Alienation & humiliation

The alienation from a lack of personal authority which members of Middle Eastern societies feel is the basis of the unrest and instability in the region. 

The problem is less the loss of power such social systems afford the ordinary citizen as much as the scale of the societies and the distance the ordinary member of society feels from the center of power. Honor societies work reasonably well in situations where the tribal chief who holds the power of the tribe is directly linked to each member of the tribe. Once the society becomes anonymous, though, the exercise of power in an honor system results in the feelings of alienation and disaffection that destabilize those societies. 

Western technology and values is the agent of that massive increase in the scale of these honor societies. With the advent of Western technology therefore comes the breakdown of the infra-structure of custom that theretofore afforded every member of society a particle of honor, and now, bereft of the customary access in the societies to the loci of power, result in alienation. 

The manifestation of alienation in societies where political control rather than economic control is what has been shorn of the ordinary citizenry is what we call humiliation.