Let's find a third way, an Alternative

Is this part of the world doomed to backwardness? Do all people live here in spite of their will? Will everyone who has an opportunity to seek a better life abroad leave this country?

Judging by the current situation, the country looks hopeless. A whole list of complaints could be filed in no time starting with unemployment, disorganization, repression of freedoms and ending with a tribal-sectarian culture which seems unable to sustain cultural advances or to catch up with progress.

But a few young people still have hope to reverse, or at least to try to halt, the snowball effect of socioeconomic and political deterioration in third world countries. The pickup line for this ambitious group is the following: If there is a will, there must be a way.

Exposure here, which many think comes as a byproduct of globalization, does not mean more, more and much more consumerism. It does not mean extensive usage of Internet for entertainment (not to say pornography).

Exposure should be based on two factors namely benefiting from the revolution in information technology and telecommunication and, in the traditional sense, benefiting from the experience of Western educational and academic establishments in the region.

This said, young people who are eager to style their organizations after Western models should not think of doing so for the reason of avenging Western dominance over underdeveloped peoples later. On the contrary, they should work on self-progress in order to join efforts with the more sound factions in the Western world who prefer to invest their taxes in developing third world countries to destroying them and abusing their resources.

Fanaticism prompts fanaticism while logic provokes more logic. When America suddenly decides to settle score with American-created and later protected regimes in the Middle East, the issue looks like an internal business between these dictatorships and their masters.

But it is certain that there are some sound people in the West, now sitting in the shadow, who would love to see people who share with them their logic and reason in the East step to the forefront and take over to replace backward-minded leaders. Once sane leaders take over in to-be-built democrtic systems, dictatorships might face a domino effect and collapse. When dictators of the East and Hawks of the West fall, the currently prevailing "clash of civilization" theory might be reversed.

Change, however, in this part of the world is easier said than done. The editorial team of this publication, for instance, had a hard time in putting these few pages together. Living in a country where the only license that one can get is the driving license, and without any potential resources of funding coupled with an ailing culture that does not support any intellectual business, issuing this publication was more of a nightmare.

The business became even harder when several friends and foes belittled our ability of creating an alternative to the main currents that are ruling the region namely the Western "collaborator" faction or the domestic "national" but group, of course both dominating their countries with tyranny.

Our answer to all of these questions was: We belong to neither of the dominant camps. We want to reassess the failure of more human ideologies and to marry them with Western-style organization. This puts us in the "nowhere classification," a classification of a third way different from that of the dominant schools, a way that might be an alternative.