Q&A with Shereen El Feki: A glimpse of Arab society in a globalizing world – TED Blog, Dec 2009
…what’s interesting now is the fact that people in other cultures, and again I’m speaking specifically of the Arab world, are aware of what is happening elsewhere in the world, particularly the young generation which speaks some English or at least can read English, is on the net, knows what is going on in the outside world. And the real challenge now, in my view, is in a sense for the West also because why is it that people continue to do things differently? Before we could say, “ah, well they don’t know how we live, and when we show them that’s how they’ll live.” But the reality now is that young people know the score in the West. They know what happens, but they make different choices, and those choices are not based on ignorance. Those choices are based on information. And that’s, I think, a real challenge for people in the West to really accustom themselves to — that not everyone wants to live the way that Westerners do.
There is a sense here, because I grew up in Canada and I worked in the UK, that the West has sort of blazed a trail for the world to follow… that there is this model, we’re all going to converge on it, and that will be that. In particular this model that exists in the West places religion in a certain place. And it by and large relegates religion to something which is almost like the muzak of society — it’s there, occasionally you may tune in when you have nothing better to do, but it’s certainly sort of background noise to life in the West.
That is a fundamental difference to what is happening in the Arab world. And that young people, all people, but young people in particular have this intense, intense sense of faith and they cling to it and they believe it is a source of strength, not a barrier, is I think possibly an obstacle for Westerners to really understanding how society is developing. It’s often presented when Westerners talk about Islam or the Arab world; they somehow see Islam as a step backward. So when they see women who are covered, for example, they think it’s somehow a step backward. To Arabs and many of my friends and my family members, it’s a logical step forward.
So religion is one issue — the role of religion in society. The other huge — I don’t want to characterize these as barriers; they’re really just very big differences — is the role of the individual. Largely, the model in the West in society is the autonomous individual. The individual is almost like the atom of society. It’s the unit of society. And that’s how Western society has developed over the past few centuries. It’s very different in the Arab region. People don’t necessarily conceive of themselves as individuals. They really don’t see their place in society in that way. They see themselves as part of a collective. And that has really interesting implications on a number of levels, but it is also one of these really big differences between the West and the Arab world.
It cut’s both ways. There are lots of things that Arabs don’t understand about the West, although they have access to this information. We all filter information through our own prism. And Arabs have a prism of their own, so I’m not putting this all on Westerners who don’t understand.
Killing Her Softly – Mark Steyn, May 2008
By mid-century, when today’s millions of surplus boys will be entering middle age, India and China are expected to account for a combined 50 percent of global GDP. On present trends, they will be the most male-heavy societies that have ever existed. Unless China’s planning on becoming the first gay superpower since Sparta, what’s going to happen to all those excess men? As a general rule, large numbers of excitable lads who can’t get any action are not a recipe for societal stability
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