"SOCRATES: You know, Phaedrus, that's the strange thing about writing ... they seem to talk to you as if they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a desire to be instructed, they go on telling you just the same thing forever." -- Plato: Collected Dialogues, 1961
While writing has allowed the transmission and preservation of valuable information and knowledge through the ages, it does suffer from the fact that it is a very static form of knowledge. Every piece of writing is written at a particular place, at a particular time and with a particular frame of mind. Debate, argument and conversation are necessary if we are to harvest useful and pertinent knowledge from the written text.
The supposed word of God, by the very nature of its alleged source, is supposed to be infallible, full of wisdom and immune to critical analysis. Lacking the ability to argue and debate, it has the potential to intellectually paralyze entire societies, hold them hostage and stunt their intellectual and moral growth.
I had been rather busy lately as I was wrapping up my masters thesis which I finally handed in last week. It has been an insightful and rewarding experience, even if a bit painful at times.
This was my first experience conducting serious research and I learned quite a few lessons through the process.
I started out with a rather complex design which just didn't make for a coherent and neat story in the thesis. I had to go back to the whiteboard several times before I came up with the final design that my supervisor was satisfied with. Upon some reflection, I realized that it is easy to hide sloppy and incomplete thinking behind a facade of complexity, and that simple and beautiful designs demand a lot of clarity and completeness in thought.
The second surprising lesson I learnt was the difficulty of precisely saying something that is intuitively clear. To rehash a cliche: the devil is in the details. It took me many rounds of phrasing and rephrasing to finally say what I wanted to say.
Ironically, while science has the potential to increase the effective grasp and control of humans over nature, the scientific process has the opposite effect: it tends to make you much more humble and aware of your limitations. It is inspiring to see what one can achieve when one starts out with a humble and curious attitude, in awe of all there is but knowing that one doesn't know much of what there is to know.
Our minds have a tendency to loose track of the moment and worry about the past or the future. All that is needed to find joy and peace and be whole is to reunite our thoughts with our bodies and truly be present in the miracle that is now.
I came across an old quote by Eleanor Roosevelt today which conveys the same message in a very short, simple and playfully humorous way:
"Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift, that's why it is called the present."
I have been reading Sherry Turkle's wonderful book 'The Second Self' lately. She talks about how computers are challenging and changing the very notion of what it means to be human and how children, teenagers and adults relate to computers in different ways.
The section on how children interact and relate with computers in particular, and with the world in general, is quite fascinating. She compares children to philosophers -- young philosophers -- hypothesizing about and categorizing the world into shifting and changing categories. She terms computers as 'evocative objects' -- objects which are neither living nor non-living but which sit tenuously at the boundary of being alive and not-alive in the minds of young children. I heartily recommend the book if the above introduction piqued your interest. However, in this post I want to discuss some thoughts I had which are only tangentially related to the book but which were triggered by the material in the book.
She claims that one of the first categories that the children divide the world into is between living and non-living things. This categorization also makes evolutionary sense because anything that is living is potentially hostile and thus demands more attention. As is to be expected, children treat nearly everything as animate and alive in the beginning -- to paraphrase her, in a child's mind, a rock falls down a slope not because of gravity but because the rock "wants to get to the bottom". On a personal note, I was surprised to see my 3 year old cousin terrified of the water when I went to the beach with him and his family last year. One possible explanation might be that he considered the water to be alive and having a will of its own, wanting to suck him into itself, thus causing the fear I saw in his eyes. His behavior seemed to suggest that this was the case.
Now I want to relate this primal instinct to classify things into living and non-living things with the preference for an animate as opposed to an inanimate God.
We humans have a tendency to construct objects out of everything we think about. In fact, the very act of thinking about something requires that something to be perceived and objectified. We need to give the totality of all that we experience a name if we are think about it as well; and God seems to be the name most people give to that -- this perhaps explains why the notion of God being everywhere is common to nearly all religions. Now, God is not the only contender for this coveted spot. The physical laws can potentially also describe the totality of all there is, and some vague notion of a 'universal force' might satisfy some people too. Such laws and forces have a cold and calculating nature however. People don't associate the same warmth and love with laws and forces as they associate with an animate God. Perhaps, maybe, our unconscious evolutionary bias towards understanding the world in terms of living animate things -- most of which we learn to 'de-animate' as we grow older -- might have something to do with our preference for an animate God.
Tears rolled down my eyes today after a long time ... and it felt good.
The emotions were triggered by a song at the end of the latest episode of House. One of the characters dies in the beginning of the episode and the other characters are shown dealing with his death through the episode. The episode ends with a juxtaposition of powerful images, gestures and symbols set to a beautiful song in the background. You can find the later part of the song below (while it lasts):
Death can be such a moving experience. A very close family friend of ours died last time I was in Pakistan. His son is rather young, not older than 11 I think. He dealt with the death of his father in such a graceful manner that it left me in total awe of his strength and stamina. The only time I saw tears in his eyes were when people were covering up the grave of his father with mud. It made my heart melt and my eyes well up with tears.
Death also puts our lives in perspective. It gives us a chance to celebrate the life of the one who passes away in a way that we rarely do when the person is alive. It makes us think about our own lives -- of the reasons and emotions we want others to remember us by with.
It makes us realize the beauty and potency of the feelings of love we have for our loved ones. How those feelings manifest themselves through an outpouring of tears when people are separated. All humans, irrespective of culture or religion experience them. Humans commit atrocious crimes as well, but it is these feelings of love and sympathy that give me hope.
The emotions the song triggered and the tears that resulted were cathartic. I suddenly had this longing to pray because that is the only way I know to express myself spiritually. I did pray. Whatever little Arabic I knew, I was careful not to recite the verses talking about Muhammad because I don't believe him to be a prophet. I was careful not to recite any verses I knew the meaning of and that I disagreed with.
Humans need ways to express themselves spiritually. Religion provides them with such ways. Most religions go ahead and add in a healthy dose of supernatural stuff and doubtful and fishy claims as well. But they do provide the masses with means to express themselves spiritually. I haven't really given much thought to finding out new ways to do that for myself. I guess its about time that I did.
(from http://www.jannah.org/qurantrans/quran24.html) 024.002 The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication,- flog each of them with a hundred stripes: Let not compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by God, if ye believe in God and the Last Day: and let a party of the Believers witness their punishment.
The lashes being meted out, no compassion in the hearts and faces of people, and the momineen standing around watching: looks like a scene straight from the Quran!
Now, the woman wasn’t accused of rape, so these verses don’t exactly apply to her, but we know how easy it is to twist and turn such verses and use them for your own version of justice. EVEN IF she had committed adultery, how many of you would be OKAY with such a punishment? I know for the life of me that I wouldn’t. I am repulsed to my very core with this barbarism.
I realize that most muslims are decent people, but it is important to realize that Islam (like Christianity and Judaism) isn’t a decent religion. It contains humanistic teachings but sprinkled with such utter barbarism. Lets not cherry pick verses from our religion and stop pretending that such barbarism is totally unwarranted according to Islamic teachings.
People are repulsed by the tactics of the Taliban, but as I said here, the Taliban might very well be following the true literal word of the Quran but most people might not be able to see it because they are blinded by their own moderation. It can be very hard to accept this other gory and ugly part of religion when you consider your religion to be the eternal source of peace, joy and happiness. For once, lets try to see religion as it really is and try to grow out of our infatuation with it.
Here is a verse straight from the Quran:
(from http://www.jannah.org/qurantrans/quran24.html)
024.002 The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication,- flog each of them with a hundred stripes: Let not compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by God, if ye believe in God and the Last Day: and let a party of the Believers witness their punishment.
The lashes being meted out, no compassion in the hearts and faces of people, and the momineen standing around watching: looks like a scene straight from the Quran!
Now, the woman wasn’t accused of rape, so these verses don’t exactly apply to her, but we know how easy it is to twist and turn such verses and use them for your own version of justice. EVEN IF she had committed adultery, how many of you would be OKAY with such a punishment? I know for the life of me that I wouldn’t. I am repulsed to my very core with this barbarism.
I realize that most muslims are decent people, but it is important to realize that Islam (like Christianity and Judaism) isn’t a decent religion. It contains humanistic teachings but sprinkled with such utter barbarism. Lets not cherry pick verses from our religion and stop pretending that such barbarism is totally unwarranted according to Islamic teachings.