Give priority to moral education [Archives:2007/1096/Opinion]
Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Maqaleh
Consecutive governments in the third world countries have so far prepared numerous five-year and non-five-year plans in order to develop their peoples and resist all the causes of economic, social and cultural backwardness, but to no avail. The real reason is traceable back to the fact that such plans have been implemented in atmospheres cleared of all the moral values and in a vacuum emptied from any effective laws.
In climates like those, it is difficult for any government to reach the minimum scale of achievements, which peoples have been dreaming of and awaiting over the past few decades that featured considerably relative affluence and prosperity in the third world. This amount of affluence and prosperity was about to ensure placing underdeveloped nations at the starting point of the right course toward real development and sought progress.
The present situation with its troublesome problems raises this question: “Should these peoples have started from the moral education in order to ensure that at least part of the comprehensive development, which they usually aspire for, was achieved?” The answer to this question is clear and frank, but before framing the answer, we must admit that such a question was raised too late. We should also admit that the components of progress, which peoples had already possessed once in the past, already decreased and deteriorated.
In order to develop and prosper, the developing nations have to start from the zero point, place adequate emphasis on moral education with all its spiritual, human and civilized dimensions, as well as review the absent moral values in order to confront deviation and deviators. Additionally, these nations should observe the mafias of financial and administrative corruption that have gone rampant and created their own leaderships, cells and branches to control organs and systems of the third world countries.
On the occasion, not only the third world is in need of a deep-rooted type of moral development, as the developed countries may be in urgent need for such development too. No wonder that the developed nations recently reached an unprecedented climax of technological advancement and made available an unimaginable degree of luxury, but this amount of advancement and luxury may be short-lived and will no longer survive unless there is a moral awakening to prevent any anticipated infringement, as well as put a limit to the rude style of the immoral and inhuman treatment of backward peoples. Also, there should be an extermination of the malicious competition within the developed world itself. The developed states are recommended to work hard and ensure themselves against unavoidable collapse that appears to knock at the doors of big capitals with unprecedented violence.
An focused glance at the economic analyses recording the outstanding abnormal relations between the overdeveloped world and underdeveloped nations will be enough for identifying features of the moment of collapse. Such a moment draws nearer and nearer as the overdeveloped world insists on committing more crimes for dominance and illegal wealth purposes, plus the immoral and cruel treatment of third world peoples.
Deviation, destruction of values and approving the principle of “Loot and Flee”, which are the result of this treatment under the shadow of globalization, functions as the preliminary alarm ahead of the inundation. So, backward nations that suffer oppression have no choice but to remain adherent to their moral values, hit embezzlers, mercenaries and those who waste public money with an iron fest and then concentrate on the system of values that activates and applies what laws and constitutions cannot.
Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Maqaleh is Yemen's prominent poet and intellectual. He is the director of the Yemeni Center for Studies
Source: Al-Thawra State-run Daily.
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