Daily Lessons from Life - 06 March 2011

Just read an article by the New York Times writer on the book: Clash of Civilization.

He indrectly remarked that the author of that book might have made the wrong inferences and/or conclusion that the Muslim civilization is culturally different from the Western civilization as the recent spates of 'revolutions that overturned long reigning regimes in the Middle East and North Africa nations' showed that they do want freedom to express themselves.

I submit that the origianl author and this NYT writer made the mistake of using the wrong words to describe the Muslim civilization in the 1st place. It is a religion. It is not jsut a culture. As I have contended many times in the past, religion is about emotion and not about rationality.

At the same time, the root cause of all these uprising seen recently is: Bread and Butter issues! People are out of jobs, not happy with the rising cost of living, health care, etc. They were interested in who run the country using whatever system as long as the rulers provide breads and butters for them or enable them to do so.

Of course, once that is absent, the people began to ask hard questions like: why are the ruling classes having a much better life than them, the people who allowed these elites to rule over them? One thing leads to another and the corruptions, the unfair treatments, etc gained momentum and taken a life of its own.

So, the universal values are: human being wants a decent living with breads and butters to survive in an increasingly commercialized world. If the leaders cannot provide these to them, they will revolt! As simple as that.

Not that many people are in the position like the author of that book or the NYT writer where basic breads and butter issues are simply non-issue!