Compelling Criticism

I hate Criticism, and I hate the person that just criticizes for criticism sake. Being a researcher that bases every discussion on empirical analysis I feel that those that criticize should also try to use empirical research prior to uttering any word.  However, doing research is hard, and it’s not everybody's cup of tea hence you find that the masses only express their own opinions instead of comparing and contrasting facts and numbers before deciding what is true and what is false.

Let me be less obscure then, I often do searches on twitter on current affairs, just for laughs of course, and to fill a void in my time.  I have so much time especially that now my kids had grown up and almost left home, and my husband is on a two months vacation visiting his folks in Australia, and being a person that is wired with two blackberry phones, Ipad, laptop and my daughter's Iphone, I like to tackle each of these devices to see what is happening in the world that we live in.   What I saw is startling! People are also killing their time, just like me of course, but the difference is noticeable.  There are groups of people who are seemingly hired by someone just to go after other groups who are expressing their opinions on current affairs.  For example, one would tweet that a Falafel sandwich in Anter cafeteria is nice, so a person would say no, Just Falafel is nicer, and then a third person will interact and say that the Falafel in Deira tastes better.  I beg to defy these facts, so I will buy the three Falafel sandwiches, eat them, and then think which one is nicer? that is empirical research (forget the fact that one will be fat if one tried all the similar foods in various locations, and the fact that one will be stuffed too and full of gas if I may say so), and then decide that yes true, Antar is better.  So the attack starts, who are you to say so, and you are daughter of the B because you defied our thoughts, and you are born with a tail because you told lies, and other insults that one cannot even mention on a blog but are being exchanged on twitter.

I mention the falafel just as an example of course, the criticism goes further than this, people are calling you names, cursing your family, your loved ones, saying names about your prophets, scholars, imams, the authors that you like, the countries that you adore and anything and everything on earth that matters to you, also stuff about how you look, your life, and making up stories on you etc. Who are these people? And which school did they go to? Do we have a school that teaches swear words and fowl language? Or is there a school in the country that specializes in bringing up a group of scum bags? Are these guys paid by someone just to write these stupidities and make us all look like idiots in the eyes of the world?

My remarks on this issue, if it’s true that people who say bad words on twitter and other social media are in actual fact paid by an institution, then we are going to be facing ruin and will be like those counties that are now forgotten! There is a very nice poem in Arabic, we learnt it in school and I have never forgotten it! it means something like this: tribes are made of a set of morals and ethics so long as these morals stay with them they will be immortal, and if the morals are gone they will also be gone! Not a great translation though so here it is in Arabic: انما الامم الاخلاق ما بقيت فان هم ذهبت اخلاقهم ذهبوا