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GlamourGlobal(s)Mycommentsonthearticle:Why the s inGlobal(s)? Has the adjective Global describing people become a

noun?Iamsureyouhaveareason.MyviewoftheissueyouraisedinGlamourGlobals,thenouveauriche,thepetitbourgeoisie, the affluentand the conspicuousand invidious consumers is thatthesocio-economicandculturalconditionsthatproducedthesekindsofpeopleintheMiddleEastarethesamethatproducedthesespecialclassesofsocietiesintheWestortheFarEast,simplybecausematerialwealthbringsabouta leisureclassoutofthesocialstrata.The following examples from history may prove upon thorough examination

capableofdemonstratingsimilaritiesbetweenwhatyoucallGlamourGlobalsintheMiddleEast(GCCinparticular)andthepeopleintheseexamples:theFeudalEuropeandFeudalJapanintheMiddleAges;thebourgeoisofthe18thcenturyEurope; the Gold Rush to the US West in the 19th century and the CaliforniaDream; the mid of the 20th century community in the US influenced bycommercially oriented propaganda and the creation of mass false desires andneeds.Alsoyoumaywanttoread:TheTheoryoftheLeisureClassbyThorsteinVeblen.People-material relationship, or material consumerism, is between produced

commodities,standardorluxurious,andindividualsorgroupsofasociety.Theseproductscan becalled four-fold things.The four foldsare the social, cultural,economicandpoliticalaspectsofthecommoditiesbeingproduced.Thenouveauriche,thepetitbourgeoisie,theaffluentandtheconspicuousandinvidious consumers and their relation to things don't only form a socialissue/problem,i.e.limitedtojustsocialrelationsexpressedwithintherichArabssocietiesintheGCCthroughthethings,suchasLexuscars,LouisVuittonhandbags,Montblanc fountain pens,Rolexwatches, iPhonemobiles, vacations in 5stars hotels, 1st class flight travel, etc., but also form a cultural, political and

economicissue/problem,wherethemediaisapowerfultoolinthehandsofthecontrollingfew.Marketing isa fieldwithin which good or evil ispracticed.Honestmarketingthatserves usersand conveys the true belongingessenceof things is goodmarketing.Marketingthatmanipulatesperceptionforprofitoverpeople,basedonsystemicbias,twistingoffactsforpoliticalgainsisevilmarketing.IntheUSA,The20thcenturyhasbeencharacterizedbythreedevelopmentsofgreatpolitical importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate

power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protectingcorporate power against democracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda.

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See also: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media(1988),byEdwardS.HermanandNoamChomsky.AnanalysisofGlamourGlobalsneedstotaketheselinesofthinkingonboard.Identifyingsimilaritiesbetweenthesevariouscasesfromdifferenthistoriesand

geographiescaninformourunderstandingoftheGCCcase.TodescribeourGCCmaterialconsumerismcondition,oneneedstoknowwhathas been written about it. I am not aware of any study that tackled thisissue/problemintheMiddleEast.Ibelievewhathashappenedtousinthepastfew decades resulted from the vacuum in our souls, education, poetic sense,philosophical outlook, historic embrace and geographical awareness; flaws inpractical functions, work practice, interpersonal and social relations; lack ofemotional intelligence, lack of confidence, insecurity, ignorance of ancestorsheritage; and, asaMuslim society, lackof Islamic values and understandingof

Islamshigherobjectives.AlltheseandmanymoremissingvaluesarecausestothissocialphenomenonofemptinessyoucalledGlamourGlobalsinGCC.CommentbyZiadAazamhttp://spacewriting.wordpress.com/.Thank you Said. I have learned from your comment. I understand now that Glamour Globals looks atthe phenomenon Globally not just GCC. So the audience for the book are global not local. This iseven better, we can then learn from comparison. I wonder if my thesis that human, given the sameconditions, will behave the same despite different cultures, will be proven correct. I think the depthof these two questions you are asking will lead to analysis of the other economic, political andcultural perspectives and not just the social. Of course all these three perspectives are looked atfrom the social perspective, as you mentioned. This is great, because it focuses the research. I don'tknow if it helps to look at it also from the product, or 'Thing' itself, as a four-fold thing.

The two questions: 1- 'Is there a target audience that is loyal to trends over Brands?' and 2- 'can wechange perception without changing behavior?', I believe will lead to understanding of humanbehavior in relation to material culture. This is also an issue that could be mapped to fashion andarchitecture traced over long periods of transformation. As an Architect, I also ask if people havelost their 'belonging' brand and moved into what is trendy, losing content along the way. Looking atJeddah's built environment is enough to conclude that there is an audience loyal to trends overbrand. I also believe that we can't change behavior but we can change perception which ultimatelywill change behavior. Jeddah's Heart and Abir's effort is just an example of our effort to changeperception. In fact, all we can do is have sharp local and global analysis of the issue/problem andtalk to people, debate and disseminate findings. And you are right, I have always thought that it isthe TCK and the variation on it, can make it happen.

Again, the essence of the issue/problem is all in the very relation between human and their objects,things or artifacts. As you said, it is in the content. Now, once we get into this area, the Imaginationand the Judgment capacity of people come into play in the context of History and geography, asdemonstrated in the formulas above in my Timeline..Ziad Aazam I have been thinking of the above three formulas for a long time. My observation ofwhat came of us as humans in Jeddah behaving through events and social practices made me thinkthat there is something fundamentally wrong with our Being.

The experience I had made me analyze our human condition. I was convinced that many of us arenot full human beings, almost human machines but not beings. I was thinking about what is

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missing in the way we are. It is not the religion/faith only that is missing. We all know that Muslimscan be machines and not beings. I asked what is the difference between a Human Machine and aHuman Being and I realized that it is because Human Machines don't have Beautiful Minds that fullHuman Beings have.

What constitutes the Beautiful Mind, I asked. There has to be something missing. What is missing issimply a set of two complementary and essential aspects of the Human Beings: (1) the ability to

Imagine and (2) the ability to Judge. These two aspects have to coexist. For us Muslims or anybeliever in God, Faith is a layer that contains both aspects of the Beautiful Mind.

A full Human Being is a balanced Beautiful Mind capable of Good imagination and Good Judgment.The condition of Being enters the equation, where the balanced Well-Having and the Well-Givingfurther balanced by Good Imagination and Good Judgment are key to Well-Being.The Heart bumps blood. Very mechanical and straight forward organ. The use of the word is inreference to the essence of the thing. The Heart is the Mind too or the Brain where Feelings aregenerated, hence, the Emotional side of the Human Being.

The Mind is where the Rational side of the Human Being resides. It is the Conscience, the awarenessof oneself.

The Soul is the Spirit, the Self, the Life called You and I. It contains The Heart and Mind.

The Body is the live functioning Machine that contains all the rest and carries the Heart, the Mindand the Soul.

Time . Space

The Soul, with its Heart and Mind, is eternal in the Second Life yet limited in this Life. It will continuewith Time's Arrow forward. It is Time. It contains History and it is part of History. The Soul istrapped in History, in Time.

The Body is finit Space. It comes and go. It transforms. It is where one exist on Earth. It isGeography, with its own culture. The Body is trapped in Geography, in Space.Ziad Aazam Thank you, Russell. Our problem is that we are so much consumed in materialproduction of the present, individually and in isolation, when our collective integratedunderstanding can be more balanced. Take 'Sustainability', for example, the Green calls for moregreen while ignores all other colours; the Capitalist calls for more economic equalities while beingcolour blinded to Green; all this happens when the essence of sustainability has always beenembedded in our past prior to current modern life. We are just not looking. The moment when wecollectively know our past, we can have a sense of our future. This time, on the flow of history,

there are no artificial boundaries. The spaces of digital flows (e.g. Facebook) and the spaces ofphysical places (Jeddah and Bristol) are intertwined to become one global/local entity with the sameconcerns from the global financial collapse to the earth problems stated in Al Gore's 'AnInconvenient Truth'.Ziad AazamReem, because the Modern world became gradually yet quickly complex expansive, ashumanity, we never paused to reflect on its harming expansion. If we take the impact on thehuman, for example, our education system, whether international or local, split our brains into Artsand Science. That was our first diverging impact as young seekers of knowledge. We were split inhalf and we had to make a choice: either or, as if they cannot coexist. Those who chose the Science

and its application (Technology) lost touch with humanity; and those who chose Arts (Humanities)lost touch with functionality. The West has realized this and they are now making every effortpossible to unit the two worlds. Interdisciplinary, new universities approach and Google new work

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practice are but few examples of such efforts. It will take generations before the world see differentkind of functioning humans.Reem Asaad You ignorant? If anyhing, you the most humble educated friend I have. I amenlightened by your depiction of a fused world.. The segregaion of art and science in the thirdworld and how the developed world recognized the inevitability of incorporating these two spheres.In fact aren't our human bodies and souls the starkst example of such philosophy...or bettersaid..reality. Please..keep going.

As for the other subject of youth and hope..i posted my wish on the wall. An imaginary wish torestore hope to all hopeless youth of the world.Ziad Aazam But Hope is linked to the future time not the present time. That is why we don't feelwhat we hoped for when it happens because it then change from hope to just living. You can't hopefor the present, you can only do or act in the present. Hope remains hope insofar it is not realized.Once realized it becomes reality and a new hope has to take its place. I should remind myself toothat this what every generation does in reaction to the one before it. Hope fuels history. We makehistory as we progress from hope to hope.