Wednesday, March 22, 2006

The First Cut is the Deepest

Arabs keep reminding me with monkeys, and I don't mean that in a bad way.

Many years ago a Russian psychologist made a brilliant experiment where he placed a group of monkeys in a cage. In the beginning the monkeys kept jumping and fighting trying to escape from the cage. As time passed by they realzied that they've been locked up and got really depressed, and got used to their new life in prison.


To everyone's surprise, when he opened the cage, the monkeys felt too depressed and too defeated to even leave the cage.

Actor Duraid Lahham said in one of his plays ....
اول كف هو بس اللي بوجع، بعدين لو تاكل مية كف ما راح تحس فيهم
(meaning that the first slap on the cheek would hurt but the next 100 slaps won't)

We were slapped the first time long time ago, and since then we've been behaving like those monkeys in the cage, so pathetically helpless and too tired to move.

We consider a day without casualities in Palestine a happy day, a day in Iraq without civilians being slaughtered a miracle.

If , these days, Iraq stayed united without a civil war that would be a victory, while a couple of decades back the fact that borders existed between Arab countries was considered shameful.

We are so numb now that I'm afraid if someone came by and opened the cage, nobody would leave.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

yes!! we were talking the other day about the same concept,,, y3ni,, what if israel openned the broders for all palestinians to come back ,,, who will do it?? i bet that less than 5% of them will go back!!

manar said...

7akyak bewaje3!

Dozz said...

yeah yeah yeah...thats y im a trouble maker who never accepts anything she doesnt agree with!!!it might change me forever...

Anonymous said...

"We are so numb now that I'm afraid if someone came by and opened the cage, nobody would leave."

most probably that would be the case. unfortunately.

Anonymous said...

Sad but true.

Anonymous said...

for me if they open the cage door i will run away directly :)
but you are right, if we used about it we cant leave it!!

Anonymous said...

I don't share your pessimistic point of view.History proved that cages can be smashed and humans are more difficult to tame than apes.