Cocky, Now Snobbish Jordanians

I once asked a Lebanese friend, after noting the complicated relationship between Jordanians and the Lebanese, what do Lebanese people think of Jordanians? That friend lived in USA for the longest part of her life, so her answer was not really hers, but her parents', who lived in Lebanon for a longer time. She told me that Jordanians are Cocky.

Cocky! I was surprised a bit, I won't deny it. I thought it all had to do with the grumpiness of Jordanians. But after some thinking, it made complete sense. I mean, don't we take pride in being full of pride? Pride for reasons that exist only in our collective imagination, or that were completely out of our control? Not like they justify, in their own right, a fraction of the cockiness we display either.

But, for the sake of what's to come next, I will say it is very typical of Jordanians to be cocky; regardless of their class, they "always got everything under control". Lets assume it is the genes, and pretend like we can not help it. What is quite new to our society then is the sense of elitism complemented with snobbery.

Before delving any deeper into this, lets differentiate between two types of Elitism: Behavioral, and Intellectual. Elitism implies a claimed air of superiority and vanity, but I will consider intellectual elitism a good thing, for the sake of chasing that which is peculiar to our society and more detrimental.

Very few, however, would disagree with the fact that behavioral elitism is detrimental to the well being of a society. And unfortunately this is the kind of elitism that has been growing recently in Amman. So do we blame the internet? The spoiled generation that did not suffer like their parents did? The newly-rich? Not really, and I don't think that these are answers to the question as much as they reflect the dull conservatism of our society. (The majority of the rich in Jordan are newly-rich! All of our grandparents came either from villages or the desert, and even the ones who were rich had to abandon all of their property and flee barefooted to Jordan)

There was a time in the past (late 60's to early 8o's) when different developed states contributed to human capacity building in Jordan. A decent percentage of the young Jordanians and Palestinian refugees were sent to complete their studies at different countries, such as USA, Western Europe (UK mainly), and the USSR. Being the Macho men they were, who couldn't prepare the simplest of recipes, and for other religious reasons, many of them were wedded to young Jordanian girls, and their kids were born abroad.

Many of these kids, especially the ones born in western states, acquired dual citizenships; the Jordanian one, and that of the country they were born in. The fathers, in many cases, proved competent, and found themselves a place in the flaring western economies of the time (or in the westerner compounds of the Arab Gulf countries) so they lived there for a while with their families, and the kids were raised in decent conditions. They started returning back in the mid-90's, importing many new concepts to life in Amman, and contributing to its modern day identity (e.g. Malls, the IB curriculum, gyms... etc)

How old are their kids right now? In their 20s-early 30s. Most of them do their studies in USA, UK or Canada, and then some of those come back to work in Jordan. Actually the financial crisis sent many of them back to Amman, regardless of their preference. I met some of them. They are good people, like other people, spoiled, like most of of our generation in Amman is, though they still retain some responsibility. Sincere, candid, they blow their nose while around you, they prefer speaking in English, but don't mind Arabic, some of them are abusing their wealth no doubt, but that is not exclusive to them; locally raised kids of the rich philistine merchants do much worst than that.

However, despite the fact that these are not a majority, they are setting, unintentionally, a new standard of living in Amman; the behavior is changing to be more westerner, without a change in mentality, which is quite worrisome, because this is turning people into brainless zombies or behavioral replicas that are too shallow. Nothing can be more dangerous than shallowness, and we are not even importing the good behavior. What you get at the end is snobbish people, like my uneducated aunt who lived in a rural area for the most part of her life (nothing wrong in this) but who now acts like she had been to Harvard Law School for no obvious reason other than that life now "necessitates" having a Facebook account, throwing a couple of English words while speaking in Arabic, and listening to Hip-Hop songs to be called modern! (that is the definition of modernism in Amman and not worldwide)

Another thing to add is that even though most of those born-in-the-West kids are not into reforms, the few of them who are, got it completely wrong. They think that Jordan can be reformed as fast as their trip is from Heathrow to Queen Alia airport. They saw the "solutions" already, so it is a matter of imposing them on the society, with minimal modifications, forgetting that it took long times and sacrifices for the West to reach what it already had reached, that solutions evolve, and are rarely imported. And I am afraid that the motivation behind most of what they do is some form of self interest.

It was really absurd to see some of those calling themselves "prominent", or "genius" and they did nothing significant yet, other than getting a Bachelor degree from a University in UK, or being popular among a small clique of their likes!!! That is again, what I call unjustifiable snobbery and elitism. This can never help, in a positive way!