Fata Morgana

We’re late in the fourth year of the Media-named Arab Spring as it touched Egypt. The popular uprising that resulted in Hosni Mubarak’s resignation began on January 25, 2011, in Tahrir square in Cairo. Since then Mubarak resigned  (February 11, 2011), Mohammed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, won the presidency (June 30, 2012); he was ousted from office after a year (July 3, 2013), replaced by Abdul Fattah al-Sisi (June 8, 2014) who, like Mubarak, is a general. Today the Egyptian court trying Mubarak for his crimes as a ruler dropped all charges against him, members of his family, and his top associates. The demonstrations that immediately erupted appear to have been put down promptly. And we’ve still nearly two months to go before the fourth year is over.

When Arab Spring began, The Guardian, in a February 5, 2011 story, had this to say (link):

25 January is a date that will be forever remembered in Egypt. That was the day when the Egyptian people decided to end the country’s last pharaonic dynasty with a people’s revolution. 

I genuinely wonder if that date will really be remembered—considering that this revolution withered on the vine—this despite the fact that for a brief spell the Muslim Brotherhood, which is at least in part representative of Egypt’s Muslim population (94.7% of total), succeeded in gaining but not in holding on to power. The “people’s revolution,” to use The Guardian’s words, represented a small portion of the 5.3 percent, with perhaps a few percent of secular Muslims thrown in.

The Guardian’s lead is the sort of thing that caught my eyes early on and caused me to keep following the twists and turns of this story since. I am no more fond of military dictatorship than the next guy, but what interests me is our own Western faith in the inevitability of Progress. It is that faith that labeled this whole affair an Arab Spring. It has turned out to be a kind of a mirage. And living now in what looks like the slow-motion shatter of democracy here—or its transmutation into something quite alien—makes the whole notion of “exporting democracy” to other totally unsuitable realms, like Afghanistan, seem so benighted. 

Observation v. Illusion

Events in Egypt (at this point marked by Square Cleansing of Brotherhood Supporters), had me asking myself this morning: “Did anybody really win the French Revolution?” The boiling eventually stopped, but looking for a winner—as in who achieved power in that endless flux— the best answer is that Napoleon Bonaparte was the victor. He gained ultimate power and ended the Revolution when, in a coup, he dispersed the so-called Directorate and replaced it with the Consulate (1799). He was then a mere 30-year old self-made general of genius.

Refreshing my memory of the Revolution by reading the highly-condensed Wikipedia article on the subject, I though that the text sounded like instant commentary describing the boiling of a stew. You want chaos? There it is. In 1789 France had a population of 28 million—a large enough number to produce the kind of chaos that is not really describable. Egypt today has a population of nearly 83 million.

The parallels are many—because, in fact, upheavals such as the French or the Egyptian revolutions are best described as natural events. They happen when social structures reach a certain social paralysis and then, quite spontaneously, rearrange themselves—not unlike tensions in the earth’s crust that produce periodic quakes. In that process, inevitably, chaos results. And the chaos eventually ends when order is restored, always by military force.

While the chaos rages, all manner of illusory ideas will lend color to the madly rising steam that rises from the bubbling pot: such as progress or the fervently sought arrival of millennium. The deep intuition in the human soul—that all of us are destined for a better realm—gets projected to the here and now. But here and now is not where that takes place. But what is going on, here and now, is much better described as the mechanics of society. When these have frozen up while life’s energies continue to push demanding change, chaos happens.

Egypt as a Lens

Egypt is an interesting lens through which to view democracy. Yes, I know. I have a bit of a hang-up here. Egypt keeps recurring on this blog, in the current context especially here, here, and here earlier. The country is more than  97 percent Muslim; in the last parliamentary elections, the vote was 30 percent secular, 60 percent Muslim; Mohamed Morsi won his election by 51.7 percent of the vote. Not good enough, evidently.

The sentimentalized view of democracy as “rule of the people” is too simple. For it to work effectively, not only must the people be extraordinarily homogeneous in culture, they must also be predominantly secular in their convictions. Democracy is the governing institution of secular mercantile peoples. It is uncomfortable with genuinely held religious belief. And the surrounding environment is also important. Imagine the situation in Egypt if it were reversed. Suppose that 60 percent of the country was secular, that the demonstrators, agitators, and Tahrir-squarers were all Muslim fundamentalists and a minority, and the Army were siding with them. Would the U.S. government’s reactions then be muted and sort of hands off?

The Leap to Direct Democracy

Those who exulted over the Arab Spring should now be in states of ecstasy. Egypt appears on the way of skipping over the cumbersome, so-yesterday form of Representative Democracy straight to Direct Democracy. They’re way ahead of us. We’re still struggling with inefficient forms of it, like ballot initiatives, that teach our governors and legislatures to become better contortionists. Hey. We already have the necessary institutions and technology. Why don’t we get with the program and embrace Facebook Democracy now. If we don’t innovate, Egypt will get ahead of us—and be the first to show the ultimate consequences of DD.

Polarization?

The subject is Egypt and the occasion was hearing someone in the Media refer to the “polarization” of the population in Egypt. I turned to Brigitte and said: “What polarization? The pea and the pumpkin?” But then I resolved to make the image a little more realistic. Well, the population is 94.7 percent Muslim in Egypt. Some of those people, to be sure, are probably inclined toward secular belief and behavior, i.e. are only nominally Muslim. A better figure is provided by the parliamentary elections. These produced representation which was 30 percent secular and 70 percent Islamist. Not quite the pumpkin and the pea, but still rather disproportional. Presumably the active part of the 30 percent easily fits into Tahrir square.

Two Orientations

The New York Times features an interview today with the president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi. Mentioned in that article is a plaque on Morsi’s desk that says: “Be conscious of a day on which you return to God.”

The words derive from the second chapter of the Quran, The Cow, verse 281. “Fear the day when you shall all return to Allah; when every soul shall be requited according to its deserts. None shall be wronged” (N.J. Dawood translation). Another translations uses the word “fear” as well (‘Abdullah Yusu ‘Ali); two others use the words “guard yourselves” (M.H. Shakir and M.A. Haleem Eliasii). That “be conscious,” therefore, is a sort of modernization.

There is an orientation to the beyond and an orientation to the here-and-now. Call them other-worldly and this-worldly. Got to pondering that. Got to wondering about genuine change. The prevailing this-worldly view is that real change requires collective action; hence there is a continuous attempt to persuade the masses. The other-worldly view is that change comes about when an individual becomes aware of the greater whole, invisible from here. The two orientations also have a different time scale. The this-worldly is here-and-now; the other-worldly is mindful of the last minute of an individual life; it is more expansive. And real change, it seems to me, is when we move from one orientation to the other, either way, as individuals. The rest is just detail; it will take care of itself. Morsi’s stance, therefore, based on that plaque on his desk, appears to be other-worldly. Oh, my. 

Egyptian Time Perspective

At 4:31 p.m. Egyptian time, which was 10:31 a.m. here in Detroit, an hour-and-a-half late, the final results of the presidential election there were made known to the public. The Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, Mohamed Morsi, won the office with 51 percent of the vote; his opponent, the ex-general Ahmed Shafiq, garnered 48 percent. So it is over? Well, in a way. The country’s military oligarchy seems still to hold the thicker strings that guide this Egyptian puppet in its motions. They engineered the parliament’s demise just before the run-off vote was held, perhaps thus hoping to shoo in their candidate.

Interests me, this whole business—if for arcane reasons. Using the Muslim calendar, we are now in 1433. But the Islamic calendar is based on 12 lunar months; these yield 354 or 355 days per year. Using 354.5 as an average, 1433 produces 1390 years of 365.25 days—suggesting that the calendar began in 622 AD. Yep. That also happens to be the official starting year of the calendar, the year of Mohammed’s flight (hegira) from Mecca to Medina. Hegira (or hejira) is also used to mark the Muslim year, combined with the Latin anno; this year, therefore (until November 14), is 1433 AH.

Now supposing we imagine that civilizations are more or less organic phenomena—rather than mechanical—thus that they develop and age “naturally.” In that case the Islamic one is in its fourteenth century—a time which, in ours, felt not even a whiff of democracy yet; the authentic, spontaneous thing would have to wait another 400 years or so. Which is another way of saying that the tenor of events in Egypt, with the authoritarian hand of the military still holding the reins (to change metaphors), seems to be about right. The democratic form is not, in this view at least, “natural” to the Muslim culture at this time. It is imposed by its overwhelming presence round about that country—to its North and, across the ocean, to its West.

Is that the reason why this announcement was late in coming—even if only by an hour-and-a-half? Were the Egyptians sort of hoping that, if they delayed, time would catch them up to an alien modernity? If so, they didn’t wait long enough.

Unavoidable Conflict

The conflict between church and state is, you might say, built in. Religion organizes people; it forms communities. The leader or leaders of such communities then come to represent a power. By its very existence, this power rivals that of the secular ruler. The constitutional separation of church and state is a reasonable but awkward stratagem. It works for a while. Here and there. This separation has biblical rootings: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”: quoted in three of the four gospels. Problems surface when Caesar demands what belongs to God—or the Church encroaches on what belongs to Caesar. In a very complex modern world even drawing the line between the two is extraordinarily difficult.

This issue is at the core of today’s runoff elections in Egypt. To one side is a relatively weak representative of Caesar, but evidently backed by a military oligarchy strong enough so that it could simply squash a parliament dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. On the other is the Muslim Brotherhood itself which might, just might, if it waxes strong eventually, impose religious law.

The problem is compounded by the fact that humans are social creatures and that a vast gulf opens between religion as a social phenomenon and religion as an inner experience. My own view of collectives is, to put it mildly, reserved—and no matter what their nominal coloration. They tend to be somewhat less than human. Internal guidance may conflict with the demands of both collectives. As a minimum, let there be separation—be that separation enshrined in constitutional language or not. It won’t always be so. Millions of years to go yet, and a snapshot from the U.S.A. is barely even a moment on such scales. There is no conflict for the individual if Jesus’ words are understood. Caesar is all collectives; we give them what is theirs. The rest is conscience.

Egypt: Twixt Rock and Hard Place

The up-swell of Islamist protest in Egypt. Fascinating. It pits the military (read the monarchical impulse) against the Muslim Brotherhood. The modernists and liberals, meanwhile, watch with minority trepidations from the side-lines. The military as “defender of the constitution” brings memories of Turkey and of Kemal Ataturk. Ataturk, of course, was the modernizer. Above all he wished to free Turkey of religious dominance. But the hard place, ultimately, is democracy. Now we see the same pattern once again, and once more in a modernizing Muslim state. Democracy comes of age when the genuine elites are secular by deep conviction and the religious faith is shattered into numerous-enough little pieces so that no one can hope to dominate. That was the case in 1776 or thereabouts. Our Washingtons and Hamiltons, our Jeffersons and Franklins? Secular to their very enlightenment cores. And the religious character of the American population was a scatter of parts left by an explosion called the Reformation…

A More Visible Egypt

Having seen the secularist, modernist elements rise up in Egypt during the so-called Arab Spring, I watched with fascination as vast throngs of what the New York Times labeled Islamists filled Tahrir Square on July 29. This was a demonstration by the religious majority, estimated to account for between 80 and 90 percent of the population. Most of the rest are Coptic Christians. In the Nixon days this would have been called the silent majority. If the “spring” actually produces genuine democracy in Egypt, it is reasonable to anticipate a governing structure strongly reflecting the views of this majority—who favor Sharia law much more than libertarian secularist forms.

All through my life Egypt was more or less invisible thanks to its probably defensive self-alignment with the West. You would behave that way if little upstarts like Napoleon invaded you from time to time and made themselves Big. Another way to read the Arab Spring is to read it as Winter in the West. The Euro-American culture is in decline. Therefore Egypt has become more visible now. This land became a unified state, hold on now, in 3100 BC. It has 80 million people. It must be enormously diverse. It is damnably difficult to picture to ourselves, in anything like rich detail, the genuine reality of other cultures. When they become visible, they always surprise us. Iran? We see a mullah with a long grey beard, his head wrapped in a vast shawl. Read Reading Lolita in Tehran (Azar Nafisi) as a corrective. And so on. Egypt? Tourists standing by camels while in the near distance a pyramid throws its shadow…

Arab Spring, Media Winter

Now is the winter of my discontent
With poetic-sounding metaphors of
Media made glorious spring by all the
Arab risings here and there that I see,
As well, here and there, eventually suppressed.

Waves

Whenever a revolution succeeds in toppling a regime—especially a notable and big one like the recent one in Egypt—I can’t help but think of B.F. Skinner, the behaviorist. Back when his thought was carving up the landscape, I read his Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971). Little of it remains in my memory now except the early chapters. In those he drew a dark picture of revolutions and of noble battles for freedom. Here is a man whose basic ideas I don’t share in the least. He was one in a long line of moderns who think that science can engineer happiness. Still, his characterization of revolutionary movements was down-right traditional, in other words descriptive. Human social life resembles waves. Waves have crests and troughs. The rising and falling periods are very much longer than the happy moment when, for a brief flicker of time, a wave is cresting.

A childlike fascination characterized media coverage of this event—and the more popular the medium, the more childish. As another wave, that of progressive thought, is now waning, the hope that progress isn’t entirely dead revives at times like these—and now the hope is that Egypt will transform itself into a society where the waves of conflict will be smaller but much more frequent. That’s what a democracy is. In a democracy the power is more distributed and the waves are smaller. Life turns more choppy, too. And all’s well while the wealth lasts.

Societies are also creatures of habit. Egypt has been under authoritarian rule as it were forever, back to the Pharaohs. I’ll be watching with curiosity how this thing actually evolves—while continuing my watch on Russia where, as best as I can detect it, the Tsar is still in power, and never mind details.

What’s in a Name?

Looking up some statistics concerning Egypt this morning, which I’ve put up on LaMarotte here, I came across a fascinating discussion of the country’s name on Wikipedia. That got me to looking elsewhere as well. In the midst of my researches, I received a comment on my LaMarotte entry. Trying to discover the roots of that name takes one way, way back into the past, but the comment tipped me into the current moment again—and suggested this post. More on that comment at the end.

The people of Egypt, I learned, originally called their country Kemet or Kermet meaning Black Land; they had the rich Nile-fertilized fringes of the river in mind, of course. Another name, also appropriately grounded in experience, was Dershet, meaning Red Land—by which the inhabitants had in mind the vast rest of arid Egypt. In course of this excursion I also discovered that the region owed its development to climate change anciently. It pushed herding peoples south and east as the Sahara region dried out and became a desert around about 3400 BC.

The actual name of, Egypt, was originally associated with the city we now call Memphis. Its name was Hwt-Ka-Ptah, meaning the Temple of the Ka of Ptah. Other renditions of this name are Ha(t)-ka-Ptah, Hikupta, and, in late Egyptian E-Ka-Ptah, Linguists tell me that the hard consonants in this name, k, p, t were modified into q, p, t and eventually g, p, and t. The Greeks, who traded on the Nile a great deal, came to speak of Memphis as of Egypt, and they rendered the name into Aigyptos—which is the name that appears in Homer’s Odyssey. The Romans, who in most cultural ways aped everything Greek, rendered that as Aegyptvs. From there it got transformed, in French, into Egypte, and in Old English into Egipte.

Now in the Bible Egypt is referred to as Mizraim, who was the son of Ham and, by extension, the land of the son of Ham. Today’s Egyptians call their country using the Arab word Misr. It simply means “country.” Misr itself is thought to be of Hebraic derivation.

To this I might add that Ptah was the creator god of people who lived anciently in today’s Memphis. The word ka means soul. The Temple of the Ka of Ptah is thus the Residence of the Soul of God—so highly did the inhabitants of that city think of Memphis on the waters of the Nile: nothing but desert to the west. To see how little water Egypt has, check out the stats on LaMarotte.

Finally the comment. It came from Michelle in France this morning. She said: “Did you know the word Egypt is no longer available on Chinese search motors for fear of extension of the revolutionary energy?” Interesting! Well, I thought. I think I’ll give the Chinese a few other names to search on.