There is a very valuable scientific book by the eminent physicist Martin Reese, titled “Our Cosmic Home”, in which he stressed that our universe is very enormous, in our galaxy the Milky Way and there are billions of stars and planets, and in the universe billions of galaxies, but all this huge amount constitutes only 2% Of the universe, while 98% of it consists of mysterious matter and energy called dark matter and dark energy, and scientists do not know anything about it at all, but they know that it exists through the gravity that it exerts in the universe.
In addition to this mystery in our universe, there may be endless other universes that are born from black holes every day, and perhaps there are also infinite parallel universes that inhabit dimensions beyond the three dimensions that we humans know.
Scary thing, isn’t it? Of course, but, despite this great and dizzying unknown, one fact is certain: the whole, from the smallest atom to the largest galaxy is inextricably interconnected, and the whole depends on the whole, and every part contains the whole in one ‘hologram’, just as the whole of the universe Or the superuniverses were born and born from an entity that is billions of times smaller than a single electron, hence the ethereal saying about the individual human: Do you think that you are a small planet and the great world has been included in you?
When we descend from space to Earth, and specifically to our homeland Lebanon, the first thing that must be done is to apply these two basic laws of the universe to our social and existential life, meaning there is no separation and interdependence of everything with everything, and to remove our consciousness from its central selfish illusions, but how, and we are divided into Dozens of sects, sects, and creeds, and even divide on the history that each reads according to his mood, fears or ambitions?
Here the huge and decisive role of the issue of identity emerges. Only societies that crystallize a strong and solid national identity and are able to adapt to the data of the fourth technological revolution will be able to withstand and survive.
Why is the Lebanese national identity alone capable, not only of enabling the nation to withstand these fierce hurricanes and tsunamis, but also of finding solutions to all the current economic and social disasters that threaten its very existence? Because it is based on three interconnected foundations: love of the homeland, love of all its citizens, and love and reverence for its environmental nature.
The Regional Integration Forum, in the document of the “Lebanese National Identity Charter”, put forward this triple slogan: Do you love your country? You must, therefore, love all its citizens without exception, and with them love the natural environment of the homeland, and with all enthusiasm, impulse and support for all its creatures and components.
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The foregoing is a patriotic painting drawn by writer and colleague Saad Mahiou in a lecture he gave in Beirut on “national identity” that I deducted from it what is suitable for an article, and it is in that hymn that it beats with love for our country that we dream of, and our identity that we seek to be our first and last umbrella.