I noted, with interest, this week that the group of tourists who were kidnapped in Southern Egypt relied on GPS to inform authorities of their exact location which contributed greatly to their safe return.
This, of course, is unacceptable: GPS devices are banned in Egypt (along with other countries renowned for freedom and democracy, Syria and North Korea) and those tourists knew that. By turning to their GPS devices in order to save their lives, they blatantly disregarded the law of the land. The honourable thing to do would have been to follow the law and trust the authorities to resolve the situation in a timely and competent manner.
After all, the Egyptian government’s track record in timeliness and competence is beyond reproach.
Ok, I was kidding. And not just about the obvious.
You see, joking for me is like the flailing limb on a Tourette’s Syndrome patient: I just can’t control it. It relieves a lot of my tension and also buys me time to consider exactly what it is that bothers me about any given situation. I’m pretty sure it’s some kind of coping mechanism that helps me maintain some sanity in the face of a world that has certifiably gone to hell in a hand basket.
And that’s on the good days.
Let me veer back to the point of this week’s column, with all the focus and assuredness of a drunk behind the wheel: Why is it every time a new technology that offers a better way of life for all is introduced, a faction of people appear determined to slow it down?
The answer to that depends on the region of the world you’re looking at.
In China, the media (particularly the internet) is regulated by the government for totalitarian reasons, to control the information that its citizens are exposed to and maintain their ideological hold over them.
In the Middle East, it’s to protect a way of life that has been threatened by globalization and exposure to new ideas. That’s why the Internet is censored in Saudi Arabia and Dubai, and why until the early 1990s, satellite dishes were banned in Arab countries.**
In the US, it’s done because an industry or a corporation feels their business model is being threatened by a new technology, which prompts them to organize their lobbyists to attack it, under the guise of ‘regulation’. The fascist restrictions that media companies have put on music and movies are one example. The shameful sandbagging of any kind of alternative energy investment, spearheaded by oil companies, is another.
In Egypt, it’s for a little bit of all the reasons I mentioned above, as well as another big, fat, ugly, smelly, putrid, hairy 800-pound gorilla-in-the-room reason: incompetence.
Now, granted, some of you may view corruption as equally culpable, because it enables the incompetence and refuses to hold the people responsible for it accountable, and I don’t disagree. But corruption, in my opinion, is a human trait, present everywhere; If a decision-maker (in business or government) demonstrates a level of competence, I’m at least willing to overlook their corruption. But this isn’t the case here.
There are far too many people in far too many critical positions with the power to make decisions that affect not just our day-to-day lives but, more worryingly, our future as well, who don’t have the qualifications to do what they do.
I struggle to look at any sector of government or any independent regulatory body without catching a whiff of sheer and utter incompetence borne out of the same intellectually-bankrupt calibre of people being appointed to key positions where they make haphazard, subjective policy determinations that conform to their narrow-minded, sycophantic, limited view of the world.
These people were appointed to their positions not because they’re qualified for what they do, but because they know other people in power. They were appointed because they have a genius for ingratiation and administration.** And when the administrators or the bureaucrats are put in charge of the talent, bad decisions are a natural outcome. Because they themselves have no talent, they seek to stifle it in those who do.
But things are changing, I’m confident of that. Because while the administrators-in-charge are ignorant by token of their incompetence, the people they’re trying to deny the knowledge to, aren’t themselves ignorant; they only suffer from an absence of information. That’s what’s so malevolent and damaging about ignorance: not knowing and thinking there’s nothing wrong with not knowing. We, the people, on the other hand, have demonstrated on numerous occasions, a determination to find knowledge “even if it be in China , to quote the Hadith.
Maybe if we had GPS, we’d be able to get there quicker.
* Tom Friedman captured this struggle between traditionalism and modernity in his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree. ** It amazes me how many evil historical figures, were administrators; administration and process are pure evil; because they treat talent as ‘resources’ and because they forget the system is there to serve the people, not the other way round.
Mohammed Nassarwas kidnapped at birth and forced to work in advertising, in Cairo, New York and London. Today, his main concern is that archaeologists will one day stumble upon his desk, debate the value of his profession and judge him. Feel free to email him at [email protected].
