Spirit in Action
Human Emergence & The Build Palestine Initiative
Elza Maalouf’s new book Emerge! The Rise of Functional Democracy and the Future of the Middle East explores the possibilities for peace and prosperity in the Middle East from a different direction - the process of human & cultural emergence. Spiral Dynamics was one of the tools which helped South Africa transition successfully, and Elza has dedicated years, using this tool, with the Build Palestine Initiative.
- Duration:
- 55m
- Broadcast on:
- 21 Dec 2014
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along Peace in the Middle East seems so important And there are so many people addressing the problem from different directions. Today, for Spirit in Action, we'll look at the Middle East from a relatively new and promising approach The application of memetics and spiral dynamics My guest is Elza Malouf, and her new book is Emerge The rise of functional democracy and the future of the Middle East Elza is Lebanese born and raised, living in the USA And has put years of effort into the Build Palestine Initiative And is part of the Center for Human Emergence, Middle East We're going to join her on Skype shortly But I want to start you off with some music singing of Peace in the Middle East That's my wish, and my hope is that Elza Malouf's efforts will lead to that peace Here is the group, Emma's Revolution, and their song Peace Salaam Shalom And then we'll join Elza Malouf on Skype in Kuwait Peace Salaam Shalom Peace Salaam Shalom Peace Salaam Shalom Peace Salaam Shalom Peace Salaam Shalom Peace Salaam Shalom Peace Salaam Shalom Peace Salaam Shalom Peace Salaam Shalom Peace Salaam Shalom Peace Salaam Peace Salaam Shalom Peace Salaam Shalom Peace Salaam Shalom Peace Salaam Shalom Peace Salaam Shalom Elza, I'm delighted to have you here today for Spirit in Action Thank you for inviting me, Mark, it's my pleasure And it was my pleasure already to speak to your husband, Sayid Dalabangi I spoke with him a while ago about mimeonomics Evidently, the hominematics runs in your family Did it precede your getting together, or was it something that came along after you two were together? No, actually, I went to the first Integral Leadership Program in Boulder with Ken Wilber And everything was pointing at Don Beck, Dr. Beck, so I had to take a seminar with Dr. Beck So I asked John Schmidt, he said he's doing a seminar in October So I immediately signed up for October and Sayid caught up later I invited him to a speech that Don was giving a Dustin Unity Church And he was in a day because Don speaks like big words So Sayid was in a day for a couple of days Until I think he rewired his brain and he was able to understand him So you and Sayid were already a couple before you started with mimeonomics Yes, absolutely And you come from Lebanon, and where is Sayid from again? Lebanon Same city, how close, same tribe? It's like a mile apart, our town is very small, so it's almost a mile apart He went to school with my brothers Okay, and your brothers therefore approved of the two of you being together? I'm not sure really Okay, but I didn't care Well, the book again is Emerge, the rise of functional democracy and the future of the Middle East This is based on built-on scaffolding that was constructed originally by Clara Graves And then Don Beck, mimeonomics, viral dynamics, and there's more names coming into it, memetics What Graves called the double helix, biopsychosocial systems, etc, etc So that's why Dr. Beck called it "spile dynamics" So you're building on top of that, and I see that you're adding levels to the whole theory I have to say that when I read the introduction, you really grabbed me with some of your personal experience And the one that grabbed me most is what you talked about starting law school And then in the second year of law school, how things changed so dramatically For those who were part of Islam Could you just share what that experience was for you? Yes, so I went to school with the would-be Hezbollah leaders They were wearing jeans, and night keys And the next year, they came in with the button-up shirt in the style of the Iran revolution And they wouldn't shake my hand, they didn't play table tennis with us They changed completely So I suspect that there's something going on And they grew their beards as well So I knew there's change in these people Because the Shia sect was the really oppressed sect For example, I think I mentioned in the book the son of Isaiahim, a clan leader, was going to school People from the Shia sect would come to him and say, "We need to send our kids to school" And he would say, "Why? My son is going to school, why do you need to go to school?" So once the Shia revolution happened in Iran, they gained a lot of power And they didn't want to change that power And they changed their appearances, of course But also, they changed their mindset and their value systems They became closed blue, meaning order-driven, closed blue And we'll get to what those colors and levels mean If people have listened to my interview with Said, they'll already have a pretty good idea But they'll get much greater detail in the book, emerge So you saw something happening, a changing of levels I don't think, at that point you didn't yet know about mime-nomics, spiral dynamics All of this idea, this way of conceiving the universe No, of course not, but I had an intuitive sense of what spiral dynamics was Well, let's get a brief overview of what it is Of course, people are going to read the book if they really want to understand it But could you give me an idea of what spiral dynamics, mimetics What these are all about, and then we're going to find out how they apply In the Middle East, in Palestine, particularly where you've been doing your work So it's a developmental model that says we were clans Then we became tribes, and then we became feudal lords And then we became nations, or we were ruled by religions Yeah, some form of communism And we have the enterprising system, or the so-called American Dream The 2.3 kids, but the boat, it's so-called right now, unfortunately And eventually, we needed to look at ourselves We asked, is that everything there is to life? So we needed to go inside ourselves and become self-reflective And understand our psyche, our shadow, and understand more about who we are as human beings And I think 10-12% are mostly in the green system Are egalitarian And eventually, we have the yellow system, or it's flex flow It's systemic, it has a whole systems approach And eventually, we become holistic nations, or what I call global commons Where everyone owns the land, we share properties But this system is yet to emerge at this point So this is in a nutshell, the evolution of the spiral A meme is a cultural gene It has the DNA of the culture The thing that helped me think of this right away was, I think, that probably Claire Graves spoke of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the seven levels You start from something very basic, very individual, small group And it evolves into larger and larger sensibilities in a wider world And so, as you go through the colors that are associated with this clam, tribe, and so on The beige, purple, red, blue, orange, green, yellow, and maybe turquoise So it's a way of describing social evolution, a way in which we build and refine And we cycle up, we have healthy and unhealthy expressions of each of these levels And right now, I think probably, we think that most of the U.S. is in what we call the blue It's a good, stable, we have a national consciousness But it's not very dynamic in terms of pushing the frontiers You then go to the next level, the strategic level, the orange level Which we maybe think happened preponderantly in the 1980s There's some green in there, which can be connected with green politics Be egalitarian ways of thinking And all of that, we're always a mixture in society Every society is a mixture You grew up in Lebanon When you were growing up in Lebanon What was the kind of distribution you think you saw in Lebanese society? It's really about value systems, so even though we were civilizations apart from Beirut My home had an orange value system Because my mom especially tried to nurture my individuality And I grew up with three older brothers So you can imagine what's happening in my household But we had scientists in the Malou family, we had business people We had bishops, we had bankers, especially women, they were bankers And they were very progressive in our Malou family And my mom tried to nurture my individuality And what about the society around you in Lebanon? Was Lebanon largely at the red, the blue, the orange levels? No, it's purple red Well, Lebanese outside Lebanon They're very strategic, very enterprising But in Lebanon, because we went through a 17-year civil war We had to protect ourselves And I think Lebanon needs a collective therapy In the near future, really But they're mostly purple, they're clannish For example, today I just heard in my hometown The Fatush family, they beat a reporter and her cameraman And the army is surrounding the Fatush family in a certain part of my city They're demanding to deliver the bodyguards that basically hit that woman So that's at the very clann level, tribe levels a little bit higher up than that Would you talk about your tribe, which is part of your background, your identity And maybe your vision for the future, too, rooted in the past? Yes, my tribe, the Ghassanid, brought Christianity to the Middle East And the mother of the emperor who adopted Christianity was a Ghassanid as well So that gave me real pride And on my mother's side, I'm a Phoenician as well Elisar is famous for leading her men into Carthage So on both sides, I think I have good DNA And we talk about personal DNA, but there's social DNA as well So I really think that memetics is all about the social DNA that's out there Which is constantly modifying and evolving as well, right? That's so true, most of Lebanon now is regressing, really, to purple red Basically, tribal and feudal lords There are feudal lords, really, because they're clan leaders And if you don't vote for the Zaim or the clan leader, you're shunned by your family And vice versa, now we have March 14th and March 8 And whomever votes for March 8 will never vote for March 14th They don't present you with an agenda, be it March 8 or March 14th And the people in Lebanon follow blindly Because they have the allegiance towards the Zaim Explain to me what March 8 or 14 means, what does that mean? March 8 is a coalition of Hezbollah, General Allen, and some Armenians And March 14th is Samir Jaja, Aminj Mayil, and this Fatush guy The funny thing is they both embezzled money They both did not serve the public well And it's really unfortunate that we keep electing the same people over and over again So these are two competing leaderships within the Lebanese society, yes Within the Lebanese society, yes And you said people are regressing, that brings up an important point The way that I read Memanomics and was reading the theory is This spiral, you're constantly mounding the spiral, sometimes you get stopped at certain points But you're speaking of actual regression Regression, yes There can be a rise and fall Yes, absolutely, because we can regress on the spiral Or we can advance to the next level of complexity on the spiral But I feel in Lebanon, they're coming from the red value system Or the feudal lord value system And they don't care, they resist by partying, by the way So they have the best party place in the world That travels, by the way, Dubai And I don't know if you know anything about Dubai Well, I do want you to talk about that in a little bit But first I wanted to talk about a couple other elements to give us to that point Your book is called "Emerge the Rise of Functional Democracy in the Future of the Middle East" And the part that really grabbed me, the reason I wanted to have you on is because you're so intimately involved in working with the future of the Middle East Particularly of Palestine, Israel, with that conflict, and we'll get to that soon But you use that phrase "functional democracy" and as soon as I read that phrase, you know what I thought? As opposed to what we have in the USA right now, which is pretty dysfunctional What do you mean by "functional democracy"? Functional democracy, it's the democracy that fits It's a governance that fits as well What we have in the United States, we have Democrats and Republicans Basically, Republicans are blue-orange, meaning "order-driven" and "enterprising" or "strategic" And Democrats are really becoming green or egalitarian And as Dr. Beck says, "progressive is one thing you need to get over it" Because they're holding on to their progressive agenda But also it is one thing, they have to get over it And the Republicans, they're repealing Obamacare, they're doing havoc Now that they're majority in the Senate and in the House as well Yes, so they're waiting for another Republican to come to the presidency, unfortunately And it's becoming a real dysfunction in our democracy It's really a pity When we describe the Democrats as on the green-leaning edge of things The Republicans on the orange, she enterprising or "order-driven" "order-driven" because you have the Tea Party, they're very "order-driven" And they listen to their leaders If their leaders are making them afraid of President Obama, they will be afraid of him The Tea Party is blue, it's "order-driven" The Republicans are very strategic, very orange, very enterprising Something that our listeners should be aware of Even though there is some kind of a hierarchy here From the tribal to feudal to "order-driven" to enterprising To egalitarian, humanitarian, and not up Even though there is some kind of a hierarchy All societies include elements of all of these And the important thing is how they work together and interact You can't have just one to the neglect of the other Is that an accurate statement about mathematics? Absolutely, absolutely And what we need in the states We need a super-ordinate goal for all Americans And a super-ordiant goal Both parties have to work together to achieve that super-ordiant goal For example, a summit on the child That would be a super-ordiant goal It involves law enforcement It involves law enforcement, educational systems, health care systems The laws of the land, etc, etc So a summit on the child will be a super-ordiant goal for our democracy And what we mean by a super-ordinate goal is a goal That is common to all these different levels of emergence So that they can all work together Yes, for example, if I'm advising President Obama I would say, what would work for the Tea Party? What would work for the Republicans? And what would work for the Democrats? We have to address the various levels of value systems in our country Before we address foreign policy, for example I don't mean to be too politically divisive here But I do think that there is a real problematic viewpoint The way I've heard the Republican viewpoint is Yes, they want it for themselves If it's good for Obama, they oppose it That would be like if Obama said, "Well, if it's good for the Tea Party, then I oppose it" Then there is no way forward together We definitely have a jam log in Washington DC, definitely And I don't know what's gonna burst that bubble, that jam I really don't know But I'm still hopeful, I believe in the human spirit Well, let's talk about a little bit of the background that gets you to where you are working in Palestine And actually, at the moment, you're in Kuwait, are you there for fun and frolic? Are you there for work? No, for work. This is how I make my living So you're consulting with a company there, perhaps, at this point? Yes, I am We'll ask a little bit more about how you deal with corporations using these theories and these methods of emergence But things, for me, got really interesting when I read about Don Beck in South Africa Could you give me a synopsis of what happened with him working with South Africa? He visited South Africa during the span of 10 years, back in the 90s, till, I think, 2000 He was able to work with Mandela and the clerk And he would pick up the phone and call the clerk, that was what South Africa was like back in the days He advised the clerk when he needs to release Mandela from Robin Island And he was behind the scenes If you've seen the movie Invictus, he wrote seven games for Glory to create a euphoria in South Africa Because they became all South Africans And because Mandela wore the green jacket, so they became all South Africans And he wrote seven games for Glory for Coach Christie I don't think Coach Christie was portrayed well in Invictus, nor Dr. Beck was portrayed in Invictus But they focused more on the rugby player But he was one of the architects behind the scenes moving South Africa from upper tide And I think what we learned from that situation is that there is a vital role that spiral dynamics could play in helping a country find a better future Absolutely. When he went back last year, they gave him an award as a recognition for his role in the transition from upper tide in South Africa Let's talk about your work in the Middle East and what got you involved going back there Of course, Lebanon is home for you I think maybe you were already consulting a number of companies, corporations in that area Before you got involved in the Bill Palestine initiative? Yes, definitely. I came for a visit and my friend Rabia told me it's very important that you come to Kuwait So I came to Kuwait. Since then, I've been consulting with one company. It's been ten years I was with this company since April 2010 But before I came many times since 2003 and I was consulting with a chairperson who's a woman by the way But in 2010, it was an official date, so I came into the company and basically we cleaned house There was red leaders who were running the show and we were able to really create a habitat for these red leaders to move away from this company And little by little we were able to write the ship, meaning creating the blue And eventually we were able to emerge into more orange complexity or more enterprising and strategic complexity It took us four to five years to do that And that's an important element in moving people forward in spiral dynamics You actually have to go through the stages of evolution You don't go from being an amoeba to being a full-blown human being You have to go through the intermediate levels Absolutely, and you cannot skip a stage Even cultures cannot skip a stage You move people from unhealthy red to healthy red And then you create the habitat that has processes and procedures, rules and regulations And eventually you can write the ship, meaning you create order And eventually we're able to create more orange complexity Depending on where you are in the world This region cannot handle lots of orange complexity And the industry, therein, also cannot handle lots of orange complexity I'll have to remember to remind our listeners all along the way what these colors connect with But we'll get back to that, again, the place that they'll find that is by going to the book "Emerge" By Elza Maloof, it is "Emerge the Rise of Functional Democracy and the Future of the Middle East" She's my guest here today for Spirit and Action, which is Nord and Spirit Radio Production On the web at northernspiritradio.org And on that site you'll find nine and a half years of our programs For free listening and download You'll find links to our guests, so you'll find the link to Elza Maloof through integralinsights.net Integralinsights.net Also on that site you'll find comments that previous listeners have posted And we'd love to have you add yours, because we love to wait for communication There's also a donate button, so you can support us Click on "Support" and you'll be able to make a donation, or you can mail it to us if you wish That's how this program is funded Even more than that, I want to encourage you to start out by supporting your local community radio station Community radio brings you a slice of news and of music that you get nowhere else on the American airwaves And so start out by supporting them Again, Elza Maloof is our guest here today You're a lawyer, Elza, amongst other things But you work as a consultant Is that an evolution of your work or a sideline? It is an evolution of my work I can't practice law in the US, because it's the Napoleon code So I can practice it in Louisiana, for example, but I don't want to practice in Louisiana So you act as a consultant, and you've been doing that in the Middle East But somewhere along the way, you got involved in the build Palestine initiatives Talk about how you got there So, two conscious human beings were sitting in the Yemeni Quarter in Tel Aviv Neri Baron and Rafi Nasr They talked about Don, to bring Don to Israel and Palestine So he can do the work that he's done in South Africa They came to New York, and they talked to Don And Don told them, "Send me an email" They send him an email Don called John Smith, who sponsored us for the first few trips to Israel and Palestine He's a home builder in Omaha, he has no clue where Israel and Palestine exist, really But he sponsored us with his great heart And Don called me, and he goes, "Do you want to come with me to Israel?" I said, "Sure" And then I hang up I looked outside, I said, "Israelis are the enemies" And Palestinians are the enemies I descended to my ethnocentric self immediately But it took me like a few minutes to get over it, really But I realized that I can contribute to the understanding of Arabs to the Israelis in particular So I said, "Yes" and then we went there And I need to guide you to page 160 in the book Where you see the first two trips we listened We listened with empathy, because that's the first thing that we do We listened to their life conditions, even though I'm a student of the history of the Middle East And I keep up with the updates, of course But I had to listen, I listened to the Israelis, I listened to the Palestinians And we listened with empathy, as I said, and we listened to their life conditions We listened to what they told us about their memetic codes And we understood their mindsets and world views We understood their suffering, we understood their pain as well Also, we supported them in the next few trips We supported them in creating systems and structures And the last thing we looked at is behavior and actions And as you can see from page 160, where the peace accords are If you have a book in front of you I do have it in front of me So if people get a hold of the book, emerge, the rise of functional democracy In the future of the Middle East, they'll be able to follow some of this detail Really, the first half of the book is talking about the theoretical scaffolding That underlies, it supports this work And the second half gets much more into the practical realm Which is the part that really grabbed me Having been exposed already to the theoretical framework before Actually, we called our initiative, eventually we called our initiative the Build Palestine Initiatives The meme started spreading in the West Bank And eventually, Salaam Fayad, who was the prime minister at that time Says, "The exercise of getting ready for statehood was a concern for some As it represented unilateralism by the Palestinians I'm here to tell everyone it is indeed unilateralism As it should be, because it's about building a Palestinian state It's about getting ready for Palestinian statehood If we Palestinians don't build it, who's going to build it for us? And that was in Herzeglia Conference on Strategic Governance in Israel, February 3, 2010 So these memes seeped in the culture Now I understood how Dr. Beck did the work in South Africa Even now, they still have those memes in the culture So you started into this work, you first sit with a couple of friends You get the taste of something in the future, Don Beck's going to help you You're going to go work together But I got the idea that you got first up to your ankles and then your knees And then pretty soon, you're up to your neck For four years, you worked really hard on this Pro Bono, I think Yes, definitely Pro Bono At the end it culminated in a summit on building Palestine It was a huge conference It was a meshwork solutions, really And Bjarne, our friend in Iceland, was inspired by our meshwork solutions By our nation building exercise He was inspired and he did the same in his country It culminated in a summit Where Naf is asked for very little money, really And he said, we're going to pay people We're going to create a human Facebook Five people will tell ten people Ten people will tell fifteen people So they created a human Facebook that really circulated throughout the West Bank and Gaza And we were expecting five hundred people I think twelve hundred people showed up by the end of it And I told Don, I said, how can we feed those people? He said, just give me a fish and a loaf of bread He was in plan, by the way Did you feed them now? I don't think it would have worked So you're saying Don, but it's not exactly Jesus No, of course not But it was funny But my sense is that that culmination event that happened in I think 2008 That you had been working for four years up to there All of a sudden you've got more than a thousand people coming together with considerable energy It's such a promising launching point What happened then? We ran out of funds unfortunately Because of the financial crisis And charities are the last thing to get money So it was really unfortunate I am still in touch with two colleagues Neri Barón and Nafiz, Nafiz Rifai I'm always in touch with them And I'm hoping we can go back They want us to go back So I'm keeping my fingers crossed to go back Part of the depletion of funds was your own personal funds I mean you had done this pro bono for these four years When Don Beck was working in South Africa He did a fair amount of pro bono free work Unpaid But then there were sponsors Corporate sponsors even who said For the future of this region We need this for our prospering to happen You couldn't find those people in Palestine, Israel? No, we could not unfortunately The Africaners, especially Steel and Alloy helped Dr. Beck But Israelis couldn't help us Because I don't think they bought in Into that idea that We are doing the best thing that can ever happen to Israel They couldn't accept it They talked about scenarios They talked about different aspects They tried everything under the sun But they couldn't buy in into our theory And it was really unfortunate Very unfortunate Especially for the global financial crisis That happened in 2008 To cut the legs from underneath you I'm going to talk a little bit about the process That led up to 2008 People can again read the book And emerge the rise of functional democracy in the future Of the Middle East by Al-Zamalouv You'll find a whole lot of things That we can't possibly cover in this hour One of the things that you do Is you start doing that Listening that gathering of information And in particular You recruit indigenous intelligence experts They do their work, they gather a lot of information They are very often people right from the area So they have an inside view of the culture and the people And then they bring the information they've got And they hand it to the integral design architect Are you an architect? Yes, I am an integral design architect And now for example Anary in Israel Are integral design architect So let me just say What the indigenous intelligence is The indigenous intelligence mark Is the multidimensional capacity Of an individual or a group in a specific society To interpret its value systems complexity To non-natives And also it informs governance By assessing the life conditions of the people And the challenges they face And you can read the indigenous intelligence experts Their most likely natives of the territory They earned their ranks Because they were once flamethrowers and zealots So once they become more enterprising They earned the respect of their peers as well You used a phrase "flamethrowers" And so I think we need to have you talk about the value systems Assimilation contrast effect model Because flamethrowers, zealots, ideologues, moderates, pragmatists, conciliters All of those things are important to understand The mechanism with how you can actually move a country forward Could you talk about that and particularly I'd like you to reflect How that is on the landscape in the USA right now? Yes, so it is the inter-conflict That fuels the inter-conflict For example, Rush Limbaugh calls moderate Republicans rhinos Republican by name only And I don't know what they call moderate Democrats I'm not sure about that But see, Rush Limbaugh is the extreme in the Republican Party And I believe I'm not sure Maybe Rachel Maddow is the extreme in the Democratic Party So these are, and I don't know if people like Rachel Maddow or not I'm not sure, but these are the flamethrowers and the zealots For example, the Tea Party, it has a range of people It's the mailman, it's the small business owner, it's Sarah Palin By the way, Sarah Palin wanted President Obama to attack Ebola I don't know what's going to attack Ebola, but yeah, that's another story And so is Sarah Palin a flamethrow or a zealot or an ideologues? She's a zealot for her own cause And can you point to someone who would be an ideolog or a moderate pragmatist? McCain is a pragmatist I think he's defending now the CIA, but he used to be a pragmatist And on the other side, I think Pelosi is a pragmatist Yeah, actually, Elizabeth Warren is a pragmatist As opposed to a consolator? She is a pragmatist, yes, she's not a consilator Because she's attacking the bankers, she's attacking Jamie Diamond She doesn't want anything to do with city group Her latest article is "We need to stand up to city group" I'd really love to see you do some good social engineering on the United States government Because it looks rather hopeless at the moment, they really need your help You and Saeed together should join up with Don Beck and make it happen Yeah, it's our pleasure My interest mostly is foreign policy and the focus on indigenous intelligence Because if we use the indigenous intelligence properly, especially in the Middle East For example, President Al-Sisi is doing a marvelous job in his country He's creating 15 industrial cities And you better mention which country it is because people won't recognize the name This is the United States, you know, where we're extremely ignorant You know how bad it is, right? Sorry for that No, no, hey, I lived in Africa, right? And I just had my sister give me an email yesterday She said, "Oh yeah, what country were you in and where in Africa?" This is my sister who, 35 years ago, she didn't know, okay, good And she's motivated and interested And that represents the good end of things So in Egypt, President Al-Sisi, who's now the president of Egypt The Egyptian historically hold the army in high regards And they trusted to create and protect national institutions So what Al-Sisi is doing, his development plan, is calling on creating 15 new industrial cities Reviving the tourism sector, improving trade and foreign investment And introducing many economic reforms that, of course, the Muslim Brotherhood wouldn't know where to begin, really So this is a forward-thinking autocrat who's looking to bring his people To meet the global standards of the economy and also to prosper Another example, Singapore, under Lee Quanyu He started with that blue, with that order, with that ordered autocracy And can you talk about other Arab nations and how they're developing going forward? You give a couple of good examples in the e-merge Now that the oil is really disappearing, it takes $50 to extract oil from the land So I feel there are three issues in the Arab world As I mentioned, the deeply rooted tribal allegiance to clan leaders or zheims Who hold mipatistic power for many generations And are not afraid to use brutal force against moderate voices So the proof is in the pudding, it's really what happened in my town, exactly And also, for example, the sudden appearance of oil Which really propagated the fallacy of wealth in the hands of few And it became a symbol of modernity And, Mark, this is what leads to an arrested culture progress And it leads to a culture-wide sense of entitlement and really complacency So I'm going to read here, based on the available data from the World Bank region-wide per capita income Is less than $700 Yeah, with oil contributing to 70% of that amount, imagine And it's region-wide, so imagine what's happening now in Syria Then living on less than $2 a day And so when the oil income dies out, there will be no infrastructure there The hub total economic collapse, even worse than what they've got currently Absolutely, absolutely That's why, for example, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia pumped $40 billion in the economy And here, in Kuwait, they're doing more Kuwaitis-quatization They're putting Kuwaitis in as managers of restaurants In Saudi Arabia, they're doing a Saudi-station Also, they're trying to put more Saudis to work Because gas and oil is really dwindling in this part of the world Are there other countries in the Middle East that are particularly shining stars For hopeful future for the Middle East? Tunisia, Tunisia is a great example The Muslim Brotherhood are very moderate And they came to power, but they're really moderate Because Tunisia was ruled by the French, and it's almost a modern state The three monarchies in the Arab world, Morocco, King Abdullah of Jordan, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia Are really elegant, they are the caretakers of the land And the caretakers of their people as well They're honored by their people Yes, there will be extremes in every country But I think they're doing a good job In Morocco, the King Mohammed VI changed the constitution To allow more freedom for the people And King Abdullah of Jordan tried to bring the tribes And they are al-Qaeda to the elections, but they refused And the King in Saudi Arabia is really pumped $40 billion in the economy To help young people, especially millennials, to get jobs As you know, also, from having lived in the United States, you know that we're not well-informed And that's being very generous to say it that weekly We're not well-informed about governments and history in the Arab We've got very limited, I guess, what that is all about You flush that out considerably in the book Would you mind sharing a little passage? Give us a little bit more of an idea of a more enlightened perspective About what's true in the Arab world? There was Al-Jahiliya, or pre-Islam, it's from 300 BC to 600 AD It's tribal, heroic values, etc., a band of nomads And there was the Islamic Renaissance, especially in Andalusia Where Islam follows in the tradition of Hellenistic philosophy Intellectual discourse and inclusion In Andalusia, Muslims lived in harmony with Christians and Jews And cultures thrived while Europe stagnated And come Al-Jahili doctrine Al-Jahili, in coherence of the philosophers, he stopped He stopped the interpretation of Islam And Al-Wahhabis are coming from Al-Jahili It's really unfortunate And there was the colonial mandate and also the Ottoman Empire But also I had a front row seat to Arab nationalism And I would like to read a small passage In its initial phases, Arab nationalism was culturally defined By one's ability to earn insults at the imperialists Including the United States As a child, I remember my uncle taking me to the meetings of the Syrian national party One of many Arab nationalist parties in Lebanon The Syrian national party sought to reunite Syria and Lebanon under one flag During those meetings, attendees escalated the rhetoric To levels where I thought military action was imminent Shouts came from every corner of the room Those imperials, dogs, and that's an insult to dogs, by the way Have not sheltered dogs That's an insulted dog Have not sheltered the wrath of the Arabs And we will slaughter them all Then coffee was served with freshly made back lava And we all went home The scene repeated many times over and nothing was ever accomplished I loved when I went with my uncle And nothing happened later on So that's my story about Arab nationalism Because it was a western idea Michel Afla created the Bas party And Antoine Saad created the Syrian national party But it was foreign to our region They brought western ideas that were foreign to our region Because they did not understand the lay of the land They did not understand the purple, the tribal and feudal aspect of our culture I'm afraid that even with your book my knowledge is still very thin But fortunately you've raised my level of intelligence by your book You merge the rise of functional democracy in the future of the Middle East Elza, I'm really impressed by your dedication Four years of working and your devotion I wonder what inspires such deep devotion such work? Is it your Catholicism growing up? Is it part of your tribe? What is it that has informed you and sustained you in this work? It's really a simple mark I feel if I was a little girl in Lebanon in that small town, Zakle And someone came to me and said, "How can I help you?" I just want to help those kids There's a picture in front of page 122 that says it all for me It's really about those children It's about the education of those children And really about creating a middle class in the Arab world Because Lebanese, Palestinians and Jordanians are the middle class in the oil rich countries But we need to create middle class We need to invest in the middle class and allow those millennials to become middle class In those countries, in the oil rich countries So we can invest in our human resources, our women as well We really need to support women Women with high school degrees in the Arab world are 83% Women with college degrees are 27% And the literacy rates amongst women are 60-70% So we need to get rid of this literacy We need to give women more college degrees Because to whom much is given, much is asked So this is why I come back to the Middle East And it's a no-brainer Well, I wouldn't say it's a no-brainer You've got some very good brains that you've been applying to this Along with compatriots like Sayidalabani, Dandak And many other great workers for peace and for future for prosperity For not just the region of the Middle East They're helping in the United States, South Africa, everywhere else I really appreciate so deeply your work, the book, Emerge The rise of functional democracy in the future of the Middle East Elza Maluf, you can find the link on northernspiritradio.org Her site integralinsights.net is probably the best place to go and learn more Thank you so much Elza for all of your work And for joining me here today for Spirit in Action I really thank you Mark, thank you for inviting me And best of luck And with our last minutes today on Spirit in Action I want to leave you with music that's kind of tangentially related To the broad sweep of human and evolutionary emergence that Elza Maluf addresses But this song has us look at a slice of human history from the point of view of an oak tree The song touches me deeply and maybe it will say something for you The song is by Jonathan Bird and it's called "I Was an Oak Tree" See you next week for Spirit in Action I was an oak tree It took a thousand years to grow And I've seen kingdoms come and go I've seen the losers turn the lords back again I held the rebels when they hung them from my limbs When men of fortune cast their futures on the sea It's when they came for me And I was a slave ship Under the standard of the cross A hallelujah of Holocaust And half were dead before they reached the other shore And the captain never saw the coming storm That swept around the Cape and took us by surprise And only ate and survived I was a campfire Power driftwood in the sand The only comfort in this land And eight hungry sailors rose to date corns that they'd found And left me burning as they stumbled toward the south Of a church bell ringing out above the oceans When I was born again I am an oak tree Out along the wild Cape fear And there is talk of freedom here Oh, where is the kingdom that was here before I came Where have the people gone Who longed and left their names May revolutions just a circle after all And every kingdom falls I am an oak tree If it takes a thousand years to grow I'll see kingdoms come and go I'll see kingdoms come and go [Music] [Music] The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World" performed by Sarah Thompson This spirit in action program is an effort of Northern spirit radio You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests On our website, northernspiritradio.org Thank you for listening I am your host Mark Helpsmeet And I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily Toward the light. This is spirit in action With every voice, with every song We will move this world along With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing You
Elza Maalouf’s new book Emerge! The Rise of Functional Democracy and the Future of the Middle East explores the possibilities for peace and prosperity in the Middle East from a different direction - the process of human & cultural emergence. Spiral Dynamics was one of the tools which helped South Africa transition successfully, and Elza has dedicated years, using this tool, with the Build Palestine Initiative.