Glamour

Global(s) My comments on the article: Why the s in Global(s)? Has the adjective Global describing people become a noun? I am sure you have a reason. My view of the issue you raised in Glamour Globals, the nouveau riche, the petit bourgeoisie, the affluent and the conspicuous and invidious consumers is that the socio-economic and cultural conditions that produced these kinds of people in the Middle East are the same that produced these special classes of societies in the West or the Far East, simply because material wealth brings about a leisure class out of the social strata. The following examples from history may prove upon thorough examination capable of demonstrating similarities between what you call Glamour Globals in the Middle East (GCC in particular) and the people in these examples: the Feudal Europe and Feudal Japan in the Middle Ages; the bourgeois of the 18th century Europe; the Gold Rush to the US West in the 19th century and the California Dream; the mid of the 20th century community in the US influenced by commercially oriented propaganda and the creation of mass false desires and needs. Also you may want to read: The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen. People-material relationship, or material consumerism, is between produced commodities, standard or luxurious, and individuals or groups of a society. These products can be called four-fold things. The four folds are the social, cultural, economic and political aspects of the commodities being produced. The nouveau riche, the petit bourgeoisie, the affluent and the conspicuous and invidious consumers and their relation to things don't only form a social issue/problem, i.e. limited to just social relations expressed within the rich Arabs societies in the GCC through the things, such as Lexus cars, Louis Vuitton hand bags, Montblanc fountain pens, Rolex watches, iPhone mobiles, vacations in 5 stars hotels, 1st class flight travel, etc., but also form a cultural, political and economic issue/problem, where the media is a powerful tool in the hands of the controlling few. Marketing is a field within which good or evil is practiced. Honest marketing that serves users and conveys the true belonging essence of things is good marketing. Marketing that manipulates perception for profit over people, based on systemic bias, twisting of facts for political gains is evil marketing. In the USA, The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda.

See also: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. An analysis of Glamour Globals needs to take these lines of thinking on board. Identifying similarities between these various cases from different histories and geographies can inform our understanding of the GCC case. To describe our GCC material consumerism condition, one needs to know what has been written about it. I am not aware of any study that tackled this issue/problem in the Middle East. I believe what has happened to us in the past few decades resulted from the vacuum in our souls, education, poetic sense, philosophical outlook, historic embrace and geographical awareness; flaws in practical functions, work practice, interpersonal and social relations; lack of emotional intelligence, lack of confidence, insecurity, ignorance of ancestors heritage; and, as a Muslim society, lack of Islamic values and understanding of Islams higher objectives. All these and many more missing values are causes to this social phenomenon of emptiness you called Glamour Globals in GCC. Comment by Ziad Aazam http://spacewriting.wordpress.com/ .
Thank you Said. I have learned from your comment. I understand now that Glamour Globals looks at the phenomenon Globally not just GCC. So the audience for the book are global not local. This is even better, we can then learn from comparison. I wonder if my thesis that human, given the same conditions, will behave the same despite different cultures, will be proven correct. I think the depth of these two questions you are asking will lead to analysis of the other economic, political and cultural perspectives and not just the social. Of course all these three perspectives are looked at from the social perspective, as you mentioned. This is great, because it focuses the research. I don't know if it helps to look at it also from the product, or 'Thing' itself, as a four-fold thing. The two questions: 1- 'Is there a target audience that is loyal to trends over Brands?' and 2- 'can we change perception without changing behavior?', I believe will lead to understanding of human behavior in relation to material culture. This is also an issue that could be mapped to fashion and architecture traced over long periods of transformation. As an Architect, I also ask if people have lost their 'belonging' brand and moved into what is trendy, losing content along the way. Looking at Jeddah's built environment is enough to conclude that there is an audience loyal to trends over brand. I also believe that we can't change behavior but we can change perception which ultimately will change behavior. Jeddah's Heart and Abir's effort is just an example of our effort to change perception. In fact, all we can do is have sharp local and global analysis of the issue/problem and talk to people, debate and disseminate findings. And you are right, I have always thought that it is the TCK and the variation on it, can make it happen. Again, the essence of the issue/problem is all in the very relation between human and their objects, things or artifacts. As you said, it is in the content. Now, once we get into this area, the Imagination and the Judgment capacity of people come into play in the context of History and geography, as demonstrated in the formulas above in my Timeline.

Ziad Aazam I have been thinking of the above three formulas for a long time. My observation of what came of us as humans in Jeddah behaving through events and social practices made me think that there is something fundamentally wrong with our Being. The experience I had made me analyze our human condition. I was convinced that many of us are not full human beings, almost human machines but not beings. I was thinking about what is

missing in the way we are. It is not the religion/faith only that is missing. We all know that Muslims can be machines and not beings. I asked what is the difference between a Human Machine and a Human Being and I realized that it is because Human Machines don't have Beautiful Minds that full Human Beings have. What constitutes the Beautiful Mind, I asked. There has to be something missing. What is missing is simply a set of two complementary and essential aspects of the Human Beings: (1) the ability to Imagine and (2) the ability to Judge. These two aspects have to coexist. For us Muslims or any believer in God, Faith is a layer that contains both aspects of the Beautiful Mind. A full Human Being is a balanced Beautiful Mind capable of Good imagination and Good Judgment. The condition of Being enters the equation, where the balanced Well-Having and the Well-Giving further balanced by Good Imagination and Good Judgment are key to Well-Being.

The Heart bumps blood. Very mechanical and straight forward organ. The use of the word is in reference to the essence of the thing. The Heart is the Mind too or the Brain where Feelings are generated, hence, the Emotional side of the Human Being. The Mind is where the Rational side of the Human Being resides. It is the Conscience, the awareness of oneself. The Soul is the Spirit, the Self, the Life called You and I. It contains The Heart and Mind. The Body is the live functioning Machine that contains all the rest and carries the Heart, the Mind and the Soul. Time . Space The Soul, with its Heart and Mind, is eternal in the Second Life yet limited in this Life. It will continue with Time's Arrow forward. It is Time. It contains History and it is part of History. The Soul is trapped in History, in Time. The Body is finit Space. It comes and go. It transforms. It is where one exist on Earth. It is Geography, with its own culture. The Body is trapped in Geography, in Space.

Ziad Aazam Thank you, Russell. Our problem is that we are so much consumed in material production of the present, individually and in isolation, when our collective integrated understanding can be more balanced. Take 'Sustainability', for example, the Green calls for more green while ignores all other colours; the Capitalist calls for more economic equalities while being colour blinded to Green; all this happens when the essence of sustainability has always been embedded in our past prior to current modern life. We are just not looking. The moment when we collectively know our past, we can have a sense of our future. This time, on the flow of history, there are no artificial boundaries. The spaces of digital flows (e.g. Facebook) and the spaces of physical places (Jeddah and Bristol) are intertwined to become one global/local entity with the same concerns from the global financial collapse to the earth problems stated in Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth'.

Ziad Aazam Reem, because the Modern world became gradually yet quickly complex expansive, as humanity, we never paused to reflect on its harming expansion. If we take the impact on the human, for example, our education system, whether international or local, split our brains into Arts and Science. That was our first diverging impact as young seekers of knowledge. We were split in half and we had to make a choice: either or, as if they cannot coexist. Those who chose the Science and its application (Technology) lost touch with humanity; and those who chose Arts (Humanities) lost touch with functionality. The West has realized this and they are now making every effort possible to unit the two worlds. Interdisciplinary, new universities approach and Google new work

practice are but few examples of such efforts. It will take generations before the world see different kind of functioning humans. Reem Asaad You ignorant? If anyhing, you the most humble educated friend I have. I am enlightened by your depiction of a fused world.. The segregaion of art and science in the third world and how the developed world recognized the inevitability of incorporating these two spheres. In fact aren't our human bodies and souls the starkst example of such philosophy...or better said..reality. Please..keep going. As for the other subject of youth and hope..i posted my wish on the wall. An imaginary wish to restore hope to all hopeless youth of the world. Ziad Aazam But Hope is linked to the future time not the present time. That is why we don't feel what we hoped for when it happens because it then change from hope to just living. You can't hope for the present, you can only do or act in the present. Hope remains hope insofar it is not realized. Once realized it becomes reality and a new hope has to take its place. I should remind myself too that this what every generation does in reaction to the one before it. Hope fuels history. We make history as we progress from hope to hope.