Khalid Al Sayed
By Khalid Al Sayed
The dialectical cultural relationship between authority and people may not have been clear before the Arab Spring, as it is now with telecommunications and the new media revolution.
Certainly this relationship exists in all Arab countries and at all times and ages, and it is not only confined to Third World countries, but is also common in developed countries because culture is a political tool since it helps reach political objectives.
Focus in the Arab world may be more on the role of authority, because it governs the state and all its institutions.
Due to lack of democracy and real civil institutions, in addition to the presence of some intellectuals who are looking to back the authority in order to achieve their own personal goals, and not forgetting also the weak financial returns of cultural projects, establishes the urgent need for the authority to take over cultural development and to become the sole entity to conduct all cultural activities.
Here we have to be a little bit fair. Not all cultural development activities conducted by the authority are only for its interest, sometimes its projects benefit the community and create a kind of balance.
It is true that the authority may use or sacrifice the intellectual and any cultural project for its own interests in order to remain in power or to avoid reactions within the community.
However, the problem arises when the culture of the individual, class, or group is weakened, and then the culture of the community becomes incomplete and incomprehensive, not interrelated and connected to each other, because of biases of one class. This leads to the disintegration of society or the state, the primary cause being cultural disintegration.
An integral cultural project in the community or the state must be based on the culture of the people, otherwise the authority dominates the culture of the community and forms its intellectual, social and political relations according to its own interests.
To keep its culture strong, the state must promote the culture of all factions of society, and must also be part of a larger and more comprehensive culture.
The culture of the individual is part of the culture of the group, which in turn, is part of a larger culture — the culture of the state and the nation.
The Peninsula
