Kemal Öztürk
We may be late in declaring the end of utopias that were comprehensive enough to change the world. In last two decades, not only have no new ideas emerged to surprise or captivate us, but the number of people pursuing existing idealist dreams has also noticeably declined, as you may have noticed.
Recently I have watched a video of a U.S. Navy commander. He was telling his soldiers, “If you want to change the world, start by making your bed.” We all understand the logic of this metaphor. But also, we see that the people who make their beds then get caught up in mundane tasks like cleaning the kitchen or tidying up the living room, never stepping outside to ask, “Where should I start changing the world?”
Minds Engaged in Daily Tasks
I’ve been a journalist for 30 years, and I have never seen a period like last decade so filled with crisis reporting and breaking news.
This trend means that we are so occupied with the crises inside and can not even look outside to see the points where the world needs to be changed.
In short, we have stopped dreaming big.
Thousands of articles have been written and hundreds of television programs have been made about the new vote percentages in local elections, the new arithmetic of parliament, the new alliances, and re-forming groups, but not even one of them were about the financing of politics and democracy within the party discussed.
Please think about it—if we can’t even address these two vital issues of Türkiye’s politics, how are we going to debate the absence of politics to solve world problems, the transformation of liberalism, or the end of globalization and capitalism?
Without great ideas and great visions, of course, exciting utopias can not be offered.
More serious, the shallowness spread by the wind of social media is so strong that hardly any sturdy base is left to stand on.
People do enamor by “short” videos that explain how to be happy in five steps, get rich in three, and find peace of mind with two jumps of hopscotch—and they never sober up.
Will you suggest someone who watches these “super pill” life lessons, which do not exceed two minutes, that we should discuss post-modernism, post-Kemalism, post-Islamism?
Nowadays, even those following “best book quotes” accounts are considered as the “refined follower.” You can imagine the rest.
The Drama of Phenomenon Intellectuals
Since the day someone who introduced himself as a “philosopher” boasted on Twitter about one of his aphorisms getting a million views, I’ve realized that even our intellectuals cannot resist to this trend.
Because he started to think that posts without “likes” are wrong. You could call this stance as the “phenomenon intellectual drama,” a term for those who care about the level of ignorance they face.
I don’t think that we need to elaborate more on the dire situation in Türkiye. But don’t assume the situation is very different around the world either.
Just looking at the U.S. can make us realize that “the world has gone crazy, my dear.” Trump became president of one of the world’s foremost know-how producing countries and when he doesn’t use a teleprompter, the total number of words he uses in his speeches is around 330. Of course, I didn’t count, but I’d bet the actual number is even lower.
Instead of studying the new sociology that gave birth and breastfeeding Trump, intellectuals who say, “Biden is senile, that’s why Trump is on the rise,” are probably at the Instagram influencer’s level. They can’t understand societal changes because they set their sights on social media
American society’s ignorance is actually well known. When I have visited the U.S. in 1999 for the first time, I noted: “Perhaps 1% of the 300 million people run the country. The rest are programmed just to consume and pay taxes.”
Of course, no one expects them to establish Brookings Institutes everywhere. But does anyone recall any surprising ideas produced by those massive universities, think tanks, or institutes that has the huge budgets as large as a country’s one?
The Youth Seeking Refuge in the Frankfurt School
It seems like there are no ideas that shape the world coming from the USA, but in Europe are ideas being produced in rapid succession against the crisis we are in?
As powers in Europe waste all human values produced over the past two centuries one by one, I’m sure Kant, Weber, and Zola are turning over in their graves and cursing at European today’s intellectuals every day. They couldn’t have kept the great legacy alive.
Those who put, the fruitcake politician that burned pages of the Holy Qur’an, under police protection and trying to pass this hideousness off as “freedom of speech” don’t even look at the equestrian police on the purebred English horses in Edinburgh trying to crush young students shouting “Free Palestine.”
They didn’t even allow students, who had been beaten with batons of the police in Berlin, to seek refuge in the garden of the Frankfurt School; they sprayed them with water cannons and drove them to “East Germany.”
They aren’t even aware of their contradictions.
Moreover, they think all their problems stem from the migration of the gray-haired Africans, slant-eyed Asians, and “unkempt” Middle Eastern to Europe. That’s why the politicians who curse immigrants the most have all increased their votes. Wilders in the Netherlands, Le Pen in France, the Freedom Party in Austria, Orban in Hungary, and Meloni in Italy were all crowned at the ballot box for being the best “immigrant repellers.”
It’s as if they believe they’ll escape the crisis they’ve fallen into if they fill ships with all the immigrants sheltered in European countries and send them back to Africa. This isn’t just a hypothetical example; it’s a solution policy they’ve already implemented in the UK. The first ship has already gone to Rwanda.
What do the European intellectuals and thinkers, who once shouted loudly at the smallest human rights violation or legal issue in non-western countries, say about this xenophobia?
I’m not curious what European intellectuals are doing while politicians seriously discuss expelling Muslims and foreigners from Europe as if it was another “Reconquista” of Andalusia. They’re busy probably trying to build audiences for their YouTube channels.
Ideas Springing Out From Islamic Countries!
What I mean to say is that there’s an exhausted Europe, a degenerated U.S. and a Western society that doesn’t know what to do.
Of course, it’s impossible to describe here the depth of intellectual rise and social development and progress in the Islamic world, such a great transformation is happening!
Every day a new idea is born from the Transoxiana basin, enlightening the world! The words of our intellectuals, academics, and scholars are spreading in waves across Europe and West, illuminating them like the light rising from the East in the 8th century!
Okay, I won’t continue this irony. Türkiye is the best of the Islamic countries; now you can imagine the rest.
While explaining the end of ideals, ideas and utopias, I am trying to explain that the issue is happening all over the world. It’s not unique to us. So, let’s not be sad!
Mankind has entered a new period of hesitation. The general state of the way that has left behind is clear to all, but the path to begin still remains unidentified and undecided. It feels like we are sitting on the fence. We can neither detach ourselves from the 80s and 90s, when big dreams were dreamed, ideas were born, and utopias were chased, nor we can adapt ourselves to the new reality. I guess most of us will be farewelled from Fatih Mosque (passing away) with this mentality.
I think we may be left with a handful of people who care about these issues, talk about them, and want them to be discussed. The writings and voices of these sensitive people were collected in this digital magazine.
Let’s see what will happen to us.