amazing grace

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

Towards the end of the last film I wrote about, American Gangster, the gangster character, played by Denzel Washington, leaves a church to face his cop nemesis (Russell Crowe), while the choir is singing Amazing Grace, a lovely hymn - which conveniently provides a segue to the film I saw tonight, called Amazing Grace (after the hymn). I'm in a hurry to write about it, as I'm convinced they'll stop showing it here in the next day or two; there were just a handful of people in the cinema tonight, but it's a good film that a lot more should get to see. (I know, I know, you can always see it on DVD.)

Amazing Grace tells the story of William Wilberforce (played by Ioan Gruffudd), the British MP who fought to abolish the slave trade. It has a very strong cast (Albert Finney, Michael Gambon, Rufus Sewell, Ciaran Hinds - and singer Youssou N'Dour as former slave Olaudah Equiano), and although it's not extraordinary in artistic terms, the portrayal of Wilberforce's conviction and tirelessness makes for a very inspiring experience – you come out thinking that if more of us just kept trying we could make very big changes around us…

What struck me was the paradox that the same evangelical Christianity which was Wilberforce's inspiration to end the slaves' suffering, was also a key element of colonialism (in fact Wilberforce was also one the founding members of the Church Mission Society). I'm not criticising Christianity in particular (most faiths have missionary 'wings'), and am not suggesting that it was the impulse behind colonial ambitions, but it was often used as a justification, and missionaries were part and parcel of 'empire'.

There's a quote in the book by Rabindranath Tagore I read recently which expresses the contradiction well:

Time after time she [the West] has fought against herself and had undone the chains which with her own hands she fastened round helpless limbs; and though she forced poison down the throat of a great nation at the point of the sword for gain of money, she herself woke up to withdraw from it, to wash her hands clean again. This shows hidden springs of humanity in spots which look dead and barren.

Oh, I should explain why the film is called Amazing Grace; the hymn was written by one of Wilberforce's mentors, John Newton. He was a slave-ship captain, who had converted to evangelical Christianity (while still working in the slave trade); years later he bitterly repented of his participation, and helped Wilberforce in the campaign for abolition.

See it if you can...

talk about arty-farty...

I saw this on the BBC website a couple of days ago:

A mechanical cow that breaks wind on the hour has become Edinburgh's latest tourist attraction. The bovine backside has been attached to the side of the Rowan Tree pub in the city's historic Old Town. It lifts its tail and shoots out a cloud of white smoke at passers-by throughout the day.

Silly, but fun... And actually, it immediately reminded me of a famous painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder called Netherlandish Proverbs , which depicts about one hundred Flemish proverbs of the sixteenth century (some are still in use today - and many are familiar to English-speakers, as there are equivalents in English). The painting is a lot of fun to look at, but there is a serious message intended:

Bruegel's paintings have themes of the absurdity, wickedness and foolishness of mankind, and this painting is no exception. The picture was originally entitled The Blue Cloak or the Folly of the World which indicates he was not intending to produce a mere collection of proverbs but rather a study of human stupidity.

The image that the Scottish cow reminded me of is that of two backsides sticking out of a window (if you look at the larger picture you can see it), and apparently that illustrates two sayings; first, 'It hangs like a privy over a ditch', which means 'It's obvious', and second, 'They both shit through the same hole', meaning 'They are in agreement'.

There are a couple of sayings that refer to wasting time (which I'm pretty good at): 'To carry the day out in baskets', and 'To gaze at the stork'. I love both those images! I'm not going to keep quoting - take a look at the picture and the explanations of the proverbs yourself, and let us know if you enjoy any in particular.

the true meaning of blogging

I was quite taken aback when I read this article today; it offers some tips for 'real' blogging by Jorn Barger, who actually coined the term 'weblog' ten years ago (and who – though it's not relevant – could easily pass as a member of ZZ Top). It turns out that he believes blogging should be about lists:

A true weblog is a log of all the URLs you want to save or share. (So del.icio.us is actually better for blogging than blogger.com.) You can certainly include links to your original thoughts, posted elsewhere…but if you have more original posts than links, you probably need to learn some humility. If you spend a little time searching before you post, you can probably find your idea well articulated elsewhere already.

I agree that most things have been said before, but that doesn't mean they shouldn’t be articulated in different way – or repeated. I've never understood why people get so worked up at banality in blogs. It seems to me that a valuable part of blogging is community – creating a little group of people you communicate and share with, maybe not about profound subjects, but it's a way of connecting all the same. And if I find what someone else is posting uninteresting, I don’t have to read it – and can seek out more stimulating or original material elsewhere. What's the big deal?

Anyway, for those serious about blogging and getting noticed, here are some tips. The piece ends with a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with:

If blogging can't be fun at least some of the time, it isn't worth doing.

stakhanov on my mind

All this talk about productivity (or lack of) at the beginning of ten days of holiday here in Bahrain, has inevitably given rise to thoughts of that Hero of Socialist Labour, Alexei Grigorievich Stakhanov. So to give you all something to contemplate during this long break, fellow Stakhanovites, here is a short video about worker motivation, concluding with some inspirational words from Stalin (but don't be confused by the capitalist tone): 'In the soviet today, everyone works according to his ability, and receives not according to his needs, but according to what he has produced.' (This is to a musical accompaniment that sounds suspiciously like Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? - surely they are not making a sly reference to Comrade Stalin?) May you be motivated to exert yourselves on your return to work... But in the meantime, Workers of the World (or at least of Bahrain), relax!

thar she blows!

Just a reminder that I am now reading Moby Dick - I know some of you were interested in reading it too, and in joining a discussion when we're done. Whet your appetite with this clip...

they shoot donkeys, don't they?

Sorry...cheap quip. But couldn't resist when I saw this (go to number six).

Reminds me of the molotovs found on the farm in Bani Jamra, and the interviews Al Wasat did with the farm animals...

civilisation has a darker side

Civilisation has a darker side
Which must be accepted with the good.
The arts of sex and music, the art of might,
The art of being kind, the art of straightforwardness,
The art of deceit, the art of kingship,
Justice and the enduring crown…
The resounding note of a musical instrument,
Rejoicing of the heart, the kindling of strife,
The plundering of cities, the setting up of lamentation,
Fear, Pity, Terror.
All this is civilisation.
All this I give you,
And you must take it all with no argument and,
Once taken…you cannot give it back.

Ishtar, Sumerian Goddess of Wisdom, circa 4000 BCE

Quoted in From Baghdad to Bedlam

staying within a box in order to think outside it

Restrictions breed creativity: When you have unlimited resources, you can afford to be sloppy with your designs. Restrictions introduce a set of rules that you cannot change and are forced to be creative in order to come up with a solution.

Although this post is not about Fikr 6, it is inspired by something I heard at the conference. Muhammad Saggaf is one of the extraordinary Saudi speakers I mentioned in a previous post. He is the head of Saudi Aramco’s EXPEC Advanced Research Center, and I wish I had interviewed him at the conference, because he is a truly creative and dynamic thinker.

In the session entitled Technology: Speed to Change, Muhammad Saggaf spoke about Aramco’s approach to research and development, and to collaboration with outside partners. In brief, he said that Aramco has a liberal view towards patenting; the company does not seek to retain intellectual property rights when collaborating, understanding that it will increase the benefits for the company by not doing so. Because Aramco limits its operations to Saudi Arabia, it is not looking for new markets, but rather an impact on existing operations. Aramco aims to be an effective collaborator, specifically by articulating exactly what it needs from its partner – making the effort of working out in detail, not just in general terms, what it wishes a new technology to achieve.

Basically, the limitations of location and precision regarding technical requirements are seen as extremely useful and positive. I was reminded of something I once heard about engineers loving restrictions – because then they get to be really creative. That resonates with me, because it is exactly the same with (you guessed it) translation. Translation is an incredibly creative process because of the fact that you are constrained, and have very clear parameters to operate within.

The same principle can apply to writing in general; someone advising me on a thing I’m writing told me recently to ‘embrace restrictions’. The more limitations you place – of time, of viewpoint – the better you can create within those limitations. And going back to my point about structure in poetry, striving for a particular form can provide a framework in which creativity is unleashed. (Robert Frost once said that writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.)

There’s a wonderful episode described in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, in which Phaedrus is advising one of his students. She wants to write a five-hundred-word essay about the United States, but doesn’t know what to say. He suggests she narrow it down to their town, Bozeman, but although she goes away and tries, she still can’t find anything to say. He then tells her to narrow it down even further, to the main street of the town. She comes to the next class in distress, and wants to know why she would be able to write something about one street if she couldn’t write anything about the town as a whole.

He was furious. ‘You’re not looking!’ he said. … The more you look the more you see. She really wasn’t looking and yet somehow didn’t understand this.

He told her angrily, ‘Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick.’

Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, opened wide.

She came in the next class with a puzzled look and handed him a five-thousand-word essay on the front of the Opera House on the main street of Bozeman, Montana.

Phaedrus is saying that we have to force ourselves to be truly creative, and remove ‘blockages’ that make us see things in the same old way:

The narrowing down to one brick destroyed the blockage because it was so obvious she had to do some original and direct seeing.

The Robert Frost tennis soundbite is mentioned in Le Ton beau de Marot, and I’ll finish with an ‘odelet’ quoted in the same book, written by James Falen, translator, in correspondence with Douglas Hofstadter :

Every task involves constraint,
Solve the thing without complaint;
There are magic links and chains
Forged to loose our rigid brains.
Structures, strictures, though they bind,
Strangely liberate the mind.

fikr 6: things that made me...

...think (or remember)

John Davies, Vice President, Sales and Marketing Group, and General Manager, World Ahead, Intel Corporation:

Intel's World Ahead Program ran a project in a village outside Cairo. They were told when they first went there that fixing the basic infrastructure (such as the sewers) was more important than installing technology. Intel established a WiMAX umbrella in the village and put some computers in the local hospital; when they visited four months later they found that four schools had connected themselves to the internet, and that the pupils had worked together to come up with official proposals to be submitted for building pedestrian bridges, cleaning up rubbish dumps, and analysing crops. They had used the technology to become more self-sufficient, and to solve the problems in their own way.

Dr Mona Mourshed, a partner with McKinsey & Company, based in the UAE:

In Finland you need to be in the top ten percent of graduates to become a teacher. In South Korea you need to be in the top five percent, in Singapore and Hong Kong the top thirty percent. In the Arab world teachers tend to be recruited from the bottom twenty percent of graduates, who have no other option.

Twenty-first century skills – flexibility, adaptability – need to be encouraged from pre-school. There is no point focusing on universities if nothing is changing at the youngest age. You cannot fix early problems later. Failure is cumulative.

(For more, see a recent report that Dr Mona Mourshed co-authored: How the world's best-performing school systems come out on top)

John Clippinger, Senior Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School:

There is certainly a 'fatigue of the new', but we can't avoid it. There has been more new knowledge in the last ten years than in the previous two thousand years, and we all need to learn how to manage that volume and to work out what is trustworthy.

Cory Ondrejka, Chief Technology Officer, Linden Lab (creators of Second Life):

Despite the range of information on the information on the internet, it is possible to stay in a giant echo chamber and hear just what you want to hear.

...despair

Ashraf Ghani, Former Minister of Finance, Afghanistan, member of the UN High-Level Panel on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, once tipped to be UN Secretary-General, as well as to be president of the World Bank:

The problems in the Middle East began with the division into separate nations and the importing of Western-style nationalism; the region should stop operating on foreign models and look at the Abbasid period as an example of self-confident government.

...giggle

During the Crown Prince's speech I switched on my Bluetooth – and the first name that came up was (صاحب السمو).

fikr 6: the young businesswoman

Fatima D. Al Darwish took part in Fikr 2 in Beirut four years ago, as part of a delegation representing Arab youth. She was invited to attend Fikr 6, and was keen to gain a lot from the experience. Fatima is just 23 years old, but she owns her own PR company, with five full-time employees and many part-time. The firm works on conferences in Doha for private businesses, but will soon be signing a contract with a government organisation.

Fatima began her company a year ago, after graduating from a Canadian college in Qatar with a diploma in human resources and business management. She says that attending the college really shaped her personality, and was the best time she has ever spent. All her teachers were Canadian, and she found that not only did she learn about her course subject, but also about another culture and different traditions.

I asked Fatima what she thought she would be doing in five years' time, and she said, 'I believe in Gandhi's saying, that you must be the change you wish to see in the world. I want to change many things, but I won’t say what they are; I will first become that change myself.'

fikr 6: the caring capitalist

The trouble with many panel discussions is that you often find a group of experts in the same field who naturally are going to approach the subject in hand from a largely similar perspective. Businesspeople see the world in their way, educators in another, and environmentalists in another – it’s like the proverbial elephant being groped by a bunch of blind men, where each one just grabs the bit nearest him and describes that in detail.

I prefer to hear from people who know how to ‘join the dots’ – or think about the whole elephant. I found it refreshing to hear Paulo Gomes talk, because he seemed to take a broad approach to his work. Some background:

After eight years as Executive Director on the board of the World Bank Group representing 25 African nations, Mr. Gomes launched the Constelor Group in 2006. Constelor is a consulting firm focused on Africa with multi-sector expertise to advise public and private sector clients on strategic matters, capital raising, strategic planning, market studies, and public-private partnerships.

Paulo Gomes is an entrepreneur and investor, in the banking and mining sectors. He established the first 100% African-owned pan-African mining company, and is currently setting up an Arab-African private equity fund. The Fikr 6 conference provided him an opportunity to discuss with potential investors; he is trying to encourage Arab investors to consider Africa, because investing in certain Africa countries provides an opportunity for good returns, and many investors do not realise that.

He spoke on the panel about Doing Business as a Global Citizen, and what struck me was the emphasis he gave to sustainability. I asked him later if he thought sustainability was compatible with growth, and he said he believed so. He said it was crucial to preserve resources; Africa is the 'next frontier', and while there might be a temptation to cut corners, that would have huge consequences. There is a chance to learn from others' mistakes; as economies grow, resources should be shared so that millions are not left on the margin. If the benefits of growth are not shared then the process will be derailed by those who are not benefiting.

Paulo Gomes also talked about education, inclusiveness, and giving people a voice. Interestingly, he said that listening to people is not the preserve of democracy, and that a wonderfully written constitution doesn’t necessarily help people. There are also traditional methods and systems through which people can make their voices heard, and technology and education help in that process.

On a personal level he believes that he needs to be open to learning new things, and prepared to hear different perspectives, so he is in regular contact with civil society organisations such as environmental and women’s groups.

His hope is to change people’s perspective in the Middle East towards Africa; he doesn’t want an 'aid attitude', but wants investment to empower Africans.

fikr 6: the philanthropic entrepreneur

One of the people I interviewed during Fikr 6 was Kamran Elahian (Yagoob's Dome has covered the talk he gave on behalf of his wife here):

Mr. Kamran Elahian is a veteran entrepreneur with over twenty-eight years of experience in the high-tech industry. Kamran has co-founded ten high-tech companies, one venture capital firm and two non-profit organizations. ... Kamran founded Schools Online, a non-profit public charity organization (with the goal to bring the Internet to disadvantaged schools in the world); which merged with Relief International. He also co-founded Global Catalyst Foundation, a private philanthropic foundation.

I asked Kamran Elahian about his hopes for what Fikr 6 could achieve, and he described his vision of technology bringing change to the world: removing poverty, creating democracy, enabling cultural exchange. He also mentioned that the role bloggers play in this process is phenomenal, and cited the huge popularity of blogging in Iran (where he was born, and which he left thirty-five years ago). He said that it was fascinating to see how blogs are used to state opinions, either openly or anonymously, with every possible viewpoint represented, and that blogging was a democratising medium, a 'frictionless' way to reach large numbers of people – something that would have been impossible in the past unless you were well-connected, or stood on a box in the park!

Kamran has been involved with the internet since its emergence, seeing it as an important tool for commerce between countries. He said that many wars had been started through ignorance, whether of culture or religion, and that he had noticed a sense of cultural superiority in every place he had visited. Iranian by birth, and American by citizenship, he describes himself as a citizen of the world, and believes that the internet allows us to become global citizens, conceptually speaking. He explained that originally people identified with their village, which eventually developed into identifying with a state, and now people are able to identify themselves with even larger entities, such as Europe. By identifying yourself with the largest community possible you are not losing your identity, it's simply a matter of where you place your priorities. He said, 'If you associate yourself with a small entity, your thinking stays small.'

Listening to Kamran talk about empowerment, and equality, and the need to identify primarily as a human reminded me of conversations I have had with Baha'i friends, so I asked him whether he was Baha'i – and he confirmed that he had been raised as one. But he said that such identities are arbitrary, and that he no longer identified with a particular religion; he wanted to avoid the possibility that he would not be completely open to others. He aims to have entirely open and free interaction with other people, without inherited prejudices.

Before I knew who Kamran Elahian was, I had noticed him walking round Fikr 6 with a huge smile on his face. He looked so friendly and relaxed, and he just radiated calm and happiness. As a final point I mentioned this; he said he was happy because he had given all his money away – and no longer had to worry about the stock markets!

fikr 6: overall impression

So here is my overall impression of Fikr 6, and some random thoughts:

The staff at the registration desks were awful; when they weren't completely ignoring you they were trying to fob you off onto someone else. Even under pressure, it doesn't take much effort to tell someone they will be seen to in a moment.

As I (and others) have already mentioned, free wireless internet should have been available.

The sessions were very variable – there were some extraordinary and awe-inspiring speakers, as well as some total dunderheads (albeit influential dunderheads). And the quality of the session also depended on the skill of the moderator. A couple of moderators felt it was their job to talk as much as the invited speakers.

Some of the most impressive speakers were Saudi, and I mention that only because of the stereotype of Saudis prevalent in the Gulf, let alone the rest of the world. I have encountered a number of very cultured Saudis, mainly writers, but this was the first time I had listened to people working in business and industry, and I was struck by their education and articulacy (whether in Arabic or English) and their dynamism and innovative thinking. At one point I was feeling tired, and uncertain whether I could sit through a particular session; I checked to see who the speakers were, and because they were Saudi I knew it would be worth attending.

As with most conferences, an important element is the opportunity for networking and sharing ideas informally. And I think that's where a lot of the real debate was happening too. I feel very lucky that I had the chance to meet people, many at the top of their fields and with very interesting backgrounds, who made me think about things in a new way. But I would agree with Butterfly's questioning of the real and long-term impact of events like this - how the ideas can 'trickle down'.

fikr 6: watch this space

Fikr 6 ended two days ago, and I apologise for my tardiness in posting about the event. While it was on there was no chance to post anything - as Mahmood has mentioned, there was no free wireless at the venue (ridiculously) - and yesterday, I had the great pleasure of showing some of the speakers and organisers around Bahrain for the whole day. But I intend to make up for my silence as soon as possible. Amongst other things I will be posting interviews I conducted with some people who inspired me.

In the meantime, I will just leave you with a photo of Eric Case of Blogger, whom a number of Bahraini bloggers had the chance to meet last week. This is Eric seemingly listening very carefully to the English translation in one of the sessions. That is, until I pointed out to him that the session was actually in English.