Exclusive images courtesy of Rian Hughes

Recent events in the Middle East have the rest of the world waiting with bated breath. This revolutionary shift towards potential democracy, and the demand for basic civil rights that we in the western world take for granted, is completely unprecedented. Why has this happened now? What serendipitous events caused these countries to simultaneously rise up to “bring down the regime” ? Rian Hughes’ latest book CULT-URE gives a remarkable insight into what drives waves of ideas, and how these ideas translate into actions: whether these ideas are dangerous or benign, they exist and they are being transmitted.

On March 7^th 2011 an article by Michael Elliott was published in Time magazine, entitled ‘Learn to Love the Revolution’.  Elliott speaks of “a rapidly growing population of young people increasingly resentful of dynastic rule and increasingly linked to the outside world and one another by technology”. If you can see other people on the Internet enjoying democratic rule, with jobs and homes, and a good education, surely the logical question to ask yourself is – why can’t I have that? [as was the case in communist Eastern Europe] Just because the youth of the Middle East has been denied these freedoms and privileges, it doesn’t mean they don’t want them, nor does it mean they cannot have them.

As Hughes says in ‘CULT-URE’, “A democratised culture begins to reflect the range of opinions and tastes of the people of which it consists rather than those of the political or cultural elite”. It is evident that although many countries in the Middle East could not choose the way their country was run, the advent of the “democracy of ideas” that is the internet gave a new outlet for societies in turmoil to discuss these issues. These ideas are now taking physical form in the shape of a spate of uprisings.

In CULT-URE, Hughes speaks of the power of ideas, legends, and stories, for example how supernatural beliefs spread – “While the jury is out on the powers of the mind to shape reality…in a more practical manner, a thought, strongly held, will affect and guide a person’s actions – and in this entirely unsupernatural fashion, ideas become actualised in the real world”. The ideas are out there, there only needs to be a series of incidents to make these ideas take shape and become actions.

The Internet is capable of making oppressed citizens of these countries more aware of the huge gulf between the challenges they face under a tyrannical and corrupt dictatorship, and the seemingly utopian existence of those in the privileged West. Unfortunately, we in the ‘privileged West’ have played no small part in the recent uprisings.

The economic downturn has resulted in colossal financial losses for a proportion of Middle Eastern and North African countries. To quote the blog Deterritorial Support Group (http://deterritorialsupportgroup.wordpress.com) “Faced with already high graduate unemployment and rocketing food prices, the collapse of their export economies were the straw that broke the working-classes back in North Africa– the ensuing crisis of legitimacy, industrial actions and massive street violence (also completely downplayed by the European media) may have then been painted as a political crisis, but they were only the symptoms of a financial crisis with which working people had been lumbered, and could no longer sustain.” (http://deterritorialsupportgroup.wordpress.com/2011/05/21/egypt-bahrain-london-spain%E2%80%93-tahrir-square-as-a-meme/)

In Rian Hughes’ CULT-URE, the author articulates the idea of a meme, defined as an idea that spreads from person to person being capable of changing the world – the most predominant vessel for memes being, naturally, the internet. “As the old hierarchies are levelled,” Hughes says, “will those who simply shout the loudest be the ones whose opinions are heard? Will the playground bully or the powerful and connected simply exploit the weak and powerless?” [Actually, the next line is me saying I doubt this will be the case...]

In the case of the Twin Towers bombings, Al-Qaeda created a meme so strong in its symbolism and that spread so fast it was mesmerizing in its horror. “For those with a certain view of the United States, the World Trade Centre, built according to an uncompromising modernist geometry, symbolizes capitalist economic power and a muscular, secular rationality. For most New Yorkers, the Twin Towers now symbolize a senseless act of murder, driven by an alien faith.” We see the danger in memes in the case of terrorist acts, but a meme can also generate a positive movement – the bloody and violent images of protests in the Middle East are shocking, and the developments horrific. But a society using its might to overthrow an oppressor is a powerful symbol.

To have a sense of one’s own principles, and of what is ethically acceptable, what is dangerous and what is revolutionary, is an essential tool in the modern world. To quote Hughes, “In the electronic democracy of ideas, it becomes ever more urgent that we develop a sense, not of scepticism or the blind acceptance of authority, but of independent analysis. It is precisely those societies that permit their populace the least self-expression that fear this bypassing of the traditional hierarchy the most.”

In Hughes’ words, “Soon, we will all have the means to create. We just have to decide whether it be art or bombs.”

By Isabel Wilkinson