Making Integral Sense of Egypt

I was also warmed, even choked up a bit, when I saw that the Egyptian military was on the side of the people. Also, that that the crowds kept getting bigger as the protests faced down reactionary forces.

I'm an American and I was surprised that so many of the people I talked to were completely aware that the US has been helping ruthless dictators around the world in exchange for help with our "national interests". I talked about it with conservatives, liberals, people who don't follow the news and I didn't encounter a single person who wanted to claim that America is always wearing a white hat in every situation in the world. Many of the people I talked to endorsed (half-jokingly) the idea that we pursue an outright Viking-style foreign policy and forget all the human rights BS. Right-wing Americans say, "We've got to cut their throats before they cut ours." Everyday Americans say, "I don't want to pay $5/gallon for gas." Left-wing Americans say, "We're still colonizing everyone." If no one believes the goody two-shoes posture, than why do we present with it? Are we that concerned about how we appear to international law? I wonder if the new Egyptian government will reveal all of our "dark side" dealings we had with Mubarak?

I would be interested to see a follow-up discussion on all the factors that have led to the Arab and Muslim worlds falling behind the West, East Asia, and India. Historical factors, cultural factors, foreign influence factors, natural environment and resources factors, developmental factors...you know, the whole AQAL thing. I'm also interested in the idea the Modernization does not mean Westernization. The ability to see that clearly, along with an AQAL analysis, would help us see more vividly what we could do to help besides the kind of "send good vibes and charitable donations" thing that they ended up with in this dialogue.

Hey Jeff, what an interesting discussion! On twitter it provided my network of friends and myself endless reflection, inspiration, and wonder. Everyone is chiming in on their interpretations (including myself). So it was good to hear I-I's take on the matter. This left me with a few questions.

"What we're seeing in Egypt... is a punctuated evolutionary month... where modernism is coming along. Modernism coming out of traditionalism, coming out of more authoritarian structures... What does modernism bring? 'I am somebody. My individual human rights are more important, or taken into serious account with the rights of the culture.... It becomes unbearable to to exist under a pre-modern structure."

I found that certain elements were missing in this analysis. For example, the authoritarian dictatorship, although it was "traditional" in the sense that Egypt's culture responded to a leader as a "father figure," etc... The government itself was a secular one, and in addition, many of these revolutions are not necessarily a shift to modernity, but a reaction against it. Many of these nations see themselves as the satellite states and peasants of global, Western Empires, and due to the ability of the internet to organize and gain access to more information (and gain more solidarity), they have decided to stand up. The Middle Eastern news organization, Al Jazeera, chimes in on this subject:

"It is not a revolution, not in the literal sense of the term, not a way of standing up and straightening things out. It is the insurrection of men with bare hands who want to lift the fearful weight, the weight of the entire world order that bears down on each of us - but more specifically on them, these ... workers and peasants at the frontiers of empires. It is perhaps the first great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most modern and the most insane.

As much as this is a positive shift, more democratic shift, it is equally a reaction to modernity, industrialization, globalization...or more specifically Westernization. I don't think we can simplify what's going on in Egypt to being only about a linear transition from premodern to modern or postmodern. It's a dynamic in which modernity and the West has spurred, not only a sense of national solidarity for the Egyptians, but catalyzed a human solidarity that is not Western or Middle Eastern, but universal. The philosopher Zizek chimes in on this issue very well when he stated in a recent video on Egypt:

"We like to hear how democracy as we understand it is something specifically western, and so on and so on. How irrelevant all this multicultural talk becomes--there, where we are fighting a tyrant, we are all universalists, we are immediately solidary with each other. That's how you build universal solidarity. It's the struggle for freedom. Here we have a direct proof that A) freedom is universal and B) that cynical idea that somehow Muslim crowds prefer some kind of religiously fundamentalist dictatorship---no, what happens in Tunisia, now in Egypt is precisely this universal revolution for dignity, human rights, economic justice. This is universalism at work.

They understand democracy by doing what they are doing better than we do in the West. So I'm proud for them. The moment you fight a tyrant, you are solidary, no clash of civilizations."

In other words, the reaction against globalism and hegemonic empires is creating a sense of universal solidarity that unites the disparate cultures in a new kind of unity. Western civilization has long been defined as a center that controls the periphery, so what we are seeing in Egypt and the middle east in general, is a collapse of an empire's rule in its satellite states. Only twenty years ago, the Soviet Union experienced this in the revolutionary spirit and global solidarity that united many nations in Eastern Europe and even in the Middle East. Now the US is experiencing something similar:

The only genuine post-colonial message would be one of deference: "Stand aside, and applaud." The great transformative struggles of the past century involved a series of challenges throughout the global south to get rid of the European colonial empires. But political independence did not bring an end to the more indirect, but still insidious, methods of control designed to protect economic and strategic interests. Such a dynamic meant reliance on political leaders that would sacrifice the wellbeing of their own people to serve the wishes of their unacknowledged former colonial masters, or their Western successors - the United States largely displacing France and the United Kingdom in the Middle East after the Suez crisis of 1956.

I think we can say that this is not only about a shift to modernity, but the first inklings of a planetary culture. The West has, for better or worse, united the world through oppression. Often it is some kind of traumatic or destructive event that unites and catalyzes evolution. The Vikings united medieval Europe in terror, preluding the eventual emergence of European civilization and colonialism. Now, European colonialism, and in extension, Western neo-imperialism are uniting the people of the world in global strife---and when they react, they are not just moving up a ladder, but moving the world towards the first planetary culture, beyond multiculturalism or modernism, but into a universal solidarity.

"It seems as if the world is entering the beginnings of a new revolutionary era: the era of 'Global Political Awakening.' While this 'awakening' is materializing in different regions, different nations and under different circumstances, it is largely influenced by global conditions." - Andrew Gavin Marshall, Global Research.

The global crisis is potentially uniting us all in a global transcendence. This isn't just a shift from one stage to another, but a total transformation of the whole geo-political system. We can't ignore the deep, shadow side of Westernization and Globalism, because right now it's this very shadow that is being revealed and transmuted into the light. Egypt is not a regional shift, but a planetary one.

-Jer

PS: I wrote an article about this on Evolutionary Landscapes: Egypt, Transformations & Signs of a Planetary Culture

There's an excellent essay in the current issue of the British political magazine The New Statesman, which, without specifically using the language of Integral, beautifully endorses Jeff's arguments I think. Here's the final paragraph and then the link below.

The process of change will undoubtedly be long and chaotic, but one thing is certain: the age of Arab-Muslim exceptionalism is over. Recent events point to profound transformations in Arab societies which have been under way for some time, but which until now have been obscured by the distorting optic of western attitudes towards the Middle East. What the convulsions in Egypt and Tunisia show is that people in those countries have drawn the lessons of their own history. We have not finished with Islam, that is for sure, nor is liberal democracy the "end of history", but we must at least learn to think of Islam in relation to an "Arabic-Muslim" culture that today is no longer closed in on itself - if it ever was.

www.newstatesman.com/religion/2011/02/egypt-arab-tunisia-islamic

, rather, the people of Egypt,

were to more gently point out

the changes they personally desired, the changes they are fighting for - 

how long before

they were punished, coercively

or otherwise, both aggressive, in this case...

How gently would the people be permitted to make requests in their personal self interest before the government

abandoned them for a separate interest?

How aggressively

before it was considered a more official threat

(and was most likely then suppressed,

or before

irreperrable (un-repairable) harm?

People are people, after all, even oppressed.  We all know fear.  As adults, we all have the capacity to make certain choices

And actions have corresponding movements, internal, external, both, either

There is only so much 

people are willing to endure, 

once we realize 

that we all have a choice.

Punishment - the whole dynamic - (judgement, guilt, blame - the dynamic cycles arising from the birth of determined, or imagined - obligation - a response to injustice, which only keeps the cycle of injustice in place, rather than freeing the movement to spiral through (hope/longing/Beauty-Justice cycle) - into the manifestation of inter-human Justice) -

Perhaps the issue lies in clarifying - What we do and what we do not - have a right to claim responsibility over, what we have a right to write our name on and what should be returned to it's source (or reflection)

...

I.                   Justice (fulfillment, recognizing, and/or Return)

·         Confusion about justice has occurred partially due to the human experimentation with the notion of “Divine Justice”

·         The Power and Innocence Relational Cycles (see, for example, “The Justice Cycle)

II. Beauty, the deriving force

mark → becomes reflection → becomes source

This cycle moves upward, and does not have a movement backward or down; there is no repetition of any of the three on the same level of the expression and reflection spiral

·         The Beauty Justice Partnership 

Innocence is a given.  Human power always has to do with choice - taken from, made for, 

Oppression is an assault to Body, Power is in Voice.

The Return can be symbolically understood as the return of the voice to the corresponding body

Thoughts?

Declarations? 

Clarifying questions or responses?

All welcome, requested, even...

kindly

or not, as you wish

preferably kindly

without creating 

further 

separation,

rather - clarifying 

veils, layers

and the like.

And

experience

s