A New Consciousness in the Arab World

Several writers and analysts have recently penned articles asking whether the so-called "Arab spring" has succeeded, failed or merely stalled. An essential aspect of the debate has not been sufficiently examined, however. This has to do with the psychology of this remarkable Middle Eastern moment.

Whatever the ultimate outcome in the region, the rebellions against authoritarian rule may well represent the start of a more profound transformation: an end to the mindset of submission, what the Polish writer Czeslaw Milosz called "the captive mind", that was so essential to sustaining the authoritarian regimes currently being challenged.