By Mazin Qumsiyeh
The shifting landscape locally and globally necessitates rethinking and new paradigms. Intellectuals and analysts are not the only ones who have a responsibility to change the failing old modalities and evolve. History of similar transformations provide lessons. Many events provide warning bells of a need for a new rational direction that can deal with things like the climate change debacle, the collapse of the unipolar world, the rise of China, the recent shifts in Israeli society, the war on Ukraine, North Korea, pandemics, dictatorships, and risks of nuclear war.
Being in the medical field, we say there is a need for taking patient history, assessing current symptoms, coming up with accurate diagnosis, offer therapies and council factually on prognosis. Historically humans had many transformations in systems of organizing ourselves and our societies. We went from hunter gatherers to agricultural communities, clans to city states to kingdoms to empires then to nation states and to superpower nation states. Countries experimented with capitalism, socialism, communism, absolute monarchies, “representative democracy” and more.Transitions are not easy and can be very traumatic and certainly violent. But rejection and collapse of teh old paradigm does not guarantee a better paradigm.
How people are responding to collapse of the old order determines the sharpie of the new world order. The grounds are shifting and the voids are large and will be filled one way or the other. If enough people push for a nature and people centered new structure, we will have it. If we sit back and watch, the elite powers will simply shape yet a different oppressive regime. The forms taken for such oppressive regimes can range from religious theocracy setting the clock back hundreds or thousands of years (e.g. Jewish or Islamic fundamentalist views ala “Israel” and As=fghanistan) to a new neo-capitalist systems (ala Hungary and Ukraine) to totalitarian regimes dependent on cult of personalities (like in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or North Korea). What is needed is a science-based rethinking of our future that is based on basic human rights and justice. As activists from Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr to Despond Tutu to Sara Roy and thousands of others articulated: we can envision a peaceful and more just world and work for it.
Here in Bethlehem, Palestine the struggle continues: thinking globally and acting locally. Last few days we had: a) educational/empowerment events for marginalized communities, b) carried four major field trips focusing on biodiversity, c) cultivated summer plants in the community garden including a main activity on Palestine Land Day 30 March, d) progressed well in the work for a new museum of Natural HIstory facility. For photos and summaries of activities, wee https://www.facebook.com/PIBS.
The deafening silence of intellectuals in the face of growing global conflicts
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