Creative Lebanese Abroad.. Lebanese Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Suhail Farah: We Need to Free Ourselves from the Negative Factors of Our Historical Memory Saturated with War

Scientific centers in major countries have directed their research to serve the hellish biological wars and to destroy the enemy.
In the last three centuries, there has been a great divergence between the necessity and importance of scientific work in life and the ethics of science.

In the last three centuries, the technical mind has become adept at destroying the human mind, body and cells.

At the end of the fourth generation of the planetary civilization cycle, we are far from the just republics whose features were drawn by Plato and Al-Farabi.

I do not have confirmed information that convinces me whether Corona is manufactured or natural

India and Germany are not the only ones aspiring to play a bigger role, but other players in the East and West are competing in the absurd game of the planet.

An unclear vision.. Successive conflicts, and also parallel ones, are being witnessed by the entire world, diseases, epidemics, wars and disputes have become the loudest everywhere, and “humanity” is the biggest loser in the end, as human civilization at the present moment – it can be said that it has reached an alarming degree of danger, everyone is in a state of hostility, man confronts man, and man confronts nature.

Crises are becoming more severe, but no one can provide solutions. If someone takes the initiative and talks about “what must be done,” he – and his opinion before him – will collide with a wall of renewed conflicts, which confirms that humanity and civilization are on a difficult slope, and that they need all efforts to come together to avoid the downfall and decline that could lead to crises and disasters that humanity cannot handle.

*First of all, tell us about the backstage of your nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize for the third time?
Indeed, for the third time, my name has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, starting from 2017 until now, from the European side, which includes leading Russian researchers, where the head of the department, Professor Alexei Gromyko, who was a contributor with us and a viewer of the responses to the presentation of our work at the United Nations on the background of the 64th and 65th sessions of the General Assembly, noticed our works, especially those published in Russian, in the field of civilizations.

Gromyko was following our activities in the UN Alliance of Civilizations. He presented our work at UNESCO in Paris, Vienna, Munich, Moscow and elsewhere. These things motivated him to nominate our names in the first round in 2017 and the second in 2018, together with a well-known Russian academic colleague in the Eurasian and global scientific sphere, Professor Yuri Yekovets. He wanted to add to our names in the new nomination for 2020 the name of a great intellectual figure, Alexander Ageev.

*In your opinion, why this nomination?
Professor Gromyko believes, along with his colleagues in the Europe Department, that we, the three candidates, have inaugurated a field of knowledge in the science of civilizations, methodologically based on the scientific integrative vision of the field of civilizations, and cognitively constitutes a new qualitative shift in the view of civilizational cycles or generations with their history, present and future, and issues of dialogue and partnership between the civilizations of the East and the West together.

Practically, our scientific publications published in more than one language contribute not only to injecting a new (epistemological-cognitive) vision, and an operational map to activate the culture of dialogue between civilizations, cultures, religions, governments, and even the relationship between scientific and spiritual religious knowledge, but it also led to the creation of “seminars” or new-meaning study classes that are taught in more than one Russian and Eurasian university, and the project of the Open University for Dialogue of Civilizations that we founded, which is based in Moscow and which I have headed since 2013 until now, came to light.

*Honestly, how do you see the performance of the committees responsible for determining the names of the Nobel Prize winners?
The Nobel Committee for Science and Peace is undoubtedly one of the highest and most prestigious committees on our planet, and the purely academic scientific evaluation concern is almost always present when its committees work on issues related to the natural sciences, and this appears with clear distinction. The academic concern in literature fades, and sometimes confusion, ambiguity, and even aversion increase when receiving the news of the announcement of the prize when some figures or organizations related to the Peace Prize have been chosen.
I also feel that accepting the nomination is in itself an incentive to actively pursue my scientific and dialogical message, without receiving support from any party or by any means, as my scientific, pen, and axiological message are my assets in this existence, and I did not originally intend to even open this file because today’s world is preoccupied to the core with major problems. However, absolute silence is of no use; the pulse of life continues, and we must always renew its positive and joyful cells.

*Apart from the award.. How do you explain what the world is going through at the present time under the pressure of the spread and outbreak of the novel coronavirus?
The issue of countless epidemics and viruses that have been present on our planet since its inception is not only a product of the Corona era. The big problem lies in the fact that scientific research centers, specifically medical ones, in addition to the shallowness of the budgets allocated to them, the scientific and biological-medical mind, instead of focusing its research and developing it only in the context of the qualitative fight against epidemics and viruses that, as I said, existed even before the appearance of man on the planet and will remain and continue and multiply.

In this context, scientific centers, specifically influential and powerful countries, have worked to direct research to be used in hellish biological wars in order to weaken and destroy the enemy.
In the last three centuries, there has been a great divergence between the necessity and importance of scientific work in life and the ethics of science, and the scientific and technical mind has become adept at using the destructive energy of science. Wasn’t World War I closely linked to chemistry? Wasn’t World War II closely linked to physics?

Unfortunately, the scientific and technical mind excels in destroying the human mind, body and cells. Instead of focusing its energies on balanced civilizational growth, and instead of actually contributing to combating epidemics and viruses, I personally and many others do not have the logical, confirmed information that convinces me and many others so far that Corona is manufactured or natural. I want to point out here the following: The most dangerous thing with the adventures of the digital age and its totalitarianism, along with artificial intelligence. If things go according to the hellish scenarios of the money whales, the great collapse is coming. Therefore, it is urgently and urgently required to establish a strategy (cognitive, scientific, political and economic) to correct the course of all matters.

*Have the Russian Academy of Education taken any steps to correct the situation?
For our part, at the Russian Academy of Education, we have discussed these problems at length and issued a considerable number of recommendations, concerning how to continue the comprehensive, wise and careful management of the extremely rapid development of some sciences and their applications in life, which the human biological mind has not only not comprehended and cannot keep up with properly.

What we see is the reckless pursuit of the market of scientific acrobatic competition, in the approach of the line of adventure whose ends no sane person knows: is it really healthy for man, his mother nature and his cosmic environment or the opposite? There are many – exciting – worrying question marks about that? And
the effort on our part was to create a binding law that works on rational – carefully studied and wise – restraint, to deter the adventure of accelerating some uses of technologies and sciences in the fields of education and the conduct of affairs in industries and the management of transportation and other technical applications in cities and rural areas, and in the world of harmful experiments in the interior of the earth and the depths of the seas and oceans and space, in addition to other proposals. The bottom line in this direction is the necessity of the most active work of the wise men of the planet in order to activate urgently, greater and broader cultural and axiological affairs in our sciences and in the totality of our powers and actions, we the inhabitants of this planet.

*In the midst of all this, how do you describe the current crisis that human civilization is experiencing?
We, the specialists in civilizations, believe that four civilizational cycles have emerged on this planet since the emergence of what is called Homo sapiens, and in every planetary civilizational cycle of dimension, influence and meaning, there is a pioneering civilization that carries the civilizational banner, and there are sub-regional civilizations, there are civilizations that have become extinct or have mixed and evaporated with nearby, neighboring or distant civilizations.

In every civilization cycle, there are three principles that control it, which are: (the factors of its emergence, progress, and brilliance, reaching the summit, and then taking a sagging horizontal line for it until the signs of decline or collapse appear clearly.

In this context, the second major principle emerges on the surface of events, and its summary is the concept of crises. From within crises, the human mind strives to operate scientific imagination and to devise alternative rational solutions that aspire to progress and are linked to the principle of predictions. What contemporary human civilization is experiencing now are the ends of an era that we have called the fourth generation of the planetary civilizational cycle, accompanied by organic crises at all levels, which are dramatically worsening with time. Their basic titles are (ecological, demographic, geopolitical, financial, economic, social, socio-cultural and axiological-value).

Here I stop in this direction at the three value systems that are prominent on the surface of our words and actions, we human beings who are active in the civilized space of the eastern and western parts of our world.

*Can you tell us in more detail about the three value systems you mentioned earlier?
The first system: One does not need to think hard to perceive and conclude objectively, far from politicizing and ideologizing matters. Anyone with an analytical mind, even one of average intelligence and energy, perceives that there are experimental paths that have occurred and their cells have become flabby and have reached a state or phenomenon that is clear to the eye, namely the decline of the classical liberal and neoliberal systems. The European and American models are collapsing before our eyes.
As for the second system related to socialist experiments and values, as its founders dreamed of it, it has failed in most of its experiments. I do not mean only the Soviet experiment and the domesticated one in Eastern European countries and many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, but also the current Chinese situation that some are amazed by.

It is not socialism in the classical sense. Rather, it combines a liberalized market economy with a one-party ideology. In general, China has entered, even in the depths of its economic and even cultural policies, into the consumerist pattern of research that has been widely tried and tested for more than two centuries in the West and the rest of the world. It has become rejected and hated by most of the rational inhabitants of the planet. This model was practiced by the West with distinction and has failed morally and in life over time, and I do not expect its hybrid Chinese success.
The third system of value discourses and practices, specifically linked to traditional and non-traditional religious institutions, all of them, without exception, are living in a deep spiritual crisis and in blatant contradictions between their spiritual-moral values ​​and the overall practices of their followers. Most of their followers, each of them, adhere to their closed dogmas and strict commitment to their concept of absolute truth, which creates thick walls of ideological and even human communication with the bearers of other religions and sects, as each of them has its own absolute truths that are closed in on themselves and their narrow identities.

*What about initiatives to get out of this state of crisis?
Indeed.. There are initiatives to get out of the ghettos of crisis on the narrow self, and they are many, thankfully, to bridge the great gap between religions and sects, active in the East and the West. However, they have not reached the stage of a phenomenon, and here I highly appreciate the initiative of the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirik and the Catholic Pope Francis in Cuba.

I also stop at the generous initiative called “Human Fraternity” which was signed by His Eminence Sheikh of Al-Azhar Ahmed Al-Tayeb of Egypt and His Holiness Pope Francis of Argentina, which was taken from the UAE’s experience in openness to convene and launch it, and other activities and initiatives in this context.

Unfortunately, however, these initiatives remain as if they are voices wandering in a wilderness filled with rejection of the other, disputes, conflicts and wars between closed identities and absolute truths steeped in individual and collective selfishness, which unfortunately take on a religious character. Thus, the features of the crises, the various discourses, contents and practices, take their paths, specificities and continuity of their times according to the status of the system, its values, its political and economic situation and the distributed natural resources.

And for the active or lazy human energy latent in it, and for those who hold the cognitive, scientific and religious authority, and for those who control the paths of science and technology and direct awareness among people.
I can also say that the experiences and systems of the twelve basic civilizational groups existing on our planet and in our current era are all living in a “civilizational dilemma.” These groups are: contemporary Western civilization, which includes Western Europe and North America, the Latin civilization of South America, the Chinese civilization, the Eurasian civilization with Russia at its heart, and the Islamic civilization.

In our opinion, it is divided into four basic groups: the Arab, Turkish, Persian, and Indonesian-Malaysian, the African civilization, the Hindu-Buddhist civilization, the Oceanian civilization, and the Orthic civilization. All of these groups are inhabited by the narcissistic concern for the problem of identity and destiny, or what the great Lebanese and Francophone thinker Amin Maalouf called the phenomenon of “the tearing of identities” and “the drowning of civilizations.” Almost all of them enter into the turmoil and turmoil of organic crises.

In short, the human civilizational compass is at a major and complex crossroads, and the path of this compass and those who carry its banner are all in fact in a state of real loss, living in an atmosphere of extreme ambiguity between their rulers and their ruled, and consequently with other parties and options, and the absence of justice is the master of situations, and all of this is happening in a climate of a lack of broad trust between the big and small players together in the countries of the West and the East, it is a desperate struggle with those who control now and tomorrow the quartet of money, authority, power and knowledge.

The main wrestlers in its arena are: America, which is living in an atmosphere of internal racist, ideological, political, and financial-economic contradictions, and which has been witnessing, for quite some time, a prominent contradiction on the ideological level between the Puritan-Calvinist heritage that founded its religious doctrine and the Catholic Jesuit trend, between the contemporary conservative trend – the Melburnian in its economic vision, and the left with its classical and new discourse. With all its might, it is doing the impossible in order to preserve the remnants of its power that has expanded globally.
After the fall of America’s archenemy in the last century, I mean the Soviet Union, it searched for an alternative to it, which prompted the American security imagination and ideology, saturated with egomania and grandeur, to temporarily show Islamophobia on the surface of its enemies, which it tried to generalize for a period on Islam and on all Muslims, but it did not succeed, until a strong enemy emerged, which is the new giant – the Chinese dragon, and on the other hand, activity began to reignite in some cells of the Russian bear.

Despite its deep wounds after the decline of its star, it is now militarily superior and even excels in some sciences. I will not stop at the components of its natural wealth, most of which has not been used. Russia, in its fresh water, vast forests, gas, oil, nuclear energy, and other conquests in the Arctic and elsewhere, even the culture and education of its children, truly excels in a number of sensitive and vital aspects over America and China together. However, the basic weak point in Russia’s Achilles’ heel is its poor economic and even political management of the Russian and Eurasian space in general.

Which means that the most prominent title of the conflict revolves around who will carry the banner of global civilization financially and technically, and although it is currently confined to the Chinese giant and the remnants of American might, other players are eager for that. India and Germany are not the only ones aspiring to play a greater role than what is assigned to them, but other players in the East and West are competing in this absurd global game. As I see with the eye of a humble researcher the possibilities, that for a somewhat sound collective leadership of the global civilization orchestra.

*So what exactly does humanity need to get out of this predicament?
We all need to mobilize all our positive, constructive energies, individually and collectively, so that each of the twelve civilizational groups can carry out a comprehensive cognitive, mental, and axiological revolution with itself first, to liberate its stereotypical ideas about itself and the other, and to liberate itself from the negative factors of its historical memory saturated with wars that it has carried for centuries about itself and the other who is distinct from it. Second, it needs important vital factors that stimulate creativity and development so that the human compass may take its alternative, better and more suitable course for the inhabitants of the Earth.
What I envision here with my colleagues, with all the positive energies available to humans, is to establish a just noospheric civilization based on the wisdom of science, the justice of the ruler and the ruled, and the spirituality of transcendent human and heavenly values. The effort in this path is doubly required for our Arab and Islamic world to renew its mental, cultural, practical, and even spiritual cells.

The longer we delay in making a real intellectual and cognitive revolution with ourselves, the more we remain in the circle of the consumer position of the values ​​of others, not their producer. The Arabs remain, unfortunately, on the banks and margins of the leading, active civilizations, as the discourse of conflict based on the principle of (Social Darwinism) and the absence of the crystalline presence of the highest human and divine values ​​is the master of positions.

So, at the time of the end of the fourth generation of the planetary civilization cycle, we are far from the just republics whose features were drawn by Plato, Al-Farabi, and all the good dreamers of a more just civilizational world in the distribution of wealth, information, and knowledge. There is no salvation for humanity except in building a world whose motto is truth, justice, and transcendent values, in the world of the fifth generation of the desired and anticipated civilization cycle.

*Finally, what is the path that humanity must take to end the existing state of conflict, whether between man and man or man and nature?
The conflict between man and nature, and between man and himself and his neighbor and the bearer of ethnic, religious, sectarian, cultural and general civilizational identities, is a characteristic of the existence of this human being who has not yet risen to the human moment that is supposed to humanize all his words and actions. Conflict only generates fanaticism, hostility, conflict and wars. To save humanity, there is no alternative but to adhere to a human discourse based on axiological values, represented in (truth, justice, goodness and beauty), and we usually reach the truth through the wisdom of the scientific mind.

Justice can be achieved through an equitable and sound distribution of the wealth of a dynamically growing economy and the components of wealth in nature and reason. Goodness can be achieved through an existential approach to transcendent ethics, while beauty can be achieved through a constant yearning for transcendent culture in all our discourses and practices. The strategic alternative to conflict is to mobilize wise mental energy in order to activate dialogue and actual partnership between all civilizations, cultures, religions, governments and peoples of the world.