Personal Opinion on Mike Davis "Fear and Money in Dubai"

Stories such as ‘Treasure Island’, ‘The Lord of The Flies’, ‘Robinson Crusoe’, or yet ‘The Beach’, narrate how people unexpectedly thrown in, apparently heavenly, parallel universes, gradually come across the real essence of these places. A secret secured under sands, behind exotic trees and protected by wild animals and ferocious aboriginal tribes.

I am not stating that millions of individuals are thrown against their will every year to the capital of visual excess that Dubai has become. In fact most of the people that set foot on the land of ‘architecture on steroids’ crave opulence and look forward to stuff the city’s malls, hotels and restaurants with their money.

Of course that’s true up until the point we talk to a local taxi driver or we consider a regular workman. Both freely decided to leave their hometowns, most likely to be located somewhere in Southern Asia, to enthusiastically embrace the slavery lifestyle.

Dubai stands to labour just like ‘The Island” stands to the characters of the books previously mentioned. Everything seems to be magical and convenient to begin with, and then day-by-day the darkest and cruellest sides are revealed. Behind the shining facades of luxurious hotels and shopping malls hides an army of bare workers, mostly from Pakistan and India, that live in the poorest and most deplorable conditions, often falling ill out of hunger or due to the lack of clean drinking water.

For some people there seem to be nothing really to fear in a city that offers entertainment that goes beyond imagination but if start peeling off the first few layers that enclose Dubai’s essence, you may come across illicit goods imports, prostitution rings, slavery, and the delicate balance between royalty, petrol and the rest of the world. Perhaps we should all stop and consider how Western Civilization, and especially the unrestraint consumerism that comes along side of it, allowed oil to become the most valuable raw material. All the economies depend on oil and its derivatives: petrol, diesel etc. And having neglected the use of alternative energy for too many years has made us in fact dependent on United Arab Emirates and other major oil producers.

One wonders how long this situation in going to last, and how many more souls will suffer its regime, as the oil deposits are not eternal. And especially because sooner or later despite the opposition of large multinational companies of oil producers, the world will stop depending on oil favoring the use of cheaper and less polluting forms of energy.