Borderlands, Midlands or Whatever

Reading articles of George Friedman is always entertaining. Recently he traveled to Azerbaijan to reflect on the geopolitics of that particular region around the Caspian sea. From there he wrote an article, Borderlands: The View From Azerbaijan. There are quite a few interesting things in this article that I would like to reflect upon.

I have envied to be in the position of George Friedman for quite some time now. I have been reading Stratfor for almost the past thirteen years now. I started reading it in the wake of spetember 11. At that time I was only a passive reader and I presume that even being that was a great accomplishment for me. Now I feel like becoming a writer of that class, and perhaps I being over ambitious. Nonetheless, the idea that George Friedman has took the pain to travel all the way to Azerbaijan to understand the region by assimilating in it to some extent is enticing in its own right. The fact that he reflected on the region so comprehensively form there is also quite commendable. While reading this article I wondered so many times that he must have roamed around on the roads, talked to people and must have sat in a park to eventually write his thoughts. Literally, it reminded me of my trip to Austria once where I read Simon SIngh's book, Big Bang, in various parks of Graz. And when I was reading about Johannes Kepler, I was sitting in a park in which his statue was just in front me. I can imagine how one can feel while being so well connected in this way.

The article is very profound. The truth is that how George Friedman has reflected on Azerbaijan is very informative. I never knew so many things about that place that I know now. And I am sure plenty of the Muslims would not know many things as well. For instance, not only that plenty of the Muslims would not know that the majority of the people in Azerbaijan are Azeris, I suspect that most people would not even know what it really means to be an Azeri. It would not be an exaggeration on my part to say that most Shia people would also not know about such things.

The other thing we learn from this article is that the government of Azerbaijan is secular. I wonder if it is a good thing or a bad thing. However, if you are a western person, or a westernized person, you might be a little bit shocked at my previous sentence. In saying that the government is secular, George Friedman also points at the social status jews enjoy in Azerbaijan, and also Iran. Learning that jews can enjoy a decent social status in both countries and can even rise to the ranks of ministers and higher officials is only pleasing. But it appears that George Friedman likes the secularity of Azerbaijan more than religiosity of Iran. This is somewhat concerning.

I look at this as a problem. I look at it from a unique vantage point. And my vantage point ensues from my interaction with Europe and my readings about atheism. The fact is that I get a feeling that George Friedman finds it rather better for a country to be implementing human rights when it is secular as opposed to when it is religious. I find it evident from his tone. I wonder about this from a theological point of view. In awareness that one of the reasons that people abandon religion is because it is supposed to create rifts in the society, at the very least, and bellicose conflicts in the worst case. Islam is particularly framed as a terroristic religion in Western countries. It is not uncommon to find a poster in Copenhagen featuring a bearded man with a turban on his head, possibly with a bomb in it. It is a pity that Islam has earned this reputation. People tend to abandon religion for these reasons. I was in Copenhagen last winter when I read an advertisement on facebook that was about a cemetery free of religious symbols for atheists in Copenhagen, Odensea and other parts of the country. It appears that there are people who do not want to buy in to religion even on their deathbeds. This is a pity.

But my question is profound. Why would someone be opposed to religion while it is actually practicing humane values. This is understandable. The truth is that in classical Islam there is a lot of room for other religions. Jews and christians are revered for being the people of the book. Specially concerning jews, who have had a really nasty history, one can find that their golden age was those seven hundred years in which Muslims ruled in Spain. They could become ministers in courts and they assumed dignified official positions in offices. Classical Islam is a lot more than that. We have heard about prophet Muhammad (PBUH) that he was a very just man. People used to come to him to settle their disputes. And when jews and christians used to come to him to settle their disputes, he used to settle their disputes according to Torah and bible respectively, as opposed to the Holy Quran, that was revealed on him, just like Torah and Bible were revealed on prophet Moses (PBUH) and Jesus (respectively).

Given this, one wonders that why people prefer secularity over religiosity. Obviously from a rational point of view it is possible that there is no God, although given the massive evidence chances are slim. But for sake of an argument, let's say that God exists, then what is the harm in accepting this reality. I hope I have conveyed a part of my thought process comprehensively, although I feel that I need to refine my argument.

The last thing is very interesting. George Friedman goes a long way to discuss how Azerbaijan has been a subject of continuous criticism of the US state department for a long time for human rights concerns. It has been denied weapon sales due to such issues as well. George Friedman tries to play them down partly in wake of the need of Azerbaijan as a potential fixer of regional affairs particularly uprooted by Russia.

George Friedman is an opinion maker. He is also not any ordinary opinion maker. He does not do this directly. Neither is there any need for him to do it directly. The truth is that StratFor is such an enlightening institution that it keeps on informing its readers about geopolitical developments on a weekly basis in a way that no other think tank in the whole world does. Add on top of this cake the icing of objectivity and non-partisanship and what you get is a perfect way to bias yourself with its prophecies.

In as much as it is a good thing for countries to get closer, the truth is that their intentions need to be straightened up before they do that. Instead of liaising with Azerbaijan to counter Russia, would it not be a lot more wiser for the US to sit down with their diplomats and to try to resolve all the human right violations that the US thinks that Azerbaijan is guilty of, and to address some of the concerns of Azerbaijan has about the US. Making liaisons is obviously a good thing, as they can help us in winning wars. Intentions behind such liaisons matter to a great extent, as they can lead to lasting relationships and help in winning hearts.

The US made a similar liaison in the past with Afghanistan and Pakistan to counter the Soviet Union. Indeed, the Soviet Union was collapsed as a result of that. But some results of that relationship of geopolitical necessity were rather grave. And we have seen them manifest in the form of terrorism and war on terror.

Barrack Hussain Obama has been a good US president. He has been philosophical in choosing not to intervene in Syria in wake of use of chemical weapon. Moreover, he imposed some sanctions on Russia as a result of its intrusion in Ukraine. This has been a tremendous change in the attitude of the US foreign policy possibly for the first time in recent history. He and his administration needs to be commended for this. Would he make further liaisons that are genuinely candid or that fulfill geopolitical demands needs to be seen.

 
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  by  Niyaz from Baku 

Bonjour

Time passes very quickly. Most of the times we spend our present moment in trying to anticipate or plan about the future or to reconcile with the past and the time does not tend to pass. However, there is a lot of time of our lives that we have left behind when we look towards the hindsight.

A few years a go I had a privilege to work in France for one year. I was based in France telecom's R&D headquarters in Lannion as a researcher. Lannion is a nice little town in the South West of France in its province of Brittany. Like the rest of France, and most of Europe, Lannion is also extremely beautiful. And not only that the people are mostly also very friendly and extremely nice. The year lived in Lannion was very memorable. We were a few Pakistanis in the town who had befriended numerous French, Romanian and people from other nationalities. Together we had loads of fun. I wanted to write a bit more detailed article about my stay in Lannion, but I would save that for another time. I am writing this article for another purpose and a different experience.

I was lodged very close to France Telecom R&D. I could walk to work from home in around 15-20 minutes. This is not much. In order to walk conveniently and to enjoy the experience, I had found a combination of streets that were rather solitary and that were also full of typical Celtic flora and European houses. As I write this, I deeply yearn from inside to go and live there again. Walking to work and back used to be a healthy process that I really enjoyed. Sometimes it rained and I had to take a bus. But normally I preferred to walk. Walking also allowed me to develop new perspectives about my work, as it allowed me ample time to reflect and think about work. 

On a few occasions I passed by a small boy in one of the streets. And this is one of the reasons why I am writing this article. I will talk about the other reason latter below. The boy was around 6--8 years old. He'd be going school. He'd be well-dressed, well combed, neat and tidy, with a schoolbag hanging on his back. Whenever he'd pass by me, while robotically walking to the school, he'd say "Bonjour" to me loudly while his eyes were almost always lowered. The only things I clearly remember about him now are that he had blond hair, he'd be wearing large glasses with a brown frame, and that he had blue eyes.

I cannot forget this experience. And I have always wondered that definitely his mother may have taught him to behave nicely to strangers. Of course, such children can also be at a risk of being abused in some way due to their innocence. But the fact that he was being groomed and nurtured very elegantly should not be overlooked. Irrespective of his family background, and our cultural remoteness, I still think about that boy at times. And I think that he deserves enormous praise. I could never muster the courage to ask him his name and related things. All I'd say in return was Bonjour. I was wary that if I reacted in any way more or less than that, the pigeon will fly away, and I would never be able to see him again.

Let me digress a little bit to another topic for a while. This seemingly does not have any relevance with the context of this article. However, this is the second reason why I wanted to write this post. In as much as the two incidents are disconnected, the truth is that they come to my mind simultaneously. So, let us digress to Innocence of the Muslims for a short while. Recently I read somewhere that google has promised, in front of one of the relevant US courts of Law, to remove the movie from YouTube. This is a commendable effort indeed. This would not only allow Government of Pakistan to remove a ban from YouTube, it would also help in subsiding unnecessary rifts between various cultures and civilizations. 

When the movie was first released I had a chance to look at the movie a little bit. This is to say that I had a chance to look at the boy and the girl who starred in the movie. The truth is that I had a strong feeling that the people had been duped into playing those roles. This is quite embarrassing for those children as well.

I have a feeling that movies like these are not made without a purpose. One of the purpose they serve is obviously to uproot people. In this case they were Muslims. And in case of the Muslims, the other reason is to gauge the emotional temperature of the Muslim society. People react badly and they are termed as barbaric and terroristic. Indeed, this is a pity.

However, as I said earlier such movies create unnecessary rifts in the human society. As a general impression such movies are also self harming in a moral sense too. On the other hand we can learn so much good from the example of the boy that I quoted above. Irrespective of whether the boy came from a Christian family, or whether his parents had become atheists after loosing all hope on religion, due to its hyper institutionalization or terrorism, the truth is that they groomed him in a nice way to say hello to strangers. Such people should be remembered.

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A Great Book About Islam and Tolerance

Recently I had a chance to read a very nice book on the subject of Islam and tolerance. The book is written by Hazrat Hakeem Tariq Mehmood Majzoobi Chughtai, editor of the monthly Ubqari magazine. The book is basically a collection of almost all the episodes of the section, "Islam and Tolerance", that is published in the monthly Ubqari magazine. This means that almost all the episodes since around 2007 to 2014 have been compiled into a book. The book is in Urdu. The English version is due very shortly. 

The book covers almost all the aspects concerning human interaction in which Muslims should exhibit extreme tolerance and generosity towards non-Muslims. It begins with the Makkan period of Hazrat Muhammad (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him) when he was confronted by the lethal hostility of his own uncles towards his religion. 

The rise of Islam coincides with the chronic hegemony of the Persian and Roman empires. The author discusses the abject plight of the christians and jews living under their rule. The Roman empire specially had a Christian disposition in running its state. The author discusses how Muslims guarded, restored and elevated the rights of the people of the book and other non-Muslim minorities. It is very interesting and enlightening to read that how strictly Muslim Caliphs used to oversee the delivery of rights to the common people by their governors. How religious freedom of the minorities was ensured enacted is also discussed in the book.

One of the important thing about the book is its presentation of the Islamic constitution of war. It is indeed quite enlightening to read that how Hazrat Muhammad (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him) evolved an extremely humanistic war constitution as the Muslims started coming in conflict with their neighbors. For instance, it is profoundly surprising to read that Hazrat Muhammad (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him) has forbidden Muslims to separate war prisoners from each other who are each other's relatives. It is also forbidden to torture or to kill the captives. Muslims should take good care of their food and clothing. And as soon as the enemy extends an apology, he/she should be forgiven immediately or the conflict should start to recede. This is extremely humane, specially considering the barbaric pre-Islamic Arabian peninsula where people could be decapitated for extremely trivial things.  

The book also talks about many other aspects from which one can draw conclusions on as to how to treat one's neighbors and related aspects. For instance, it is interesting to read how various people from medieval Islamic period used to treat their Jewish neighbors in the light of Prophetic Hadith of Hazrat Muhammad (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him) and revelations of Allah.

As a whole the book addresses all sorts of people. It tells the Christians about the Islamic opinion of Jesus Christ (PBUH). It also tells that why, as a matter of principle,  one of the most veritable caliphs of Islam refused to pray in a Church in Egypt, as it was conquered. For the jews, it has a message that they perhaps owe a little bit of gratitude to the Muslim community, as their forefathers were supported by a just Islamic governance system when they had to face frequent diasporas. It reminds the love of Sufis to the Hindus. It invites the statesmen to review their public policies in its own light. It incites the modern civilizations to see if they can create peace conventions that are better than those of the religion of Islam. For the zealot, it has a message that fanaticism and terrorism are rather grotesque applications of religion. Lastly, the accounts of a few exchanges between various sufi saints and their contemporary Zoroastrian neighbors insinuate us to use reason to develop an argument. 

This book is a must read. Everyone should read it whether Muslim or non-Muslim. This is specially important to develop and refine opinions about Islam and for faith literacy. And even if you are a non-Muslim who is theoretically opposed to Islam or religion, you can at least refer it to a Muslim acquaintance. This may have collateral benefits.  

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  by  Koshyk 

The Self Illusion

Sam Harris has to vowed to publish a book on the self sometime next year. The idea is to show is that self, or a sense of self, or whatever about that, is inherently an illusion. I hope that I would be able to read it and reflect on it. In the meanwhile I have found a rather suitable image that was floating on facebook. The image has a verse from the holy Quran that literally means that "life of this world is nothing except an illusion." It is interesting to note that Sam Harris agrees with the Holy Quran in some sense. It would be interesting to read his argument and to see how he would systematically disagree with religion on this issue, on which the religion basically almost assumes the same position as that of Sam Harris.  This image is a part of my preparation to read, and hope to understand, his upcoming book.

This is the 85th verse of the third surah of the Holy Quran, named surah Al-Imran. Imran (AS) was the father of prophets Musa and Haroon (AS) (Moses and Aaron). Al-Imran means the family of Imran.

 
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Worship Places of non-Muslims, Their Rights and Our Obligations

This is the title of a new book by hakeem Tariq Mehmood Chughtai. I have not had a chance to read the book itself. However, excerpts and essays from this book are published in the monthly Ubqari magazine. The author has written this book with tremendous curious inquiry. Examples are taken from the conduct of early Muslims viz a viz non-Muslims. Some parts of the book are also inspired by the writings and findings of Ibn-e-Zeb Bhikaari, who writes a column titled Islam and Tolerance in the monthly Ubqari magazine. Overall the articles are nice and specially thought provoking. In some instance one cannot avoid getting impressed. It is also an attempt to groom Muslims all over the world. 

It is specially very nice to read a few examples. I would really like to quote a couple of them about the disposition of early Muslims regarding non-Islam. Perhaps this would help us in developing nice and better traditions for a better prospective future. Following are the examples:

1 Episode 56 – February, 2011

When Hazrat Abu Bakar (RA) sent an army on the expedition of Syria, he addressed the emir of the army: ”You will find a nation which has devoted itself for the worship of Allah (i.e. the Christians). Leave them. I make ten recommendations for you. Do not kill any woman, child, or an old person. Do not cut a fruit bearing tree. Do not ruin a place that is inhabited. Do not slaughter goat or camel without need for eating. Do not burn any oasis. Do not cheat in the property that has been confiscated due to battle. And do not become cowards.

Similarly another example is as follows:

19 Episode 77 – November, 2012

When Ameer-ul-momineen hazrat Umar (RA) went to the church of Kaneesa and the time of prayers approached there, he said to Venice Batareeq, ”I want to offer my prayers.” Batareeq replied, ”Ameer-ul-momineen, you can offer your prayers here.” You (RA) refused to do so. Batareeq went to the church of Constantinople, but you (RA) did not offer your prayers there too. You (RA) offered your prayers outside the church in front of the door. And said to Batareeque that I did not offer the prayers inside the church so that in future Muslims do not capture the church following the logic that Umar (RA) had prayed there. After that you (RA) wrote a letter and gave it to Batareeque. In which it was written, ”Any Muslim cannot pray in the church with Azaan and jamaa (as a group prayer), although he can pray alone.

I find this second example quite impressive. Even if you do not like it, you can refer this to another Muslim you know. Perhaps this might be helpful in some sense. Every little helps!

The cover of the book is quite interesting in itself. It has a mosque, a church, and possibly a synagogue in it, which is a nice symbol of interfaith harmony. The location of Ubqari institute in Lahore is also very interesting. In its neighborhood lies a huge campus of Pakistan's council of churches. The view from the top of the institute in the morning is very nice. Upon looking around one finds a number of  huge churches surrounding the institute from all around.

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Does Willpower Exist

Almost for the past one month I have been thinking about writing about willpower. The idea may sound trivial to the casual reader. However, it is interestingly not so. Why am I interesting in writing about this curiously has a very cogent reason. That is that while we are not so sure about whether we possess free will or not, how can we assume that possess willpower.

Quite interestingly my curiosity has coincided with the recent publication of Daniel C. Dennetts Reflections on Free Will. Sam Harris recently wrote a book titled Free Will. In response to that Daniel wrote a possible rebuttal to that. I have not been able to read Free Will possibly due to shortage of time and lack of access to a decent library that would host such books. I am sure it must be a very interesting book. On the other hand Daniel's rebuttal also sounds promising. In Sam's own words the rebuttal itself is as long as the book. 

Luckily I have been able to give it an initial eye-ball, something that I could possibly only do given my tough routine over the past few weeks. Daniel has some very interesting reflections on Sam's notions of free will. I could not comprehend everything, but one definitely gets a good deal of an idea even through casual reading. It is interesting to note that both Sam and Daniel hold interestingly opposing positions on existence of free will. While Sam argues that we as humans do not have free will, Daniel proposes the converse. However, the argument is not that simple. It becomes quite obfuscated specially when we involve compatiblist and incompatiblist theories into account. It is true about me at least that I find a lot of things difficult to comprehend. It might not be true for many other readers (or students). However, I presume that a more focused reading may help in alleviating my problem of understanding the whole gamut of "free-will" "no-free-will" theories. 

Assuming this knowledge of free will as a basis one may pose another interesting question: Does willpower exist? Often we hear success stories about ordinary people who dealt with extra-ordinary situations and came out as victorious. We tend to say that so and so person has tremendous willpower simply because he/she struggled very hard against so many unprecedented and unfavorable circumstances and eventually came out as victorious.

Mountaineers climb high mountains. In the due course they fall off high and rocky cliffs. They get emotionally shattered and physically crippled. However, they do not give up on their ambition to climb. Is this determination and audacity an exhibition of willpower?

I stopped blogging almost a month ago due to other important chores that I was supposed to undertake. As I stopped blogging I made a vow to myself that I would think about a few ideas about writing and come back and write with more zeal and passion as soon as I got a new idea. The very fact that I have somehow managed to come back and written off this article, is this suggestive that I possess some level of willpower in some  meaningful sense? 

In order to understand this we would initially have to understand what willpower simply means. In its simplest interpretation willpower can mean the ability to execute one's will. To this end, one should have the ability to have will or to will, irrespective of how a philosopher may believe that it is suitable for us to have it or not. Anyhow, if we agree with Sam Harris that we do not have free will at all, how can we have willpower? 

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  by  joiseyshowaa 

Right to Die

I just came across a news story that has got something to do with terminally ill peoples' right to die possibly with the aid of a doctor. I have not read the complete story. However, I understand the crux as it is a familiar one. 

This is a familiar story because a few months ago I read a similar story concerning an Irish ex-lecturer named Marie Fleming. I hope she is alive and gets better soon. At the time of reading she was suffering from multiple sclerosis. As much as I have an idea about this disease is that it renders the person totally dysfunctional and ambulatory. The whole story was sad as the whole family had appealed to the Irish supreme court for her to be given the right to die with assistance. This is indeed ironic specially concerning that the most instinctive of the human desires is to actually live and not to die. However, I presume that when pain overrides pleasure, people's desires shift.

At the time when I read the story I tried to find her contact details through the Internet. I was not fortunate enough to have found something valuable to that end. Finally I did manage to find the contact details of a few important personnel belonging to some Irish society of multiple sclerosis. I mailed a lot of them. I even called a couple of them on phone. The response I got from them was, however, not at all prompt or encouraging. 

In the process of finding those details I also came across a facebook page for a Canadian organization called Dying With Dignity. They help people in dying with some assistance. It is assisted suicide of some sort.

The reason I called them was that at the time when I came across the news, I was also listening to a lecture by Ubqari Institute. In the lecture, Allama Hakeem Tariq Mehmood Chughtai told the listeners that if a person having any sort of neurological illness listened to surahs (chapters) At-Taghaaban and Ar-Rehman (the Beneficent) of the Holy Quran, he/she would heal. I do not remember now that for how long these should be listened to. I think it was recommended to listen for 41 days regularly and possibly 41 times daily. I am posting links to these surahs below. You can also download an audio file containing both of these surahs from the website of Ubqari. The audio file is designed to play one surah in one ear and the other in the other. Click here to download. Please appreciate the fact that recitation of the Holy Quran is in itself quite euphonic. Also try to read the translations. They are also nice.

So this was the reason I was trying to call them. Another thing I wanted to share was about death itself. One of the surahs of Quran is called Yasin. One of the functions of this surah is that if this recited close to a dying man, the process of death becomes easy. The dying person dies a peaceful death. A link to surah Yasin is also below.

If you or someone you know are suffering very badly then spiritual shower is for you. It is really good for instantaneously feeling good. Again you can read the pages of Ubqari magazine for many prescriptions for treating incurable diseases. There are many herbal as well as spiritual philters and prescriptions etc. that are really nice. 

Check this out on Chirbit

The reason I refrained so much from posting this information here is that at the end of the day I do not feel like posting so much stuff pertaining to religion here. I felt that I should write about something else. However, I hope that this message would be sent across to the ears of Marie Fleming and the likes. May Allah forgive us all for our sins and remove hardships from us through his endless blessings.

On a separate note, there is no harm in listening to these videos specially if you are so much willing to die. Why not do something like listening to the Holy Quran before taking the last breath. What is the harm after all. May you live long though. And if you know Marie Fleming or anyone in her family in any way, please convey this message to her.

Death is inevitable. This is how a really sad letter titled approaching death by a late Toronto based lawyer, Edward Hung, begins. It is very sad indeed to read how he died and that he had to travel all the way to many places around the world to get himself cured as well as to arrange for someone to take his life. It is a pity that he had to die such a tragic death. So if death is so much inevitable and there is a person out there who is so eager to die, then why not try something different even if it is only for a while. Moreover, it is absolutely free.

 

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  by  andrewosterberg 

Mind Wandering

Consider that you are sitting in a large room around a dining table. In the room there are a handful of happy people. There are also a few familiar faces that you have not seen in a while. They are possibly your friends and relatives. The room is ornate with candles and balloons and the table is adorned with gifts, refreshments and a nice birthday cake. Everyone is happily clapping and singing birthday carols. You are their center of attention. But there is something wrong about the whole event. That is that you are not quite there. 

Numerous situations like this can be recollected. In an important meeting when you are supposed to pay attention to the minutes, you are mentally in your office. While you are bathing in the washroom, you are thinking about the badminton court. And while driving your car, you are cribbing in your mind about that comment your boss punningly made at your attire last week.

If you are suffering from a problem like this that wherever you are present physically, your mind has flown away to somewhere else, then you are suffering from mind wandering. Mind wandering can be a desirable quality on one hand and it can be quite dangerous behavior on the other.

Of course if you can naturally stretch your imagination about matters meriting some significance in times when you had otherwise been sitting idle, you can possibly use those moments to solve some important problems. Consider about the ample time you may have while you are traveling in a bus to get to work. If your mind wanders during the journey to the technical caveats of your work, you may as well find a solution to your professional issues. 

However, mind wandering can cost you a substantial price too. For instance, think about those cribbing thoughts you may have had about the sarcasm of your boss at your dress. Had you extended that thought train a little bit further and developed an argument, it may not only have become a cause for loosing your job, it could have been life threatening too if you had lurched your car on the road as a result of that mental aggression.

Research suggests that the posterior cingulate cortex of our brains is responsible for this type of behavior. Research also suggests that with continued meditation this region of the brain can become rich in gray matter density. An attribute that is responsible for lesser mind wandering. Research also suggests that there is an inverse correlation between mindfulness meditation and mind wandering. Do you wonder where you can find good recipes for developing mindfulness? Consider sufism, dhikr and meditation as cures.

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  by  Samuel Peters 

Understanding Superposition

Understanding ordinary Physics can be quite cumbersome at times. This can be true even for the brightest of the students. There can be a lot of concepts in various topics that may demand a lot of curious scrutiny even if you are studying the basic ideas. Moreover, a very important subject such as theoretical physics may not only sound difficult but also quite boring to the whimsical adolescent who is slowly creeping out of the teen years and would be soon going to the university. What adds to the misery of the student is that how the subject matter is made to appear so esoteric to comprehend while it is orchestrated. 

We had a very nice teacher named Professor Dr. Faiz-ul-Hassan. He used to quote one of his own Swedish teachers while he was a post graduate student that any subject in the world can be explained to any student in a way in which appears easy for him/her to understand. Indeed, Dr. Faiz used to teach very well. I still remember that in his class even the most mischievous of us used to sit and listen to the lectures very quietly and attentively. This is quite remarkable given the lack of interest students generally had in any kind of academic activity. He used to teach us difficult subjects and we used to find them interesting and easy.

A couple of days ago I came across a very nice article that discussed quantum mechanics in the context of human consciousness and its survival after death. The article was quite timely for me because I was wondering how quantum mechanics was connected to consciousness. Even though I could say, "I know what you mean" as an expression in a discourse, I really did not nearly have a clear understanding of superposition and its repercussions on the study of consciousness. Consciousness is recently being acknowledged by science and it would be appropriate to think that any serious student of consciousness should try to understand quantum physics to some extent. It is one of the various ways at looking at the survival of consciousness after bodily death.

So the explanation of superposition was given with the help of a cartoon and I found it very useful, informative and funny at the same time. Even though I had read a little bit about superposition before in the context of quantum cryptography, but I had never understood it so well before. The cartoon is as follows:

If you have seen this cartoon you may definitely have understood superposition and I can bet that you must definitely have enjoyed the cartoon. It just takes a little bit of curiosity to appreciate such work. So giving an explanation of superposition now is rather redundant. I also think that I cannot write an explanation of superposition as nicely as it has been explained by the old man in the cartoon. However, I am going to write down my own understanding of superposition only to gain a little bit of self satisfaction. You can skip this article now if you wish or you may keep on reading it if you wish to leave a nice remark at the end of article.

So what superposition tells us that matter can behave in weird ways. Depending on the circumstances it can retain its physical form or it may also convert into energy. It can exhibit a particle like behavior and it may also act like a wave. This view is endorsed with a so called double slit experiment. What the old man does is that he shows us something with the help of a slit placed between a source of white balls of some sort and a black board on the other. When the balls are fired towards the board some of them strike with the sides of the slit and are deflected away, while a few pass through the slit and form a line-like pattern on the board resembling the shape of the slit through which they passed. 

He then replaces the single slit with a plate that has two slits instead and repeats the experiment. As expected what we notice is that two bands are formed on the wall resembling the shapes of the slits. He argues that this is an intuitive result. 

In the next stage of the experiment what he does is that he replaces the source of balls with an electron gun. So in the single slit experiment a single band is formed resembling the slit. However, in the two-slit experiment, multiple bands are formed as opposed to the two that were intuitively expected. He argues that this seemingly counter-intuitive result is also intuitive. He argues that the electrons exhibit wavelike motion while traveling towards the plate. As they pass through the slits, some of them reinforce each other and while others annihilate each other through constructive and destructive interference respectively. The result is multiple bands as can be seen on the board.

In the next stage of the experiment he starts firing single electron at a time from the gun. He does so to figure out if the electrons behave differently when they are fired in isolation. What he figures out is that same sort of multiple bands are formed again. He argues that while some electrons are deflected and while some pass through one slit and while others pass through the others, the over all result is a number of bands. He owes this to the wave like nature of electrons as they travel to the board (which is possibly a fluorescent screen of some kind that illuminates as electrons strike it). 

The last step of the experiment is crucial. In this step what he does is that he fixes some sort of the detector along side the slitted plated. He does so in the hope of observing the behavior of the electrons as they pass through the slits. To much of his surprise, what he finds is that two bands are formed on the board. He finds this surprising and expects us to be surprised also because he concludes that this time the electrons exhibited a particle type behavior. He concludes that under special circumstances electrons can exhibit either a wavelike or a particle-like behavior. Moreover, he concludes that all matter is capable of exhibiting such behavior.

To us such behavior has far reaching consequences viz a viz human consciousness. It means that in a theoretical sense it might be possible that we humans, which are normally observable as physical beings with flesh and bones, might as well be able to exist other than that too. The question that what was that detector made of that made the electrons so shy that they blushed away from acting like waves demands us to brush up our quantum physics a little bit. Teaching difficult subjects with the help of cartoons like the one above is indeed a very remarkable way of teaching.

 

Psyops by PsyopsPrime is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.psyops.tk/.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.psyops.tk/.

  by  superdeath 

Your Best Self

Your perception of your "self" can play a great role in how well or poorly you do in various endeavors you undertake in your life. I am using the term "self" with quotation marks particularly to pay emphasis. First of all it is important to have an almost precise understanding of the term "self" itself, if not "the self". Here I have used the term "self" to refer to the topic or to the self in general, whereas the term "the self" is used to refer to a particular self. The self has been a subject of considerable philosophical scrutiny since millennia. Many thinkers have thought and written huge treatises on it. The topic also draws great attention in teachings of various religions. So what does the self mean?

It is your inner personality that distinguishes you from others. The self is something that makes you unique. The strength of your character, things you are good at, your virtues, your fears, your audacity, your goals, your memories and the way you respond to various stimuli on a moment by moment basis in your life forms your self. 

This is possibly a brief and a comprehensive explanation of the term self. If you have understood this explanation well, it should not be very difficult to understand your own self. However, the story is not that simple. Bewildered? Even if you are not confused at the moment I promise that you will be quite confused by the time you reach the end of the next paragraph. And if it does not confuse you or shake your beliefs about your "self" or "the self" as a topic, you are either a well read person with an elevated acumen for philosophical thinking or you are a bit too naive to comprehend all this academic mumbo jumbo concerning the self. Don't mind, many people are like that.

Even if you have tried hard to understand your self, you may be living in an illusion about it. Actually there was an article in The Scientific American Mind recently that was titled The Self Illsuion. According to this article everything you experience in your life is merely an illusion. In simple terms this means that you are living in an illusion no matter whatever perception you have about yourself. A more complex explanation is that the pain you have due to a severe injury is also merely an illusion. Would it be alright to infer from this that your whole existence, or the very fact that you believe that you exist as you are reading this article and your whole being is merely an illusion? You'd rather that this is the right conclusion.

Looking at the self from the vantage point of contemporary philosophers and the article posted in Scientific American Mind is definitely perplexing. However, you can simplify this discourse by making a few ordinary assumptions. You can assume that you are real and that all of your pains and pleasures are also real and consequently your self is also real. Having agreed on these simple assumptions we now try to see on as to what forms a good or a bad self. You will find that things are still quite complicated. Keep on reading to learn more.

Your self deceives you in many ways. You can do a few simple thought experiments to find out the various deceptions it plays on you. Stand in front of a mirror while you are combing your hair and while you are all dressed up in the best clothes you have. You do such a thing everyday. Now listen to that inner voice that tells you all the great and cool things about yourself. That is how your self is being dishonest with you while trying to beguile you about all the good stuff that you are actually not. Do you feel like disagreeing with this judgement? Let us see why you should not.

At once tell yourself to deliver a speech to an audience comprised of arbitrarily chosen people on a randomly and instantaneously chosen article. Think about it very strongly that you have to perform this activity very soon. As soon as you give this command to yourself you will find your self telling weird things to you about yourself and the speech you have to undertake. Indeed, if you do not have any public speaking exposure or if you are a novice speaker, a myriad of negative thoughts must definitely have stampeded through your mind at this moment. 

You are getting nervous. You try to find an excuse. You think that you are obviously great but making a speech is totally out of question. You tell people that you are good at cracking jokes with friends but you are definitely not going to make this speech because you believe that there is something really so bad about public speaking that it should not be done at all. You may even say that this whole public speaking is completely crap and that everyone should abandon it. 

These are all lame excuses. The truth is that deep inside your self is telling you that you really can not make this speech at all. It is telling you all the bad things about your voice and appearance. It may as well be telling you that how goofy you may look like when you actually stand up on the stage to make that speech. Just imagine yourself standing behind the dice while the clamor of claps from the audience strikes your ears. You think of your self as a dumb donkey, a designer's dummy standing on the stage with absolutely no clue about what you have to say. You even curse the moment when you stood in front of that mirror and thought about yourself as being something of value. It all started from there.

However, the truth is that your self is playing against you again and telling you all the bad things about you that you are actually not. This is the illusion of the self when you believe with considerable confidence in the assumption that you made earlier that you exist along with all your mental faculties intact and in good order.

The crux of the discourse we have had so far is that your self tells you good things about yourself while in reality that might not be the case. At the same time it can tell you bad things about yourself while actually you are not too bad either. Actually as a matter of fact, by continuous practice in trying to improve upon a few things you can become better and better.

Now try to relax! If you have read it so far, you have made great progress. Even if you have not understood everything in this article, it is alright. The mere fact that you have been reading this article till this point means that your curiosity has drawn your considerable attention to the subject matter this article is trying to cover. You need to be complemented about this. Congratulations!

Assuming that you have understood that your self deceives you in ways that you do not understand well, you have to find some remedies. In this paragraph and in what follows we can try to find a few remedies. First of all try to learn to relax. having a relaxed personality can enhance your performance manifold at many tasks. In order to develop a relaxed personality that you can do many things. However, I presume that meditation is one of the best cures. There are many meditation techniques that are available online and you can choose the one that suits you the best.

The second thing is to work hard. There is no shortcut to hard work. And with hard and persistent effort you can achieve anything you can conceive and that your heart can believe. The third thing is to do what you love to do. This has been emphasized by many gurus and success preachers. It is a self evident truth that there is nothing you can do well than what you love to do. 

Having said this, the fourth advice is to try to pursue decent goals and develop humane ambitions. This is quite self explanatory. The fifth thing is to try to learn to be confident. Actually if you pay due heed to the above advice, self confidence will automatically follow. Never mind if you are low on self confidence right now. Just try to console yourself with the idea that everyone suffers from this syndrome time and again. There are a few who are perpetual sufferers and there are many who have recurring episodes of low self confidence. The sixth advice is that while you should not overestimate yourself you should not do the converse as well. 

The last tip is to try to understand that your self plays tricks on you. This means that while you should not believe that you are Hercules, you should also not think about yourself to be completely irrelevant. When that happens with you, think that anyone can have these kinds of feelings. Even as I am approaching the end of this article, there is already a plan developing in mind to tell me that how the heck did I manage to write this article at all. Always remember that your best self is when you are cool, calm and confident on the day when you actually have to deliver that speech you were really scared of.




Psyops by PsyopsPrime is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://psyops.tk/.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://psyops.tk/.

  by  GaggieITMI 

Understanding Human Consciousness

I recently patched up a small research proposal titled Understanding Human Consciousness. It is a five pages long draft in pdf format. I think it is nice and can be improved by the passage of time. My interest in neuroscience grew between 2008 and 2009 while I started reading books about self help. Awaken the Giant Within was the first book that I read on this subject. It is a brilliant book but I believe that there is a lot more to neuroscience than feeling good alone. 

As I progressed further on the way I cam across ideas of Ray Kurzweil about downloading human consciousness on to computers. I also came across the books of Marvin Minsky which I think are very nice. Emotion Machine and Society of the Mind are two of his really nice books that are worth mentioning. Unfortunately I could not finish reading both of them.

The journey did not stop here. In 2011 I had a chance to read Sam Harris. I would again like to mention that he raises very cogent questions in his The End of Faith. It is indeed a very thought provoking book. Specially the questions he raises about why people believe in one religion or the other are rousing. His concern that such beliefs should be explainable by reason is rational. The other question he raises is that whether any afterlife exists or not. Although I would like to assert that he himself is quite judgmental about that question already.

As the reading journey continued I had a chance to read Irfan. Irfan introduced me to Western Spiritualism. From Irfan I came to know about the various contemporaries of Charles Darwin who were spiritualists and believed in an afterlife. Most notable among these are Alfred Russel Wallace and Sir Conan Doyle. It was quite interesting to read from The History of Spiritualism that he attributed much of the world's misery to materialism and advocated for the adoption of some kind of religion by the humanity. It was quite interesting for me to know this as I thought materialists, or so to say atheists, to be a lot more benign people before this.

Anyhow, introduction to spiritualism gave me a chance to read and skim through many academic papers regarding invocation of spirits and souls, and other aspects related to spiritualism. For instance, there are quite a few tracks in spiritualism that study the ectoplasm, a viscous material that possibly comes out of the mouths of the mediums as they communicate with the dead. Similarly, there are also papers that study the minds of mediums to figure out what sort of people are more conducive for becoming mediums. 

I do not remember the source of the papers but I am sure they can be found through the website of Society of Psychical Research. In the meantime I have also been reading papers on neuroscience from the point of view of mental and physical health as well. They are quite numerous. The conclusion they draw is that most of the mental and physical functions of human body and personality are localized in the brain and that there is no evidence for the presence of a non-physical mind i.e. a soul or a spirit. The burden of coming up with a proof is normally left with the reader.

So given this I thought that I should at least write a research proposal that could sum up all the reading I have been doing over the years. I think that it looks nice. It does not have any citations or references at the moment and I hope to be able to add a few citations by the due course of time. Here is the link to the proposal.

  by  ezhikoff 

Provocative Ideas

I generally like a few things about Sam Harris. He raises some thought provoking issues at times. Specially when he provokes everyone into thinking and asking themselves introspectively that why do they believe in what they believe. I think that this kind of provocation is healthy and urges a human being to study human consciousness. That where did we come from and where are we headed? Or whether it all starts here and ends here too. This much is fine. There are other such things which one should appreciate too. This is also not in conflict with traditional Islam. A keen study of history suggests that wherever the medieval Muslims went they learnt something from other societies. And they were not too much into killing other people at all after all. So, according to Islam, one should learn good things from where ever one can. This is naturally a good idea. 

But then there are other things which are quite objectionable about Sam Harris's objections on Islam or religion in general. One of them is that Sam does not like the idea that religion is used as a tool to glue people together. This is generally true about his opinion about every religion. In my opinion as much as religion is used to unite people together for common good, it should be fine. Of course, it should not be fine to unite with each other to harm others. Unity should be also be fine for self protection. There is no harm in having a harmless brotherhood too. I used to respect atheists as I had some of them as friends and I used to think that they are educated people. Brotherhood is also good if it enhances the self-respect of a community. But I have read a few articles from other atheists about Sam Harris in which he has been addressed as a "Son of a Bitch" and a "Bastard". It might be the case that Sam does not mind that, but this sort of treatment is quite harsh. 

Moreover, just because he does not mind listening to such complements himself, he demands more liberties of free speech regarding religion. His use of the term misogyny of Islam can have many connotations and can be justifiably considered harsh. But the truth is that we Muslims believe that Islam was born at a time when Arabs used to bury their daughters alive due to the fear that they would grow up and would have to be married to someone. A perceived consequence of marriage used to be that the family of the daughter would have to live under the perpetual domination of their daughter's in-laws. Something which the Arabs despised and could not live with. I personally think that the mere idea that their daughter would get married and go on to have sex with another person was unbearable for them, even if that other person was her husband. And a solution for that was burial of the living and breathing child. We believe that Islam was born out of such circumstances. 

We believe that all the struggle of Prophet Muhammad (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him) including his migrations and wars was against this kind of oppression, which is quite a lot I would say. We believe that all the Islamic rules viz a viz marriage and betrothal are there to enhance the self-esteem of the women. A woman should not be buried alive if she has been born in pre-Islamic Arabia by chance, nor should her naked picture be put on a billboard if she is fortunate enough to be born in 21st century Amsterdam. She should be married properly with her consent. To this end, Islam tries to strike a balance between the people of different mentalities. On one extreme, there can be people who can flare up instantly at the mere sight of a stranger falling upon their daughter, sister or mother. There could also be people who do not mind if their daughter, mother, sister or wife thinks that it is boring to have the same partner for two consecutive days but is at a higher risk of catching sexually transmitted disease, being kidnapped or raped or ending up in a bad situation of the same magnitude. Islam tries to anneal all of them. And I know from personal knowledge that plenty of such people exist in non-Muslim countries where people do not accept their women to be dating on loose. I remember the movies unfaithful (Richard Gere) and Revenge (Kevin Costner and Anthony Quinn) where these guys ended up in bloody circumstances because their wives were seeing someone else. A question is that are these movies representative of the American culture, if so Islam presents a cure in the form of respectable marriage laws.

Islam allows a woman to not get married if she chooses so to be. Similarly, one cannot wed a woman off to someone if she does not agree. And yes, should she not be educated? Islam argues that it is the duty of every Muslim man and woman to seek education. This is quoted in many hadiths of Prophet Muhammad (may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him). I am a Muslim and I like Sam Harris. I even like his commentary on religion. I think he enlightens us all on as to what and why should we believe in. I think that as a human being Sam Harris deserves respect. But Sam Harris should also try to earn that respect. His use of the term misogyny is rather provocative. 

Understanding Consciousness

One of the topics that is quite hyped these days is the study of human consciousness and its possible survival after death. The argument that human beings have souls that depart to a certain afterlife once we are dead is one of the major tenets of almost every religion. The materialist view, that we human beings, along with all the other life forms. are merely flesh and bones defies any such notion that human beings have souls or that they depart to some other world once we die. To this end, they also argue that there is no such divine entity, such as a godhead, that may have created life. The religious doctrines of creation of universe can be explained away with the help of theories of astronomy, cosmology and astronomy. Similarly, the religious doctrines about the creation of life and humanity can be explained away with the help of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. 

Rationalists try to understand and study the nature of survival of human consciousness with the help of various ways in which they can try to tap into the afterlife and communicate with the dead. There might be a possibility that some religious people may have the ability to do it already. I heard (or possibly read somewhere) that Jews have been prohibited to do it according to Torah. Given that it is considered the old testament for Christians and a holy book to be revered by the Muslims, it may be supposed that the followers of these two religions are also prohibited from tapping into the so-called unseen world. Particularly, Muslims are advised to follow a set path and believe in the unseen and are advised not to long for miracles. 

Whether or not there is an afterlife, or whether or not people survive bodily death cannot be proven by believing merely in someone's word of mouth. A religious scripture no matter how convincing it may be is not a proof of any of the extraordinary claims it makes. The claims must be proven from sources other than where they have been claimed. Thus, objectivity demands an honest scrutiny.

People who are interested in knowing about human consciousness and its survival of bodily death leverage mostly from the research of near death experiences (NDEs). As the name suggests, in an NDE a person is subjected to a clinical death of sorts in which electrical activity in the brain of the subject stops. Once rehabilitated back to normal life, the subject is asked to describe his/her experience. A keen survey reveals that there are hundreds of thousands of NDE stories. A review of the NDE research also indicates that NDE research has become a mature field of study with considerable adoption of scientific method.

Another discipline that tries to tap into afterlife is spiritualism. Spiritualism is rather old and established itself in the late nineteenth century. In simply world spiritualism entails methods to communicate with demised soul and to tap into the spirit world. A wide variety of literature is available by various contemporary and prolific scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Older people include Arthur Conan Doyle, Alfred Russell Wallace and William Crookes, to name but a few. History of spiritualism by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is probably the best resource on the subject.

If the findings of NDEs and spiritualists are correct that human beings survive bodily death, and that human beings do indeed have souls that depart to another world as we die, it means that materialism and its related theories of evolution etc. have already been explained away. For skeptics it means that they would have one less dimension to think about as regards existence.