Leaving to continue living: the escape that saves civilisations
When the penguin decided to leave, it was not declaring a break with the ice, but rather reading the transformation of the environment: from a living space to a suffocating territory
His departure was not a sign of weakness, but rather a recognition that permanence, when it loses its meaning, becomes a refined form of blindness. There are beings who do not need to shout to understand that places that do not renew themselves end up slowly devouring those who inhabit them.
In Arab civilisation, this decision closely resembles that moment when we insist on remaining within systems that have lost their ability to produce meaning, yet we still sanctify them in the name of loyalty to history.
It is not that we have lost the ability to move, but that we have convinced ourselves that immobility is a virtue, and that persisting in corroded structures is a sign of wisdom, when in reality it is nothing more than a disguised fear of the unknown. The penguin, in its symbolism, was no braver than us; it was simply more honest about the conditions of life.
The problem with our civilisational consciousness does not lie in our heritage, but in having turned it into a closed climate, incapable of allowing us to breathe. Just as ice, when it melts, ceases to be habitable ground, ideas, when frozen outside their time, become a burden on reason.
However, we insist on clinging to them, not because they are still valid, but because they are familiar to us. And it is precisely here that intellectual departure ceases to be a betrayal and becomes a necessity, and where the question becomes ethical rather than cognitive: do we remain because we believe or because we fear?
Civilisations do not die when they make mistakes, but when they lose the ability to recognise their mistakes. What defines moments of historical resurgence is not the proliferation of slogans, but the courage to reposition oneself and the bravery to abandon modes of thought that have already exhausted their function.
The penguin did not seek harder ice, but a space that would allow it to live. Similarly, a civilisation does not need more rigidity, but intelligent flexibility that protects its essence without mummifying it.
At the heart of the current Arab crisis, the danger lies not so much in external storms as in the obstinacy of remaining within a scenario incapable of producing a future. In this sense, the departure is not geographical, but mental: abandoning the patterns of thought that have led us to confuse patience with resignation, and firmness with impotence.
Only then does the decision to leave become an act of civilisation and not an escape, just as the penguin did: it left to stay alive, not to disappear.
Abdelhay Korret, Moroccan journalist and writer