Follow the Leader

In 1978, just prior to the revolution that toppled the Shah of Iran, I spent a couple of weeks there on a business trip. Outside my hotel window at night, I saw dozens of young men studying under the lamps in a small park. When I went down to talk to them, I found they had all studied English and ALL professed a strong desire to come to the United States. They bought me tea and pastries and were the most hospitable people I’d met anywhere in the world.
Less then two years later, the Shah was out, Ayatollah Khomeini was in and a mob of students stormed the U. S. embassy and imprisoned our people for 444 days. I watched in amazement as young people who looked exactly like the ones who had befriended me in the park were shaking their fists and chanting, “Death to America.” It was a dramatic example of the collective mentality overcoming individualism in the Middle East.

Give Me Freedom or Give Me Death

Patrick Henry apparently hadn’t foreseen Mazlov’s Hiercharchy of Needs. In 1934, Abraham Mazlov proposed a theory in which he listed all the human needs and organized them into a hierarchy, usually shown as a pyramid. He placed the most basic, physiological needs (breathing, food, etc.) at the bottom with safety and security needs above that, followed by esteem issues (self-respect, achievement, mutual tolerance) and finally those things dealing with creativity, morality and problem solving.

His theory, fairly well accepted by sociologists, is that one can’t spend much energy on any level of the pyramid until all the lower, more basic, levels have been largely satisfied.

The lesson here? It’s foolish to try to force high level concepts like “democracy” on people still struggling to keep their families safe or worse yet, trying to keep them from starving. Wise up Neocons.

Clash of Cultures – Guilt Versus Shame

In the United States and other western countries, children are taught at an early age to feel guilty if they do something naughty. In our society, life is full of opportunities to do things our mother told us not to do. We either let our conscience be our guide and keep from doing them, or go ahead and do them – and feel guilty.

Arab boys, particularly Saudi Arabs and others from the Persian Gulf region, aren’t given that inner compass, Jamal told me. “Society tells them what is right to do. If they do what is wrong, they would bring shame on their father and uncles, on their family.”

“So when they’re in London …”

“Exactly. There are no fathers or uncles. Alcohol and sex are freely available, so why not do as the Londoner’s do?”

We in the west prize our individuality. We consider ourselves individuals first and members of groups second. Arabs (and many other non-western peoples) think of themselves primarily as members of a group – family, clan, tribe. It’s such a fundamental difference between us, failure to recognize it can lead to hatred, terrorism and wars. (More on this in the next couple of posts.)