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The Baby Bottle Culture

A year ago, I wrote an article about the education and media in the Arab Countries. And I had compared the culture of our society to others’. Every nation and society has a set of attributes that they are known for. For example:

·     India, China and Germany: The hard-workers

·     Israel (The country of economic miracle): Smart and risk taking people

·     Japan: The Smart and most committed people.

·     US: The most open minded people

If you ask me about the current main attribute of our culture, I would say it’s the baby bottle culture. Yes! Baby Bottle.

Egyptian culture has changed in the last 60 years. The corrupted revolution that happened back in 1952 has made a significant change in our culture and how the people think. What happened? The Nationalization.

After the revolution, the government nationalized almost all of the private sector companies. Since there wasn’t private sector in Egypt, the government was responsible for stuff like hiring employees, and the government used to hire almost every graduate without even planning. Added unplanned/unneeded employees caused inflation in the public sector companies and the government system; those employees were a burden not an advantage, which led to:  

·     The performance (outcome) of all of the institutions was decreasing over the years.

·     Increase the complexity of performing any task/job, because of the increased complexity of the process and of the hierarchy.

·     The value of the human being (What the person feels about himself) was decreasing.

·     The salaries (i.e. salary value) were decreasing.

Now there are about 7 million people working for the Egyptian government, which is more than the number of people who work for the US Federal Government!

But the most important impact was a cultural one, added more unneeded employees made the work place more of a coffee shop and less of workplace, people go there to talk since there is no work to do, people stopped caring about their organizations, since it’s guaranteed that they will get their salaries every month, since no one can fire them and since the promotion and hiring wasn’t based on scientific factors such as: knowledge, performance, skills, etc.  

Also, hiring almost every graduate was like a silver bullet to destroy the society, since the people are sure that they will get hired regardless of their quality or value to the organization and the equality between them all regardless of their value caused the following:

·     The most talented people left the country. Remember Farouk El-Baz was offered to work as a teacher for secondary school after he earned his PhD from the US. So he left to the US and joined NASA.

·     The whole country (since most of the work was governmental) became an expeller place for talented people.

·     Made the people lose the spirit of self-reliance/Independence/keenness and Hard working.

The whole society couture has changed to Baby Bottle. There wasn’t any need to search for jobs, for people to develop themselves or to study more. Everyone was waiting for their governmental job offer envelope at home/coffee shop (Everyone was waiting for the government to feed them milk in their mouth). And actually the Majority now, even if they are not waiting for the envelope anymore, they have already lost the spirit of Self-reliance/Independence/keenness and Hard worker.

Now the majority of the Egyptian wants to GET before DO. People complain more than work.  

It’s really scary to find someone who really has a GOAL in their life, KEEN to improve themselves, or CARE about their organization.

It’s scary to know how many fresh graduates are looking for prestige, salary, fancy job title, and bigger office in their jobs - without even caring about the organization.

It’s scary to know how many fresh graduate engineers think that they had enough education to get Google-Salary.

It’s scary to know how many people have descriptive force and attitude. It’s scary to know how many people are worth nothing. it’s scary…

Now if I choose between two technically-equal people to hire an Egyptian and an Indian: I would mostly go for the Indian.  

Some notes:

The nationalization means to turn the private sector property into public property that is managed by the government. Also it’s important to mention that there is no such thing as nationalization in Islam.