In Ancient Greece, persuasion played a major role in the public sphere; by extension, thinking played a major role as well. Because the Greeks had established direct democracy and jury trials, there was a sharp demand for arguments and reasoning that could be of use to the citizens of Athens in the deliberations of the Agora (public square), just as they could use them to prove their own innocence if they were accused of having committed a crime.
While Socrates roamed the streets and neighborhoods of Athens to convince people of what he believed was right, his sophist rivals became street vendors to teach people how to debate and persuade, and they received a fee in return.
The fact is that nothing negates the need to persuade - that is, to think - like the truth and the right have been ascertained beforehand, and the devalorizations of the conclusions that individuals reach through reasoning and experience. Under such circumstances, there is a father who tells the other members of the family what is and is not appropriate; there is an idea that this father believes in, and he seizes power for its sake. With this idea, he issues fatwas on both the highly consequential and the minute: informing them on how to manage everything from agriculture to our health, the cinema to our defense strategy, and we shouldn’t forget garbage collection either...
In Lebanon, we have something of this sort and something of the other. Before 1975, substantial segments of the population began abandoning their sects’ ideas and embracing non-sectarian ideas. This process was the result of thinking, debate, persuasion, reading books, and knowledge of the outside world. These people thereby put choices that had been made freely above those that had been purely inherited, and put reason above groupthink. However, as a result of the wars that hit Lebanon’s state and society, and the demographic segregation resulting from mass displacement and the orientation towards sectarian purity, free choice and thought eroded in favor of pre-formulated inherited notions. Every community remembered its “roots” and clung to them, and to them alone. Indeed, who would be there to protect and provide for the individual if he were deprived of his family or dared to criticize them? Furthermore, advice ceased to be “worth a camel,” as the Arabs of old to say. No one needed advice anymore; all the wisdom anyone could ask for was found in our homes.
Nonetheless, there remains a category of people seeking to think and choose instead of following, inheriting, and receiving. They are a group of individuals, not a community - individuals whom progress undergone in different parts of the world has impacted positively while the morbid experiences undergone in their country have impacted negatively. They thus argued for an economy without corruption, politics without nepotism, culture without disingenuous reverence, and a judiciary without cronyism. They also sided against sects' interference in the public sphere, and the double standard regarding who could carry arms, which have paralyzed the state and the legal system. Of course, they are also committed to both the autonomy of their bodies and the freedom of their minds.
Today, those same individuals are being “cured” by an approach which was born with the war, that is, through the imposition of regulations on their minds and bodies, indoctrination rather than argument and debate, and an emphasis on the virtues of remaining perpetually committed to opinions reinforced by the views of our great-grandfathers.
Thus, what is currently happening is akin to taking back the Lebanese, at the forefront of whom are these young men and women, from the higher education stage to the preschool stage. In kindergarten, children are taught to wake up early, wash their faces, and obey their parents, in the hope that school and university replicate this “know-how” in more pedantry ways.
Today, the kindergarten in Lebanon has a cure for every problem: what behavior is acceptable and what behavior is unacceptable, who is patriotic and who is unpatriotic, how to distinguish clean money from dirty money, and why is martyrdom the ultimate ideal for how to behave in society (a society of the living indeed!) .
This kindergarten also has a principal who never takes a break from shouting at the children who need to be disciplined, threatening them and copiously hurling his long list of profanities at them; and just as the kindergarteners are struck with fear at the sight of their principal’s scowl, the Lebanese ought to fear that of their angry principal. If they fail to understand the extent of his rage, experts on his sacred mysterious soul appear on television, social media, and newspapers, to help them grasp it.
However, the fact remains that if the material being taught to the children of this kindergarten is not frivolous, the information is false. One man has come to be an astonishing embodiment of this erroneousness, a minister tasked with caring for culture who is actually nothing more than an assistant headmaster at the preschool.
In the meantime, we should forget much of what we know in order for things to work out for us as kindergarteners as they have for the children in Kim Jong Un’s country.
Yes, things are going splendidly: we are on the brink of knowing everything. Soon, there will be no need for us to think, argue, persuade, and be persuaded. Everything is taken care of: Israel is an enemy. America is an enemy. Iran is a friend. Divine teachings open every door. We wake up early, wash our faces, obey our parents, and brush our teeth as well.
