Dr. Hossam Badrawi Official Website
Humanity’s Challenge in a New Year
By Dr. Hossam Badrawi
I watch the news, read social media and ask myself: What do I hope for in a new year? My wish is to see a real change in the lifestyle and development in Egypt, which will protect our country from what is happening around us. My wish is to see the leaders of the future who are in our homes and schools now, and who have the opportunity that has arisen and are able to engage in it and use it instead of falling into the clutches of resentment, negativity and a sense of defeat.
A young man who dreams of tomorrow said to me: What opportunity do you mean?
I said: The massive spread of information and communications technology, and the emergence of artificial intelligence and its capabilities, which is a force that cannot be stopped, a force that affects every area of modern life. From the first moment the eyes of hundreds of millions of children in Egypt and the world open, they have been immersed in a continuous flow of knowledge, communication and a life that their parents and teachers did not know. It is a new world, and it is renewed every day. This is the opportunity that was not given to us. The present of humanity is changing, and the youth are living this unprecedented human revolution, where it has been proven to everyone that every dream and fantasy has become possible.
At the same time, today’s children and youth are exposed to all the evils of humanity represented by Zionism and the leaders of the West who bless it and provide it with weapons, money and absolute support to wipe out peoples from existence and divide the Middle East according to their whims.
He said: So you mean that school, culture and knowledge are the crux of the matter?
I said: Let us move a little outside the traditional thought. Al-Razi, Al-Farabi, Leonardo da Vinci and their likes of innovators and scientists did not enter a school, as there was no such thing as a “school” in their time. The school is merely an invention invented by man at the beginning of the nineteenth century to standardize education to serve armies and religions at first, and then to serve employment and industry after that, and the strange thing is that since that date everything has been affected by progress except the school, its image has not changed “a teacher standing explaining and in front of him students”, although education and its form are supposed to lead the movement of progress. The fact is that the progress movement preceded education, so in education we are running after what happened in industry and technology. Industry and technology have preceded education systems everywhere in the world, and this prompts us to ask: What exists today and what will exist tomorrow? Do we defend the traditional form and chase after what others have achieved and not have initiatives outside the scope of the traditional, within which we have not succeeded in developing our society? In this context, the number of illiterate people in our country has increased to reach 16 million citizens, and poverty has increased to 32 million citizens. These are the official figures announced years ago. This is despite the fact that as children grow, the capabilities of digital technology grow with them to shape their life experiences, and provide them with countless opportunities for learning and increasing their ability to influence the future of humanity so that they are taken into account and heard. His colleague said: What prevents them from seizing this opportunity and raising Egypt and humanity to a better level? I said: The obstacle to their creativity and freedom is us, the generations before them who manage their lives, stereotype them according to our forms and customs, and transmit to them our shortcomings and evils, so their poverty, illiteracy and extremism increase.
She said: Give us more explanation.
I said: Most of us knew life before the Internet. But for children who grow up on the Internet and artificial intelligence, they cannot imagine life without it. Digital technology has transformed the world we live in, and the social landscape has changed. One in three Internet users worldwide is a child, and young people are now the most accessible to the Internet among all age groups. Many children have a digital footprint before they can even walk or talk. Digital technology can be a game changer for disadvantaged children, providing them with new opportunities to learn, socialize and have their voices heard, or it can be another barrier if they are excluded from the world of communication. Digital technology is the latest product of human ingenuity, so do we go the path of resisting and condemning it or are we an active party in shaping the future? This is the question, and I would also add that the digital world eliminates the gaps between social classes, changes the features of local and international politics, and increases the power of individuals in an unprecedented way.
The first young man said: But the state talks about digital a lot, and everyone is heading towards it..
I said: The move towards digital is nice talk, but we have to prepare for it, not by importing devices or even manufacturing them, but by the content and method we adopt in calling for it. The challenge of digital is not in learning to use it because our children are born digital, but in repeating our saying that we call for it, but in fact we resist it at the same time.
The young woman said: So what is the challenge of using digital devices?
I said: The challenge is the decrease in human communication as young people dive into using devices and the decline in the influence of positive values in the content they absorb and that shapes their conscience. The challenge is how to fill the free time of our children with or without digital, and what are the positive values that we are talking about, and that should be integrated into the production of digital games and digital drama? Things that we must solve among ourselves first.
The first young woman said: What will we learn from that?
I said: Fear of the new and trying to prevent it is stupidity, seizing the opportunity requires initiatives, and standing still without action is an escape from the future, and surrendering to Salafism and glorifying the past and condemning the use of reason and stopping at beliefs that were formed before the revolutions of science and knowledge is civilizational suicide and we see its manifestations in Syria, Yemen, Sudan and other countries.
The young man said: So we prevent the use of technologies that call for extremism and promote the trend towards extremism, violence, sex and deviation and allow the rest..
I said: You will not be able to, we have to understand that we must not leave a void in the lives of our children and youth, otherwise something will fill it, whether we want to or not..
It will be filled with extremism or deviation, using the same technologies. Can we prevent the impact of digital or fill the void with art and sports as a communicative human act, in addition to the overwhelming attraction towards devices, or lead digital to fill the conscience with positive values, which basically requires identifying and defining them. This cannot be done alone, but we must work positively and produce intellectually and not wait and miss the opportunity. We have not succeeded in calling for culture, reading and increasing knowledge for decades, and now we have an opportunity with a cognitive leap and means that put us on an equal footing with those who preceded us in civilization and knowledge production. If we decide to do the same thing again in the same way, we will only reach the same result. The main challenge is how to do two things at the same time, to give our children free rein to imagination, creativity, innovation, communication and freedom, and at the same time to put within them the methodology of thinking and resorting to references and evidence before believing anything, without imposing our ideas and linking them to our customs, traditions and what we believe. Ancient societies were ruled by religious and social beliefs that science has proven to be wrong and sinful.
The smart young woman said: Do you mean Europe, which at that stage was under the rule of the Church in its dark age?
I said: Yes, but they needed 400 years to get out of it, and they admitted that it was a dark age, and the Church in Rome officially apologized for what it did to people in those ages, but we still exalt the darkness of religious rule, and push towards the Islamic Caliphate as if it were the path to heaven, and preach religion by beheading and excommunicating everyone who does not share our belief, and they are three quarters of humanity, and between us and our factions there is the same hostility, even more, and those seeking power seek refuge in religion and a return to the past.. and they also use modern technologies. The world is leaping into a new future, and we are resisting and striving for the past, and the opportunity is to shorten four centuries of time to catch up with civilization as makers of the future and not just as consumers of what others make. I believe in the capabilities of our youth, and I see them as nothing but a blessing that we, the older generations, waste by trying to stereotype them with the likes of the past and without formulating the future, so we waste their energy and potential. The responsibility lies with the administration of the country and society.
The first young man said: What do you advise?
I said: I am a man of “optimistic genes”, and I see the best in people, and I see the opportunity before me clearly, and my wish is that the “shoulds” turn into policies that are actually implemented. Let us think together about how to participate in shaping the future without monopolizing the truth, and involve our children, as they have become more capable than we imagine. We do not want our children to be like us or our grandparents, but better than us.
