Accompanied by local residents, Ahmose Volunteers talked to parents as well as to children who were very excited to welcome someone who cares about their health and well-being. As an educational treat, the children received each a coloring book telling the story of Montasser who overcame Pneumonia while illustrating the good habits needed to prevent the hazards of pneumonia.

In addition, Ahmose Volunteers Team has also provided the training to روح الشباب Youth Organization so they can also do their part of the awareness, them being on the ground.

Accompanied by local residents, Ahmose Volunteers talked to parents as well as to children who were very excited to welcome someone who cares about their health and well-being. As an educational treat, the children received each a coloring book telling the story of Montasser who overcame Pneumonia while illustrating the good habits needed to prevent the hazards of pneumonia.

In addition, Ahmose Volunteers Team has also provided the training to روح الشباب Youth Organization so they can also do their part of the awareness, them being on the ground.

Accompanied by local residents, Ahmose Volunteers talked to parents as well as to children who were very excited to welcome someone who cares about their health and well-being. As an educational treat, the children received each a coloring book telling the story of Montasser who overcame Pneumonia while illustrating the good habits needed to prevent the hazards of pneumonia.

In addition, Ahmose Volunteers Team has also provided the training to روح الشباب Youth Organization so they can also do their part of the awareness, them being on the ground.

On the second day of the Toys Campaign, our volunteers rallied up to collect and repair more and more toys. Between stuffed animals and electronics, everyone was busy making the toys better so we can put a smile on a child’s face.

A quick web-surf on Facebook and Twitter will show you the main trend these days: everyone is looking for those who are to blame, exchanging angry comments on either the pretended manipulators or the dull “manipulees”… And this, even when they rightly but helplessly say that we have to treat the causes and not patch the symptoms (nicely tweeted pal, but you didn’t really help us out here).

Instead of this, I would suggest trying to find out those who are NOT to blame, among the people we can call “truly responsible” (those with the ability to do something). The ABC of medicine is: increase the resistance of the body by strengthening its fittest defenders instead of obsessively attempting to remove the chronic disease. When the confusion is recurrent, those defenders might have one or two pieces of valid advices on the path to take… If we lose sight of them because we are too focused on “who’s shooting” and careless about “who’s healing”, we will probably lose much more tomorrow.

Of course, this first requires defining who is “responsible” (a word, as we repeat many times, that comes from ‘response’ and ‘ability’, the ability to respond to a given situation). Here, Plato gives a clear-cut answer: it will be impossible to define if we take it for granted that all people are equally response-able. He goes further and proves, in his masterpiece The Republic, that philosophers are those who are both the most response-able and the least to blame whenever injustice is swaying.

Is Philosophy the medicine that our society needs right now? We very much believe so at El-Madrasa. And the increasing attention it gets proves that some are ready to stop being obsessed, to stop encouraging protests for the sake of protest, to start looking for sustainability in their actions and in their thoughts, to start by themselves before asking from anybody else to change. Those are not to be blamed, because they dare question their duties, refine them and live by them. Those have definitely a place in El-Madrasa and a crucial role in society.

What about you, dear reader? Are you NOT to blame for what happened? Are you “response-able”? You come and tell us!

Marouan Moussa

Director of El-Madrasa

Homeostasis: A complex word, to explain something that simply exists in the entire Universe, which is Harmony. In fact this is one of the most important physiological processes, which ensures that everything in the body, ranging from fluids, to minerals, to organic materials are all in perfect equilibrium, which is the ideal state of HEALTH. Every cell gets the precise amount of nutrition needed and if the slightest disequilibrium happens, diseases start to appear in the body. Does that remind you of anything in society? Yes you’re right! It’s JUSTICE! Mess with that and all sorts of diseases start to appear in the Country.

Unity: We usually take the unity of the body for granted. But in fact there is a tremendous work that is constantly ongoing in order to keep that unity. How come that billions and billions of cells, of different types, natures and functions still manage to all work together in perfect synchronicity. Do you ever hear of cells fighting one another? Of cells getting the job they are not fit for? Of attaining a power that they are not up to? Actually we do hear of something like that in medicine. It is called cancer. A cancer happens when a cell decides to disobey the rules of the body and to multiply without stopping, squeezing the other surrounding cells, and consuming all the nutrition. This is the utmost expression of injustice inside the human body. And in the end the cancer ends up destroying the whole body, bringing its own destruction along.

Education: Yes! Put like that it sounds strange but in the human body there is a very strong system of education and selection. Things are not done randomly and every cell undergoes a process of education, selection, probation in order to become a mature and functioning cell. For example, the cells of the immunity, the system that is responsible of protecting our body from infections, they undergo a very strict process of selection by entering some sort of academy in the body called the Thymus gland, in a process called the ‘thymic education’. The cells pass by a dozen of stages and only the ones fit for the job graduate as a cell called T-Lymphocyte. And when this process fails in you get what we call in medicine ‘immature cells’ running around the body not performing their function properly. Hmm… sounds familiar?

Now those concepts are just a glimpse of all the wisdom concealed in this fantastic machine called the human body. The point of this first article is to realize that there are things to learn in the most unlikely places, and that a parallel can be made between our country (or any country in fact ) and the human body with all its processes. So maybe our societies are mere reflections of a universal set of models, so by trying to understand those models we could get to know what an ideal society could look like and how we could reach it. And most importantly, it could help us to reach a state of health for our country in those troubled days. In part II of the article we will try to see how we can start healing our country now from all the sicknesses that infested it, again through the Wisdom of the Human Body.

Ahmed Abdel Al

“The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.” – Socrates

Huh?

Do you want to tell me that during all these years where we have been chasing our desires, listing our endless goals, starving to get more & more of “stuff” in our lives, and jumping from one dream to another…all of that was a big fat illusion?

Do you want to tell me that the more we achieve, the more we feel unhappy? Do you want to say that once we get what we want, we start looking for the next to-do item on our list? And that we don’t even dedicate the time to enjoy what we have just achieved?

Do you want to tell me that we stop our joy until we get what we want, yet once we do we find out that we are still unhappy? That we neither enjoy the journey nor the destination?

Do you want to tell me that we are like rats in a race? Thriving to get to the “Finish” line, while all we do is starting all over again from where we began, “running in circles”?

Do you want to tell me that the paradigms of “Doing More” and “Getting More” that the modern societies planted in our minds, fed it through their Education and Economical systems are deceptive and misleading?

400 years B.C. you’ve revealed this to the human race…400 years BC!!!
Have we been manipulated? Or have we contributed to our own manipulation?
The Truth is un-arguable, Socrates…We cannot hit ourselves against it because if we do we will fall…

Ferial Abdel Ghany

ومرت الأيام وعرفت في أثناء دراستي لحضارة أجدادنا أن القلب هو رمز لنفس الانسان وطريقة حياته وأن تلك الريشة هي ريشة “معات” – رمز العدل والنظام في مصرنا القديمة. فكان أجدادنا كما يعلم البعض يقدسون الطبيعة ويحترمونها ويحاولون دوماً عدم الإخلال بنظامها والحياة من خلال مواقيتها ودوراتها في بحث دؤوب عن مكانهم ومكانتهم وسط تلك التحفة المثالية وهي الناموس الطبيعي للكون.

 فلم يكن أبداً اهتمامهم بالفلك والبروج وأسرار النجوم مجرد فضول أو محاولة لإثباب قدراتهم العلمية وذكائهم التحليلي، ولم يكن تقديسهم لنهر النيل خوفاً من عقاب “إله النيل” أو طمعاً في الثواب والحسنات، بل ولم يكن حبهم للموسيقا والرقص والفنون رغبة في التسلية ومضيعة للوقت: لا! فلم يكن كل عمل يقومون به وكل ظاهرة يقبعون على دراستها وكل نسك يتبعونه إلا محاولة مخلصة منهم لفهم الطبيعة بأسرارها وتعاليمها وآياتها الخفية ومحاكاتها بل والتعلم منها حتى يتمكنون من أن يعيشوا ويتعايشوا إتباعاً لإيقاعها في اعتدال وعدل.

 فكان أجدادنا أكثر ما يغضبهم هو الظلم والفوضى وهما بالنسبة إليهم مترادفان، ولقد أطلقوا عليهما اسم اِسفت وهو الرمز المضاد والمقابل لـ معات.

 فيا ترى ماذا دفعهم لاختيار الريشة ليرمزوا إلى العدل والنظام؟ ألم يكن من الأفضل أن يرمزوا إليهما بقبضة حديدية أو ميزان موزون أو حتى بعين معصوبة كما نرمز نحن إلى العدالة الآن؟

 إن العدل بالنسبة لهم كان عدلاً مبصراً يرى النظام ويميزه عن الفوضى. والنظام بالنسبة لهم لم يكن توازن قوى الخير مع قوى الشر حتى يعتدل الميزان. ولم يكن النظام والعدل أبداً يعتمد على العنف والترهيب أو حتى الترغيب.

 لقد كان العدل والنظام لدى أجدادنا قيمة ومثلاً أعلى – فضيلة مطلقة سامية ترتقي بالانسان والمجتمع والدولة بل وبالعالم كله كما ترتقي الريشة بجسد الطائر الثقيل في مواجهة الجاذبية الأرضية التي تشده إلى أسفل لترفعه هي إلى السماء ليحلق إلى الأفق بعيد المنال.

 كما كان العدل في قناعتهم الفلسفية أعم وأشمل وأوسع من جدران المحاكم – فقد آمنوا أن العدل الخارجي في المجتمع هو انعكاس للعدل والنظام الداخلي في الانسان ذاته وأنه لا مجال لإحقاق النظام في الدولة إن لم يعم النظام جسد ونفس وحياة كل فرد في المجتمع.

 فلننظر حولنا الآن – بل فلننظر إلى أنفسنا: هل عدلنا في حياتنا وأعطينا كل شيء حقه؟ هل يعم النظام مشاعرنا وأفكارنا وآرائنا؟ هل نعيش حياة اعتدال أم حياة تطرف: نسرف في أشياء ونبخل في أخرى؟

 فلنجعل معات تعم في كل منا أولاً قبل أن نبحث عنها جاهدين في من حولنا وما حولنا بلا جدوى!

نهى سالم

In Heliopolis: The course starts on Wednesday, 22nd of February at 7:30 PM.

In Maadi: The course starts on Monday, 5th of March at 7:30 PM.