This blog post below is neither based on literature nor any socio-political theories that I have read, it is the pure invention and the result of the sane/insane reflection that my poor limited mind has been developing lately. This blog is not neither a call for actions nor reactions, nor an attempt to offer alternatives. For some, these thoughts might have no clear linkage nor even a logic behind. It is ok; I don’t ask anyone to support me or to agree. This blog is simply a ventilation of an alienated free woman.

When and how it started

I am not a politics-driven person, I never understood it nor even tried to before, and I can say frankly that I am completely ignorant and illiterate when it comes to politics. However, lately it occurred to me that we as “humans” live in a big illusion called the “state” and its systems. I started to believe so once I was back from the Netherlands or even while I was living there for one year to get my Masters degree in Arts Management. Coming from the “country-of-no-system”, the chaotic Egypt, I faced daily the rigorous crushing Dutch system of functioning and living. Everything (banks’ systems, public transportation, and public life) were too organized, predicted, dictated and lived by the rules. I cannot deny that living in a system can be relieving from the daily struggle of surviving in Egypt. But with a little distance and reflection, you can easily realize that these social/public/political systems eliminate any “outsider”, “stranger” and any “non-follower” of the system. I lived there the glorious and dominating system of one of the most powerful “democratic” state of the “woohoo” very first class country of the world!

Nevertheless, coming back home, I have been witnessing a constant and rigorous intentional and unintentional drainage of my health and my brain from the exhausting, polluted Egypt. You know, this is, after all, a 3^rd world country ruled for a long time under a dictatorship.

Well… What can I say?! In both worlds I suffocate! And this suffocation, increased with the daily demonstration of a fascist minded media, people and the massacres produced and re-produced daily under the name of the modern state.

And what is a “state”, ladies and gentlemen?

As far as I understood, a state or the modern one was invented based on some fictive divisions (borderlines) on the map (usually drawn by the super powers dominating certain areas/or times). Based on these “fictive” borders we developed some concepts which are supposed to unite a group of individuals and in the same time distinguish them from their neighbors: some of these concepts can be named as: “nation”; “identity”; “race”; “religion” (which are systems also suggested for some ideal balanced life styles) and so forth.

Well, even before the so-called “modern state”, there were “tribes”, and “families” formed for the same purpose which is the securing and the equal division of resources among a number of individuals in order for those to survive..

A question for the “history” and “sociology” nerds: when ever were these resources equally distributed or when were individuals ever equal in rights and wealth? Were we ever close to achieving this, ever? If yes then please mention in which “great” or “low” civilization?

I am not a violent person, I am neither calling to destroy all these systems nor states that have been built to control, organize and lead us. We are living in a very old, even an ancient world that we cannot destroy from one day to another. I am just becoming more aware everyday of the alienation of our lives. So I choose to be aware and to live in the safe “free” illusion of the self (mind and soul). I choose deliberately living in the “bubble”.

The fabricated “field”

The Bubble. Yes this is a very safe zone that the self creates to save one’s sanity in such fascist, violent, ignorant and absurd world. My bubble consists of the little “garden” view that I see every morning from my bedroom window in our rented house in Maadi, Cairo (and I am so grateful for that). And the second is my work, this little,  yet functioning office in Dokki where we plan for art projects, we fundraise, we implement, and we continue planning and moving forward slowly.

Even these little functioning circles are not that free after all.Three weeks ago, I attended this forum on “Theater in the Time of Change”, where an old scholar and ex high rank in the Ministry of Culture, debated that in the nineties of this century the neo-liberal governorate fabricated a field of art where artists believed that they are really “liberal” and “free”. They produced their art under the auspices of the ministry and they were among the first that the state censored and banned.

Claiming ourselves as “independent or liberal” is also a delusion. Even if we are not working for the “state” or under its institutions, we are still working in a “fabricated” field, dominated by other organizations, institutions and systems. These late are leading and also controlling us, control our language and the terminology that we are using and define our relationship with the people that we serve or work with. They dominate us and we follow.  Well, we are living as I said in an ancient world, where systems produce themselves under different names and reproduce another systems, even opposite systems are parts of the ones that they are opposing.

The simple fact is that there is no freedom as simple as there is no vacuum space on earth. And the only vacuumed spaces that exist are artificially “fabricated” ones.

God is Freedom

With this way of reflecting, there is two ways to react if you were a soul truly seeking the “freedom”. Either you kill yourself as act of freedom or you seek God.

I truly believe that God is Freedom. God is the probability, the possibility with no limits. What keeps the one in a job that s/he doesn’t believe in? Or a relationship with no future? Or a land/state that alienates him/her? Most probably either s/he fears poverty, loneliness or isolation. How the one fears those if s/he believes in God, the unlimited, the hope.

The little moment of freedom for me were revealed on these fractions of seconds of despair, where I felt a bit calm, in peace and with God. This might change… of course but not for this fragment of fraction of second.

May some call this is another illusion, or a fake Puritanism or devotion? May some accuse me of drugging myself with a certain doctrine (note please that I am talking here about believing in God not preaching a certain religion). May be I am all in denial seeking the salvation in a fake spirituality. Or even more, I am just that ignorant unconscious woman. Whatever I am, this is how I feel and think.

This is not a negative pessimistic post, this is a different way of seeing the reality. And as we all know, reality is relative and fictive after all.