Dubai, the UAE, the Gulf, the Middle East and Muslim world. To hell with it, let's include the West, the rest of Asia and Africa, South America and Oceania as well.
This planet of ours is quite a contradictory place. Or at least, the dominant species that inhabit it are. Humans – men and women that is – are little, pulsating bundles of conflict, hypocrisy and confusion. I was going to focus on just our bit of the earth but it seems disingenuous to suggest that this problem only afflicts one particular section of the human race. It's all of us. Animals, thankfully, rarely have this problem. Giraffes, for example, are hardly ever accused of hypocrisy. However, I feel mosquitoes do tend to favouritism from time to time – why is it that I am always the only person in the room to get bitten?
We often are told and say that we live in a globalised world without really understanding what it means beyond being able to buy a Starbucks coffee on any street or mall corner in the world.
Globalisation in practice has created a labyrinth of contradictions – economic, social, political, cultural and mathematical. The latter including the bizarre situation where Arabs invented Western numerals and the numerals used by Arabs today have their origins in Hindu culture.
These contradictions make life today far more challenging and potentially rewarding. The surface rewards are well known – you can experience the riches of Peruvian history and culture, for example, on a laptop produced with the skill and industry of the South Koreans, wearing the latest in French couture blah blah blah… as are the challenges: growing disparity between rich and poor, terrorism and the return of piracy – on the high seas and digital.
The world's leading nations celebrate the former and put plans into place to deal with the latter. Meanwhile, we ignore the underlying challenges and rewards that face us as individuals – how do we, in reality, day to day, navigate the labyrinth of contradictions?
Can you be environmentally aware without denying developing nations their right to progress, conscious what a billion more car owners in India and China will do to the planet? Is it really a comfortable position to be in when you despise American foreign policy but love watching Brothers and Sisters, thereby supporting US cultural imperialism? Can you actually be a Westernised Muslim? Or are we just kidding ourselves about all of the above?
Is it really possible to exist in the grey all the time? It's a struggle to. No wonder so many surrender to the safety of black and white.
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