Re-thinking Life !

Modern cities in the 21st century are defined by “individual empowerment”, “social inclusion”, “economic development”. “cultural prosperity”, and “sustainable development”. The rapid urbanization around the world ( see here ), makes it imperative for cities, as they grow in population, to meet the societal, economic, and cultural needs of its citizens who are growing increasingly diverse. But  you do not have to scrutinize the Arab cities’ ecologies to know that they are conceptually and pragmatically nothing near a modern city as illustrated above. A typical Arab city, let’s say my city Tripoli in northern Lebanon, is underdeveloped, lacks social mobility, individuals are undervalued, has marginalized groups, and the city development is temporal. The marginalization or assimilation of groups in the city is only growing by the day. I have seen this in every Arab city I have visited, with the exception of a few in the GCC. A key ingredient for continuous development is life-long lea...

Two indicators that can be used to measure a nation’s ability not only to survive but also to thrive are the nation’s top interests and the nation’s literacy rate . This does not preclude that there are other indicators as well, but in an age where knowledge is king, a nation will be definitely doomed if its people lack knowledge or are not interested in obtaining knowledge. Our Arab nations in particular have been underdeveloped although they have the top oil and energy reserves in the world. But, why is that the case? Internet Search Trends To explore what issues Arabs are interested in, what better way than to look at top search internet trends data. Google Trends in particular track the “key word” search that every country has used for the whole year. Google Trends however does not include all countries in its tracking. Nonetheless, for the sake of comparison, I have explored what people in United States of Emirate, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon have search for the whole ye...