Practical Visionaries in the Egyptian Revolution

As you watched the revolution on the streets unfolding before your eyes on nightly television, what struck you the most about it? What spiritual lessons do you think we can harvest from this? I’d love to hear your thoughts about this.

Watching the news, I recalled an amazing insight I had when I visited there in 1973, narrowly missing the Israeli-Egyptian war that year.

As a young woman, the mystery of the pyramids and the ancient spiritual culture of Egypt had so intrigued me that I bravely set out to visit it on my own just after college, when there were few Western tourists.

A fan of American rock music (I had been working for Rolling Stone magazine at the time), what caught my attention was their popular music. But to my ear, all the songs sounded similar. “Ahhh,” an Egyptian cab driver teased me, “you are only noticing the melody. Listen to the rhythm.” To my Western ears, melody was always foreground and the rhythm, the drumbeat, was less obvious in the background. But to Egyptians, it was the opposite. They focus on the complex and unique rhythms of each song, not the melody which weaves through it in the background.

So what do you think is the foreground melody which we Westerners focused on in Egypt and other mass demonstrations in the Middle East—and what background rhythm did we miss?

I think at first we saw only negative stereotypes of Arab people and a fearful and dangerous uprising with all too familiar scenes of violence and anger aimed at the U.S. This seemed to be the main foreground in our perception.

At first we missed many things in the background that were actually foreground to the Egyptian people–30 years of repression by a brutal regime, supported in large part by our own country, which was too embarrassing for us to admit. We missed the brilliance and beauty of an ancient people who created a very refined civilization when much of the world was still savage. We missed the diverse, multi-religious, inclusive society that Egypt has become. And we missed an incredibly well organized community of intelligent, disciplined and peaceful people, as well as the internet warriors and street warriors who were ready to die for freedom.

We in the West, who are often so comfortable and complacent about our freedom and democracy, at first missed the incredible courage of thousands of young people who peacefully self-organized to demand democracy. But thanks to the courage of thousands (especially young people), the light and brilliance of the Egyptian culture is finally coming to the foreground. The world has been inspired with what humans can accomplish when there is a rhythm of common purpose, a spirit of community, and altruistic sacrifice. A dictatorship has been forced to resign and masses of Arabs are now more empowered to defeat authoritarian regimes in other parts of the Arab world.

To me, the heroes of this revolution are true practical visionaries—they have a vision of freedom and democracy, but they also use practical organizing tools like Facebook and self-organize brigades to protect their neighborhoods, street clinics to help the wounded and spontaneous music to lift their spirits. And they even cleaned up after themselves!

For those who study these things, Egypt, the home of the ancient mysteries erupted in the month of Aquarius, the sign which brings revolutionary change and which governs technology—and the social media –the tools so effectively used to catalyze the revolution.

So what are your views about the deeper spiritual causes and lessons involved in this revolution? Please add your comments below. (For more of my insights on current events see my last two books: Spiritual Politics and The Practical Visionary. (www.thepracticalvisionary.org). –By Corinne McLaughlin

Photo Credit: Free images from acobox.com

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