Amidst the challenges within the Arab world, the dilution of power at the Arab world’s periphery, and the dynamism of non-Arab projects unfolding in the Arab world, Arab consciousness is living a dichotomy.

On one side, there is a mix of powerlessness and anger. The most palpable expression of that mix is amongst the millions who have suffered the direct consequences of geopolitical clashes and civil wars in the past decade and half. For those, the present has become a difficult act of survival amidst acute living circumstances. And the misery will continue into the foreseeable future, for there are millions of children, primarily in the Levant, Sudan, and some parts of Arab periphery that are, and will continue to be, denied decent education and other basic services, and so will end up with limited skills and means to secure sustainable employment in ten or fifteen years.

But powerlessness and anger go much farther in the Arab world. Tens of millions of Arabs live under acute and persistent inflationary pressures that have eroded their living standards, and have turned their lives into a perpetual existence in a grinding machine with limited time and energy left for any meaningful personal developmental pursuit.

This is increasingly a global situation, and interestingly being experienced these days, not only in the global south, but also in parts of the developed world. But what exacerbates the situation in the Arab world is that a significant majority of Arabs lack the social infrastructure that exists in different parts of the world. Whether in education, health systems, or other key domains, most Arabs have been experiencing various forms of degradation of the basic social services they receive. Often the regress is absolute (compared to what previous generations of Arabs, at least in the large urban centres, used to receive) as well as relative (compared to services in different parts of the world, including in large parts of the global south).

Politics exacerbate the situation. Not only because of the challenges in representation and the situation of rights across most of the Arab world, but also because geopolitics have instilled a sense of powerlessness in the collective Arab consciousness.

This sense of powerlessness pervades even amongst Arab elites. Those social segments are spared the grinding machine of the daily lives of the vast majority of the Arabs, and their economic prospects are much better than those of the rest. But their sense of belonging to their countries, and for many, their sense of being a part of the Arab world, impress on them a feeling of a general malaise surrounding them.

Not surprisingly, many opt to leave, whether by directing the bulk of their savings abroad, or by detaching themselves from the culture of their lands. There is a notable westernisation in many cultural and entertainment pursuits of Arab elite, including a clear descent in the knowledge and proper usage of Arabic. And the trend will continue into the future. The spread of foreign schooling systems - and not just foreign schools - has already created an educational caste system the Arab world has not experienced for over a century. In this new system, a tiny elite receive almost totally western education, anchored almost entirely on western traditions and frames of reference, with hardly any connections to the foundations and pillars of Arab culture, whether old or contemporary.

For the poor, the attempts to leave entail harrowing risks. Thousands of poor Arabs, with no chances not only of social mobility but also of mere decent living in their countries, take to the Mediterranean, risking their lives for the hope of reaching the new lands of milk and honey on the northern shores of the sea. This is a level of desperation the vast majority of Arab countries have never known.

Arabness itself is facing an acute challenge. The word, the connotations, and the subtle intangibles that surround the notion have become problematic in large parts of the world. Whether they are feelings of sympathy or of despise, the sentiments that are stirred in different parts of the world by the idea of Arabness have become largely negative. Often, as in some parts of Europe, there is the heritage of centuries of seeing the Arabs (or, in a collective simplification, the Saracens) as the other, or in long durations of history, as the enemy. But, that aside, there is also an accumulation, over the past few decades, of consistently looking at the Arab world and seeing threats and problems. Interestingly, in large parts of the West, especially in Europe, the prevailing desire now is just to sever the links to the largest swathes of the southern and eastern Mediterranean.

This creates an asymmetrical situation. Large parts of the Arab world need the west, while large parts of the west want to avoid the Arabs. In one way, this makes leverage in any situation far from balanced. But perhaps more importantly, this situation has created a brooding, some might say dangerous, emotional environment in which the relationship between the two shores of the Mediterranean has been dwelling for some time.

And yet, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, Arab consciousness is living a dichotomy, for there exist another, vastly different, emotional universe in the Arab world, which the next article in this series will present.