AT THE ‘JUMPING OFF’ POINT A BRIGHTER FUTURE BECKONS

To tear ourselves away from the safe, trusted and warm embrace of our respective confessional units and the political groupings representing those confessional units, is the biggest challenge facing the Lebanese today. Without such a step we will never have a country only confessional-feudal cantons.

Each of us has to move on and out eventually, whether from our parents’ house, from high school on to university, or from the old country to the new. Letting go is always hard, but we have to be weaned away from the feudal bosom on which so many of us depend. When you are jumping off a crumbling pile of rocks (confessional feudalism) and you can’t see where you are jumping to (a united and strong state) instinct naturally kicks in and keeps your feet rooted in place. Indecision and fear have paralyzed us.

But jump we have to because the ground is fast disappearing beneath our feet. We all need to jump at once and while we can’t see the ‘rock of state’ we are aiming for we have to trust that we can find it despite the fog of doubt. We all have to jump at once; we can’t cheat, and we all have to leave behind the safe comfortable old ways. Before we do all that we need to trust each other first.

I have noticed recently that levels of frustration in Lebanon have reached toxic levels and the recent heat wave has not helped, in fact everyone seems more stressed, tense and on edge than ever before.

The Lebanese were always taught to take care of themselves and not to think of others because no one will think of you. I was told recently by a friend that Lebanon is a cruel society and to a degree I suppose it’s true. But people’s cruelty to one another and inconsiderate manner is not so much an innate character flaw as it is a survival instinct that the Lebanese apply to every facet of their life.

Recently, however, we seem to have crossed a threshold, a point at which the levels of reciprocal cruelty, corruption, congestion and verbal pollution, have ceased to be tolerable. One hopes in fact that these intolerable levels reach a crescendo so we may finally arrive at an awakening, a realization that we are plummeting down a path that will lead to total societal collapse.

We all need to understand that everything we do, even whether we smile or frown while walking down the street, all has an impact on those around us. We are each individually capable of doing more harm than we are collectively capable of doing good, add wealth and no rules to the mix and you have potential for great harm and injustice.

People’s fatalistic attitude to injustice in Lebanon in fact allows such injustice to grow and flourish. Their toleration of mild levels of corruption has allowed this vile practice to gain wider societal acceptance. Giving up, retreating back into one’s shell will only make the corrupt and despotic more daring. Standing up to injustice, even in a small way, demonstrating one’s refusal and strong objection to injustice, will not be easy but it’s a necessary first step.

Above all we need to trust one another and work together outside our respective confessional institutions and away from the umbrella of our political party or color. I have realized there are good people out there working in civil society as hard as they can to do what little they can to change this bleak outlook, even if their impact is only marginal, their presence is a comfort to many.

The scope of civil society needs to expand to focus more on schools and the young, to give them hope that they too can be part of positive change, to let them know that they have a future outside their confessional cocoon.

Education, or rather re-education, needs to drill in the minds of the youth the mantra of national unity, not just to pay lip service to it as a vague and unrealistic concept but to practice it in their own lives, even to teach it to their parents. This starts with field trips to different parts of the country, volunteer work, social work outside their confessional community, to build networks at a young age with people that their parents once saw as the ‘enemy within’. That is the only way lasting change can happen.

A friend recently suggested that I keep my expectations low and realistic otherwise my frustration and anger will overwhelm me. But dreaming of a better country, a proud and united nation, is what keeps hope alive in each of us. So, I agree, we mustn’t be too optimistic, Lebanon will never become ‘Singapore-on-the-Med’ in our life time, but many a great endeavor had a humble start, the important thing is to start!