Free Arab women to bring up mentally balanced leaders

Ammar said (in "The death of Hope)":

"After all, ours is an authoritarian culture, in both the political and socio-religious sense, and the personal ambitions, avarice and temperaments of the leaders and rulers involved tend to be the final and most decisive factors in setting the main guidelines for the state’s policies, both domestic and foreign."

Philip I said:

Ammar, a perceptive post that lays bare the delusions and prejudices of the typical Arab mindset.

If psychoanalysts are to be believed, these are emotional disorders which develop from an early age in response to excessive authority or neglect.

At the risk of stating the obvious, nation states are made up of artificial institutions and family units. These units either nurture or stifle the mental and emotional develpment of the individual.

Culture and religion play an enormous part in the way parents and schools raise children and institutions develop and inspire adults to assume specific social roles including leadership.

The emotional disorders and prejudices that we observe are the tip of the iceberg. Underneath is a great solid mass of attitudes, convictions and memories that cannot just melt away.

Wars can bring about abrupt and fundamental change to societies. For example, in Europe, after the first world war, women demanded more rights and were able to fight off excessive male domination in the family and in public and private instituions because they sacrificed so much during the war and many men were killed. The result was that the female half of Europe quickly became more productive and better organised. Europe's institutions became more creative, more flexible and more socially fairminded.

War or no war, human history shows that unless the Arabs change their attitudes towards women, they have no hope in hell of developing into healthy and strong societies that can produce good managers and mentally balanced leaders.