“Evolution mounded our minds and bodies to the life of Hunter-gatherers. The transition first to agriculture and then to industrial has condemned us to living unnatural lives that cannot give full expression to our inherent inclinations and instincts, and therefore cannot satisfy our deepest yearnings.”
“The romantic insistence on seeing a dark shadow behind each invention is as dogmatic as the belief in the inevitability of progress”.
Harari
#sapiens
“Was the late Neil Armstrong, whose footprint remains intact on the windless moon, happier than the nameless hunter-gathered who 30,000 years ago left her handprint on a wall in Chauvet Cave?
If not, what was the point of developing agriculture, cities, writing, coinage, empires, science, and industry?”
Yuval Harari
#sapiens
“To satisfy both optimists and pessimists, we may conclude by saying that we are on the threshold of both heaven and hell, moving nervously between the gateway of the one and anteroom of the other. History has still not decided where we will end up, and a string of coincidences might yet send us rolling in either direction.”
Yuval Harari
#sapiens
“If a diplomat says Yes, it means perhaps.
If he says perhaps, it means no.
If he says no, he is not a diplomat”.
و ماذا يعني تحرير لبنان من الاحتلال اذا كانت إرادة شعبه مسلوبه بعد التحرير؟!
و ماذا يعني تحرير نهر اذا بات ملوثاً بعد تحريره؟!
و ماذا يعني تحرير جبل اذا صار محرقاً للنفايات بعد تحريره؟!
و ماذا يعني اعادة بناء مربعاً دمره العدو اذا مازال يفتقد الى الخدمات و طريق آمن للمشاة و الأطفال بعد اعادة بنائه؟!
و ماذا يعني تسمية مستشفى باسم شهيد اذا كانت لا تستقبل المرضى بدون دفعات مسبقة؟!
و ماذا يعني تسمية جامعة باسم عالم اذا كانت لا تقوى على إصدار دراسة واحدة معتبرة عالمياً؟!
اذا كانت “مداد العلماء أفضل عند الله من دماء الشهداء”، و كانت “جلسة في طلب العلم خير من سنة في الجهاد”
فقياساً نحن مازلنا تحت احتلال فكري و إرادي.
Most people in Lebanon are living impossible lives. They are held hostage by their circumstances. They would leave if they can.
And then there are the mafia leaders and/or the bourgeois…. with their dreamy mansions on mountain tops, and extravagant cars … they enjoy, carefree, exploiting Lebanon’s lack of legislation and cheap refugee-related mostly-illegal labor.
Then there are the tourists, mostly Lebanese dual citizen tourists who fill the cafes and resorts.
One day, the thieves of Lebanon will be hung in Public arenas. And all their pictures will be taken down and burnt.
In Lebanon, everything is connected to everything. There are no partial solutions. Comprehensive solution or none.
The “Arab Spring” was the beginning and not the end of a continuous shock waves to come to the Arab world.
No nation has less imagined characters than the Arab nations…. a product of haphazard borders drawn by French and Birtish diplomats in 1918 who ignored history, geography, economy, culture, and religion.
For example, South Lebanon (Jabal Amel) and its inhabitants were completely ignored in the Cycas Beacon agreement, and through out the Lebanese national identity up to 1975 when consequentially Civil war broke up, and still going (in the form of cold civil war).
The Islamic imagined identity, or pan-Arabic imagined identity are far stronger than the national one.
That’s why I believe in the inevitable Arabic Unity in the future, once the decadence of the Arab world reaches an implausible and impossible level that result in continuous revolutions.
لا أمانع من وجود قانون يعاقب على ازدراء الأديان، اذا كان مقابله قانون يعاقب على ازدراء العقل.
I don’t mind a law that penalizes the contempt of religions if there was a law at the same time that penalizes the contempt of mind.
Wissam Charafeddine 