Dr. Amjad Hamid Abdullah/University of Karbala – College of Islamic Sciences – Department of Arabic Language
Our contemporary world is heading towards the intensification of a conflict that has been taking place at a relatively slow and balanced pace for decades, but it has now become more intense and extreme than before. I refer to what I call the “Geographic Lifestyle Conflict” or “Gio-life style.” This is a global conflict that involves the use of social media platforms, mass media, economic pressure, and even blockades to instigate mass changes in the lifestyles of the inhabitants of a particular geographical area, pushing them towards a certain lifestyle, supported by major global institutions, with military power not far behind. It is a new type of invasion that the world is witnessing, in which the invading parties seek to impose their cultural dominance over a specific audience, stripping away their identity and enforcing an external will, making that audience and, eventually, that geographic region obedient to the invader’s interests.
Certainly, the culturally controlled audience, subjected to a lifestyle imposed through manipulation and distortion, will never be authentic. Their cultural identity will remain hybrid, meaning they will be necessarily dependent on the audience of the invading party. This reminds us of the culture of racial segregation against African Americans in the United States, which established the inferiority of all non-white people and imposed, through persuasion and coercion, the subjugation of the black community to the white community. This began with the use of hair oils to conceal curly hair, cosmetic products, and whitening procedures, as well as through fashion and other elements of Western lifestyle, particularly the abnormal aspects of it. It is not difficult to observe that the factories producing those cosmetic products and fashion items, which can be called “tools for cultural transformation and lifestyle change,” are owned by American capitalists, who must be white. In these factories, black men and women work for relatively low wages, while blacks also purchase these products at relatively high prices.
Thus, the white capitalist profits threefold: by reducing wages, increasing prices, and maintaining demand. However, this depends on the continuous propaganda and high-level media manipulation, meaning part of the financial budget must be allocated for media spending. On a societal level, the fuse of a large social bomb, which could destroy the usurious labor market if it retains its old lifestyle, would be removed, making it uncontrollable, ungovernable, and exploitative.
This was witnessed throughout the 20th century, after the struggle for the liberation of slaves in the preceding century. It seems that the following century—this one, the 21st—is beginning to witness a similar phenomenon of replacing the relatively costly slave system with a system of dependency through cultural exploitation, which has been profitable for capitalist countries. These systems have previously tested it locally within their own lands and developed expertise in it. With the rapid development of social media, we are now witnessing numerous conflicts around the world, aiming to impose a Euro-American lifestyle on the rest of the world’s inhabitants, across cultural and even military fronts. One of the most extreme is the imposition of the (homosexuality) lifestyle, declaring that anyone who does not conform is against them!
This includes breaking the concept of fatherhood, dismantling family ties, and establishing individualism, along with the reinforcement of the “digital father,” which I refer to as the virtual guide for every individual connected to the global network through modeling, indoctrination, and cultural exploitation with a focused psychological impact. The party that controls the digital father and directs it towards a specific lifestyle is the party that exploits both natural and human resources, benefiting from the imposed cultural dependency on the world in global cultural wars, supported by international institutions that have established laws and norms to criminalize those who resist or disobey.
Every human group has the right to choose the lifestyle they want, but no group has the right to impose its lifestyle on another, whether through deception, lies, or military force, as is evident in our world today. This signifies the disintegration of the world in a more tragic and intense way, according to the geo-lifestyle.
