"There is no danger to the humanitarian project from those with fixed ideas and shifting values." This is what former Tunisian president, human rights defender and thinker Moncef Marzouki wrote in his book "Revisions and Alternatives".
These messages that the book sends after each deep thought tour is what distinguishes this important book. The book combines an attempt to develop many theories and from "different disciplines" (multidisciplinary) to construct a narrative of epistemological break with existing ideologies.
If you think that Marzouki is a rebellious doctor who only rejects injustice, then you are wrong. Here and in everything that is written, especially when he is in his seventh decade, you are faced with a long experience, deep knowledge, and insight that should raise in us the questions that the book clearly asks about the need to discuss the five ideologies - and the postulates that have been established in the minds - that the book discussed: nationalism/nationalism, progressivism, liberalism, democracy, and religious ideology (not ideologies).
It is important to note that this discussion was not a discussion of one ideology for another, or an attempt to detract from contrary ideologies, or to walk through preconceived backgrounds, the exact opposite is what the author mentions, as he explains - a scientist of cognitive and neurosciences and their terrible development in the 21st century - the danger of ideology dominating the mind when it tries to explain reality with the reference of ideology. The book can be compared to what Karl Popper wrote at the beginning of the 20th century about open society when he reviewed and criticized all existing ideologies in Europe.
Patriotism and the atrocities of wars
"Experience has shown that this (national/nationalist) logic, even if it is behind intermittent periods of peace, was and still is the cause of all the atrocities of wars and the nation-state to impose its existence...", he adds, "Liberalism assumed that freedom is the value of values, and that its victory will lead to the liberation of man from the constraints with which he tied himself", but experience has shown that it also releases greed and greed in man.
This is reminiscent of what John Rawls wrote about social justice as a value equivalent to freedom, or what Alasadir Marcantile wrote in her book "Beyond Virtue", in talking about the issue of values that must transcend ideology as shown by Marzouki's words.
It is the dysfunction of the world order created by the victors after World War II and the profound imbalance in the perception of the relationship to the universe on which capitalism and the global financial system were born, which have created crises that some call "biological globalization", when microorganisms contribute to resisting corporate greed and spread diseases.
Democracy as a path to peace and freedom
"Democracy assumed that the values and rules it enacted to run the peoples are capable of creating the best systems capable of achieving humanity's aspirations of peace, freedom, equality and justice, but historical experience has revealed that it has produced the corrupt financier, the corrupt politician, the mercenary media, and the ignorant or misleading voter," he said of democracy.
He is reminiscent of Frank Katsen's post-democracy book enumerating the disadvantages of democracy in the Global North: "Experiments have shown the limits of politics' ability to change human beings for the better, which religion has tried and failed before. These experiences have also shown that progress is not necessarily an evolution and that the path to the better can be halted and regress into very bad situations." As for religious ideology, he says, "Those who proclaim themselves as spokesmen for the sacred and who are charged with putting borsch on the straight path are neither worse nor better than ordinary politicians."
This assessment is not based on personal antagonism, or ideological hostility, but rather on the perception of human behavior when living in the prison of ideology, and perhaps, as Karl Popper said in The Myth of the Framework, we are inevitable from the prison of ideology, but we can expand those prisons and visit other prisons. If that ideological cover is removed, we will be able to critique and think critically about what the author calls in the second chapter of the book "updating," perhaps meaning the context in which the failure of these ideologies emerged.
In this chapter, the author talks about what Noah Harari, the writer who wrote about the future man: "I confess that I rose up like a snake bite at the passage in which Harari says that rights are the doctrinal arm of the religion of man - the god he calls individualism. Have I been in all the difficult years that I have been recruited for human rights causes as an individualist and believer unconsciously immersed in a new religion that moves me, like puppets move hidden fingers?"
Harare is one of the ideologues of the Davos Forum and is an advisor to Klaus Schwab, Chairman of the Forum. Here Marzouki begins to review the foundations of many of the prevailing theories, and points out how to reach the epistemological rupture, and here we can evoke the idea that we are in front of ideology (we are always employees or employees) either we use it for purposes that hide the nature of predation as a claim to chivalry, or we find ourselves seeking another agenda as many have adopted democracy to justify the occupation of other countries' countries and the exploitation of their wealth.
This is a very profound development that many universities in our Arab world have not yet been able to access, I mean the "world of complex adaptive systems", this is what I understand from the state model that Marzouki elaborated on, and it is very close to phenomena that have recently begun in many studies on distinguishing between the excavations of the state; I mean power and the conflict around it, and then the political structure of the system to rationalize this The struggle over power and to convince the governed of the legitimacy of the ruler, until we reach the crust where narratives in which knowledge and charisma contribute, and finally the violence that many portray as the abstract definition of the state, the Leviathan who wants to eliminate everything, which Marzouki also reviews.
We are facing a moving phenomenon that makes talking about politics without understanding this dynamic a serious issue that media professionals toss in celebration of its shell, or people ignore it thinking that they are isolated from its evils, or when we do not realize the seriousness of the practices of power and money that are the core of this phenomenon, which has a long and great history, which is the state.
Here, Marzouki makes it clear in a statement that politics cannot be mere games that neglect important contexts that may eventually force everyone to collide with complex crises with deeper historical contexts, namely the environmental, demographic, developmental, and technical crises that the world is experiencing.
Marzouki elaborates on what is known as great history when it goes beyond the traditional approach to understanding historical transformations from a meta-perspective that examines human transformation and human evolution, when it goes beyond reductionist premises and linear paths to understand major transformations in public, we realize that what is happening is more than Kais Saied's seizure of power in Tunisia, the defeat of Islamic ideology, or the success of counter-revolutionary forces in a round of rounds. The people, the state, democracy, political Islam, and our understanding of civilization, history, and the universe in its physical meaning drives minds in their understanding of the future.
Founding revolutions and revisionist revolutions
It is possible to refer here to what Marzouki talked about of the development of consciousness from the tribe to humanity when man begins to expand in his perceptions, and this is what is known in the sciences of perception as the theory of the moving helix when thinking is divided throughout history into 8 spectrums, starting from the tribe and ending with the environment and the feeling of cosmic dangers. All this makes Marzouki within the framework of understanding the revolution, which is a broad perspective, as he says, "In this vision, humanity has lived through 4 revolutions – when the investigation disappears, of course – to call them founding revolutions, because they established very different civilizations, that is, once I see profound comprehensive and long-term changes in human lives. As for the so-called revolutions, the real number of which no one knows, let's call them revisionist revolutions, as they are just societal explosions to modify the distribution of wealth, power and consideration after the balances have been disturbed to a degree that is no longer acceptable to society."
Major variables and the theory of the great transformation
In the third chapter, we find ourselves facing the global crises we are experiencing, which we must realize are part of the context of the revisionist revolutions (which we call the Arab Spring). These crises, as Marzouki mentions them, are closer to the theory of the Great Transformation developed by the Global Scenario Group, or John's theory attributed to the major variables, and in general they have become clear to everyone who has a holistic view through which Marzouki looks. These crises are the question of security and peace, the climate issue, the epidemiological issue, the technological issue, the question of the economic system, the question of the political system, the question of belonging and responsibility.
What roadmap?
The third chapter explains these challenges, which, as can be seen from the context of the book, are the catalyst for these variables that old ideologies must reconsider their postulates in order to be able to confront them.
It is the dysfunction of the world order created by the victors after World War II and the profound imbalance in the perception of the relationship to the universe on which capitalism and the global financial system were born, which have created crises that some call "biological globalization", when microorganisms contribute to resisting corporate greed and spread diseases, when politicians are subject to the World Trade Organization through large corporations, and when the nation-state becomes an after-eye relic by talking about empire, as the Italian philosopher Antonio Negri wrote, or the networked sovereignty of a group of powerful states. On weak ones, wrote Ana Maria, an adviser to President Obama. All these challenges strongly raise the question of identity to make ideologies face more powerful and modern questions: the way to search for the new path.
This is what Marzouki writes in the last chapter, "What Roadmap?" Perhaps this chapter is one of the most wonderful things you read when it appears in Marzouki the literary man and perhaps the novelist Al-Areeb, it is the art of simplifying deep meanings, when he shows that the power of technology, or predation in the world of politics, cannot reach humanity to any safety, "O God of all computers, the Lord of all robots, and the master of all mobile phones with which you spy on humans, with the head of the most beloved robot you have, do you show me the outlines of an ideology that falsehood does not come from behind it and in front of it, I come out with it To people, guide them to the straight path, and they will elevate me and you."
Thus, he shows that he does not have a magic solution to all these crises, and that he asserts that struggle and values as feelings and decision-making starting from the first system of spontaneous consciousness cannot be compromised. Here, he clearly discusses perceptions of Marzouki's person as idealistic or unrealistic, to show that on the contrary, when he felt that the human rights struggle alone would gain nothing and said – to a friend who asked him what to do?- "We take over the Ministry of Interior."
The road between two abysses
He wants to remind those at the bottom of false realism that he was more aware of reality than they are and clearly gives us his perception of politics in general when he gives us an example, "You are told, and do you want to convince us that the alternative is utopianism and naivety that does not lead its owners, no matter how good their intentions, except to be stupid prey to predators who are themselves prey to Machiavellian ideas and illusions!?. There is a way out of the wolf or lamb choice; Mandela's School of Politics... The Mandela School is the right path between two abysses, the first that mixes force and violence, the school of the predator who considers politics a battlefield, in which there is no place except for one winner and one defeater, and the second is the school of prey, who is always looking for reconciliation, reconciliation and submissiveness", the Mandela School as he explains it "is the one that believes that force has nothing to do with violence, you can be strong without being violent, and you can be perfect without being naïve and foolish ignorant of the true nature of human beings." and complex".
Each chapter of the book needs to be a special topic in itself, especially in its cognitive dimension because such books are not repeated often, and the study of the Arab political mind from the perspective of cognitive sciences is the right entrance to understanding politics in the Arab world. After clarifying his comprehensive vision for change, Marzouki does not hesitate to say that values are the basis for all this, as he said, "There is no danger to the humanitarian project from those with fixed ideas and transforming values."