In the Middle East, turmoil has spread quickly. Oppression, inequality, and violence have been keyed in to the very makeup of its society. But what causes a culture to emerge and prosper or stagnate and fail? How can the people take charge of their own inalienable rights to growth, freedom, and life—to keep from backsliding into the grasp of old, unhealthy ideologies?

In Elza Maalouf’s groundbreaking new book Emerge! The Rise of Functional Democracy in the Middle East, we are introduced to a new paradigm for governance based on Clare Graves’ theory of Spiral Dynamics. Where the West’s approach has failed due to lack of memetic understanding, Maalouf’s succeeds by placing democracy in an evolutionary, values-system context specific to unique, Middle Eastern characteristics. Not only does Emerge ask us to seek understanding before we structure and create, it shows us the necessity of teaching our youth to build their own sustainable, indigenous constructs.