Reality between explanation and justification

First posted on my short-lived blog Tharwalizations.

Our attempt to explain the reality around us neither justifies nor consecrates it. Rather, it is only a necessary instrument that can enable us to better deal with it, its causes and consequences, and its impact on our lives. Consequently, our description of diversity in our region and of the rising ethnic tension in it is only meant to make sense of it and to enable us to better deal with it and with the challenges it poses for all of us.

The all too real need

First posted on my short-lived blog Tharwalizations.

Nationalism, Baathism, Islamism, whateverism, etc, indeed, the various isms that have swept across the region in the late 90^th and early 20^th Centuries onward have been nothing but a betrayal of its amazing ethnic diversity and all the intermixing that has been taking place for centuries. What we need is something new, a new idea of who we are, a new conception, no matter how vague, that can allow us to celebrate our differences and turn them into a source of strength rather than trouble and internecine warfare and mayhem. WE need to knit ourselves again into new fabric that can be reinserted back into the civilized world, for all our sakes.

The Whirling Dervish of the Apocalypse!

There are many young people starving for hope in Lebanon, Syria and across the region, and Hassan Nasrallah’s latest speech was aimed squarely at them. No. it did not offer them hope in the real sense for which they are aspiring, jobs and such, but it did promise them victory, and in their desperate and empty lives, the promise of victory and the call of battle can indeed excite, especially when the leader involved seems to have a certain hard-won credibility in this regard. Continue reading →

Heresies, Public & Private!

The reason I tread lightly in the political field is because it is, in essence, only a manifestation of the real problems in our part of the world, most of which tend to be not simply social but psychological in nature.And since such problems, due to their very intricate nature and the fact that we have to work on both the individual and collective levels simultaneously, cannot be dealt with in matter of days or months and tend to require years, if not decades, to be handled effectively, seeking political fixes to these problems is nothing short of idiotic. Continue reading →