Without the Middle Class we have no Compass

We are like Lemmings, that is how I would describe the Lebanese, this is not in reference to the popular misconception that Lemmings, a kind of rodent, commit mass suicide when they migrate, but rather it refers to the Lemmings’ biological instinct to migrate in large numbers. It’s remarkable how similar we are to Lemmings when you think about it. They tend to migrate when population density in one location becomes too great. Expert swimmers, Lemmings try to swim across bodies of water in their migration effort; many drown when the body of water they are trying to cross turns out to be too wide. They just overextend themselves and die of exhaustion. This was often misperceived as some form of organized mass suicide, which it is not.

Nature creates creatures like this every now and then, like the Dodo bird, whose behavior seems to fly in the face of self preservation and common sense. In that tradition, the Lebanese seem to follow most faithfully. A bickering troublesome people in their homeland they are lured to migrate to greener pastures by the promise of one day returning to their fabled homeland and shoving their success in everyone’s faces. What a Dodo bird! They completely miss the point of life, to enjoy every moment, to suck the marrow out and leave behind only dry bones.

We completely ignore the fact that by creating this artificial dependence on income from Lebanese living and working abroad we hold our economic future hostage to the continued economic prosperity and political stability of those countries, from Ivory Coast to Bahrain. No one ever thought their whole world would come crumbling down all at once, or that almost every Arab country, where the young educated Lebanese work tirelessly to prop up our economy, would have a popular revolt, with some going down the path to civil war. What shall we do now?!

First, let us examine how this all started. Lebanon always had people whose hopes and dreams could not be encompassed within the precincts of the Lebanon Mountain Range, and who had greater aspirations. Many who went abroad succeeded brilliantly, others died obscurely, but history rarely remembers them. In recent years, the civil war in Lebanon and the divisions it served to entrench and solidify between the many sectarian communities, helped spur on an incredible and unprecedented migration, both temporary and permanent. Not since the First World War did so many Lebanese leave their homeland in search of jobs, wealth and stability.

But what really hurt Lebanon was the migration of almost all the middle class at one point, leaving behind only the newly emerged wealthy elite and the poor masses neither had the sophistication to run a service economy like Lebanon. So, they did the best they could, some of the now impoverished middle class that stayed behind helped, but it was too little to make a serious difference or help Beirut recapture its pre war luster.

The problem is that people with money today in Lebanon are not necessarily refined; few have the business acumen and refined sense of commerce to know where to spend their money. Many of the poor worker bees who populate the periphery of Beirut are migrants themselves, migrants from villages from the North, South and East of the country, who consider life around Beirut to be a serious upgrade from their rural lifestyle. They are often seduced by the trappings of wealth and image, they get the clothes right, the cars, they frequent the city’s night spots, but their manners remain as unpolished as ever. Industry, sadly, from music recording to food and drink, cater today to these rude, vulgar people whose rough manner is more suited for the field and plough than the board room.

At the risk of sounding terribly snobbish, it must be said that while the outer shell of our country is no longer pock-marked with bullet holes, our society has not recovered. We have not created a new middle class; our young have little sophistication because they have no model to follow. A few of the rich elite understood that with money comes responsibility, the duty in fact to show the best image one can, to be a true role model. The total collapse of moral standards and social mores did nothing to slow complete decay in my view of the once vibrant social scene in Lebanon.

In the 70s, Hamra Street was the center of high fashion. The Lebanese laughed at the feeble attempts of our neighbors to recreate Hamra’s brilliant luster. We had a secret ingredient. We had what few Arab countries had back then, a truly mixed, pluralistic, sophisticated and educated society. Hamra Street today is a reflection of Lebanon; it is deeply troubled, with a handful of well meaning wealthy people trying to prop it up, to give it a nice polish. But only a return of the middle class who left it all those years ago can help put it and the country back on track.

One Hamra Street jeweler and a good friend, lamented the loss of Hamra the way it used to be. A female client walked in to the shop as we were talking, she was dressed in tight fitting garments, lit up like a Christmas tree, heavily perfumed, lips puffed up, he excused himself and they talked for a while then she left. “See, I don’t think she even knows what she wants, she has the money I am sure, but that’s not enough,” the jeweler said with a sigh.

Sadly, it’s hard to convince the middle class people who left Lebanon at the height of the civil war to return. We haven’t given them any reason to return, we are still struggling with sectarian issues while our politicians are more concerned with how big a piece of the pie they will get than with addressing the people’s pressing needs. We are hardly a country that inspires confidence.

Now back to the comparison with Lemmings: Like Lemmings the Lebanese wait until a problem is too big to manage, until circumstances overwhelm them and they find no option but to move on. Sadly, our country is loosing the best of its people, the educated, well travelled, hard working young people. We have been exporting our proto-middle class for at least the past 20 years. So its little wonder we don't have a middle class any more.