences as examples. Thousand of years of bitter experience have made it clear that there is no way we can overcome our religious differences. The reason is simple as far as I am concerned. There are, in every religion, many things that are meta-rational. They cannot be discussed rationally. Some theologians use here the word “mystery” in order to refer to what is peculiar about religious faith and reality. Therefore we cannot use rational dialogue to resolve whatever differences exist between, say, Christianity and Islam. This is understood even in our “primitive” culture. This shows that we are not so primitive, after all. We are capable of distinguishing between what is rational and what is meta-rational or beyond human rationality.

 

Our culture fails us, it seems, in the following way. We do not understand that what is true of religious questions can be true of political questions as well, namely when those questions become ideological. Let me explain this point.

 

There are questions with which we can compromise, and questions with which we cannot compromise. Principles fall in the second category. There are principles that are moral or ethical. In most cultures sexual relations outside marriage are taboo. In this case, it will be inappropriate to ask someone to break the taboo. Western culture has gone beyond sexual taboos. But what matters here is how primitive people feel about those things. If we differ with them on this point, there s no way we can bridge our differences. We must agree to disagree.

 

Along the same line, there are Lebanese who are in love with America and Lebanese who are in love with Syria. Those who are pro-American are mostly guided by their political interests. But those who are pro-Syrian go beyond that. They feel that Syria is our big sister, and that we owe her our allegiance. Their allegiance to Syria seems to take precedence over their allegiance to Lebanon. They are clearly guided by what I call “meta-rational” principles. They will not compromise with those principles. If you do not agree with them, or if you insist that Lebanese should be solely guided by the national interests of their country, you will be rejected as traitor to the Arab cause.

 

I call those who are guided by absolute principles “sacred monkeys”. Those who are convinced that siding with America is in the best interests of Lebanon fall in the category of “scholarly donkeys”. They cannot understand that their stubbornness is blowing the country to pieces.

 

In our middle-Eastern culture, we are not capable of democratic tolerance. Either we overcome our political differences by mutual agreement, or we eliminate the other side. What we observe now in Lebanon is the attempt of eliminating those who are on the other side of the ideological divide. So far no side is so overwhelmingly powerful that it can eliminate the other side. Whence the deadlock.

Our intelligentsia as it is represented by all those who have received a Western-style education have a hard time understanding that Lebanon is not and cannot be in the foreseeable future a Western-style democracy. They waste their time trying to change our culture. Those things cannot be changed at will. The best proof is that most of them are siding today with one of the groups that are at war. Instead of changing the culture, they are reverting to the old ways without realizing what they are doing.

 

Since we cannot be a Western-style democracy, I propose to invent our own form of democracy. Here is how.

 

                             

 

Democracy à la libanaise

 

The Lebanese State has two levels, the community level and the national level. The community level is reserved for our religious differences. There are in Lebanon 19 communities that are defined as sects within the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

 

The community system goes back to the way non-Muslims were treated in the Muslim world. Islam recognized the authenticity of Judaism and Christianity. Therefore it tolerated their existence in the Muslim world, and allowed them a very generous amount of autonomy in the administration of their internal affairs.

 

In the Ottoman Empire, the community system was maintained. It was sometimes extended to Muslim minorities who were not Sunni. In the Lebanese mountain, the Druze were treated as a community similar to the Maronite community. After 1861, other Muslim communities that existed in Mount Lebanon, the Chi’at, for example, were represented in the administrative body of that time. The creation of modern Lebanon extended the community system to all the Muslims, including the Sunnis.

The community system is based on the recognition of our major religious differences, and the protection of those differences. Each religious group enjoyed the privilege of being different, and totally independent of the other groups. The religious communities coexisted side by side, and enjoyed the same freedoms regardless of size and importance. The communities enjoyed the freedom to be different and to disagree with each other. In other words, we had a highly democratic system, which recognized our right to be different and to disagree on religious matters.

 

I propose to expand our community system to include in it our ideological differences. Thus we will recognize to those who are in love with America the right to have her as a mistress and to make love to her as often as they wish, provided they keep her in their community harem. The same privilege will be granted to those who are in love with Syria. On the national level, the Republic must remain our sole national mistress. No concubines can share her space or boss her around.

 

Our ideological differences will remain irresolvable, but there will be no need to resolve them. Those who are not compatible should not be forced to marry together in the first place. But they can coexist peacefully in total divorce. This is a good analogy, provided we understand that our communities coexist in divorce, not in marriage. Divorce affects the relations between the various communities, on the one hand, and should affect, on the other hand, the relations between the community level and the national level. Unfortunately this is not how we understand our system. We tend to confuse what ought to be kept separate. Confusion is characteristic of what is primitive. Separation is characteristic of what is more mature.

 

Those who are madly in love with a mistress cannot be expected to act rationally. As long as they do not attempt to move their harem from the community level to the national level and impose their mistress to all of us in total contempt for our feelings, I have no problem with their passionate love.

In this way, we can live side by side, free to be different and to think differently, on the community level, but united under the political umbrella of a Republic that remains religiously and ideologically neutral.

 

The major defect of our community system as it is understood today is that there is no strict separation between the community level and the national level. The communities are constantly invading the national level and corrupting the functioning of the Republic. This must stop, if we want to create a modern State, that is to say a State that functions properly. In order to function properly, our State must be neutral in its foreign and domestic policy in relation to our insurmountable differences. Lebanon cannot survive if it degenerates into a place for Christian and Muslim wars, or for ideological warfare between the hellish forces that shake the region and divide the Lebanese.

 

                                                  

 

A skeleton State

 

The State will be reduced to providing and administering the most basic services that are necessary for modern life. Its primary task will be to give us a sound infrastructure: roads, electricity, water, communications, law and order, political stability and a sound basis for economic growth. We must do away with the notion, inherited from simplistic communist and socialist propaganda, that the State is a form of divine Providence, a sacred cow that is there to provide us with what we need. This conception of the State is catastrophic in our primitive culture. Instead of respecting the cow, our people hunt it and bleed it to death. I have no objection to considering the State as a sacred cow, provided nobody touched it and nobody paid attention to it as we see it passing through the streets of major Indian cities, barely surviving on sub-standard diet. The function of the State is to create what is conducive to economic growth and prosperity, not to hand out milk and honey to those who act as if they were the exclusive owners of our sacred cow.

 

In our community system, social services are of the competence of the communities. This is how things were long before the creation of the Republic. Let the communities help those who are in need. They know their people and are less prone to letting them cheat on them. In our primitive culture, cheating on the State is “halâl” (permitted); cheating on the communities is “harâm” (forbidden). Even in the West, welfare systems are abused. The abuse is likely to be much higher in our primitive culture.

 

A lot of other things will have to be changed, if we want to invent a system of government that takes into account our political culture. But what is urgently needed today is a viable solution to the political crisis. We must give priority to this point. It will not be easy to move our respective harems from the national level to the community level, so as to free the Republic from the contradictory demands of the two sides who are at war. The Lebanese Republic must follow a policy of strict neutrality in relation to all the ideological questions that divide us, on the international or on the national levels.

 

The immediate reaction of most Lebanese to this proposition is marked by skepticism. We do not believe we can emancipate ourselves from the formidable pressures that are exerted by foreign powers. This is particularly true if we consider the vital reliance of our Lebanese factions on foreign interventions. We have that in our cultural blood. I do not think we can change our cultural blood, and I do not say that we must do so. On the contrary, I am for respecting Mother Nature even when she is primitive. What I am saying is that we can be primitive in some areas, and evolved in other areas. The important thing is to free the Republic from our pre-rational feelings. Thus a separation will be made between our instincts, our feelings, our uncontrollable urges, on the one hand, and what is rational, on the other hand. Religion and ideology fall in the category of what is pre-rational or meta-rational. The administration of the Republic, on the other hand, falls in the category of common sense, fair treatment of all, and intelligent management of our resources. No compromise and no dialogue are possible in relation to whatever is pre-rational or meta-rational. Compromise and dialogue are possible in relation to the administration of the Republic.

 

What I am proposing here is not the easy way. On the contrary it is known as the narrow and difficult way. The easy way leads to chaos and dissolution. The difficult way leads to order and prosperity. This is the choice the Lebanese people must make today. We can continue to live in a permanent state of crisis, and we can live in harmony in spite of our religious and ideological differences. It will suffice to confine our differences to the community level. This is how I would create a modern republican system that takes into account our primitive culture. The good thing about this proposal is that, if we adopt it, we cease to be primitive at the national level. Those who must remain primitive are welcome to do so, but only on the community level.

 

This is my theory. Let us see if it makes sense to you. In order to proceed logically, we should discuss the theory first. We will see how it can be sold to the Lebanese people at a second stage.

 

The author’s invitation to join this critical and impartial approach to the Lebanese crisis

 

If what you have read so far makes sense to you, I invite you to join my discussion group on the net. Here is the address:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/betise-libanaise/

Open this page, sign in, and open the “Files” section. Download the articles that are posted there so you can read them quietly and at your leisure. You can print them and send some of them to your friends. You can ask questions, critique some of the ideas that are expressed in them, and make suggestions. Just send your emails to the following address:

betise-libanaise@yahoogroups.com

I have given the group the French name “bêtise libanaise” (Lebanese stupidity) in order to show the critical nature of our project. In our primitive culture, criticism is often equated with insult. This is the way the rich and powerful, who are in control of our political system, protect their turf and hold on to their privileges.

Stupidity is not something we wish for ourselves. Nobody wants to be stupid. Most of the times, those who act stupidly think that they are acting intelligently. Most of the times also, those who act stupidly without being conscious of it are, by most common standards, very intelligent people. They can be highly respected professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, architects, journalists, university professors, theologians, economists, and politicians who enjoy a great deal of popularity. They are stupid only in some respects and unknowingly. The purpose of our discussion group is to show how this hidden stupidity works in Lebanon.

It will help to engage in our discussions with some sense of humor. The ability of laughing at ourselves is a sign of good mental health.