while the elections are in progress and some of the muslim parties accuse each other of using the wrong strategies and the military announced that the result of the election is not what people wanted, live goes on. It remains exciting, how the FJP, the so-far-winner of the elections, will react on the militarys announcement. Anyway, a new chapter has begun now.
Attached some pictures of what else is important in Egypt. The kind people, the history, the smile and the will to come along.
…and the voice of egyptians is deliverd loud and clear: They want to be heard and they want to participate. This is one step in the right direction, a very small step indeed. Now we need someone to listen to this voice and many others, who accept that their voive was not loud enough.
I am very glad to be part of this and it is amazing to see, how most of the Egyptian handle the crisis. And we will see, how it goes, as soon as the voices are counted and the result is published. We will see who is supposed to rule and who is supposed to accept the defeat. And still there are bloggers detained who did nothing but criticising the military and still there are violations of human rights. And still there are a all the problems the country has.
We will see.
I love reading books. And most often I read books which contain some knowledge about whatever. A Designer should be interested in everything, as I am used to tell my students. And the question which makes me really tick since a while, is: is it us who makes our world or is it the world, which makes us? The answer seems to be quite obvious, but it isn’t at all!
Of course we are trained and educated in a certain environment and society. And this training gave us a certain way to think, to think using certain strategies or in certain ways. And these ways of thinking make, how we perceive our world. And how we perceive our world makes how we act in our world. And the feedback on how we act in the world makes once again our perception. The image of what humans are like, differs from era to era. Sometimes the heart is the home of the soul, than we are compared to machines and nowadays to computers which work using a certain software. The future of this might be, that we loose ourselves and become part of something bigger than us. But this is not, what I wanted to say.
I wanted to say, that each culture, era and society develops their own thinking tools. And these thinking tools define how we see the world and how the world sees us. The big question is, when are we able to develop these thinking tools? And with thinking tools I also mean the emotinal aspects like empathy. I suppose that we learn these tools during our childhood. This question is especially interesting for Designers or other people, which need the ability to think creative and to understand needs and wants. And the other question is, how to raise this ability in countrys with a very special structure of education and government, like Egypt and also somehow like China. Means in countrys, where certain decisions are most often not done by the individuals but by an authority on the next level. And the decisions are often not discussed but very emotinal and based on a very personal point of view. So the lower level has no chance to understand the decision and therefore it makes no sense to think about it or to plan something. And because it is as it is some people are not in need to learn to think and to come to own decision on a higher level. And this is a big bug in every society.
We can only think, what we are able to think. So we can only see, what we are able to see. Together this leads to the idea, that we can only imagine, what we can think and see. We really create ourselves through our storys and through our imagination. We create ourselves every day using the thinking tools we once learned. And without these tools the storys we can create stay on a quite low level.
Almost ten days of struggles and clashes between protesters and the police. Most of the clashes took place not on Midan Tahir but on a side street, leading to the interior ministry. Army and police say, that they just wanted to defend the ministry. Generally the language used in media as well as from the “combatants” is more related to civil war than to a demonstration. And I suppose some of the demonstrators as well as some of the armed forces think the same way. What was quite obvious from the first moments after the revolution in january on, is the fact, that every group has a different image of what should Egypt be in future. Because there is a huge lack of education and knowledge as well as a lack of a discurs culture and respect of different opinions, many have no other way than violence to express their aims and wishes. And the ones who express their aims and wishes in different ways are offended or harrassed, like the example of Sarah Gebril, Alaa Abdel-Fatah and Aliaa El-Mahdy shows.
The egyptian society is not mature enough, to deal with real democracy, I fear. The attempt to elect a new government starting this weekend will lead to more fighting, but this time not against one enemy but between the different interest groups. And as usaul the stongest will win. This is how Egypt works at the moment. It will take much more time to create a sufficent base for real democracy.
Of coures, nethertheless, there are very kind, smart and interested people in Egypt. I know many of them. But there are also many uninterested, stubborn, illiterate and hypocritical people in Egypt, in all social classes. Education in different fields is the biggest task for Egypt at the moment and not democracy. Democracy is something that needs certain abilities to make it work. And these abilities are completely missing at the moment.
hopefully I am wrong.
…things are developing to the worse at the moment. Although it feels somehow different than in January. The tension in the City is not as high as then and life is going on quite normal. Even in the discussions on campus the latest development is not a big topic but among foreign colleges.
A few kilometres from here are people fighting and also dying. But life goes on in the rest of the Cairo as nothing special would happen. Special perverted is this on facebook, where news about Midan Tahrir mix with news about private cooking habits and the latest movies. But… anyway…that’s is – this is the real world.
Military ones again explains that they would protect the revolution. At the same moment there are Videos on the Internet which show like military dressed people beating up other people. And once again it is the foreign hand which sparks the protests, as a military genaral announced today.
This time there is no Mubarak. It is a confrontation between the military council and the people on Midan Tahrir. And we will see, how it goes.
…and back in a completely different world. The students are suspended from university due to accusations that a few would act in an offensice way against figures in relation to the university or its establishment itself. The teaching is suspended for one week since Saturday. Each party accuses the other one of false accusations without going into details. A Video on Youtube showing a masked man throwing a gas canister towards the gates of the GUC has been removed today upon accusations, that the Video does not show the truth but was staged. The University buildings are almost empty and only the staff is there, wondering, what an university without students is about.
Most probably the open questions are just postponed and not solved. So we have to wait for next week, to see, what will happen. Some german professors who are affiliated with the GUC were quoted saying that special situation need special treatment. The question is, if they would use the same words in relation to their german students at an university in Germany. Once again it is difficult to decide, how to deal with the situation.
once again a perfect and amazing and very busy time… we will come again!
If you own something, you might loose it. And if you need something, it might happen that you don’t get it. If you want to live, it might happen, that you die. If you want to be respected, you might find yourself in the position of the clown. All these things might happen, but normally they do not happen. Everything is in our head. We fear. We are afraid of.
To be afraid is something, we cannot stand for a longer term. One of the basic needs is maybe safety. Perceived safety. So we need a solution. Stricter laws, a might behind everything, a reason, a final solution.
Make people fear something and they will almost do everything. A positive side effect is, that these people won’t use their brain because it is switched of in a state of emergency.
But behind us, there are some people which use their brains in a very smart way. And sometimes these people use fear as a weapon to achieve something. And the tool fear is transported with, are rumors. And rumors spread like explosion, a nasty virus which affects our brains and our souls. The virus always affects a huge amount of people and therefore it is that difficult to kill it. Discipline and strict brain use might help. Education alone won’t help as the worldwide use of the weapon fear shows.
Once again everything is focusing on downtown Cairo. The other areas of Cairo are quiet so far. And at the moment I do not think that the incidents this night will cause any sectarian strife. Many rumors are flooding the streets and at the moment nobody can say who started the fight. Each involved party blames the other and the government blames a mysterious “third party” without defining it.
In the end it will support the military to extend the state of emergency and to keep the power. And most western states as well as Israel will support this supposingly because it might also help to stabilize the region; In a shortterm thinking construct. And we have to keep in mind that Mubarak also was from the military and that he guaranteed peace with Israel. Free and open elections could bring a government, which maybe could cancel all peace treatys with Israel. And this is something, many states are afraid of. Also democracy has to stick to the rules of the big game.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/10/2011101072623285752.html
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/503553
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/23749/Egypt/Politics-/Egypt-general-prosecution-starts-investigating-Mas.aspx
