Saturday, April 16, 2011

Obey and Follow


We live in a country that follows the “obey and follow” system of government, made even worse by the insistence of utilization of religion to justify this.  We are not alone in this; there are other countries that follow the same example, which does not qualify this as a suitable system of governance.
 
“There is no democracy. You're given systems to follow” – said to me by a friend.  The website http://www.dictionary,com defines democracy as “government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.”  This definition seemingly negates my friends’ statement, as much truth there is in his statement; it draws on a slightly pessimistic outlook on governance.  After all, we are humans, which logically means that we are incapable of creating anything perfect.  So democracy as a concept is the best we will ever do, and we will never agree on the actual details of the democratic system we each prefer (big or small government, socialism or libertarianism, etc.).  That does not mean we should stop trying, regardless of the obvious faults of the systems at hand.
 
The wealthy elite do have an abnormal level of say in who become our elected leaders, and this trend shall unfortunately continue till Armageddon (if you believe in it); that is the nature of humanity.  This will continue as long as greed exists, which always will, and is the underlying driving motivation of capitalism.  The brilliant thing about the free capitalist systems that exist is the freedom they offer each individual; it offers one and all the chance to live as they want.  That freedom comes at a price though, that being the endless circle of want and desires we feed on a daily basis.  It keeps us always wanting and thriving for more, always hungry, ambitious, oblivious to the rat race we run.
 
This brings me back to the system of governance we have in Sudan; obey and follow.  People who dare to seek power by force, and continue to rule by force can easily be classified as psychopaths and narcissistic.  Gadhafi probably does think he is the greatest thing to come out of Libya, but that only hides the fact that actually the power brokers in such establishments are always the ones we never hear about; the ones quietly pulling the strings.  Unfortunately we will never get to know these people, for they or people of the same ilk pull the strings in the seemingly free countries.  Yes; even the so-called Leader of the Free World is not actually in charge of his/her (let’s not anger the feminists anymore) decisions.  I can go further into this (Bilderberg group and all that) but that’s not the purpose of this piece.

Still, democracy is the best concept we have, and we therefore strive for because of the freedom it promises us.  I am not asking for much when I insist that it is my right not to be imprisoned, tortured, sodomized, raped, electrocuted (and whatever other horrors they do) because I decided to speak my mind.  Democracy is supposed to offer me that right, at least when implemented fully as per the human rights agreements the world has agreed upon (yes; miscarriages of justice happen), and allow me to fulfil my other needs (refer to Maslow, etc.).  

Thursday, April 7, 2011

"AND SO IS HIS COMMAND. BE AND IT BECOMES. SURE IT IS A DIFFERENT WORLD NOW OUR MOTHER IS AWAKE. GOD BLESS EGYPT. GOD BLESS THE EGYPTIANS AND US ALL. ONLY NOW CAN I REST IN PEACE."

The late Prof. Osman S. A. Ismail Al-Bili, sent this message on February 13th 2011, and he passed away on March 14th here in Doha, Qatar.