Growing up A little - Egypt's 2012 Election

I am not really found of growing up myself , but when it comes to Egypt I believe it is critical that we all leave behind our childhood manners and grow up a little, because , let's face it , like all of us , you had those moments in your childhood, when you were playing and then , when you started to lose , suddenly felt the urge to flip the chess bored/cut the PS power etc, or maybe just call the other person a cheater, what about that time when you cheated to get yourself out of that situation ? Then time passed , you learned to accept loss with a good spirit and be happy about it because after all, it's the game that counts. But the truth is, for some , accepting loss was only because it was a game , nothing more nothing less , but when it comes to elections , they just can't accept loss , in fact , they are still the same irresponsible children who would not accept the rules of the game they are playing , for democracy is simply the right of the people to rule themselves , democracy never said floul ( what's left of the falling regime ) should not enter the presidential race, to be honest I unless you can prove they are criminals, anyone has the right to enter the presidential race , and people vote for those that they prefer. The inconvenient truth is that in democracy you can't exclude anyone because everyone has the right to choose how he wants to be ruled , and whether he want's a floul , a socialist ,a rebel , or an Islamist his choice must be respected and the majority's opinion will be above all , and if you don't like it then you can take power and declare 2nd kingdom (or republic if you want) as a dictatorship , but don't ask for democracy if you will only apply half of it, play the game by it's rules or don't play at all, and above all, as long as the elections were authentic, accept defeat.

Ahamd Shafiq , Mohamed Morsy , Amr Moussa, Abou El Foutouh , Hamdin Sabhy are all people that I would hate to see ruling my country , but if one of them in a clean election, then we would all just have to accept it and start collaborating with him for the creation of a new powerful Egypt, and remember , in 4 years you get to choose again and this time Egyptians will be more experienced and won't make the same mistake twice.

For Sleep

Time management is an essential skill to life , as people grow older they learn to respect and appreciate that skill – hopefully by wisdom instead of by a tough life lesson- , because time management is the skill that allows all other skills to emerge ,shine and reach their full potential after getting cleaning the dust accumulated by time misuse. In fact , time management helps people decide what their priorities are and helps them focus on their tasks so that they can finish them in time , stress free and while managing to get your regular ( if you are lucky enough to have one , that is )dose of sleep.

How do you manage your time? Simple , you create a list of the things you need to do, sort them by priority  ( try to make the list look small , because if you are as lazy as I am it will be hard to motivate yourself to finish them if the list is 10 km long , you will be slightly demotivated and won’t finish anything at all, trust me that’s coming from experience. Remember to estimate the time of each action so you don’t overload you day and give yourself breaks so you can renew your energy and go back to work with a fresh brain.

Ok so now you’ve got your list ready? Great ! now next step , execute it . No don’t give that look , come on honestly I am sure you saw that coming? No? well sorry to break this down to you but you have to work on accomplishing them now , don’t worry they’ll be done on time if you don’t get very distracted  , take my word for it I am writing this article at 12:48 am (time management , how ironic ) , that’s about 7 hours before it’s due ( well actually 48 minutes late but  that’s nothing, you can always forge the date if you want but I don’t recommend that , it’s useless ).

Now the most important step , is self discipline, you can make plans to manage you time in the most brilliant of ways , but all of that will be worthless if you cannot bring yourself to follow  (follow  is not the freest of words , how about embrace? )  that plane , resist all temptations to create a new plan or derive the original one if you know that you are only doing this to procrastinate and waste time ( and you can’t trick your conscience so don’t pretend you taught it for your own good , that’s pointless and lying to yourself only makes things worst and pushes to feel guilty, makes you despise yourself and destroys your ego, so an off topic advice, always be truthful to yourself , don’t try to give excuses for your mistakes , confront yourself with the truth, accept  it and learn to love it and be happy with it, then try to be better, or else you will be miserable ). Tame your cravings so you only focus on what you have to do ( Red Alert 2, minesweeper , facebook and 1984 can all wait , math can’t ), and finish it.

I am going to have to conclude this now as it is already 1:11 am ( yes I did procrastinate a little while writing this , but I am an IB student it helps me concentrate ) , however sleep has became one of my top priorities these days, so I’ll fight of the will to write a verbose blog post ( because I m very talkative) well it’ actually 615 words so I guess I am fine , and fight off the alluring sight of the internet right after I finish this blog post ( no facebook, no twitter no http://ahmed-khaled-tawfik.blogspot.com/ -visit it there is a reason I copy pasted the link - , straight to sleep , and that my friends is self control.

Goodnight, and please forgive the sheer stupidity  of this article and the prodigious amount of mistakes I am sure I committed, I need sleep . 

Nothing , and that's why it works

2 year's ago I read a story called "les mise en boîte " , the protagonist of the storey is a little girl who discoverd her ability to ask peopel questions that directs them the way she wants (  best case scenario) or bemuse their mind with a question they can't answer so they leave her alone, in the middle of the story the protagonist asks her teacher what forces her to obey him  , the teacher's response was very simple yet confusing "nothing , and that's why it works" , the girl was astonished and obeyed her teacher. At that point , I stopped reading and started contemplating the teacher's response for that question was on my mind since I was shorter then a chair , since nothing is forcing us, why do we CHOOSE obey ???? Is it because we're afraid ? Is it because we're confused ?? Is it because we believe we're better off obeying ?? Maybe because we belive those we obey are smarter or superior ?Is it because we trust that those we chose to obey and that they only want our good ?? Is it a question of weakness and strength ? Is it a question of gratitude ? Maybe knowledge and ignorance ? Perhaps because peopel are thaught to obey or they are too afraid or lazy to think for themselfs ?Etc...

I had all these questions in my head , and for a year I had decided to adapt the " nothing " as an answer even thought I doubted it ,because I needed an answer that would be valid for ALL cases , and because I discovered that all the other answers weren't really primary reasons but merely secondary reasons. 

Then came the 25 Jan revolution . and I witnessed  the egyptian society in a very critical and unique time ,and suddenly it was obvious as the sun why  people choose to follow and why some choose to disobey , and that I was blind to that reason because - without realizing it- I was always thinking with a rather anarchic logic , but the truth is there is a social contract sustaining each society in the world, usually emerging from religions and the culture of that society , that contract is a set of unwritten laws that all or most of the society  believes it would help the society evolve into a better one , and it is that contract who has the power to give authority or take it , and because almost every body is ready to do whatever is necessary to help in his own and his society's evolution, then almost everybody choose to follow these rules , and as it happens that these rules always give authority to a unified governing organization (governed by the social contract and some other stuff) who's goal is to protect the society , secure it's evolution and keep these unwritten rules applied ( sometimes even by writing them or writing rules to secure them , for example they protect the value of work by not giving mush money/privlages to those who don't work and they protect the value of knowledge by giving superior jobs to the most knowledgable etc...). 

But what happens if that governing corps doesn't respect that social contract? The answer is simple ' the governed get the right stop obeying and to express there anger and discontent , threw riots , news paper articles , strikes , even terrorist acts ( destroying a parliament or any authoritarian symbol etc ..) or civil disobedience. The last is very special , because as the mahatama Ghandi once realized , they as or more effective then riots , not bloody at all , in fact it's carectrised by complete abscence of violence , for civil disobedience is simple , people just stop obeying the government , stop going to work , stay in their houses paralyzing the economy and the country and striking the government where it hurts all while limiting the government's ability to react in a hostile manner. 

Personally , I believe civil disobedience is the best solution for Egypt these days , while the riots and protests continue , I really don't want to see any more blood shed in the streets and never desire to hear the television broadcasting the death and injury toll at the latest protest or strike (or at any other occasion ) again. I believe Egypt has lost more then enough of it's loving people already.