Goodbye Blue Sky

“Goodbye Blue Sky” is definitely not the song by Pink Floyd. It is a short story by Nour Sharif though its subliminal theme is almost the same—as I see it—as that of the song. The full story, for the simple pleasure of reading, can be accessed here. 

“Goodbye Blue Sky” is a fictional account with a tinge of reality in the form of Lebanon civil war which afflicted Lebanon for more than 15 years. Most of the story is set in “a little town, far from the coast, and close to the mountains” named Zahleh and a very insignificant part in Canada—the specific town or place is not mentioned. I consider it obligatory not to reveal the specifics of the plot as that would unnecessarily smother the zeal of the reader. “Goodbye Blue Sky” is a bid adieu to peace inviting clouds of war, a goodbye to the warmth of clear sky for Gabriel, Zaynab and Michael—central characters in the story. It is a story of contrast where we are at one hand appalled by the civil war involving Muslims and Christians and on the other fascinated by the brief intimacy of Zaynab ( a Muslim) and Gabriel( a Christian). But ultimately they too have to say goodbye to their blue sky. The writer also drew a contrast between the turbulent land of Lebanon which is marred by religious violence and peaceful Canada where at some point in the story Gabriel and his father Michael migrate to reclaim their blue sky. The story brings to the fore, in the midst of peace and war, the humanly relations, though strained, between a father and a son, a husband and a wife, a boy and a girl—vacillating, sometimes due to external pressures and sometimes due to internal conflicts.

I have always felt that aesthetic sense of English Literature is mainly due to the ability of the writer and his/her sense for circumlocution. And I can say without a doubt that in this endeavour the writer wonderfully describes the situations to fulfill the aesthetic demand that every story should have. Vividness in description is clearly visible. At times I felt that the story is too short to accommodate the full web of emotions that it seems to conquer. But then I remember that the writer must have been bound to the limitations of the competition that she was taking part in. By the way if I haven’t mentioned till now, make note of it immediately. She, that is Nour Sharif, has won third prize for this story in Malik’s Short Story Competition 2012.

There is nothing that can stop me from revealing more about the story and its theme but that would be doing injustice to the writer. In a way, injustice to the reader too! What purpose the story serve to the reader if it is already accomplished through the review of the story? I, therefore, cease my hand and give a chance to your complex wiring of eye and brain. In short, I am urging you to read this story in order to enjoy every bit in its entirety.

In the end I would like to thank Nour Sharif, whom I know only by the means of Facebook, for providing me the soft copy of this story and thereby giving me the chance to read, most importantly, free of cost.

Of Guilt, God and Money

Society has witnessed death of God. Of what was held with so much surety until now is under doubt. The dichotomy of good and evil is replaced with a more blur question—‘what is wrong with that?’ The general sort of reasoning, which should be in terms of cause and effect in the event of death of God, is now bluntly placed before us in the form—what is bad in it? And you ask me what is bad in it, I say nothing. You ask me what is good in it, I say nothing. I mean when you start asking that type of questions, not only you are sure to get no reasonable answer, in fact you end any means of rational thinking. A subject of this curious question is money, comfort.

What’s wrong with money! What’s obnoxious about it! As I said anyone concerning his conscience with that question will never, in his life, be able to assert that he is asking himself a timidly bootless question. One, who asks it, will convince himself anyway that there is nothing wrong in it. For a man always convince his conscience to be on the right side even before one commits murder for no purpose at all. It may sound ludicrous yet it is true. A man must have firm conviction of right before one act. A man must do right. So how it is that he starts torturing himself with guilt of having done wrong? The feeling of wrong comes only with external agency—an agency which forces the individual to realize his wrong. A deed is not wrong or right when it is committed but only when it is judged. You see, murder of a human being is heinous in our judicial system and is reproached severely. Subsequently it is a crime, a wrong, abhorring and hence loathed. However killing an animal for meat is not murder. Why? Is it not life? I suggest you read my post titled ‘Origin of…’ where I contemplate on the origins of such type of morality. But for now let’s proceed. It is not loathed—leave a few societies like Jains—and here you see clearly that for a wrong, crime to exist there must be a body forcing repugnance, calling deliberately to us and inducing guilt. For thousands of years this work was done by religions although clumsily. But here I am not bothering myself fighting for animal rights. I like meat, have no intention to ban it legally. What I am trying to convey here is that man has thought and worked only on guilt, conscience and therefore is bound to fail when the “general guilt pattern” changes. If you don’t have a reason to support a purpose, naturally guilt can’t bear the burden for long. There is no external agency now to check the mad rush for money; there is void left in the place of guilt producing factory. And I am glad that there is. We need a reason and not guilt. Why should money not be the sole measure of all things? Why should it not drive all our endeavours? Where is the reason to support it? There is a vacuum.

I regard money acquiring the same place as a few centuries ago was filled with the magnanimous God. In the name of God everything is permitted; in the name of money everything is permitted. And how much reasonable it seems! How much logical!  How backward are those who condemn it! The society we live in always carry a weighing balance. On one scale they have an idea, on the other its monetary equivalent. A few centuries ago the other scale was reserved for God. What we have got to oppose this? Remnants of guilt from religion lying there, decaying with time, sometimes deteriorating with a vigour and giving an illusion of revival though the zeal is the struggle of a flame when someone sprinkles water on it. I have never been fond of such edifices of guilt.

Only man, in the entire realm of living, has got the gift of being raised to speculate future. He speculates and comes to conclusion that possessions, in whatever form, hoarding, in whatever form, is the only means to better future. Is his speculation right? Is his speculation independent from the structures of society? His speculation is right. His speculation is not independent from the structures of society. Here we see a reason itself provided by the society and hence it triumphs. Whatever is strong, wins! Evil is strong and it wins. It is a blatant myth that good always win. Possessions, money, hoarding ultimately decides your treatment in society. The reason is strong and it wins; it survived millenniums after millenniums. Religion tried to counter it with guilt—weak so to say—and is failing. Where is the reason? It is missing! So what can stop that mad rush? Reason itself which nowhere to be found: a void that needs to be filled. 21^st century is devoured by corruption. One direct reason is—more number of people given the opportunity to acquire which was otherwise reserved for few in early days. Intellectuals define corruption to be decaying of morality or deviation from normal or a more popular one is: preferring private gains over public duties. I say: Corruption is responding to reason, sidelining, looking askance at guilt to acquire what is most prized in society—money, power, domination. Reason triumphs, guilt fails. You need a reason against it, not some sort of complex spying structure where each spies on the other. Now there is a class of people that blames everything on human nature. I say greed, they say human nature; I say war, they say human nature; I say money, they say human nature. Hell with human nature! Human nature is blank! Zero!

As I said, with God and money everything is permitted, not in the sense that each has the freedom to do whatever one wishes but anything that can be astutely attributed to be God’s wish, or in the case of money to be yielding profit—no matter how much stupid, no matter how much catastrophic. For example, consider the food we eat today. There is tremendous change in what we eat over the last fifty years than we had over the last thousand years. A preferred, thoroughly tested diet, conforming to our evolutionary buds is changed so suddenly only to conform to the standards of profit. Result is there for you to analyse. The food which is worthless, to the body obviously, is cheapest; the food which is necessary is slowly leaving our meal. To be short, we eat crap because it’s cheap. Thank Money—addressed as God—we don’t eat our own crap because it’s free. What sort of economics or reasoning is that? You can find numerous such examples. Once the “market” approves them, they become reasonable. I have seen the absurdest of ideas thriving just for the sake of money. Comfort made the goal of life! Comfort is against evolution—evolutionary strength to be precise. How pitiful are those ailing, disease ridden creatures that care about the softness of pillow of their hospital bed! Any truth which is against life is no truth at all. And then they ask you to fulfill your thirst for comfort and money through legitimate ways? What is legitimate? Money is same whether it comes from cutting throat of some person, by lurking in a dark corner or by writing software making your back ache as if punished for something.  A noble man will stand up indignantly and lament—“Mr. Backward there is guilt in the first case.” I say—“What guilt? I don’t feel any unless you force it on me.” You feel guilt only because you have a system in place to condemn you, torture you. However, in the second case you don’t have one. A programmer may write a part of a program which is to benefit a guy like Hitler in some way—obviously unknowingly as he (programmer) is so noble—is a professional. Another great creature who writes a part of a program which helps marketing a product online that has resulted in millions of diseases, deaths and skewed lifestyle is a more revered professional. Professionalism! OMM! Oh my Money! As I told you, for guilt there must be an external agency. Without it there is no bad. Bad or evil—that is presently not classified as evil—grows in the direction where it finds no lingering guilt. Guilt is useless in that purpose because it can never effect the inception. It is reactionary—finding its way once the problem is thousand paces ahead. What should I say of how money has stupefied all senses? What terrible storm it unleashed on human relations? In what horrendous way it has streamlined the goal of all humanity! Oh! When I hear chants of growth, I nauseate. I need fresh air: a place that does not stink. A paroxysm of rage, feeling of disgust seizes those proponents of growth if you question a single letter of growth. We are backward, uncivilized holding up their growth. They sweep, with a single sway of their hand, anonymous populations, enormous vegetations and all that is natural—that is backward—to spur their “Growth Horse”. Profit and money being their God!

Once you make money the measure of all things, there is no way you can use guilt to stop a rush for it. Guilt, conscience hinders everything new, even good ones. Once you cross that threshold, guilt vanishes like it never was; only reason lasts.                   

The Art of Hitchhiking

Until a few minutes ago, it was the infinite stretch of road that ruminatively attracted the gaze of a seeker. The subject of that earnest look is now a moving object. With the most innocent of intentions and in expectation of something filled with rapture, he extends his arm most gently. However, the one who is sought so dearly seems to be on his way of attending a matter of national concern. For him, therefore, everything else is trivial. In a moment he passes his seeker like a flash. And now the “road” is there again to be looked at, ruminatively—

Hitchhiking

It is often the scene in the business of hitchhiking—especially when a naïve is at work. However, for a veteran, who is most careful in the manner of his approach, this exercise is often fruitful. I have experienced it with tremendous rate of success for two consecutive years. Each day it was normal to work it four to five times, covering about 13-14 kilometers, in different parts of the city and at varied times of the day. Naturally such an exposure gives great insight. Here, for the sake of change and withdrawing from the nature of topics I have been recently dealing with, I will share a few tricks of the trade which I feel helped me to make my wallet weigh a little heavier.

Before I begin I must make sure you are aware that these tricks have their space domain in India and on the great Indian roads—it may or may not work on others depending on the psychology of its natives. Here we start! The most important of all traits that must not abandon a hitchhiker: a will not to be embarrassed. The more stringently you are cornered, embarrassed, looked down at, the stronger your will should become. The seeds of successful hitchhiker germinate only in those who could stand all day long despite being unlucky, although that rarely occurs, only to be observed if a meteorite falls on whosoever stops driving for a moment.

Next on our rulebook is what vehicle to avoid. Bicycle is cornered without consideration unless the situation is so grave that you will die if not carried by someone. Scooters too are better, if avoided, the reason being scooter drivers are hypochondriac on behalf of their means of transport. It bothers them constantly—the chronic ailment of their conveyance—and one more pedestrian, an aspiring copilot, would only add to woes, may even serve as the cause of death for the ailing creature. That’s what they think when they turn their heads in order to avoid the pleader. Girls and women should also be avoided in India because they give you such a stare as if you are not from Earth, not Mars, not even Venus but from Pluto and instead of being helped by them you are there to escort them to Pluto. We have done enough about what to avoid. Now what place to choose? Select an area where vehicles naturally slow down just like around speed breakers. Slowing provides more time for thoughts to settle down—obviously of the driver’s. If there is nothing to curb down the speed then be sure to signal your intent from a long distance for you must provide your to-be benefactor a good time to judge. Otherwise before he sees you well, he will be past you. Rarely anyone stops after one has gone past the threshold. Make sure that you don’t present your side view or your back to the driver. Instead, you should not be unwilling to face directly opposite, signaling with your left thumb and keeping free your right hand. This way the driver can get a good and comprehensive look at you from a long distance. Stand apart from other public for they may distract the full attention you may get while you are alone. Don’t make the blunder of signalling heavy vehicles like trucks when they have no way of naturally slowing down. They will not stop; however, you may take your chances with light vehicles although it is not advisable. Never try to hitchhike while simultaneously walking. It gives an impression that you can reach where you want to by mere walking. The greatest chance you have of being hitchhiked in India is by a policeman. Policemen are generally not afraid of being played foul as most of the other drivers are. The other reason stands as—they themselves are greatest of all hitchhikers. Obviously they reciprocate when they are awarded.

Half of your chances rest on the way you present your face and the way you signal your intent. You should not show too much eagerness although you do harbour it clandestinely. Neither you should be completely loose. Be as natural as you can, communicating silently to the driver that he is not the only one in the world who would stop for you, nor it is that you are gesturing at him for the sake of gesturing. Try not to avoid his questioning glance when he turns to you to inquire silently. You answer silently. The more time he gets to judge, the more chance you have. Don’t let your arm droop unless he goes past you. Never let your shout of destination serve as a tool to stop the driver while he is still driving. It will definitely kill 90 % of your chance even though he is heading for the same destination. If you are carrying a school bag, it is an advantage although a school bag appearing more like luggage is disheartening.

I have often seen many practicing this art alongside me. I would say not all were committed to a particular mistake but yes a significant number of them were. They would get in position as I have previously described, like stand facing the driver directly opposite, but due to some sort of torture by their conscience, a lingering guilt or shame of unknown origin, they would raise their left arm reluctantly and gradually as if they had been trying to do something else but by mere chance they would not be unhappy if someone stops by and offer them a free travel. This is catastrophic for a hitchhiker, but not serious. Another mistake which is serious but not catastrophic arises when you have several candidates competing in the vicinity. They all stand in a group thereby making it ambiguous who is the deserving one. An orderly air to the ambiguity can be provided by maintaining a necessary distance—of about 10m—between each of them, linearly.

Like all trades, this one too has its own unwritten ethics. You will never mislead the pilot in order to gain leverage of an extra mile thereby making him drive away from his usual path. Always try to help your friends, who are still tyros, by offering them fruits of your bait or by overloading so that your skill is recognized as a social one. Well, you are already working for a social benefit by increasing the efficiency of an otherwise inefficient ride.                  

Origin of…

It was with some unproductive, monotonous and a work which I can attribute, safely, not my own that kept me away from writing a full whole month. I must add that the physical demands of this work besides the scorching heat of North India only added to sap more energy and left little to be used elsewhere. However, with this burden now off my shoulders, I can, once again, write a little to pass my useless time which otherwise would have been dedicated to sound sleep.

I chose the title “Origin of…” so as to deal with the origin or more precisely source of a number of things which obviously, in our society, are attributed a mysterious origin—which cannot be comprehended or explained and hence should be left over as sprouting from God. I shall, for the sake of my own easiness, take these “mysterious things”—for they are no doubt mysterious—one by one and without any predisposition about the order in which to arrange them. So let’s start with one of the most elated and hyped claim of religion that morality, compassion, love exclusively belong to their literatures and in the absence of those literary works mankind would not have been able to love, to feel compassionately and to distinguish between good and evil.

I could not help finding it extremely ludicrous that human moral values have origin in a book. This claim is shattered to pieces as soon as one gives away one’s narcissist approach towards morality and gaze at it with due considerateness to all of nature including the most ferocious bestiality. We can observe, not with much difficulty, that love and compassion, in their most crude form, originates in the ability to distinguish i.e. to recognize likeness, similarity of features; first and foremost physical features. Here, I am not concerned with the trivial thought of physical attraction of an individual towards another but with ability of an individual to know his own features (physical) i.e. his body structure, ways of responding to changes in surrounding, his needs in terms of food, shelter etc. You see, that is the real source of liking, real source of morality, real source of love and not to forget compassion—the ability to relate. One may be left alone, right from the birth, to grow accustomed to his own self and not to any other, not even creatures of his own type leave aside any other species yet he will first approach one like him. The awareness about his own body structure through his senses, the ability to recognize other’s—also through his senses, gives rise to something called similarity. This, indeed, is the crudest love, compassion—a likeness of what is similar to us. And this crude love is spread across all animals, not just intelligent humans. That is the reason why they—that is the animals—don’t need literature to love. They have the ability, through their senses and nothing else, to recognize what is similar. Everything similar gains love and compassion, everything different is part of suspicion. Good is what is same, evil is that which is different. Morality of even good and evil builds on the base of similarity. It is this written morality of which religions are so proud of: a morality which is descendant of crude form. You see, justice too have some traces of this type of morality. It is heinous to kill a human being while other life forms are slaughtered without attracting least of punishment through our judicial systems even though they continue to be a subject of our scientific knives and taste bud.  I am not criticizing animal killing but making my point about origin of morality. This original compassion for something similar now transcends and evolves into love, good. It is the base of all subsequent definitions of morality no matter which culture develops it. However, a search for similarity leads to a lot of weed growth. For example racism is a weed growth in which apart from humanity one finds similarity in trivial things. Social Darwinism, however, can never work for the sole reason that humans have got a good memory. Religion itself is a weed growth—a special likeness for people of same religion, their cultures, dress, food, etc. and if not hatred then aversion to folks of different religion, their culture, dress, etc. A sense of superiority is raised in such situations. Caste system in India is another such weed growth. Misogynism is a weed growth of this crude morality. Patriots are raised and traitors are killed under a more subtle weed growth. Thus we see we have left the original morality and accepted side productions as the original. And there is no shortage of men who claim that side productions belong exclusively to them. In fact, they even go to the extent of laying their hands on the original morality.

Love, even in its subtlest form, is not immune to this original creed for likeness and similarity. Although most of love blossoms from a search of desired qualities—a certain form of finding similarity, difference in a pair is also a deliberate attempt at accepting the difference itself as something given to likeness. It can go without saying that hatred will rise wherever there is no likeness or one is unable to find such likeness or similarity. Revenge and malice are born of good memory. Humans have that in particular. In those who have a strong element for forgetfulness, revenge is in traces.  Absence of active memory can even end such malice as is the case with many animals.

We move now to the origin of truth and lie. As is believed commonly, truth and lie are something eternal; eternal truth—more correctly—and lie is just a lie. However, least to my concern whether lie is eternal or not, truth and lie are something not eternal. They are side products of intent to communicate. The complexity of the concept of truth and lie is build in the proportion the means of communication grows. When you can represent things separate from actions, of which till know only humans are capable, there you see truth and lie and the intent to deceive. Man seems to be marred by the weed growth of his own inventions, here in this case a complex structure of language.

I have already grown weary not because I have written too much for this one article but with lack of sleep. So in an attempt to wind up, I endeavour one more topic—that of poverty. There are endless attempts at conquering poverty but none to know what made it first or what propagates it from generation to other generation.  The answer to propagation of poverty is simple—inheritance.  Inheritance not just in the sense of material property but inheritance of all those shortages, inheritance of daily grief to which the child grows slowly accustomed to and gives up his hope in despair, inheritance of the knowledge that he may have to sleep empty stomach, inheritance of looking daily at deep sunken faces around him weakened with constant hunger and finally accepting the fate as it is, inheritance of dealing with crisis on a daily basis rather than occasionally as their so called benefactors do. An awful lot of inheritance! What makes me more critical of religion or imaginary God is not the imagination of it but the laws it involuntarily gave to the society. Just like the law of inheritance! Now what made poverty? As I have always held in my earlier posts that fate is not the origin of poverty. Origin of poverty lies in the powerful: to snatch what he felt like; and weak to let go what he cannot defend. Then after, the lazy powerful man made laws of what is right and what is not. What is lawful and what is not!  What should remain with him that he has snatched and what should be returned! This is where laws of inheritance originate—to keep for progeny what was earned with power and now only to replace power with labour; it should be noticed that this nepotism is also a weed growth of likeness to something similar, something which is close to us. Since laws are never made to the purpose which they currently serve, people often forget the origin and accept the current usage as the genuine one. They originate, they evolve, their purpose change from time to time.

Now the concluding lines…

More harm has been done than benefit by thrusting the “benefit for all” tag. People need to think for their good only and not meddle with the whole of humanity. Every man is capable of doing good to himself and to others for man is not naturally evil, on the contrary, man is naturally loving.                 

So far so good...

Heard about the guy who fell off a skyscraper? On his way down past each floor, he kept saying to reassure himself: So far so good…so far so good…so far so good. How you fall doesn’t matter. It’s how you land!

These lines from ‘La Haine’ pretty accurately describe the scenario of environmental disaster where man in his denial keeps asserting—so far so good…so far so good. The fall is pleasurable but for how long? How far? Where will he land? These are not bothering his conscience right now. Every now and then he needs some anaesthetic –in every epoch he needs new anaesthetic—to keep him distracted and distanced from the senselessness of his existence. He invented religion to keep himself busy with some meaningfulness and now his religion is consumption; a consumer of his own life as if he had to earn his own life back from mortgagee. I can hardly find a difference between those blatant priests of ancient religions who determined patterns of human life and the “corporate priests” of our time. They both produce a tamed, predictable, harmless, bootless and believing individual; ready to believe anything for the greater good, for magnificent future, for phantasmagoria of unimaginable, in fact a subject of ludicrousness. A little unbiased view can tell you what horrendous individuals these corporations produce although there is no decline in the amount of collective bovine pride that is boasted off.

By the time we begin to comprehend our environment, our existence and our objective, we are already entangled in the chains of consumerism. We are neck-deep in its water and it becomes our governing instinct in every endeavour. Each solution to a subtle problem is a new product, new base of consumers and new set of producers. This is the reason we see passive solutions to environmental crisis. Consumerism as a solution to consumerism! New consumerism to old consumerism! Use efficient light bulbs, plant a few trees—especially to break some record, recycle your paper, switch off lights for one hour on Earth’s day, recycle some more paper and fix your tap if it is leaking as if those were the causes of the climatic catastrophe. By all these “potent” methods of conservation, we can actually defeat the monster. The rape of nature is compensated by arranging a marriage: marriage to the raper. These useless methods will lead us nowhere but in the labyrinth of “so far so good”. What we need is a radical change of thought of how we evaluate our position with respect to our surroundings.

Two main reasons, as I see it, of why environmental crisis has reached a stage as dangerous as of now are wage slavery and private property. I would caution not to misinterpret private property with personal property. Every man and woman has the right to enjoy whatever he/she earns of his labour, i.e. personal property. And it is no better than stealing to reap where someone else has sowed i.e. private property. Private property is a product of social labour which, due to the laws of ownership, assigns products of labour to the one who owns means of production. Personal property is something you produce by your own labour. Now back to our discussion. The reason why we are facing such difficulties in handling of Nature is the borrowing of concept of ownership while transiting from Feudal ages to Capitalism. You see, when we bring individual ownership of lands, machines or any other means of production by the pretext of inheritance or capital, we are actually making the sense of having more privileged than any other intellectual sense. Now the one who owns has greater power in terms of laws than the one who really produces. Having sense master over all other senses!  It is this sense which led to the slavery by feudal lords and it is the same sense, with a little modification and a human face, which leads to wage slavery. To make this game seem fair, even a wage slave can climb up the ladders of slavery and become the one who can have wage slaves himself. This seems as something providing equality. You can be a wage slave today and you can have yourself many some other day contrary to those times where once a slave, always a slave. It makes people to compete to be either one who serves or the one who make others serve. In the process, few names change—sometimes swapping occurs and it is life.

Now one may ask what has wage slavery has to do with environmental crisis? It has to do a lot although we cannot suspect it because our stomach depends on it. And why our stomach is slave to wage? Because ownership of resources is decided by inheritance or capital and not by those who work on it. In fact we have developed quite sophisticated means of credit-debt system so that even if one is not benefitted by the fortunes of his predecessors, he can use the system to step up another web of wage slavery to amass huge wealth and then continue the pattern which has been followed since, seemingly, eternity. Who will suspect it as we are doing such a noble deed of providing jobs? Jobs for what? Jobs to consume and continue the worthless cycle of mindless consumption! Jobs to outrage the modesty of nature every single time we discover useless luxury to entertain ourselves with. It is not that I oppose materialistic view of life. It is not that I support an ascetic lifestyle of some sage in India who would go hungry to please God. It is not that I practise self-denial, self-destruction, perishing for some imaginary cause: I am no priest, I am no sage but one should do labour for what he wants. If you feel that your desire cannot be satisfied with what you have and it is too hard for you to take tough morsels of life as they come to you then go and work with your own bare hands for the item of luxury which fascinates you. Why do billions of people need to work as wage slaves for your fantasy, for your luxury? Why do billions of people need to think the way corporations, advertisements want them to think? That’s where the problem lays—Bovine mentality of people, herd instinct, millions mind thinking alike just like religion wanted them to. I am sure that atheism too is heading towards same bovine instinct. It will be disastrous if that happens. Man loses his contemplating power in herd and acquires the mind and idea of crowd. You see, if I make an item of luxury by my own hands, I have the full right to enjoy it and it produces no problem. Problem starts when people are dragged into the arena of mass production through wage slavery. It is not hard to imagine what deep dent billions of similar demands controlled through mass media produce on the face of Earth. Why same demands? Due to conditioning of human mind to consume, because of wage slavery to meet that false induced desire, because wage slaves working unaware of the catastrophe their slavery will warrant, because a tag of I own it. Why I own it? My parents left it for me, because I have capital from my wage slavery to buy the work of another wage slave whose wage is discriminated as his labour is physical and inferior compared to my intellectual labour and because I can measure that his labour requires less tiring of muscles and nerves than my own. Perhaps laughable assumptions and conclusions of history!

All these can be dealt with recycle of paper and turning off lights! People trained to consume without reason would obviously say so. People who value ”sense of having” more than the “sense of labour” would obviously say so. Biological inheritance transformed into property inheritance. All these laws framed, no matter they may seem trivial, by religious texts. Without the tag of ownership, one cannot have wage slavery. Without wage slavery there cannot be such ruthless exploitation of nature. In the name of fighting climatic battle we are plunged into another cyclone of consumption and this time with no guilt. In the words of Slavoj Žižek:

“This readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: We like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really hard for us (at least in the West) to accept is that we are reduced to the role of a passive observer who sits and watches what our fate will be. To avoid this impotence, we engage in frantic, obsessive activities. We recycle old paper, we buy organic food, we install long-lasting light bulbs—whatever—just so we can be sure that we are doing something. We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this will somehow influence the game's outcome.” 

The Linguistic Farce

My mind is crocheting some of the most bizarre thoughts these days, however I need to be dry enough to soak them, I need more time to grasp and make a thorough structure out of them. These thoughts, I think, are quite radical and out of my domain too in current cognition. So any attempt to handle them unripe would only yield and taste sour to me and maybe bitter to whomsoever it may serve as a meal. Therefore, I will not play with it. Instead I will bite some more out of my earlier fruit—the fruit of language; this fruit taste sweet.

A few days ago I was contemplating of results had language—a fully formed one—been a gift of God. Though a sign language would not make much difference yet I choose a language with words and human ability to spoken language as a prerequisite to attack the beliefs of Abrahamic religions. You may refer to earlier ideas in my post – ‘Language and complexity of Universe’. I find this post a continuation of my earlier one. Here we will explore the treasure-trove of the strange events which language subjects us to.

Let us step into our cave—a cave of knowledge, rather speculative knowledge. Abrahamic religions, in fact all sorts of major religions never find themselves easy to shed light on how actually language was first learned by humans. Subsequently to fill up pits in their logic they dig up the soil of God and make it even—a leveled ground for humanity to walk on. However in the event of such cover up there is always a possibility of sinking due to heavy load of knowledge. Let us explore different possibilities.

 

We, as a result of our observation, can safely conclude that language is not an inborn quality; the ability to learn language can be inborn. Language need to be learned through conscious effort. What about Adam and Eve? What about those ‘lucky in the most unlucky sense’ human souls? What language they knew? Different Abrahamic religions claim, according to their beliefs, a language of their choice. They are adamant that man was fully aware of his being when he landed on earth and not just being but much more than that—much more in the sense of Language. You see, when we assume language as a divine gift we need to simultaneously assert that man need to know some words, symbol representations, meaning of the words as a prerequisite and how to ramble those words in order to make sense out of it. Let us be generous and assume even that for the sake of doing justice to our Generosity.

What does our generous deed reap? Or seed of our generosity got spoiled? We discover that we have “a father” even before the act of one becoming a father, just because of language. We have one knowing, both Adam and Eve, about “mother” even before existence of first mother is witnessed. We have testimonials of one knowing of son, brother, sister, daughter even before the event of actually having witnessed such an event gladly. All sorts of definitions of relationships existing before the actual occurrence for the very first time! Nomenclature of undiscovered elements—absurdity of epic proportions! Even Absurdity would jump out of shock and ask—‘Am I really absurd? I haven’t been defined yet, not experienced yet!’ You see the “Linguistic Farce” does not stop just at individual relationships. It goes onto every single dimension of life. Pre-history would be ashamed of itself. Now even before the first rose is seen by Adam, he knows of it. Senses are being betrayed and the act of defining is mocked. A square is fully formed in Adam’s and Eve’s mind just to laugh at those who observed and discovered a square, rather invented it. A surface is “round”, “flat” even before it is defined to be round or flat; a “wheel” is lurking in some corner of Adam’s mind only to be ignored till the time is ripe; a “freedom” brings joy even before one has been enslaved; “good” before first good deed or first defined good deed; “sin” before first sin. But wait sin was there! Yes the sin of forbidden fruit! What am I saying! Are fairy tales told without language? “Existence” before definition of existence! “Man” before knowledge of man; “Knowledge” before knowledge; “God” before God.

With this immense gift at his disposal and the ability to put will in the form of words in some finite sequence of words, you can imagine how he defied the act of doing, experiencing, sensing to the pinnacle of idiocy. Senses stoop to Brain and ask—‘Are we any use to you, my lord?’ The act of observing and defining is now secondary to the act of knowing—you know even before you saw, even before you touched, even before you felt, even before you smelt, heard, tasted and comprehended. I am sure you understood the drama we played here. You can guess now who created whom.  

Language and Complexity of Universe

Haven’t we heard the shout of complex to give up our claims of atheism? I mean complexity of universe, living species and all that has been observed. They, in their attempts to not unburden their weights of belief which has afflicted them since the time way beyond their reach, have chosen a new pretext. A reason of complexity in universe, that you may get to hear somewhere- “Science has brought us closer to God”. And also that science has revealed the complexity of creation of God. With their jaws dropped in amazement, unable to deny, enjoying the beauty, intricate details. Now they have a new reason, a new beginning, and a belief that will get stronger in the same extent we discover. This new reason, which has separated itself from traditional theism and shaped in a division called ‘Deism’. Man, to whom all knowledge comes from senses, material exposures, has suddenly found this exposure too complex to handle. The impression of previous belief is so much deep that the mind now refuses to return to its default shape. When the earlier concepts, of eternal reward, punishments, predetermination, miracles, etc. didn’t work to man’s skeptical, ever evolving school of thoughts, he suddenly jumped to dump them and replace the earlier hypothesis with a new one. Now he sees complexity everywhere. He finds himself as a means to explore the universe, designed to be explored. The sole purpose of creating this immense, intricate universe is the study of it by humans. I must say whether the universe is amazing or not, whether it is complex, designed or such benevolent terms, language is definitely mischievous. What man may find in his own discovery i.e. language is nothing in comparison to what he finds elsewhere.

Now we move to the more specific content of our discussion, that is, the complexity of universe. When we brand a thing as complex, using the precious words which we found, does that really mean it is complex? Complexity, which we find so much awe-inspiring, is actually a function of our own discovery and workings of our mind. Our discovery! Language! For a certain thing to be labeled as complex, we are in need of three building blocks. One is language with a word “complex” defined in it, so that we say- “Yes that entity is complex”. Another major requirement is of predefined set of things to which we can associate the word complex- to all that we learned and found difficult to grasp.  And the final ingredient required is learning of new things on the base of what we have already learned and marked it to be complex with an invisible flag of our memory. In all we have discussed till now we found that complexity is not absolute but a function of our own mind and way of thinking, which is in turn a function of our social interaction, the way society responds to external environment. There is no such thing as absolute complexity. A man, never seen a car, not even others drive would certainly find it complex if it is asked of him to race. Is that complex? Again you got to refer to all the points above. Complex arises out of what you know and what you find new. Unable to assimilate your own facultative limitations, your own process of comprehending environment; one is bound to arrive at the conclusion of complex, mysterious.

In these schemes of things I find a silent sinner which is hardly a matter of concern for many. That sinner is surprisingly language.  It gives a feeling of absoluteness. A deep seated content: soothing, absolute and firm. No need to ramble in search of creator, complexity of universe. You can pursue it for the sake of pursuing, for amusement but to know if there is really a designer you need to find from where originates the language. There is no more to be done if you can remove this veil. Of every idea which we hold for granted there is a gloomy, mysterious past which has very successfully disassociated itself from the idea, leaving the idea alone to survive on its own and impressing upon our mind -“certain absoluteness”. This “Absoluteness” is a child of language. Constant usage of ideas through language makes them certain and firm. Idea is severed from its body and we conceive certainty. Not willing to know what was the past. I see some scientist, philosophers, and almost all theologians so sure of these building blocks of languages that they rarely feel the need to find on what grounds the seeds were sowed. What Sun they faced! What Water they soaked! And the most important of all- Who served those ideas as a meal for all! Definitely humans are not willing to assimilate unless they are forced.

Language is the most important builder in any line of thought. When you say something of rose, you know nothing of it but talk in terms of metaphors. You describe its colour, shape, peculiar characteristics but you know nothing of absolute rose. And all those individual components come from your senses and another set of predefined constructs which are themselves slaves of language. Even science which boasts of it as “unbiased” and “factual” is heavily dependent on language. Let us take the example of zero- an extraordinary discovery of mankind. Measurements, equations and whatever you can think of is adorned with a zero either evident or hidden. What is "zero"? Zero is only a concept to represent nothingness. Not absolute in itself. Where can you find "zero"? Nowhere! What can we say of "Zero"? Nothing! It is only a concept. It can only be defined in relativistic terms. It cannot be observed but only represents a situation and that situation is itself unknown and is only assumed for some calculation. You can differentiate one, two, three quantities of anything but can you differentiate between zero quantity of different things. Can you differentiate between a zero arrived from adding two equal and oppositely signed numbers (negative numbers are again hypothetical) and a zero obtained from absence of counting? It has no existence except on paper. Can anyone find a zero for me? I am not judgemental here but questioning absoluteness. A few days ago I was confronted with the absoluteness of Pi, of being an eternal truth. Pi is the ratio of circle’s circumference to its diameter. Perhaps one should know the meaning of eternal when one talks of it. He wouldn’t have said it had he known that a perfect circle is to be found nowhere in nature. Its existence is only for humans and will end with humans. And yes of course the measurement of circumference to diameter ratio will not be approximated by rational numbers such as 22/7, 355/113, etc. if there was no zero, which as I have pointed out earlier is a mere concept on paper. Sometimes I think that humanity chokes on its own inventions, perplexed to the extent of divinity. People should base their thinking on materialism. I hear a common slogan now a days- “Science is our savior”. No doubt it has made us a totally distinguished species but life cannot be lived on pure science. There are things about which I wouldn’t even care to know to live my life. For as long you will be fascinated by the others, you will think of yourself as inferior, unable to assert to yourself with a “Yes to life”, unable to walk and think on your own, needing a stick to walk, to tell you what is right and what is wrong. Life is spontaneous and it is best if it is lived like that.

Done with that, I now want to explore what makes me think language is human invented. Human existence dates much back to the appearance of written languages. Sign languages being discovered as the earlier form of communication, cave paintings and all. There is nothing concrete providing a hint that first human knew to read and write. And it is impossible without syntax of language to have full- fledged spoken language, possible only if you have someone before yourself speaking that language, like we have our parents. One may say that God must have spoken to us the language but then it is virtually impossible to form language syntax from merely spoken language. Even if we assume that God gave us both syntax and spoken language when he first created us, it is impossible that such an able human wouldn’t communicate his thoughts through writing. Certainly these thoughts must reflect themselves in the first appearance of written communication that is documented. But there are none. There are only fantasy stories, aiming in the dark. It is strange to observe that with such vast amount of knowledge in the form of language, knowing words of things which were not even discovered in those times Adam and Eve chose not to express their thoughts. I mean when there is thought process communicated through writing and spoken language it is reflected in the offspring. But they chose to draw cave paintings of sun, animals, etc. How come a single language speaking community starting with the fantasy of Abrahamic religions branched into so many languages? Just like I speak English today and the next day I am fluent in Arabic. Well, all that is speculation, the truth being that evolution line of homo species proves that language was not present since the time we first appeared. It is only a recent phenomenon compared to the vast scale of human existence. Without language everything is a response to stimuli and with it all seems absolute and concrete. Man was too joyful not to accept that this spectacular phenomenon was not watched by anyone divine. Although he feared unknown, nature but concrete God came with language definitions and it will always be a concept, perhaps seeming complex concept. 

Theism, its take on Femininity and Poverty

Theism is a belief that there is an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient creature, creating all of us so that He, Himself, is out of nothingness and shaped us so that He can keep our ashes as trophies of His creation for no audience, admirer of His. It goes on to explain that He designs and determines every moment and on the day of resurrection He will punish or reward for what was already preordained by Him. And of course it makes perfect sense.

With this definition of theism in mind, we will now see how religious faith has taken up femininity, poverty and what was the real cause behind the torment of womanhood and poor? Although I am unsure whether religion has anything in the origin of poverty, I am confident that it helped to sustain and establish poverty as something which is self-evident. And faith did it with a tool called Fate. Similarly, feminine roles were also made concrete by religion. At first, a superficial glance will say that poverty and condition of womanhood has nothing to relate, but surprisingly they have. That common thing is “weakness”. What is your take on why poverty first raised its head? Weakness of an individual to protect what he claimed was his. Saying in a different manner- power of another individual to snatch and stamp a title of his own name. Weakness can be mental or physical. And there you see a striking similarity between poverty and condition of women. Don’t compare it with contemporary times. I am diving into the origin. What could have caused the predetermination of fate in various societies about the figure called woman? Definitely weakness of women! Now you see it clearly, the origin of both highly mystified things, poverty and plight of women. Often they are intermixed with fate and religious dogmas, all culminating in a mysterious being called God. Nobody needs to feel outraged if I call him/her weak because my purpose is not to brand humans of contemporary times as weak or strong, but to show them how things could have been when they were shaping themselves up.

Let us look at it objectively. I am assuming the much prevalent belief of Abrahamic religions that Adam and Eve were the initial beings on Earth. Nothing religious that I want to say. Societies let us say, sprang from them. So in a  society which was not that much sophisticated enough to have complex institutions, aims and goals, concrete laws, well defined possessions and their only focus was to survive, what can be the deciding factor at that time? I guess you don’t need to think that much. It can be only power- physical as well as mental. What decided all further things? It was power. Power that started individually became complex day by day with institutionalization. But even today the conclusions of its origin (i.e. power) are standing like any unshakable rock. To sustain those conclusions you look onto an imaginary being- originator of fate. This fate stops us from discovering what is hiding in the darkness of caves.  It is not at all coincidence that both woman and poor were treated in the most gruesome of ways by societies and that too on common grounds. They have one thing behind them- weakness. To support it you can always imagine why God has always been related to a dominant male figure- a king. More than anything else power is important. And that’s why God is powerful. Everything that is weak or was weak in the past originated in punishment of God- meaning punishment of powerful. Already determined fate supporting almost everything in society! Fear of powerful, omnipotent led to a poor and a hapless womanhood.