A few days ago, I watched the movie "Shanabou in the Trap." Regardless of the film's naivety, like most comedies of that era, I was captivated by the comedy in the character of Professor "Darwish," played with exceptional wit by the doyen of Arab theater, Youssef Wahbi. He describes Fouad El-Mohandes’s character, "Shanabou," as a "rare egoistical human" while trying to convince him to be the subject of his research. Darwish, a brilliant scientist, discovers new species, studies their psychology, and observes their reactions.
I don't know why Professor Darwish reminds me of the Arab intellectual of our time—the great scholar who understands what the common people do not, who sees what is beyond the obvious, and grasps hidden secrets others miss. Yet, when you engage with them, you quickly discover they only have a superficial understanding of their society's concerns. They have built a high pulpit for themselves, from which they address people from above, acting with an air of condescension. They almost look at people with a sense of reprimand and sometimes disdain for their inability to comprehend the intellectual’s lofty ideas.
In the past, culture meant religion, wisdom, or philosophy. The intellectual was a prophet, a sage, a philosopher, or a man of letters. Kings and sultans would choose tutors for their children to teach them various arts, sciences, and all they needed to become qualified to govern.
Taylor defined culture as "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." In contrast, Quincy Wright believed that culture is "the cumulative growth of the technologies, customs, and beliefs of a people, who live in a state of continuous contact among its members, and this cumulative growth is passed on to the emerging generation through parents and educational processes."
The definitions are numerous, yet they clearly highlight the importance of faith and the role of religion in shaping culture and guiding human behavior in the West.
As for the Arabs, culture in the Arabic language means skill and understanding. "Tathqif" means refinement, correction, and cleverness. Is this a sufficient definition of culture in our era?
In his book The Problem of Culture, Malek Bennabi defined culture as "the set of moral qualities and social values that influence an individual from birth, so that the relationship connecting his behavior to the lifestyle in the environment in which he was born becomes unconscious."
I believe that culture is the living reservoir of knowledge, ideas, beliefs, arts, literature, ethics, laws, customs, traditions, and the historical, linguistic, and environmental heritage. It accumulates in the mind, granting an individual the moral qualities and social values that shape their consciousness and, consequently, their behavior in life, to the point that it becomes a belief that drives their actions and defines their conduct with other members of society.
Perhaps the concept of culture differs with time and place. It is important that this concept is not tied to a specific intellectual elite. An intellectual is anyone who engages in an intellectual or cultural activity outside the scope of their primary profession. What astounds me most is the disconnect between the intellectual and the members of society. The intellectual is an individual from their community, and their concerns are those of their society. Since difference is a law of the universe, human societies do not hold a unified vision on public issues, whether in their view of the challenges facing the nation or the means to solve them. Thus, we find social divisions on major issues—a natural human phenomenon that appears when the state and its modern institutions are formed. At that point, intellectuals are supposed to contribute to transforming these divisions into intellectual efforts and contributions that enrich the culture and arts of this nation.
This is the main role played by intellectuals in building Western civilization and establishing the foundations that contributed to the establishment of democratic life and the freedom of peoples, purifying power from the constraints of theocracy, and spreading rational values and political modernity. Looking at our Arab reality, we find that the leadership role assumed by Western intellectuals is what controlled the intellectual developments of the Arab intellectual’s role, who borrowed from Western theories without taking into account the social considerations and economic differences between our Arab societies and Western societies. This has exacerbated the entire crisis of Arab culture instead of helping to solve it.
The Egyptian and Arab intellectual of today is different from the generation of Taha Hussein and Al-Aqqad, where the pen adhered to clear methodologies of disagreement and criticism that were not influenced by the exaggerated emotions of the common people. Today, the Arab intellectual suffers from psychological complexes as a result of ideology. We find that secularists and religionists fight each other from a psychological rather than an intellectual standpoint. An intellectual with a secular ideology may abandon its principles just to harm another intellectual with a religious ideology, who in turn may give up one of the principles of his religion to spite the liberal thinker. The same liberal thinker may, out of anger and prejudice against the religious person, abandon the condition of freedom, which is the very origin of their affiliation and thought. The struggle between ideologies, represented in their intellectuals, is great, and psychological feelings overcome them, which is a dangerous disease.
Therefore, the intellectual must be in a middle ground between the masses and the authorities. They should be immersed with the masses with their minds, not their feelings; they should empathize with them and feel their concerns, but they should not have the same psyche and emotions as the society, or else they become like common people. The intellectual is the judge between society and authority, between ideas, customs, psyches, and emotions. This is a delicate position that requires knowledge, wisdom, self-control, and integrity.
The intellectual must be a noble person without psychological complexes, first steeped in the culture of their people. Then, they should have abstract ideas that they study, analyze, deconstruct, and reassemble within the framework of their society’s culture to invent new ways to offer to the world. If they integrate into their society, trying to spread their ideas and apply them among people, they have risen to the rank of a reformer.
Finally, the Eastern adolescent must come of age, take on their responsibilities, and reclaim their distinct Arab culture that they abandoned while chasing after artificial cultures that do not represent their society or offer solutions to its problems. This child must stand on their feet and speak their mind, transcend their emotional reactions and classifications, and turn to their heritage, trying to exploit the treasures within it that others have already exploited, putting them light-years ahead.
