BC's May 2011 Edition
May 1, 2011
Time has a way of leaving things behind. And there is no need to remind anyone that Time is remorselessly egalitarian: when it wants to leave something or someone behind, it does not look to title, ancestry, or even birth status he story of an exp Arab traveller roaming the desert looking for the true love. An exciting thriller full of emotions and full of suspens in a world empty.
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The view from Arabia on political, social, economic, cultural and historic issues by Dr. Mohammad Talal Al-Rasheed
BC's February 2012 edition
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02 Feb, 2012
Author: Dr. Mohammad T. Al-Rasheed
Let us quote Freud even though it
is not fashionable to do so these days. He says, and I paraphrase here, that
man uses his unconscious aspect of the mind (quite a powerful tool according to
him) to repress whatever he does not like. Meaning, we unconsciously suppress
our undesirable desires, truths we don't like, facts we disagree with, and even
people we like to hate but dare not.
Good intentions, to Freud, meant
nothing in the scheme of things. I agree with this since the road to hell is
paved with nothing more than just that: good intentions. What humans feel and
experience matters, whether acted upon or not, since it invariably affects
their psychological and mental health.
Basically, if we take Freud
seriously, he is saying that if we do not find someone to repress us, we do it
to ourselves. Herein lays the rub as far as I am concerned. With the Arab
Spring completing its first year (while events have not slacked nor come to
full fruition), and other nations taking up the cue and demonstrating against
whatever they do not like (Occupy Wall Street and other movements), might one
ask the question: Is humanity finally sick of repression, be it psychological
or political?
Freud would answer no to that
question, simply because he believes the mechanism is in our genes and cannot
be altered. We suppress our emotions, work on suppressing others and
subjugating them to our own power, and keep the pressure up internally and
externally to achieve nothing more than the satisfaction of a gene found in us
by a quirk of nature. This is a dangerous conclusion since it leads to personal
and public tyranny.
We know a lot about tyranny in
this part of the world. We almost breathe it daily. We take it to heights never
reached by human endeavor. While a politician in the West would impeach another
for adultery while he is doing exactly the same thing at the same time, we have
people here hording billions (more than the budgets of certain small countries)
when they are well over eighty and still ask for more of the people. The first
is reprehensible on every count, the latter is mind-boggling. How on earth are
you going to spend this money and when?
What is worse, you see them
publically praying and supplicating themselves to the Almighty without a hint
of guilt or even irony. When I see such things I simply wonder how they manage
to sleep at night. Do they go the way Michael Jackson did with the help of
dangerous medication? Well, if that is the case, the unfortunate entertainer
(through his earned money which equals some of theirs) did not manage it right.
He should have taken advice from our people around here especially when he had
spent some time in this area running away from one thing or another.
Freud might give some solace to
academically inclined minds with his analysis, but the facts we deal with here
far outreach his genius. When human dignity is trampled, Justice is corrupt and
no longer a refuge, economic parity is a slogan never put to practice, and
finally our unquenchable intention of harming others with or without reason,
the outcome of our lot is pretty much determined.
From day to day we live on verbal
sedatives that come in the guise of promises of 'reform, 'inshalla,' 'give me
another chance and I'll make it right,' 'one needs more than thirty years to
implement change,' and so on. You wake up the next day, next week, next year,
next decade, and you find that you are still where you are, if not a bit
regressed in progress.
Finally, you are left with the
earnest hope that while sauntering blithely the face of this earth, the earth
has not changed texture when you go 'sleep with your fathers'.
Source: Bahrain Confidentail Magazine
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COMMENT TITLE
May 1, 2011
Have you ever heard the Latin phrase "acta est fabula"? The meaning is easy enough. Acta is, of course, act and fabula means finished. So the 'Act is finished' is the translation. It was more of a proverb until the highly gifted French author
Monthly
03 May, 2012
I should think valor, dignity, human audacity should make these people somewhat timorous of hanging in there when the cycle of time says: withdraw.
Source: Published by Bahrain Confidential Magazine
Number of comments: 0
Published Monthly
03 Apr, 2012
The most immediate power, however, that you meet every day, is your immediate superior, be they a teacher at school, a boss at work, or even a step-mother at home.
Source: Bahrain Confidential Magazine
Number of comments: 0
Monthly by Bahrain Confidential Magazine
07 Mar, 2012
If ever there was a hat in one's feather, or is it a feather in one's hat --one never knows dealing with French diplomacy-- this is it.
Source: Bahrain Confidentail Magazine
Number of comments: 0
February 2012 - Monthly
02 Feb, 2012
We know a lot about tyranny in this part of the world. We almost breathe it daily.
Source: Bahrain Confidentail Magazine
Number of comments: 0
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