Where are all the mirrors?

Today's post was supposed to be in Arabic, my mother tongue. However that is no longer happening for several reasons mostly that I could not formulate the introduction without offending some old friends of mine. From that concept, this post was born. How often do we put ourselves second because we fear of hurting people who don't reciprocate the fear or worse they sometimes don't understand it exists? Actually, that is not the topic either; I was just reminding myself of the importance of clearly pointing out what bothers me and avoiding denial.

Today we go to the seventeenth century, when French author La Bruyere wrote his only book, a lifetime project entitled "Les Characteres" in which he polemically portrayed over 300 overt personalities of French society and the royal courtyard of Louis XIV. One dream of mine has always been to write such a book of the tragically hilarious acts I have seen my friends and acquaintances commit over the years. I find it deeply disturbing that people often lack internal reflection when it comes to matters of self assessment. Plato theorized about perfect citizens in the republic and elaborated on how tyrants with power might seem the happiest people, however they cannot truly be happy when they do not realize the wrongdoings they bring to the world around them.

Nevertheless, this is not ancient Athens, and it seems most of the people in modern day Beirut (probably the world as well if I am allowed to generalize) are preoccupied with their own vision of life and unwillingly judge the rest of their neighbors.  Some very enlightened people have enough insight to see fine lines between their vision of the world and what is really happening, meaning that they can actually look at what goes around them objectively and formulate an impartial opinion.  Alas for most of those people, the line ends when their family or friends are involved and suddenly they turn blind to the mistakes these people make. In my humble experience, I have found this kind of personalities to be the most destructive to have around you. Love is a powerful entity but love does not have to be blind. Nothing irritates me more than people who stick together despite being absolutely and categorically wrong simply for the sake of love. Injustice travels in packs. When you violate someone’s right you often look for support and find friends and family there to hoot for you no matter what. This is one of the major flaws of our culture. A famous Lebanese proverb goes something like this when translated word for word: “I stand with my brother against my cousin and with my cousin against the stranger”. Need I say more?

I have gotten into endless fights and been referred to as a narcissistic troublemaker over and over simply because I have always given people the benefit of the doubt. You see while I was growing up, I was taught that people are categorically good and society corrupts them. This is what Jean Jacques Rousseau referred to as the “good savage”. He argued that humans are good by nature and society corrupts them.  I played the devil’s advocate all my life, always defying my friends and family and asking them to question their facts again before passing judgments on others. However, with time I learned some disturbing news my dear Jean Jacques, psychiatry and genetics would challenge your theory when you meet a person with antisocial personality disorder. Let’s steer away from pathologies though, no matter how healthy it is to see what is wrong in your loved ones, it is not a sustainable approach because eventually, they will walk away towards someone who supports them regardless of whether they are right or wrong. Human nature demands approval, evolutionary drives require unconditional support and if you play the devil’s advocate for too long you will end up in life’s courtroom alone with no one to defend you when you fall. It seems the answer here is once again: balance.   

This is in no way an attempt to reproduce "les characteres", I have simply mentioned one small trait that bothers me. To reiterate, I think most people with a decent IQ have gotten enough life experience to look into their proper reflections in the mirror and go over what they have done wrong in most situations. However most seem to be unable to do so when it comes for their loved ones. If you really love someone, try looking at their reflection in society’s mirror; If you really hate someone, look at them through that same mirror as well because unlike your eyes, it actually accentuates both the deeds and the flaws. In the end though, one has to learn in which scenarios to just let justice slide for the sake of love and in which to never compromise.