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Al-Ahram Weekly 12 - 18 August 1999 Issue No. 442 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 12 - 18 August 1999 Issue No. 442
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Books Features Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Culture for the third millennium
By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed
Over the last two weeks, British television's Channel 4 aired a two-part series exploring a fascinating theory put forward by the eminent British archaeologist David Keys in his new book, Catastrophe. According to Professor Keys, the seminal event marking the birth of the modern world was the eruption in the year 535AD of the Karakatwa volcano in the Malay archipelago, more specifically, in what is now Indonesia. Spewing its fiery contents with millions of times the destructive force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, the volcanic eruption set off a chain of climatic and ecological changes that led to the destruction of many of the features of the old world and laid the geo-political foundations of the modern world.
The history of the ancient world preceding this cataclysmic event is well chronicled up to the downfall of the Roman empire, then again beginning with the Islamic conquest. However, we know very little about the century or more separating the two events. This period, which covers the decades immediately following the eruption of the Indonesian volcano, was a dark moment -- both literally and figuratively -- in the history of humanity. The eruption provoked a tremendous amount of dust which blackened the skies, much as yesterday's eclipse did in many parts of the world, and drastically lowered temperatures everywhere for many years. Drought, hunger and disease spread over wide areas. This could explain the successive waves of Asian hordes, including the Huns and Mongols, who migrated to Europe at that time. Hugh Kennedy of St. Andrews University in Scotland, one of Britain's foremost Islamic scholars, hailed Keys' book for offering a persuasive explanation of the relative ease with which Islam, which rose one century after the eruption, overcame the resistance of the then still existing Byzantine and Persian empires.
While it is too early to tell whether Professor Keys' thought-provoking and controversial theory will stand the test of time, to my mind the most salient point made by his book is that history must constantly be revisited and, occasionally, rewritten, as new facts are brought to light by advances in science and technology. Only the tools of modern science could have established that the growth of trees was greatly reduced in the decades following the eruption from Ireland to Siberia and from California to Finland. There is now substantial evidence to indicate that during that same period the world witnessed a spate of natural disasters, wars and successive outbreaks of plague which decimated populations everywhere.
To the same extent that it involves history and science, any reassessment of past events also involves the more general notion of culture. Culture is the opposite of nature in the sense that where the latter denotes the material world surrounding man and existing independently of his activities, the former is a product of man's conscious will to change the material world to his advantage. Culture entails a measure of awareness, knowledge, inventiveness and creativity, and is what sets man apart from his fellow creatures. In a way, culture encapsulates the know-how necessary, at each given moment of history, to transform nature in a way that better serves humankind's needs.
Culture is based on a complex combination of beliefs, customs, information and modes of behaviour built up by groups of human beings and transmitted from one generation to the next. An indispensable element in the structural buildup of any socially interactive group, culture is what shapes the ideals, customs and institutions that govern society and lays down the rules of conduct according to which it functions, such as its legal system, ethical values, artistic expression, etc. Culture presupposes a synthetic view of the universe which evolves as our knowledge increases and changes. As such, it is a reality that changes according to changes in the dimensions of space and time. These are by no means academic considerations only, but have practical implications also. What is essential when we come to defining culture today?
I believe we face a dilemma similar to the one that faced sixth century man in the aftermath of the Indonesian volcano eruption, or, in a much more remote history, to the situation brought about when a comet hit the bay of Yucatan in the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago and brought about the extinction of many life forms, including the dinosaurs. In 1981, Luis Alvarez, a particle physicist and Nobel laureate, discovered evidence of the impact of a comet which coincided with the extinction of the dinosaurs. The impact produced a 210 kilometre-wide crater and ignited huge fires whose ashes can still be found in a wide environment. Dust filled the skies and hid the sun for years, bringing about the degradation of much of the flora and condemning many of the larger species, notably the dinosaurs, whether vegetarian or flesh-eaters, to death by hunger.
A few days ago, a highly respected scientific institution warned that if industrial and chemical pollution continues to contaminate air, land and water at the present annual rate of increase, more than half the living species will be extinct before the end of the 21st century. For the first time in history, the planet is faced not only with the threat of natural disasters, but with the now inescapable fact that nature is hitting back at man's attempts to bend it to his will. At this critical juncture, culture acquires a primordial role as the most effective weapon against the wrath of nature. For it is only culture, in the broad sense of the word, that can ensure the survival of the human species and the growing list of life forms threatened with extinction.
Arguably the most important achievement realised by humankind on the eve of the third millennium is what can be described as 'liberation from size'. Thanks to modern technology, we can now probe the worlds of the infinitely small and the infinitely big. Knowledge and culture can now restructure nature to man's benefit thanks to instruments operating beyond the reach of our five senses, particularly to the sophistication of modern mathematics and the power of computers. This expanded new world, however, is fraught with new dangers, as the positive effects of high-tech's ability to harness alien worlds to man's benefit are often offset by the adverse counter-effects inherent in probing the unknown. Instead of mastering wider dimensions of the Universe, we can precipitate our own self-destruction.
Culture offers a lifeline out of this grim scenario. The only international body equipped to address culture from a globalistic standpoint is UNESCO, whose new director-general is to be appointed before the year 2000. There are now ten candidates for the post, most nominated by their respective governments. Only one candidate, Egypt's Dr Ismail Serageldine, has received the backing of an impressive array of outstanding intellectuals of many different nationalities, including 43 Nobel laureates, who recognise that he identifies more closely with the needs of culture than with any specific state. Today, the person required for the post is not a figure linked to culture in its academic, traditional meaning, such as a poet, an artist, a writer or a painter, nor the nominee of a country with the means to help UNESCO overcome its present financial difficulties, but someone with a grasp of the specific type of culture necessary to take humankind safely into the new millennium.
