Khaberni - Amid major transformations sweeping the world around us, the need arises to question one of the most profound and impactful phenomena in our daily lives: collective awareness. This invisible being which moves within societies unseen, but is felt, measured, and observed through people's attitudes, their way of thinking, their interactions with events, and their responses to changes. In the Jordanian context, the question of collective awareness is more urgent than ever in light of intersecting political, economic, cultural, and social challenges that leave their mark on the structure of the public mind, on pathways of popular thinking, and on the relationship between the individual and the state, and between the person and their self.
Collective awareness is not created in a vacuum, nor is it left to spontaneously generate. Rather, at its core, it is the product of accumulations led by influential forces that move within society with varying presence and domination. Among these prominent forces in the Jordanian scene are the media, education, and religion. Three symbolic authorities, intertwining in their influence, sometimes overlapping, and at times opposing each other. Each one has a hand in shaping collective perceptions, in implanting values, and in setting public opinion priorities.
Media, in its contemporary manifestations, has not remained merely a messenger of events but has become a maker of them, and a director of how they are received. Media has transformed from the fourth estate to the primary force in shaping emotions, in dictating ready-made interpretations, and in guiding minds toward specific angles. In Jordan, the face of media has dramatically changed over the past two decades with the rise of digital media and the decline of traditional media models. Today, every smartphone is a window open to the citizen's awareness, and every digital platform is capable of planting an idea, a rumor, or an impression in a single moment. Official media, despite attempts to modernize, remains largely captive to directed discourse, while private media often slips into sensationalism and profitability. Meanwhile, new media has created a chaotic state in information flow, producing quickly inflammable, structurally fragile awareness, pulled at by emotions, and fed on reactions rather than reflection. The danger is not in the proliferation of platforms, but in the shallowness of the message, in prioritizing quantity over quality, and in the absence of standards that distinguish between information and incitement, and between enlightenment and confusion.
Education, meanwhile, is supposed to be the major incubator for creating cohesive, rational, and enlightened collective awareness. However, education in Jordan is going through a dual crisis: a crisis of content and a crisis of function. Many curricula lack in stimulating thought, tend towards rote learning more than analysis, and to memorization more than understanding. Classrooms, for the most part, do not teach students how to think, but what to think. Universities, which are supposed to be platforms for free thought, often turn into diploma mills rather than consciousness factories. Students often graduate without mastering critical thinking tools, without learning how to differentiate between opinion and information, or between conviction and coercion. An education that does not teach questioning, produces a society that fears difference, venerates repetition, and is apprehensive about entering into dialogue. And the awareness produced within this educational system ends up void of dynamism, settled at the "information" level, not transcending towards "knowledge".
As for religion in Jordan, it holds a special place in shaping collective awareness. It is more than just a spiritual reference; it is a key component of cultural and social identity. However, the dominant religious discourse suffers – in many cases – from rigidity, from retreating to the familiar, and from repeating ready-made templates. Pulpit sermons, public preaching, and religious discourse in the media often suffice with superficial moral handling, steering clear of the contentious issues people are living through. The youth in particular, suffer from a gap between what is preached to them from above and the questions, confusion, and contradictions they experience in their daily lives. Religion, when presented as a system of prohibitions, without being understood as a project of meaning, dignity, and justice, turns in the collective consciousness into a tool for taming, not a platform for liberation. The problem is not in the scriptures, but in the way they are presented, and in selecting what is said and what is silenced. Religion, at its essence, is a liberating force for the mind and spirit. However, in practice, it may sometimes be used as a tool for regulation and control, if the discourse is not renewed, and the text is read in light of the age, not merely under its shadow.
The three forces, media, education, and religion, do not operate in a vacuum, but in a social environment that they are influenced by and that they influence in turn. When a unifying national cultural vision is absent, these forces may work in contradiction, resulting in a divided, fluctuating collective awareness that receives contradictory messages without filtering or examination. Education might plant a value, then media may come to demolish it with satire, then religion is presented in a way that further confuses it. The result: a bewildered awareness, hesitant, fleeing to emotion when it fails to understand, and relying on slogans when its logic falters.
Collective awareness in Jordan does not need guardianship, but a true national project to rebuild it. A project that is not afraid of reason, does not despise knowledge, and does not hesitate to raise the big questions. A project that integrates values with reality, tradition with openness, history with the future. No one creates awareness alone, and no single force can claim ownership of the public mind. Building awareness is a collective responsibility, starting from the family, passing through school, cementing in media, deepening through religion, activated by culture, and moved by politics.
What we need today is not only to ask "Who creates our collective awareness?" but how we create it ourselves, collaboratively, critically, openly, away from ideological alignments, emotional polarization, or the politicization of awareness for the benefit of this or that side. An awareness that recognizes diversity, welcomes difference, and venerates reason, without losing its faith in values.
That is the awareness we dream of: an awareness that thinks, not imitates. That debates, not submits. That reads, not is indoctrinated. An awareness that builds a cohesive nation, not separate groups under one roof. An awareness worthy of being attributed to the future Jordan, not reduced to the crises of the present..
