When rural and urban areas evolve hand in hand

BEIRUT - Back in our school days, we were always asked to discuss whether we preferred living in the village or in the city. Having always opted for the city, this choice of mine matured and was reinforced with time.

Speaking about villages, one can only think, especially in Lebanon, about intolerance and dusty traditions. Furthermore, the fact that those areas are relatively secluded makes them less affected by new ideas and values coming mainly from the city.

Taking for example the revolutions of the last century in the Arab world, we can say that most of them if not all, were in fact a seizure of power of the village from the city.

It is true that the city, while in power, mistreated and neglected the development of the countryside leaving it underdeveloped and underserved. This has led the rural areas to react sometimes in a violent way.

What those village revolutions led to was dictatorships, intolerance and even more underdevelopment and uneven distribution of wealth. The fact is that those who took over either by coups or by religious uprisings were immature, short-sighted and had a single objective: seizing power.

It is not true that the oppressed are always freedom fighters and justice seekers. The fact is that most of the times they want to become oppressors themselves, beneficiaries and masters of a system that has always defied their interests.

On another level, people coming from the city often suffer from discrimination even within the most revolutionary political parties. Their opinions are regarded as bourgeois and dangerously compromising with the system.

The problem is that after the technological advances in the last decade, the information age and the relative consensus in the world about human rights and democracy, reform and even revolutions cannot be achieved through violence and reactionary feelings namely hatred. Abhorrence and detestation never ignited successful and positive reforms.

Look at the soviet revolution of 1917, look at all the coup d'états that took place in our Arab world. All those were motivated by hatred. The alternative they proposed was short-lived and rather organized in the last minute. No system produced by those was ever prepared and studied before being applied.

On the other hand take other social movements such as the 1789 French revolution. Despite the fact that it was a historical act of bloodshed and cruelty, its main instigators were the urban bourgeois and intellectuals.

Diderot, Rousseau and Montesquieu were among the pioneers of this revolution. City traders and industrialists were the main beneficiaries. This is why this revolution succeeded in establishing values that are still alive nowadays.

Peasants and illiterates were never the instigators or the real force behind 1789, they were its fuel or its military arm. Sustainable changes and reforms are often instigated by intellectuals and students or those people who thought about change and know what to do after seizing power.

The most we need now in Lebanon is a group of professionals able to work on all levels in order to build the country. Lawyers, engineers, doctors, bankers, designers and others are all needed to try to change this society which is full of corruption, conservatism and tribal allegiances.

Along the lines of creating an alternative to the society as a whole, rulers should not commit the same mistakes of the past and neglect rural areas. They should connect these areas to urban concentrations.

This would in turn have tremendous social and political effects. Countryside inhabitants would then have access to jobs, schools and universities in town while people from the city would go frequently to their secondary residences bringing their acquired values and experiences of the city.

This way clusters of high mountains and remote areas would be broken. The formula would not be village, intolerance and wrath but rather city, exposure, planning and evolution.

Kamal Sanjakdar is the Editor-in-Chief of Alternative