12/19/2014

How can we get out of trouble? (part one)

Taking part in some discussions on Facebook or other social medias like Linkedin and Twitter I have been confronted with several approaches to national problem solving that people generally adopt in our country.

·         One is confrontational and destructive: “the problem is caused by the bad guys. So let’s get rid of them, first, and things will turn out all right afterward”. Notwithstanding the fact that such an attitude is seldom possible or effective, one has seen its consequences in Syria, Iraq or Libya, where the citizens bore arms against their tyrants and their supporters and ended up destroying the entire country.

·         Others would answer you: the problem resides with our electoral confessional system. It allows for the same types of guys to accede to power. Let’s change the system and the electoral law and everything will be fine afterwards. This simplified reasoning has, so far consistently proven wrong. Three times we changed the Constitution in Lebanon to try and give more power to one community at the expense of another. We have seen the results, so far.

·         Others follow a simpler reasoning that goes like this: “well, we have managed in this way for seventy years, so why worry? Things will get settled in the end. Anyway, it’s none of my business.” Besides being not the least constructive, citizens who think this way acknowledge, from the start, that they do not want to be involved and prefer to stay prudently out of trouble and let others worry, even though, deep inside, they realize that things are seriously wrong in the “kingdom of Denmark”.

·         There is a fourth category of people, maybe the worst one, who sincerely believe that everything that goes wrong in our country is the result of a foreign political conspiracy that we shall never be able to defeat. Some would put the finger on a Saudi/US plot, others to Iran or Israel, but all will give you the same advice: “Don’t worry your pretty head. There is absolutely nothing that one can do about it. It is way above our heads and the heads of our leaders”. Others will go confrontational about it, but that is a subject that I refuse to discuss here.

In all these cases these citizens refuse to face reality and decide to get out of the game before it really starts. They do not want to fight the obstacles and prefer to prudently stay out of trouble, though they may realize that, sooner or later, trouble will meet with them or their family, or their descendants, in one way or another.

In fact some of these citizens are intelligent enough to perceive and realize that, sooner or later, our country is heading to meet the same fate, or worse, as Cyprus, Greece, Spain, Portugal, or Venezuela, where the citizens were, for a long time, living in dreamland, but were eventually forced to face the harsh realities of life, and bear huge taxes and a twenty or twenty five per cent unemployment rate to avoid national bankruptcy. This is probably what will face us if not worse, unless every citizen in this country “grows up” and realizes that, adopting an unconcerned attitude draws him/her, and their country, nearer to doomsday.

At this stage, some readers would ask me: “so what is the solution to that riddle?”.

Allow me to answer you in my next publication, considering that many readers have already complained about my prolixity.