There is no 'Right' or 'Wrong' in the upcoming vote, only best effort at trying to determine what is best for Egypt. As such, every single person must vote. If you haven't made up your mind about your decision, you have a deadline till Saturday morning. Then you must go and say your vote, even if you're not sure. Again, it's your best effort... Irrespective of the voting result, we must accept this result. But accepting the result does not mean that people who disagree with the result (whether yes or no) must shut up. Not at all. We were having a discussion about the vote, and Hany Morcos shared some great information. These are supposedly the ABC's of a democratic system, but I never knew them before. Democracy, by definition, is the 'Will of the People'. Note the word 'people', not 'majority'. This is the goal of the mechanism of democracy. Unfortunately, many people think that it's only about the majority's decision. There are 3 essential components that build a democratic system: 1. Majority Rule 2. Freedom of Speech 3. A Law System that Protects Universal Rights, and Ensures the Protection of the Minority. The first component, Majority Rule, is also referred to as 'The Tyranny of the Majority'. The problem is that the majority is not all the people, and 51% is a majority just like 99.9% is. So you always have a percentage of the population that is in disagreement with the result of a democratic voting result. This is why you have the next two components. Freedom of Speech ensures that everyone can communicate their opinion in a way that is 'lawful' (more on lawful in Point 3). This is the primary method of how the system works. The majority uses it to endorse their position. The minorities use it to influence members of the majority and members of other minorities to win them over, in an attempt by every minority to grow into becoming the new majority. Of course, there is also an untapped source that all entities are competing for: those who are silent and not participative. As you can see, this is a continuous cycle of opposing opinions that goes on forever, and minorities grow to become a majority (this is when ‘change' happens), and as time passes and embracement of ideologies changes, new majorities surface. It's an everlasting cycle representing the success of ideas in ‘recruiting' supporters. But it's not that romantic. On the real ground; it's the success of the people who believe in an idea to convince more people to adopt this idea to win the majority. The protection of the minority ensures that they can exercise this free speech. It does so by ensuring that the majority does not abuse its power (since the majority is in power) against the minority, and safeguards the minority's' rights to express themselves and to promote their ideas that oppose the majority. It ensures that you always have a fair ground, and that a minority can become a majority. Of course, this is the first principle that every corrupt majority obliterates. In countries that are very close to an ideal democracy, such as Switzerland, the people are well educated and mostly participative. The result is a spectacular communication of information, opinions, and ideas that results in a ‘peaceful battle' for winning the majority. This is what is referred to as ‘a culture of democracy'. In countries where the majority is not participative because of lack of education, oppression, and a culture of compliance, the situation is different. In such a country, any group advocating an idea is a minority. It is a race between minorities to ‘recruit' from the silent majority as fast as possible to establish itself as a majority. The ‘good' groups do that by educating and communicating ideas with the uneducated majority, and assist them in crossing the bridge from illiterate to educated. The ‘evil' groups do that through abuse and manipulation. They know that the less educated the majority are, the more susceptible they are to supporting ideas without critiquing them. The lack of education results in a form of thought that lacks analytical skills, and is thirsty to embrace an idea that ‘offers' a quick form of self-preservation due to the lack of ‘conceptual skills'. The lack of the skill sets of ‘critical thinking' and ‘conceptual thinking' are commonly referred to as being ignorant. The evil majority employs a carrot and stick mechanism to abuse the ignorant majority. The carrot is a deliberately falsified sense of security and rosy promises that are not kept. The stick is the abuse of media and guns to keep them silenced. But back to freedom of speech, I was struggling with the following question: What is the form of free speech, and what is the dividing line that separates it from criminal activity? I wanted a source to give me an easy answer. From Wikipedia, one of the cornerstones of Freedom of Speech is “the right to impart information and ideas”. From the Merriam Webster dictionary, one of the definitions of the word impart is “to communicate the knowledge of”. Then I went into a cycle of word definitions: ‘Communicate' is to convey knowledge of or information about. ‘Convey' is to impart or communicate by statement. Back to square one! Of course, books on politics will provide numerous definitions for freedom of speech and frameworks for it. But there is a basic, common sense definition for the layman (like me): peaceful expression. Peaceful expression has many legitimate forms including media, conferences, books, organizations, and protests. Let's zoom in on ‘protests'. A protest, riot, and revolution are not the same thing. Protest is a minority grouping in a peaceful way to object to the current situation. A riot is a protest that is usually not peaceful, often refusing to abide to orders. A revolution is a riot that has evolved from being endorsed by a few minorities to being endorsed by a newly found majority. A democratic system allows and protects the right to protest. A riot or revolution are outside the scope of democracy, and once you have a revolution a new legitimacy is formed that can drive any form of political ideology. However, a protest is illegitimate if it is ‘protesting' against the decision of the majority, because it would then violate a core component of democracy. So you can't have a protest against a ‘decision by the majority', but you can have a protest against the ‘current situation'. The difference between the two is extremely significant. Of course, the ‘current situation' is a result of a ‘decision', or a group of decisions, that was taken by the majority. A protest is not directed against the majority's right to enforce the decision. Rather, it's an attempt to create a new majority that opposes it, just as any other form of communication adopted by the minority would serve. And if a new majority is indeed created, then it becomes the one power until another one is formed. I can see the concern here in the case of countries that are new to democracy: there is a legitimate fear that such conflicts will lead to a lack of stability. This is the fear that Omar Soliman was playing on during his infamous quote with ABC ‘The Egyptian people are not ready for democracy'. In the short term, there will definitely be a reduced level of ideological stability in Egypt that will have a direct effect on our stability as a nation. But this is actually one of the most desired outcomes of the revolution: this instability. The previous regime's stability was a manufactured one built on the oppression and dehumanization of the people. It primarily relied on creating and preserving a silent, ignorant majority under a well-constructed and executed plan that if the majority is silenced and passive, an active minority will not have time to recruit them. They won't have time because the regime would obliterate any active minority before it recruited any significant number from the silent majority. And as such, a democratic change will never be possible and since they are the sole power with guns, they can quell any violent riots or groups. But they failed to account for the one scenario that brought them down: revolution. The regime intentionally blocked all paths to change it could imagine, and mistakenly thought that it had blocked the path of revolution as well since they would keep the minorities ‘under control'. But something spectacular was happening in the background for a considerable time, and the regime and most of us failed to notice it. The size of the minority was growing as a new generation of people, one that had probably never witnessed an Egyptian president other than Mubarak, grew up. And in the same time, a small fraction of the silent majority was fed up. They had witnessed first-hand the regime's oppression, or had started to analyze and build an opinion. The new generation of youth that sparked the revolution had not lived their adult years under oppression. They did not have that much ‘adult years' to start with! As a result, they were not neutered by years and years of fear and compliance. Much of their basic analytical skills remained intact. They were still ‘fresh', and because of this more members of the Second generation were active when compared to the First. Analytical skills are a special form of thinking that are greatly boosted by education, but nonetheless exist in every person even if uneducated. And that is because every person is capable of thinking. The regime thought it had brilliantly quelled any rebellious thinking through its carrot and stick mechanism, and indeed it was to a great extent successful. A ‘generation', ironically, has a dictionary time definition of 30 years! The regime successfully neutered the First generation, and because of its success and arrogance dismissed the Second generation as a ‘group of Facebook kids playing around'. But when a very small proactive minority of the Second generation walked out in a protest on January 25, the magic happened. More minorities joined, and simultaneously members of the silent majority started joining. By the time that the regime started realizing that the riot is growing into a revolution, more and more members of the silent majority who were fed up were joining. Caught completely off guard and unprepared (ironically, the call for the revolution day was made publicly for a few weeks) with a situation that was rocketing out of control, they did the only thing they know: They resorted to violence. And that was the regime's fatal mistake that lead to its downfall. For the first time, the silent, passive majority saw a glimpse of the reality they had blinded themselves to. And as the violence escalated, reaching its peak on the day and following early morning of the ‘Camel Tragedy', a great number instantly joined the revolution. The regime, stunned, hopelessly tried to recruit supporters from the silent majority as well. But in one of the greatest twists of irony, the regime's own manufactured silent majority failed to save it. It had been so well manufactured; it remained steadfastly silent even if many of its members still supported the regime! The Egyptian revolution to date has still not achieved many, or actually most, of its goals. But one very valuable goal has been achieved, and that is the activation of one of the 3 cornerstones of the democratic system: The rule of the Majority. Saturday's Vote is built on this cornerstone, but Freedom of Speech and Protection of the Minority have not been reached in their true forms. There have been some attempts to move in those directions, but progress is far from close to realization of those values. And that is exactly why every ‘evil minority' wants this vote to happen as fast as possible. If the other two cornerstones are established before the past regime rebrands itself and grabs some power for self-preservation, they are doomed. To be fair, there are also good(?) minorities who might support the timing of this vote for their personal agendas, but I claim that they are few. The regime, which has lost its legitimate rule but as a full structure is still very much intact, realizes that change is happening. And as more time passes, more people from the Silent majority are awakening, viewing events, listening to different sources, and forming opinions. And the regime's only chance to survive in a new form is to immediately recruit members of the stubbornly silent majority (another irony!). In the meantime, the Revolution's only chance of winning is also to reach to the vastly ignorant majority, create immediate awareness, and work on a plan to transition the ignorant silent to an informed participant. It's a race against time. On a more optimistic note due to the very design of the democratic system (if implemented correctly), it ensures that even if an evil minority becomes a majority by using carrot and stick to abuse and recruit the ignorant, the minorities will continue their work on awareness and communication. As the minorities build mechanisms and channels for reach, which don't currently exist, and communicate their message, they will undoubtedly build a new majority. The two things that are needed in order for this scenario to succeed are a democratic system with its 3 cornerstones, and that the minority immediately practice freedom of speech through an official political channel by forming a political party. And that is why I say that this instability is a most desired objective of the Revolution. But I want to stop calling it instability, and call it by its true name: democracy. Omar Soliman called it instability, because the people are not ready for democracy. That is a most treacherous lie. The truth is that it's an awakening, and the challenge is that you have an ignorant majority. This provides unparalleled potential for the ignorant to rediscover the basic skill of analytical thinking in its simplest form, and overcome their fear of not being told what to do. To evolve from sheep who blindly follow to human beings who will start to think. And when you start to think, your initial attempts at that endeavor will not yield the greatest results. Your engine, the mind, has been rusty for many years. It needs to be powered on and allowed to ‘run, process, and execute'. It's a self-learning mechanism, and as it's starting with almost zero it will initially produce almost zero. But the cycle will continue, and the ‘level' and ‘process' of thinking will mature. It is an imperative duty for the government and the Revolution activists to immediately assist those people, not through brainwashing them, but through really helping them by wiping out illiteracy asap and building the communication and ‘freedom of speech' reach channels. As you can see, this is a process that will take some few years. And during this timeframe, as the ignorant become empowered with information, education, and communication representing all different ideas, they will start to make decisions and create their own ideas. And as any process of evolution, decisions made at level zero are usually not the same decisions that will be made at higher levels of ‘education'. This time period will witness a very interesting and volatile political arena, where members of the Silent majority start joining proactive minorities and adopt certain ideas and push for becoming the new majority. I think several new majorities will come and go as more and more members of the Silent become active, build opinions, elevate in awareness levels, and change those opinions. This political volatility does not mean that the country will be in chaos and unstable. On the contrary, it's the first step for reaching true stability. There are no shortcuts here. As long as the democratic system is protected, and its three cornerstones are fully effective, this political volatility will mean that we will see frequent changes of power between political parties. Thinking about this, this is exactly what happens in Western democratic systems. Take the US as an example, a country that I personally view as sadly spiraling outside of the democratic system, is nonetheless a country that sees Democrats and Republicans interchanging power frequently. But that never means that the country of the US is unstable or not functioning. Of course, it pays grave prices for some of the decisions it makes regarding who is in power, like when they elected the Bushes. But even in the worst scenario of Bush Jr., the country was functioning. I believe that the political volatility is a price that all of us are responsible for paying, and we can't escape our dues here. The educated must pay it for allowing themselves to be passive all those years, and the ignorant must pay it for succumbing to the neutering (they are victims, but also responsible for being victims). This is what Omar Soliman failed to mention during his interview, that the fake stability of the past was only a time bomb. That the only true path to a true stability is for all the ignorant to be educated, and then for them to make an educated decision on whether they will participate or not. They currently do not participate because they have been excluded, but once they are educated and build their awareness and opinions, and while all of us do this as well since we've never experienced a democratic system before and every Egyptian is a democratic newbie, I believe there will be a majority that will be participative. There will always be a minority that is Silent, but because it chooses to and is not coerced. As we practice democracy over, we will all learn more about our ideals, form new opinions or enforce old ones, and start forming a political direction. Till we all form our political identities, it will be a volatile horizon. Not unstable, but volatile in the sense that it is rapidly changing. And this is exactly the definition of education. We'll have to practice certain ideas and political ideologies in real life, and learn from the results of the decisions we make. This is called experience. As we build our political education and experience, we will become much less volatile, and only strong political groups will survive while the myriad of ridiculous parties that is sure to surface in the near future will fade. This is similar to the situation in Switzerland or France, where the people are aware, politically self-educated, have formed firm opinions, have finished and passed the phase of ‘learning', and each individual generally sticks to certain political ideologies. This is the future I want for Egypt. We are taking the very first step in this direction. Saturday's vote represents the first political learning experience. As I mentioned earlier, it lacks 2 of the 3 democratic cornerstones. Because of that, I believe that this vote is a crime, and would have liked to see it cancelled. But it seems that it will not be cancelled or rescheduled, and as such I am determined to make the best of it. I will do so by going and voting, in recognition that my voice counts. I will vote no, and I want you to come and vote. Vote yes or no - that is your choice. But the most important thing is to vote, so that you start for the first time voicing your opinion through a formal decision. It's important for you to listen to all different points of view, but the most important thing is for you to stop listening to points of view like a sheep, searching for the guiding light. Listen to them as a thinking human being, processing all the different sources of information, analyzing them, dissecting them, and searching for the version of the truth that you feel and know you believe in. Do not adopt a choice because XYZ, who happens to be someone you like or respect, is making this choice. Stop trying to cheat yourself by seeking a shortcut that will help you sidestep the thinking process. Listen to what XYZ says, listen to what everyone you respect says, but after you listen - stop. Stop and think about what all this means, and then make your choice. This is not just about Saturday's vote, this is a lifelong commitment that you will have to decide whether you will commit yourself to or not. I hope that you choose that you will commit to it.
