a creative person is a rare commodity, and we admire what he presents, whether it is a drawing, a novel, a painting, a wonderful architectural structure, a musical tune, a singing or acting performance, a poem, a movie, a journalistic investigation, or even a sports game.
in all these cases and others, we usually do not care about the background of the creative person, nor his tendencies, or his opinions or his biography, no matter how light and strange, or even licentious and false, it is, because we are usually not concerned with his person, but with the creativity he presents.
the committed writer, critic, playwright, or filmmaker, and those who have a role in shaping public awareness, stand outside the context of the above paragraph, and it becomes important for them to have a special status, a background free of crime, and a reasonable cv, and there is no harm in trying to know something about them before believing what they write, whether about their political background, ideological affiliation, or otherwise.
for example, it is not advisable to read an opinion, criticism, article, or investigation by a writer, and to be influenced by it and believe it, without knowing the truth of his intentions, or if he was motivated by some party, in which case he does not deserve our trust, due to his loss of credibility, or because his personal actions contradict what he calls for in terms of “ideals.”
the more backward societies are, the more their numbers increase, so we have a large number of them, knowing that we, for several factors that we have previously discussed, are among the peoples who suffer the most from severe contradictions in our actions.
i have been shocked, or disappointed, many times in people, when i thought they were perfect through their “production”, but by getting closer to them i knew their truth, or so i thought.
an example of the hypocrisy that characterizes our societies is the strange number of writers, critics, and those who claim to carry the banners of culture and knowledge, and the owners of the “signifier,” who are ready to heap praise and flattery on any action issued by a tyrant or dictator, whether it is a literary work or a political behavior, as long as there is a material benefit behind that praise.
for example, the novel “zabiba and the king,” which is attributed to saddam hussein, received a lot of analysis and praise from people of high literary stature, despite the fact that it is a ridiculous novel with no meaning.
recently, a message was spread, which included famous literary and cultural names, who devoted their pens to criticizing, analyzing and praising a collection of short stories entitled “the village, the village, the earth, the earth, and the suicide of the astronaut,” which is attributed to gaddafi.
he held a symposium entitled “gaddafi , thinker and creator,” in which a group of opportunist “arab intellectuals” and writers of sultans participated, who sold their dignity for a few dollars, in exchange for participating in that symposium under titles such as “place in gaddafi ’s stories,” “the dialectic of time in muammar’s stories,” “the human dimension and the search for the moral city in the text,” “the signifi cance and paradox of place in the literary discourse of the creative leader muammar gaddafi ,” “the signifi cance of spatial formation in gaddafi ’s stories,” “the psychological dimensions of creativity in the writer muammar,” “narrative techniques and language in muammar gaddafi ’s stories,” “sarcasm in muammar gaddafi ’s literature,” “manifestations of innocence and astonishment in muammar’s stories,” and “stories of “revealing a man who is followed by history”!!! … and other nonsense.
reviewing the names of the “elders” who participated in writing these “studies” and critical letters, we feel shocked first, because of the aura that some see over the heads of these people, and the miserable living conditions that they may be living in, and more dangerous than that is what these hypocritical writings represented and still represent in terms of self-abasement, and a title for a stage that has gone on for a long time, in which the intellectual lost his vanguard role, after living conditions and tyrannical regimes forced him to give up a lot, out of greed or fear.
this is the most important difference between backward societies and their advanced opposite, especially when comparing the positions of these people with the positions of israelis who stood against their homeland, along with other jews, and with the palestinian right, despite all the risks and losses that befell them!