Bottom

Writer: Dr. Ahmed Rafiq Awad

There, far and deep, at the bottom, things are equal and parallel, and no one is superior to anyone else. There is no difference between wisdom and cowardice, and no distinction between courage and recklessness. At the bottom there is enough darkness and obscurity, misguidance and misguidance, which leads to blindness, helplessness, shame and exposure, and makes punishments, fever, meat, blood, oil and honey all permissible, and none of them are forbidden or have any value.

Those who sink to the bottom lose the ability to decide and take initiative, abandon the beautiful and the authentic, and kill the elk and the antelope, then throw the antelope away, as if they are taking revenge on everything that reminds them of life. They lose the ability to deduce, deduce, measure, and compare. They surrender to gossip and gossip-like discussion. They enter a void in which only echoes resonate, and in which only achievement is imagined.

Those who descend to the bottom replace reality by separating from it, action by singing about it, and the right decision by warning against it. They cling to their positions as if they were idols to be worshiped, and refuse to go into the forest for fear of monsters that only exist in their imagination. When they wake up, or think they wake up, they discover that they are at the bottom. Where everything has a different name, and where names are mixed with values, and actions with references, until what is right becomes a matter of doubt, what is wrong is a point of view, and contradiction is evidence of flexibility.

This is because bottom consciousness is not like surface consciousness. It is a limited, oppressive and oppressive consciousness, opportunistic, vulgar and fickle, hypocritical, contradictory and obsessive. It is the consciousness of a sick person who does not realize his illness, and does not wish to be treated for it. He claims to own everything, and the opposite of everything; He is liberal, modern, post-modern, digital, and more digital than numbers, and he is more traditional and traditional than imitation. He raises slogans when they serve him, and abandons them when they become a burden on him. Do not tighten my hand or tighten your hand; What is important is that no one bears responsibility for reaching the bottom.

Those who reach the bottom do not reach it all at once, but rather descend to it gradually. They first abandon the commonalities, then the methods, the means, and the definitions. After that, they resort to marketing, justification, embellishment, patchwork, and composition, until imagination becomes a substitute for reality, and separation from reality becomes a victory over it. And so, step after step, they hit the wet, sticky bottomland, where reptiles and mythical creatures multiply, with mouths stuffed with teeth, oozing disgusting liquids, while the fallen imagine that they have reached the pinnacle of wisdom, and that the others are the ones who did not understand the way.

But, is there a point of light in this all-encompassing bottom? Is there something worth clinging to in the midst of this darkness that swallows standards, mixes truth with illusion, makes decline an attitude, helplessness a wisdom, and surrender a reality?

Sure, there is light. Light does not come from the bottom itself, nor from those who have become so accustomed to its darkness that it has become part of their blind insight. It is a reminder that conditions do not last, that the balance of power is not an eternal destiny, that what seems fixed today may change tomorrow, and that the bottom, no matter how wide it is, is not the end of history.

I do not see this light except in the words of the All-Knowing, the All-Wise: “And those days We alternate them among the people.”