Listen

When you actively listen you will find a whole new world.

If you can enter the talker’s skin their world will gradually unfold, the depth and expanse of their world will grow illuminated by their story.

The more you eliminate your judgements from this picture the more you will be enlightened.

Like mindfulness meditation, active listening is a faculty you can harness by practicing.

Success

I think, anxiety from “fear of failure” must be embedded in our DNA like every other animal species.

Little has changed since our ancestors walked across the savannah under scourging heat, searching for food and threatened by wild animals.

Today everything from our education systems to business systems leverage the same anxiety.

At school we are constantly exposed to tests utilising our primordial fear. Success is cherished, failure is demonised. Obedient individuals are programmed to contribute to the overall success of the larger group they belong to.

It is only until recently with the rise of startup culture, failure was made welcoming and become important part of development process; the idea is to learn from mistakes in organised fashion. Alas this is an illusion.

At the end of several fail-improve cycles, the business may come to an abrupt end when it runs out of fuel. Some say 90% of tech start-ups doom to fail.

In other words, it is important to differentiate failure as a useful business process, as opposed to failure as business, the latter is unfortunately akin to returning empty handed from hunting.

So where does this leave us at?

As we get older we begin to realise other important facts of life; time is getting scarcer, we are not getting any healthier, and our hormones (including the ones that drive anxiety) get weaker.

With anti-anxiety, anti-cholesterol, and anti-high blood pressure pills on the table, suddenly it may occur to us “what the hell have I been doing to myself all this time? Fuck success!”, and this is, dear friends, my definition of “maturity”.
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Locke, Empiricism and Scottish Enlightenment

English philosopher John Locke was the father of British Empiricism. Locke  greatly influced the works of Scottish Enligtenment philosophers who succeeded him, David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and Francis Hutcheson.

Empiricism is a theory which state that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience. Undoubtedly the idea of Empiricism was revolutionary at the time of Locke.

Empiricism is the central tool of Enlightenment. David Hume was a staunch proponent of Empiricism and Skepticism.

Links:

John Locke (Wikipedia)

David Hume (Wikipedia)

Empiricism (Wikipedia)

Scottish Enlightenment (Wikipedia)

The Deal

I have the right to disrespect your religion, just as you have the right to disrespect my conviction of not believing supernatural. I have the right to mock your religion, just as the right you have to mock Science and Atheism. Drawing Charles Darwin as a Chimpanzee, or mocking Richard Dawkins as a pig do not offend me at all, I expect drawing your prophet in funny ways should not offend you either. In your case I know you are not trying to offend me personally, in my case you should know I don’t intend to offend you personally. Regardless of your faith I may like or dislike you for the things you do as a human, similarly you should judge me for the things I do as a human. I think this is a fair deal.
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The Stick

Tolerance is a stick with two ends

Majority of population in Western countries are disillusioned by the fact that Muslim population living in their country are mostly secular, peaceful people who do not harm others. Being a minority minding their business, they gain natural sympathy of the majority. This is acceptable and nothing is wrong with that, however it reflects a partial truth.

When numbers are reversed, and muslims become majority, they become part of political power granted by their religion. One good example to support this argument is Turkey. In the past decade or so the Islamist political party in power started to challenge and erode secularism, established a police state with biased judiciary and began to jail or intimidate seculars. Islam is a political ideology as well as a religion, therefore this shouldn't surprise us.

However this view also explains why non-religious populations, who were trapped in those countries are worried. Lets be clear, we cannot call this Islamophobia, as this is not an irrational fear we can mock.

If you are a non-religious person, living in a religious country is demoralising and degrading to say the least, because you will be oppressed one way or another if you choose to express yourself.

If you express your disinterest in religion and don’t abide by its restrictions in ways to draw attention, you can be intimidated or punished by mobs, you could even be prosecuted for that. This is true for countries such as Sauidi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. Penalties are different but principles are the same.

Majority in religious countries show less tolerance to you than we show to them in the West where they are in minority. Numbers matter.

Ultimately this is the bit Western liberals are missing, they have partial perspective because either they don't have first hand experience of living in a religious society or they lack deeper knowledge on history and on the nature of religions, or they don't push their intellectual capacity hard enough to see the big picture, because they focus on their lives in the West.

The Bad News

Sometimes despite our effort to curb unpleasant news, we cannot avoid them entirely. Recently I came across this dreadful news of a couple were said to have had sex, went shopping and ate pizza as their 3 year old toddler Scott McMillan lay dying on 4 November after alleged incidents of escalating violence by the pair including, it is claimed, beating him with a frying pan and hanging him upside down by his feet.

Regardless of statistical rarity of such incidents we, great majority, are all deeply distressed by such news.

On the one hand as a society we should know about bad news, knowing is the only way to start thinking about what went wrong and accordingly develop ways to start improving.

On the other hand media outlets love breaking bad news, simply because it is the cheapest way for them to increase their circulation.

I think avoiding media, not watching TV, not following media outlets on the Internet is not the solution.

We need a balanced approach.

Sure we want to have a pleasant weekend, with family spending the afternoon in a grand park, strolling and enjoying a cone of ice-cream, followed by a visit to a nearby museum. We want nothing to ruin such experience. We know, our remembering self will give precedence to bad experiences, they are the ones in our memories persist into the future.

But life comes as a package, there can be perfect moments and we should seize them. But life itself in its entirety, is far from being perfect. Hence looking at a compromise, and developing a wisdom to balance bad news with positive approaches seems to be a good strategy.

We cannot do anything for the poor boy. Capital punishment of his parents may provide temporary relief, our primordial instincts will come into play, however it won’t let the problem go away.

A meaningful discussion on how we can be aware of psychotic individuals in our communities, what services should be improved for prevention of abuse is a good start. Then as responsible fellow human beings we should look into ways to contribute to such solutions with our participation. By being mere observers we cannot cause change. We need to articulate change and participate to it.

References:

Whitsunday Coast Guardian Article:
http://www.whitsundaycoastguardian.com.au/news/torture-and-killing-boy-3-could-be-punishable-deat/2500669/

Desiring change

In my previous philosophical quest I asked:

”Why do we celebrate the New Year?”

I think I have an answer for that, today, on the 1st day of the year 2015.

We do need to celebrate the New Year.

We know the New Year will not be perfect, the misery, wars, injustice, poverty around the world will continue. We know we or our beloved ones can be struck by disease, or worst we may lost someone we love in the coming year.

But what we celebrate is marking the beginning of change. We simply celebrate fulfilling a unique quality of being human, ability to change for the better, for a better world, a better humanity.

We should never stop desiring change.

Happy New Year!

The New Year

Why do we celebrate the New Year?

Is it simply our desire to close off something and open up another? Is it a desire for a new beginning, yet we know it is not going to be new? Why do we keep deluding ourselves with a hope we know as hollow as the trunk of a dying oak tree? Why is all this show? Is it the show must go on or is it there is nothing but a show? Or is it simply a long for continuum drives us in expense of an annoying triviality?

2014

On reflection it has been an ordinary year made of extraordinary things. The world, with all of its absurdities, continued to exist. Every piece of news made us baffled, made us indifferent at the same time. Boredom arrived in a package of sanity, as we became immune to insanity. I wish you all a different year in 2015, I really do.

The Human Condition

Human condition is what it means to be a human, our self awareness, our skepticism, our independence, our curiosity, our desire for gratification, above all our truthfulness.

Sometime in our evolutionary lineage, starting from babyhood, we learned deception, to camouflage our true intent, to gain advantage and increase our chance of survival without being detrimental to wellbeing of the clan. Our true self remains hidden under a thick veneer of lies, so much so that, today we only use the word “lie” to refer to inconvenient ones.

But the human condition has a darker side, a vulnerability, our limited ability to remain truthful to ourselves. Perhaps being untruthful to others has become such an integral part of survival, we became prone to apply it to ourselves, by that we did not realise what we lost was the very essence, the very meaning of human condition.
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The Office Horror

The office is where we hang our identity on a coat hanger when we get there, and wear it back when we leave.

Essentially we sell our self along with our work, in return for cash. The office is a small scale North Korea, where we are constantly reminded of values and behaviours of the corporate propaganda paying us.

Just about everybody, including party leaders play a game, day after day, a game that everybody spends every effort to pretend it is real.

In this play, often in subtle ways, we allow ourselves to be threatened, bullied and pacified, we allow emotional rape and pillage, we are dragged to say things we don’t believe, do things do not fit us.

We long for five o’clock to pick up and wear our identity back from the coat hanger, only to have a break for sixteen hours, delusional to the extent to believe that we are free at last, in this never-ending play.
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Freedom of being ordinary

 I find two moral convictions problematic; we are special, and life has purpose. 

Challenging them, is a moral obligation and a liberating necessity, not only they are false, but they restrict our true freedom, freedom to criticize conventions, including the freedom of being ordinary and freedom of setting our lives to have no specific purpose.

Precision

What is astonishing in this incomplete self portrait of Claude Monet is the level of precision and integrity.

Proportions and placements of incomplete parts, hands, knees, legs, wrinkles of the jumper, the positioning of the body, the light, the colours are just perfect. You can see the undrawn. The "soul" is there. Nothing looks awkward. Despite its incompleteness and impressionist style it gives one a true sensation of a living person.

This is much superior than say today's hyper-realistic drawings we see mushrooming across the Internet. In those images the precision is achieved by photographic imitation, in this one it is a natural, one in a billion talent with soul.

Claude Monet - self portrait

Fairness

In 2002, My bother and I, in a hotel room in Canberra, were listening to Turkish radio. The commentator announced “land-slide victory” of Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) winning the Turkish general elections. I cannot forget that grim expression on my brother’s face, he said “This is the End”.

Further back, I migrated to Australia in 1989, quarter a century ago, not because I had fascination with its natural beauties, and welcoming people, which are undoubtedly true, but because I felt I had irreconcilable and painful differences between my philosophy and the one imposed by the mainstream Turkish culture I had grown up with.

Regardless, I continued to admire Turkish people who shared similar values with me and who are sufficiently educated and wise to follow a more tolerant and humanistic life view, through which a strong sense of “fairness” remained the common denominator.

There is a beach in Gündoğan Bodrum, one my favorite spots in Turkey. It has a picturesque mosque standing next to beaches, and cafes, where waves of gentle Aegean Sea, caressing its white walls.

I like that mosque. It is tiny, loveable, simple, rural and unpretentious. But it is more than a mosque. Surrounded by beaches where tourists sunbath, and cafes where you have a beer to enjoy the sunset, for me, this area is the Nirvana of Humanity.

A pious Muslim praying inside, and I am, being an Atheist,  sipping my beer in a neighbouring café, without bothering each other. Sharing the same air, being fair to each other. This was the Turkey I would never have left behind.

This Sunday there are local elections in Turkey. These elections are critical, a moment of truth, a great reckoning.

Either my compatriots will re-elect a corrupt, vicious, incompetent, intolerant, arrogant, divisive dictator or they say “enough is enough”, crash open the iron gate they let built twelve years ago, and rediscover their centuries old virtues, tolerance and fairness.

It is in this perspective I am with virtuous people of Turkish land, religious or not. So long as we remain faithful to “fairness”, a much better future will be ours and our children’s.

As always, there may be something to learn from bad dreams. But nightmares are nightmares. Life is real and meant to be beautiful.

Sensual Bruschetta

Bruschetta is my all time favourite light lunch dish. So easy to prepare in lazy summer afternoons, so healthy, and so Mediterranean, I keep making them every time with a twist.

Toast diagonally sliced Rustic bread with or without olives. Slice open one end of a garlic and rub on bread slices while they are hot. Dice Roma tomatoes , and avocado, throw them randomly on bread slices. Drizzle extra virgin olive oil. Optionally, add humous and black olives on the side.

Make no mistake this is a sensual dish. Tomatoes will fall, your hands and face will be soaked in oil. But that's the way it is, like quality sex.

The nose job

A duel to resolve scientific arguments? Well those were the days my friend..

"While studying at the University of Rostock[12] in Germany, on 29 December 1566 Tycho Brahe, a Danish nobleman known for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical and planetary observations, lost part of his nose in a sword duel against fellow Danish nobleman (and his third cousin), Manderup Parsberg.Tycho had earlier quarrelled with Parsbjerg over the legitimacy of a mathematical formula, at a wedding dance at professor Lucas Bachmeister's house on the 10th, and again on the 27th. Since neither had the resources to prove the other wrong, they ended up resolving the issue with a duel. Though the two later reconciled, the duel two days later (in the dark) resulted in Tycho losing the bridge of his nose.

In his De nova stella (On the new star) of 1573, Tycho Brahe refuted the Aristotelian belief in an unchanging celestial realm. His precise measurements indicated that "new stars," (stellae novae, now known as supernovae) in particular that of 1572, lacked the parallax expected in sub-lunar phenomena, and were therefore not "atmospheric" tailless comets as previously believed, but were above the atmosphere and moon."

Resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe

An antique shop in Amsterdam

An antique shop window in Amsterdam.. Delight of browsing through objects survived distant past. Just think about care, craftsmanship and love embedded in these objects, and happiness or sorrow they caused in fellow beings who are no longer with us. These objects whisper us stories they witnessed, life dramas they were part of. Alas we can't hear them.

Friction

The Physicist Laurence Krauss said:

"Philosophers are threatened by science because “science progresses and philosophy doesn’t."

I imagine Philosophy is like an annoying five year old, constantly bombarding an adult (Science) with deceivingly simple but in essence deeper questions.

According to late Physicist Richard Feynman ‘doubt’ constitutes the central tenet of Science.

“Now, we scientists … take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure — that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes that this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle. Permit us to question — to doubt, that’s all — not to be sure. And I think it is important that we do not forget the importance of this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained. Here lies a responsibility to society.”

Hence “doubt” it seems an area of agreement between Science and Philosophy.  Both use doubt as a key in their quest to understand the nature of reality.

Note Feynman also stated:

“We can't define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers… one saying to the other: "you don't know what you are talking about!". The second one says: "what do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you? What do you mean by know?"”

Indeed Science and Philosophy have conflict of interest, a point of friction. Science is most notably progressive. It marks whatever in its checklist, and after removing shadows of doubts moves on with new doubts. Whereas Philosophy it seems is stuck with questions and doubts with little intent to seek answers. One strongly favours seeking answers; the other one favours seeking questions.

Having said that progressive nature of science should not mean ‘anything goes’. It should not be “blind progression” regardless of moral questions or despite humanity. Scientists should have and do have moral responsibilities. 

I do think classical education and understanding Philosophy of Science are crucial tools for scientists to understand their role and responsibilities in the society, in answering questions like where they come from, how Science progressed, and what are moral and social challenges they are confronted with.

But I also think there may be a simpler reason for Krauss’ and others’ strong reaction against Philosophy, in essence it may indeed be a reaction against “Science Denialism”. They may be seeing Philosophy as a breeding ground for that. This would of course be a bold generalisation; nevertheless I believe has been a factor.

A day of awakening

If I need to pick up just one day, among others; mother's day, father's day, valentine's day and so on, it would be the women's day.

Women’s day calls for action, a reminder for humankind, as it points to a shame we all share.

Hundreds of millions of women are oppressed around the world, deprived of freedom to shape their life. They are physically and mentally abused.

Everything we achieved on our planet so far in the name of “civilisation” will be meaningless, unless the other half of our species is treated equally.

Therefore this is not a day to celebrate. Not yet. It must be a day of awakening.

Why do we love reading some books?

Why do we love reading some books, but not the others?

Inspired by mathematician Roger Penrose's depiction of Platonic Mathematical World, Mental World, and Physical World, I would like to present my theory.

From the book: Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality, Vintage Books, 2005.

I begin by breaking the problem into several worlds.

The world the author perceives, the world he describes, and the world we perceive.

The discrepancies between these worlds are inevitable; they would have cues on their own, as well as hindrances for our view.

Regardless of the author’s intentions, we begin to build our own world from page one. We continue to fit our perception on the world we have been constructing, not on the world that the author saw or described. Similar to divergence in mathematics we diverge from intended world-view.

So the secret to good authorship must be to relieve both the author and the reader from a burden, the burden of mapping author's world.

Rather than pushing an answer down the throat of the reader, the author should pose a question, such that the world he perceives disappears, and the world his reader perceives gradually unfolds.

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Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Reality

http://aminotes.tumblr.com/post/1025534467/the-concept-of-laws-the-special-status-of-the

References:

1. Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality, Vintage Books, 2005