In essence you are just repeating the defeatist speech echoed by most Arabs, intellectual or not, without true knowledge of occidental history. Although I agree with your assessment regarding Arab societies having turned into “consumer” constructs, the basic idea usually lurking behind such evaluation is based not on history but on abstract notions of race and nationality.
A fine example is Germany, which most Arabs admire for all the wrong (and less for the right reasons). This country is only about 150 years old, created through a conniving and at times backhanded politics of Bismarck, his intention was not to create a social welfare state or the advancement of his people, but to maintain power and force the labor class into near servitude.
We Arabs tend to forget that modern Europe was not created through some bizarre genetic code but through wars, blood and slavery. Something most Europeans will easily ignore or laugh at.
Another point regarding the importing of foreign labor is seldom mentioned; Gulf Arabs actually relied heavily on Arab man-/womanpower in their early phase of development. Both professionals and lesser skilled workers from the Al-Sham region and Egypt were welcomed into the region up to the point where pan-Arab socialism was gaining in popularity both among expatriate and local Arab alike. This, coupled with the assumed abuse of the health-care and education systems, threatened both the status-quo and eventually “Western” interests in the region.
No offense to you, but I am really fed up with the usual Arab narrative of “they are better than us, we amount to nothing”. We are people, we can and do produce talents, we deserve much better than copying failing systems and we can reinterpret modernity (which is strictly a European phenomenon). As for where to start, I am still trying to figure that out.
In essence you are just repeating the defeatist speech echoed by most Arabs, intellectual or not, without true knowledge of occidental history. Although I agree with your assessment regarding Arab societies having turned into “consumer” constructs, the basic idea usually lurking behind such evaluation is based not on history but on abstract notions of race and nationality.
A fine example is Germany, which most Arabs admire for all the wrong (and less for the right reasons). This country is only about 150 years old, created through a conniving and at times backhanded politics of Bismarck, his intention was not to create a social welfare state or the advancement of his people, but to maintain power and force the labor class into near servitude.
We Arabs tend to forget that modern Europe was not created through some bizarre genetic code but through wars, blood and slavery. Something most Europeans will easily ignore or laugh at.
Another point regarding the importing of foreign labor is seldom mentioned; Gulf Arabs actually relied heavily on Arab man-/womanpower in their early phase of development. Both professionals and lesser skilled workers from the Al-Sham region and Egypt were welcomed into the region up to the point where pan-Arab socialism was gaining in popularity both among expatriate and local Arab alike. This, coupled with the assumed abuse of the health-care and education systems, threatened both the status-quo and eventually “Western” interests in the region.
No offense to you, but I am really fed up with the usual Arab narrative of “they are better than us, we amount to nothing”. We are people, we can and do produce talents, we deserve much better than copying failing systems and we can reinterpret modernity (which is strictly a European phenomenon). As for where to start, I am still trying to figure that out.