For some time, analysts and economists have been talking about the North-South corridor and the East-West corridor and their economic effects. A point perhaps less discussed is the cultural effects and opportunities of this.
There is a time when you leave your front door open and hang a banner above the entrance saying “This is the mourning house of Hussein (peace be upon him)“. All kinds of people come and go in your house and use its facilities, and their intentions or levels of faith probably differ. And there is another time when someone whose income from selling goods has dropped decides to earn from the location of his house, opens his door to people who intend to do illicit things, and takes money for their using the house’s facilities.
In the first case, perhaps some of the people who came to your house did not come just to mourn, but in any case on the platform of the “mourning house of Hussein” they interact with different people, and it isculture that governs the shape and details of the frame. In the second case, because thegoal is to earn income, the person may conclude that, to earn more, he should also share the house’s facilities and people, to make more.
Since international relations are not built on permanent friendship or enmity with countries (we do not recognise a country, or even a stable, called Israel!), if culture and ideals do not govern economics and international dealings with a fatherly outlook, the end of becoming an East-West corridor or a North-South transit route is that, to keep the income, these routes must be kept at any price, and it is no longer you and your ideals who decide what happens; it is the economy and the axis of exchange that tells you what to do. One day you must give foreigners fast, unrestricted internet so they can control, with IoT equipment, the cargo passing through Iran; one day you must offer club and bar services to the merchants to raise the attraction for them; and one day, to keep this corridor and transit secure, you will extend a hand of friendship to the Zionist regime and its friends in the region.
So reflect…!
“And the outcome is for the God-fearing.”
culturepolitical_economygoalinstitution
Related: From order to the appearance of order (when goal or interest takes the place of meaning and ideals, the institution or order that remains is only apparent).