LET’s Know Ourselves Are We Civilized? [Archives:2001/31/Culture]

Ali Kaheli 
To answer this question, should we examine our way of wearing, our way of speaking, walking, sitting and eating? Does our appearance decide whether we are civilized or not? Are the clean and tidy way of wearing, the fluent way of speaking, the polite way of eating, or the way of growing up fruits of civilization, education, and richness? We may find an educated, not civilized, man who has these qualities. To be precise, we must only discuss civilization, not its fruits. As civilization refers to people living together (city), we are civilized when we can live in this city happily. So lets examine this ability. 
Civilized people don’t break the law and misbehave 
The failure of the reform program conducted by the previous government is a remark. The prevalent administrative corruption can be seen in both the public and private sectors. Employees care only for their individual interests, violating the law and sacrificing the public interests. This corruption involves bribery and smuggling, which are uncivilized features that cost our country millions of dollars. Here we find people looking for their little individual interests sacrificing this huge public interests. It is also known that the policemen who stop a driver who has made a traffic mistake, are helpful! When they capture a breaking-law driver, they ask him to pay them instead of more payment in the police station. Are these policemen and drivers civilized? 
Civilized people have no discrimination against any person 
If we have a close look at the ties that connects our society or any Arabic society, we will consider blood. We find the members in the community care for these who are their blood-relative; their families and tribes. They work for the sake of uplifting their families and tribes. It is known that a soldier has to fight with his tribe if there is a conflict between the government and his tribe. Even if his tribe is the wrong side, he must stand by it. This belief makes the law invalid and its breaking something common. Thus the citizen cares for the interests of his family and tribe neglecting that of his country or of whole humanity where there is not blood relationship. It is therefore illogic for most of us to care for environment, or the hunger in Africa or Palestinian crisis. Thus most of us are unable to understand and then correspond with new civilization concepts like: human rights, and democracy, etc. 

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