Many repeat the common phrase 'actions speak louder than words' yet not as much people adhere to it. Everyone can talk and say whatever they want; talk is cheap, isn't it? Of course it is, and in Egypt where we're growing up in a culture of rarity, talk is our most coveted commodity; only because of the lack of something else that's more valuable. 'Hang on. What do you mean by a culture of rarity?' you ask me. Allow me to elaborate, however briefly.
Your average Egyptian is a person who doesn't have much to call his own because valuables are becoming increasingly rare with time in our country. This rarity in which we live overpowers the inherent kindness you'll read about in tourist guide books and blogs of visitors reflecting on their visits to the land of the Pharaohs. The reasons behind this rise in rarity are numerous and may need volumes to fully discuss. Let me just say that this rarity is the result of a weak economic structure, inexistent progress in education and a government-inflicted fear of self expression. This leaves your average Egyptian in charge of only his words; in supposedly "safe" surroundings of course.
The weight of words for the average Egyptian is becoming increasingly heavier because of the open control he has on them. They are what he uses in his everyday dealings with those around him and since their use has become hugely un-moderated, they are becoming more and more expendable. It remains though, on the other hand, a valued commodity owing to its aforementioned rarity. Egyptians (and when I say Egyptians I mean the majority not 100%) take the words of others seriously and give it weight on its merit.
Another very important factor in that equation is the in-bred sentimentality of Egyptians. People value each other and expect altruistic behavior from one another in many, if not all situations. These expectations are often built on a verbal agreement and are in most cases fulfilled. It stems from our dependence on each other and from a general sense of trust. There's no prevailing sense of verification, there's no nagging voice asking 'how do you know this is right?' which make the words heavier than they should be. So if at any point the promise is broken, there's a sense of weakness. The word was all he had and now it doesn't mean anything.
The in-bred sentimentality of Egyptians has made them a little too sensitive over time. So when someone is expressing an opinion which happens to deter from the norm, unfortunately your average Egyptian would consider it a proverbial slap in the face. A 'how could you?' reaction is automatically fired back. This sensitivity has given more weight to the word. Since the average Egyptian is a text book conformist, varying opinions are a rarity, which produces millions of citizens who can't converse objectively and effectively with people they may disagree with.
An analogy that I'd like to use at this point is the analogy of falling objects. Everyone knows that gravity is an uncompromising force of nature that pulls everything towards it. If you stand at a window and throw a rock or a pen, they fall in almost a straight line, this is because of the constant acceleration of gravity and their weight which is almost unaffected by the wind during the fall. Now imagine throwing a sheet of paper out of the same window. What will happen? The acceleration of gravity is the same but any breeze passing by will take the sheet of paper with it in its direction. It's because the paper's weight is so negligible, anything can push it along. This lightness of mass can be extrapolated in examining human behavior as lightness of character.
This lightness of character which is largely attributed to the reasons mentioned above, poverty, over-sensitivity, weak economy and the fear of self expression, has made the average Egyptian like that piece of paper falling from a window. Any meaningless word from someone can push it along with it. In the grand scheme of this lightness, the outcome is intellectually weak because the individual intellect does not get any practice.
I was curious in school why the Arabic word for mathematics was a word almost exactly like the word for sports. The answer to that of course was that the brain is like any other muscle in the body that always requires exercise. Mathematics to the brain is like running to the legs. The more one practices it, the more one becomes better and sharp at it. Transposing this to the human intellect would then be quite simple. The more a person is consistently engaging their intellect in objective conversations, its stays sharp and receptive. The attuned intellect therefore can be constructive and useful in understanding the surroundings and working around them.
On the other hand where you have the lazy and fat intellects living on an exclusive diet of bland summer-hit comedy movies and mass-produced radio-friendly mono-tonal musical products. These intellects are constantly exposed to the most repetitive and mind numbing forms of entertainment which are turning them into mindless drones that are left to wander the land in search of their respective fifteen thousand minutes of fame that are just right around the corner they never seem to pass by. So out goes the drone into the real world with minimal intellectual fortitude and the cold hard truth is that the intellectual and the educational level have departed each other a long time ago in this country. It is not uncommon to meet a person with esteemed academic merits and a frigid inflexible mentality.
In the midst of all social, political and economic conditions that can affect the population of any given country in different ways, Egyptians look like they've got the bottom end of the deal. Our society is infested with religiously induced conformity that's built on 'copy-pasting' what some cleric may have mentioned in passing and directly applying it as divine orders. Our economy once depended on tourism and with every year, Egypt's global ranking is declining. Our internal politics are run by the infantile 'calling it' system which is running the majority of the country's natural and human resources deep into the desert depths that we're progressively moving into without realizing that we must limit our growth in population lest we explode and be forced to move out anyway.
All these conditions, and more that could push this short piece into pages of double digits, collectively put down the spirit of advancement in our youth and gradually grind and polish any sharp mentality and lure it into its conformist populace. Hollow characters are the ones that are most under the spotlights because the average intellect exposed to it is just too damn weak to realize its hollowness. They flabbergast the herd with their flashy appearance and ill use of big words and they keep on doing it well beyond the point of blowing smoke. This, in essence, is the excessive rattling of the empty can. An opportunistic and weightless personification of all what's wrong with our society nowadays.
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