What do Arabs have to offer the world? Maybe not much. Let’s turn that around, there’s nothing that can stop us.
Arabs are the coolest, right? I always hear stuff like “spending money like an Arab”, “Arab money yo”, and other sayings that link us to cash. It’s funny because a hundred years ago we were living in tents and smelled like sheep most of the time. Our bling was having a black camel, or if we had 100 purebred goats; that’s how we rolled! All of a sudden the West discovered our oil, refined it, and now we’re on top of the world. As the saying goes: What goes up must come down. And I have a feeling we’re gonna crash very hard if we don’t get with the program.
Besides mimicking Western cultures and economies, bringing in their goods and services, and being overall copycats, we don’t really have anything to be proud of. We can say we have cool looking buildings maybe, but even those will eventually crumble with our depleting oilfields, as the blood-sucking foreigners pack their bags and head back home. I’m not going to talk about the past or about the former glory of Arabs because that’s getting old: Like our oil infrastructure and the world’s reliance on it.
We Arabs believe that we are culturally superior somehow, and I see examples of that every day on the road, TV, online, and all over the world whenever I travel. It’s hilarious to see the mobs of Khaleejis that descend on European capitals during high season, making them essentially Arab towns. The amount of money being spent is ridiculous, but most importantly our attitude stinks as we burn all that cash. I feel embarrassed to be an Arab in London. They walk haughtily down the street looking down their noses at people, and try to buy everything and everyone in their paths. We have no cultural significance, no ingenuity, no technology, no inventions, no arts, and no major positive contributions to the globe. But we have big bank accounts. And all that money is from somewhere deep underground, simply because some dinosaurs and plants died a few million years ago. It’s a painful scenario.
I understand that our ancestors were struggling too much with the weather and drought to develop mind-stimulating games like chess, Chinese checkers, puzzles etc. But I believe those kinds of games are what assisted many cultures in grooming their young, teaching their brains how to strategize, have short/long term tactics and goals, and how to cope with winning and losing. I believe the Chinese are the best in the world at long term strategy specifically because their extremely complex version of checkers is ingrained in their society, and is played by everyone. So when they make decisions for themselves and companies, their brains are already wired correctly for that sort of analysis.
These games and training may have come way before technology but it doesn’t mean that we or the next generation can’t start a culture of intelligence and hard-wiring for the brain to be awesome. Actually with technology we should catch up to the rest of the world in a few decades. Teach your children chess, and make them interested in problem-solving toys and puzzles. Stimulate your brain in ways other than reading or sudoko. Challenge that organ on your neck. It’s an awesome supercomputer, and whatever you learn will pass somehow to the next generation. Instead of focusing our time, money, and energy on stupid things we should be investing in our intelligence. Because when the oil finishes, our brains may only be useful for goat herding again. And I don’t want my children milking goats.
