Going over Lebanon’s modern history, one cannot fail to notice that every watershed moment was dovetailed with lots of debate and controversy that put countless ideas up for public discussion.
In 1946, three years after Lebanon’s independence, for example, Michel Asmar established the "Lebanese Cenacle," where the post-independence world and navigating it were deliberated. The "cenacle" unpacked questions around this new era and became the refinery of Lebanon’s cultural and intellectual life, thereby playing a prominent role in shaping the elites that would dominate the next three decades.
It was to become a springboard for a very broad range of figures: from Michel Chiha and Rene Habchi to Abdullah Alaili, Kamal Hajj, and Sobhi Mahmasani. Even politicians like Kamal Jumblatt, Taqi al-Din al-Solh, Edward Hnein, and religious figures like Moussa al-Sadr and George Khodr, as well as journalists like George Naccache and Ghassan Tueni, chose it as the forum from which to present a cultural face to the world.
We saw something similar after Chehab was elected president following the mini-civil war of 1958, and when the 1969 Cairo Agreement between the Lebanese state and the Palestine Liberation Organization precipitated exhaustive debates about the duality of "state and revolution." We also saw this during the Taif Agreement negotiations in 1989, and as the "Solidere" project to rebuild Beirut was being implemented. In each of these junctures, Lebanese intellectuals, both partisan and independent, would turn into cells debating ideas and painting the image of the country and regime they favored, or pointing out mistakes that should be avoided.
However, the total opposite is true for the juncture we currently find ourselves in. We have seen no debate whatsoever, reflecting an astonishing paucity of ideas. Mind you, this moment is incomparably more consequential and critical than any of the precedents.
What we have today is constant television noise, mostly around a single event in particular, and of course, the torrent of defamation, obscenity, and accusations on social media that is directed not only at the individual target of the smear campaign, but his sect and community as a whole, if not directly then circuitously.
It is precisely because sects now advocate for themselves uncovered - without equivocation or "embarrassment," as the historian Ahmad Baydoun put it - that debate has atrophied. Before, when the average Christian sought to reaffirm the distinctiveness of his sect or religion, he would speak at length about Phoenicia, the Mediterranean, the Francophone world, or the modern West and its civilization. Likewise, when the average Muslim wanted to emphasize his distinct identity, he would ardently affirm his allegiance to Arab nationalism or his fervent drive to liberate Palestine, or he would highlight Arabs and Muslims’ historical achievements.
For its part, the state, through its ideological apparatuses (schools, state media, etc.), sought to reconcile these divergences and differences. So diligently was this end pursued that rounding off corners and trimming sharp edges became its bread and butter.
Today, on the other hand, the need to put on this or that garb has diminished. Conflicting identities are waging their struggle in their names; they themselves are their own ideologies- a self-sufficiency that no one could be envied for.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese, like other nations, face less pressure to align with modernity and its standards. Labels that had once been considered shameful or backward, like tribalism or sectarianism, are now more like a badge of honor. They could affirm the supposed virtues and indigeneity of tribalism or sectarianism if the label is applied to them, finding a defense for this praise in that the other side is no less proud of their sect or tribe.
Naturally, the decline of the state and its culture of compromise has fueled these inclinations and drives, especially since this decline had been preceded by a long civil war, mass displacement, the emergence of sectarian cantons, and reduced regional integration and contiguity. A lot of pus lies under such wounds.
However, if modernity used to diminish what groups have come to call their "sanctities" and expand the margins of critical engagement with these notions, then modernity’s setbacks multiply these "sanctities" and heighten the taboo around them such that criticism becomes a violation of the inviolable. Of course, the best in the industry tie these sanctities to arms that "protect and defend them," rendering tools of war, as Sheikh Naim Qassem put it, "our soul, our honor, our land, our dignity, and the future of our children."
These so-called "sanctities" are matters that cannot be debated because they are above debate by definition, and because they are in themselves a perpetual essence. They do not change, or rather, must not change.
Here, we come across another factor that helps explain the current depletion of ideas. Beginnings and founding stages spark debate and summon ideas, while endings do the exact opposite. Here, a "maxim" looms: everything we could say has already been said many times before, and every experiment we could conduct has been conducted, so what's the point of replicating it for the thousandth time? And when we no longer care about our homelands nor count on them, what is the point of arguing about them?
The fear is that this is a moment of endings. The state of the region and world, which are not any keener on debate and ideas nor any less equipped for a return to our presumed initial existence and inherent nature, only reinforces this assessment.
