Egypt Has A Lot of Everything

Ramadan is totally messing with my internal clock. I sleep in every day until around two PM, and everything gets going around 6:30 when people break the fast. I'm usually starving by that point, so I find a place to eat and then go walk around downtown. I spent last night walking by the Nile with Phil and Kiki and went to a sheesha bar afterwards that was a little overpriced, but still dirt cheap (150 LE, which is roughly 30 bucks total for the three of us).

The Nile is beautiful. We crossed the Qasr al-Nil, which is one of the main bridges that connects Zamalek to Downtown (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qasr_al-Nil_Bridge). Each entry and exit to the bridge is flanked by two imposing lion statues, though the lions lack whiskers. Supposedly, the artist killed himself over this mistake, but it's an urban legend that is really hard to corroborate. Personally, I have my doubts, but it makes a good story.

I spent most of the day at the hostel (got my luggage, too). My Arabic is getting a lot better just from talking with the staff at the hostel, all of whom are native Egyptians. Egypt makes all of the Arabic classes in the US seem kind of useless, as the variety taught in classes, Modern Standard Arabic, is the purview of grammarians, Qur'anic scholars, and the media. 'Amiyya (the term for Arabic dialects) makes a little more sense than MSA sometimes, though the vocab is way different, particularly with verbs. I can still get by pretty well because there are enough commonalities, but a lot of pronouns or prepositions, for example, are different and take some getting used to. I went out for dinner with Phil (the bromance continues) and came back here, and I'll probably take it easy for the rest of the night.

Today I was asked by Ahmad, a friend of one of the hostel employees, what I thought of Egypt. I told him that I was starting to fall in love with it, to which he responded, "When people ask you what you think of Egypt, tell them it has a lot of everything. A lot of cars, a lot of people, a lot of emotions, a lot of rich people, a lot of poor people, a lot of buildings, and a lot of sand." So far this seems to make sense. It's definitely a land of extremes, and one that takes some getting used to. The city is filled with BMWs driving next to Yugos, and wealthy engineers walk past amputee beggars looking for a bit of Ramadan generosity. There isn't really much of an in between.

Arrival

Just arrived at my hostel in Cairo after the longest series of flights ever. The flight from NY was actually really pleasant. Watched Iron Man 2, had a decent airplane meal, and slept fairly well considering I was sitting upright. I'm tired, but that's to be expected. My flight from Charlotte to NY was hell, and continues to haunt me even though I'm a couple thousand miles away from it. So we get delayed by half an hour waiting for a clearing at JFK for when we will arrive. We board, taxi out, and then turn around because the AC apparently busted in the course of time it took to move a few feet. That took close to an hour. So my flight was delayed in total by two hours. I land in NYC, and lo and behold, the landing patch isn't open, so we have to wait for another plane to board and leave before we can connect. So I start freaking out. It's 5:30, boarding starts for my flight at 5:45, and I have no control over the situation. The flight attendants ask the passengers who do not have connecting flights or can afford to wait to do so. And of course, it's people going to NY, so absolutely no one did because God forbid you act with courtesy for someone else. And of course I get stuck behind a woman with a thick Long Island accent that I can only assume has no connecting flight who is on a respirator and not exactly making good time. Once I get past the mess of people, I make a dash for the airtrain to take me to my terminal and I am fortunate enough to have made my flight just in time. I sat next to Anwar Sadat's doppleganger and his family on the way to Egypt.

So I land in Cairo, and, of course, my luggage isn't there. I wasn't too surprised by that. The only thing that was weird is that some of the people who shared my difficulties on the Charlotte flight going to Cairo had some of their bags, but not all of them, which makes me wonder how they actually handle baggage at airports. How do you only get half of a family's bags into the plane? I assume they're all moved at once unless they got lost elsewhere. But even then, that would require taking a family's bags at some point in time and breaking them up or leaving some of them behind. It blew my mind.

But yeah, I got checked into the hostel alright. Driving here was awesome. It was like mixing North Korea with Grand Theft Auto. There was propaganda everywhere since the airport is located near a lot of military installations and some Saddam-esque portraites of Mubarak. Driving in Cairo is laughably nuts. People drive down the middle of a lane like the line is a recommendation. There aren't traffic lights anywhere. People just turn wherever and honk repeatedly at people who can't move, or people who can move, are moving, behaving totally normally, but you just feel like honking. My driver had the webbing of his thumb on the horn at all times so he could easily squeeze the horn, which he did gratuitously, though not more than any other driver. My favorite way in which I saw this trait manifest itself was when I drove past a three car fender bender in a tunnel leaving Nasr City. The guys got out of their cars, screamed at each other about whose fault it is, got back in, and drove off like it didn't happen. I'm told this is standard Cairo fare for car accidents. As I sit in my room writing this, there is at least one horn a second going off in front of my room, which faces a busy street. I actually love it. It gives the city some life and makes you feel like you aren't alone, which is a feeling I hate at night in my room. So if I were to describe Cairo on my first few impressions, it would say its old, has a GTA approach to driving, sandy, and a fleshpot.

Getting Ready to Leave

This post is more about my thoughts than anything else, so it'll read more as a stream of consciousness. Ones recounting things I'm actually doing will make a little more sense and be easier to read due to chronology's innate ordering system.

Well, I leave for Egypt tomorrow morning. It's been a good week where I've tried to get in everything from home while I could. I spent a lot of money on food, but it was definitely worth it. For anyone in Chattanooga, if you haven't eaten at Sugar's Ribs or Champy's, you haven't lived yet. I'm really grateful for all the time I've had with my mom and brother this past week. I made it a point to make sure I wouldn't have any regrets before I left, and I don't really think that I do. There were a few people I wanted to see that I couldn't, but it's not as if I'm leaving forever, so I'm not overly anxious about it. I was more focused on getting in the food and beauty of the American Southeast while I could so I could take it with me. So basically I ate a lot of fried food and barbecue, had the occasional PBR (no whiskey, unfortunately, which I will miss dearly), and looked at mountains and rain.

I'm a little anxious about the flight tomorrow, but not overly so. It's starting to set in that I'm actually leaving and won't be back for a long time. I think the first time I'll really experience culture shock will be when I get to the airport and can't read everything on the signs, but I figure a lot of them, like at most airports, will be written in English as well, and my Arabic is decent enough to get by for the most part. But I'm not terribly used to speaking it, so I'll have to get used to feeling like a tourist. It's usually a feeling I don't like given my general disdain for tourists in DC (especially on the metro), but I suppose being as pasty as I am it's inevitable in Egypt.

All in all, I'm pretty excited about finally living out my fantasy I've had since I was five of seeing King Tut, which I'll probably be doing on Wednesday when I land. After checking into my hostel, I'll be picking up a phone and hopefully headed to the Egyptian Museum. I'll be dead tired, but Arab coffee is strong and my determination to get adjusted in the week I have before classes is stronger still. I'm prepared to take the pleasure with the pain, whether it be "Nile piles," traffic, smog, congestion, hawkers hounding me incessantly, or culture shock in general.

My Thoughts on... Thoughts

So with that said, I ought to discuss my opinion on opinions. As the adage says, opinions are like belly buttons. Everyone has them. My feelings on the belly button-opinion analogy run a little deeper. Opinions, like belly buttons, are essentially meaningless. They serve a purpose, but it is an incredibly limited one with a time and a place that can outlive its usefulness. This is where the comparison stops. We live in a society today where the opinions of individuals are glorified in the media with new trends like "iReporting" and the Citizen Journalist finds infinite ways to express himself or herself via the internet through means very much like the one through which I write to you today. This is a trend that in some ways ought to be valued, but in others ought to be condemned. The opinion of society is obviously hugely relevant. It is the vehicle on which our society makes its collective decisions regarding governance and the everyday social norms that govern our behavior. However, when broken down to the individual level, the Citizen Journalist has created a dual trend that worries me greatly.

First, it has cheapened the work of the thinker. Because of the rapidity and fluidity of modern news cycles and the pace at which lives are run, there is little time for the kind of quality analysis you really only see on Fareed Zakaria GPS nowadays. Instead, we have created a news cycle built around catchphrases and ideologues. The individualization of opinion has given meaning and self-importance (I will discuss this in depth later) to a whole new range of people, many of which frankly are unqualified to be given the attention they receive.

I am of the Humean school of thought when it comes to qualifications. In discussing art, Hume argues that good art is determined by what he calls "the critic," which receives qualification of opinion via extensive work that is validated by the collective agreement (or if not agreement, than at least respect for the level of rigor involved in his or her judgment process) of peers with his or her assessment. I extend his example of "the critic" to my judgment of social commentary and its worth. I feel as though only those who have the expertise and knowledge of a given subject have opinions worth validating. How are we to decide a standard by which qualification can be determined? I suppose I have two answers. First, I hate to use the Supreme Court's obscenity defense, but qualification is something we tend to "know when we see it." For example, while I may know things about politics, I am not the man with whom you would trust your car, plane, cooking tasks, or newborn child. Likewise, I am loath to trust a man or woman who has read a book on the Middle East with resolving Yemen's water crisis or making peace between Israel and Palestine. Second, debates regarding the domination and "tyranny" of pre-existing institutions with determining authority aside (particularly within academia), I think it's pretty safe to assume that if you're a PhD candidate in a subject, you probably know a thing or two about your subject, and Joe the Plumber of 123 Main St. probably doesn't know more about you than the subject you are studying. Furthermore, differences in opinion do not count as disqualification. I doubt that despite their differences, Bob Keohane and Kenneth Waltz are second-guessing their qualifications to make political statements, nor are Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia asking questions about whether or not the other is an expert on the US Constitution. So in sum, qualification is something that we know when we see it, and it's fairly easy to determine who is qualified and who isn't, differences in belief set aside.

My other big issue with the Citizen Journalist is the self-importance it creates. This sounds hilarious coming from someone with a blog, as even in my opinion, a blog is in some ways the ultimate show of self-importance. However, what terrifies me about self-importance is the intractability of opinion it creates. Because news outlets, whether they be MSNBC or Fox News, glorify the opinion of the Average Joe, Average Joe feels as though his opinion is, well, relevant. And this feeling leads to an unwillingness to change one's opinion, as it creates the sensation that the feeling has been vouched for by some higher power. Let's use a famous Joe for this example. Joe Wurzelbacher, more famously known as Joe the Plumber, is a fairly average man. Aspiring small business owner, middle-aged, blue collar, from the American Midwest. Joe famously asked then-Senator Barack Obama whether or not his tax plan would "stifle the American dream (a phrase with which I have my own qualms, but that's for another day)." After his famous confrontation with the President, Mr. Wurzelbacher became a media sensation, making numerous appearances and was even a correspondent for conservative website pjtv.com about the Israel-Palestine conflict for ten days. This in itself wouldn't be a huge issue. What I struggle with is the ways in which his opinions were assumed to be meaningful.

To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Wurzelbacher does not have a college degree. He is not fluent in Hebrew or Arabic. I'd be curious to see his knowledge of the taxes he hates so much, given he supposedly owed several thousand in back taxes. In spite of these facts, Mr. Wurzelbacher was toured in front of the nation, asked about his opinion on numerous issues, and went so far as to call into question Barack Obama's loyalty to the United States. While Mr. Wurzelbacher is certainly entitled to his opinions, he has not given me any reason to believe that I should care. I doubt he's giving out well-sourced opinions about the moral or practical concerns regarding taxation. I'm sure his opinion of the Israel-Palestine conflict is informed more by his values regarding Israel's victimhood than reality, speaking as someone who is shamelessly pro-Israel. There are others, whether they be Alan Dershowitz or John Mearsheimer, who know far more about the conflict than Mr. Wurzelbacher ever will. Why are we consulting Joe the Plumber when we could be asking people with real, evidenced opinions? With the sorts of options we have today and the increasing accessibility of the academic and policy establishments to the general population, the greatest shame here is that this resource is not utilized more often.

This glorification of mediocrity and "averageness" is uniquely American. There is glory in the middle class. We bemoan its suffering, as we should. These are hard-working Americans for whom I have as much respect as I do anyone else. However, I will not find myself asking my mechanic for his opinion as to whether or not we should attack Iran, withdraw from Iraq, or counter a rising China. He is not an expert. He's damn good at fixing cars, but not solving humanity's eternal problems. His opinion, like his belly button, is meaningless.

In conclusion, why do I blog about my opinion? I do it because I feel like it. Sometimes I have thoughts on various things, and this is how I choose to put them down. However, I do not expect any of my readers to take my opinion as law, nor do I feel as though my opinion is necessarily meaningful. If you learn something, I've done my job. If there's an interesting conversation that gets going in the comment section, people at least get some gratification out of it. But 9 times out of 10 I will not be an expert on the subject I'm discussing, and I expect anyone who finds my opinion interesting to read more about it and draw your own conclusions. Humility is something to be valued, and acknowledging that we don't have all the answers and can always do a little better is possibly the most important quality in people that is unfortunately all too lacking today. We expect people to have all the answers, so much so that we even expect it out of those who should not have the answer we seek.

EDIT: Just read this article in Time that did a really good job outlining my feelings on the subject (subscription only, unless you have an iPhone): http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2010191,00.html

General Thoughts on Blogging

Before I write anything further, I guess I want to provide the blog with a little context.

To me, blogging is an interesting outlet, especially in intellectual settings. Historically, there has been a lot of animosity in academia in particular against blogs. This is in part due to academia's typical rigorous revision process and emphasis on well thought-out, peer reviewed pieces. Blogs contrast with this institution immensely. Blog posts are quickly written, short, pieces that are lucky to make it through the spellchecker, let alone peer review. However, a growing number of well-respected figures in policy circles and academia alike, such as Tufts's Daniel Drezner, Harvard's Stephen Walt, or the Center for a New American Security's (and alum of my high school) Andrew Exum, have created well-respected blogs that have gone a long way toward making their ideas far more accessible to the general population. Blogging finds itself in a position today where it is growing in legitimacy, but increasingly challenged by rapid-output news sources such as Twitter and Facebook in particular. Blog posts were never meant to be journal articles that are rigorously sourced, well argued pieces. Rather, they are supposed to be quick outputs of unrefined (for the most part) thought. Some bloggers have found it easier to move to sources like Twitter to rapidly output brief thoughts of this sort. As a result, blogging has found itself in a limbo where it must provide more depth than a tweet, but far less than a scholarly publication or a policy memo. Thus I come into blogging in a time where its future as a means of conveyance of opinion is in question and its broader pedagogical purpose is in doubt. How should blogging be used? What are the standards that should be established for blogs when, taking into account the fluid, almost stream-of-consciousness nature of their writing, they will never be on the same level as well-sourced works?

I don't really have an opinion on the subject as of now. As a Twitter user, I do not feel as though it can ever supplant blogging with its character limit. It cannot provide the depth that, while limited, can still serve to inform opinions and make those of academia and high-end policy circles far more accessible to a general population that in the day of cable news is in sore need of thinkers instead of demagogues. I hope my posts will be fairly brief, come often, and may be more indicative of my thought process than an academic work may be.

Welcome!

Hey all. I assume if you're reading this you're interested in following my travels, or for one reason or another find my opinions on various issues meaningful enough to read them. So I suppose I'll start out with a bit of background about the blog and what I want to do with it.

Late this past spring I decided that I would keep a blog detailing some of my experiences abroad in Egypt this coming fall. It should make updating people far easier than calling them and make my trip more accessible to those who are interested in it. This was the initial purpose, and it should remain the focal point of my blogging for the next six months or so.

I've had a cursory interest in blogging for a while now and considered starting my own at various points over the past two years, but now has been only time I've felt particularly driven to do so. Seeing as how I hope to make this more of a long-term project, I'll also be writing my opinion on various subjects or posting articles I find interesting so as to give the blog a little more life and stretch its usefulness out past the fall. I'll write occasionally about issues that make me think too much or about which I find myself arguing with brick walls and thus find little means of gratification outside of this blog. They'll primarily be social or political in orientation, though there might be the occasional piece that's a little different if the mood so strikes me.

So with that, I welcome you to my blog! I do welcome comments, and I'll respond as soon as possible to those worth dignifying (:P).