AS YOU THINK SO YOU BECOME.....

Every difficulty in life present us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources, the trials we endure can and should introduce us  to our strengths.

WE ought to be normally suspicious of the murky ideas laid down in pure academic and philosophical debates, exposes and  some dry texts.

I personally passionately denounce display of cleverness for it's own sake. One should be committed to non patronizing explanations of helpful ideas for living better. One would consider himself  successful when his ideas are easily grasped and put to use in someones real life where they could actually do some good elevating out character.

The art of living is actually a philosophy of inner freedom and tranquility, based on moral teachings stripped of sentimentality, piousness and metaphysical mambo jumbo.

Happiness and  personal fulfillment are the natural consequences of doing the right thing. Unlike many of  our days thinkers, we ought to be less concerned with seeking  to preach and lecture the world , than with identifying the specific steps to take in the pursuit of betterment and moral progress.

Seeking moral progress over the seeking of moral perfection is a sure sign of the higher life serenity. Moral progress results in freedom from inner turmoil,  we can stop fretting about this and that.

Spiritual progress requires  us to highlight what is essential, and to disregard everything else as trivial and  unworthy of our attention.

Let's quit trying to be something ultra-special , to be saints or mystics, or even  heroes, living our lives through useless continuous competitions, and instead try our best  and utmost to be honorable decent people, living upright  and decent lives, becoming our best  possible selves.

Rightness is what satisfies  the person for the sake of his own mind.





My thanks as usual for your time and patience, salamat.

NO CLEAR TITLE !!

A people -  Syrian or most of the Arab peoples-  is a living thing, except of course when it's dead. One sign of it's being alive is that it is changing all the time,  and it is an absolute commandment that no change must be interfered with.

For , on the one hand, political change cannot be resisted and, on the other , to repress change would block and oppose life. History cannot be stopped when it suites a governing oligarch.

When the ruling authorities of all Arab states including those of Syria and not excluding those of the Gulf-states, address the general public, they always speak with contempt, disdain  and derision thinking to guide or straighten out a situation or whole segments of the population. They also tend to deny that during the life of a nation it is at times better , more uniform and flexible, than at other times, for whatever happens to it at other more turbulent times is not disorder and decay but necessary evolution .

I'm here playing two roles . As an observer who  refuses to utter absolute judgements and final verdicts, and as a person who lived and still is connected to those countries ; I'm saying : " Hands off , enough."

It is not for the ruler to decide for his subjects the idea and notions of wright and wrong , enforcing it by cruel genocide most of the time, rather , these new evolutionary changes will be forced, and not taken from such rulers.

It is time for such oligarchies and rulers to retire and fade away in history no matter how against human nature such behavior sounds.




my usual gratitude for your time and patience, salamat. 

THOUGHTS FROM AN ELECTION YEAR !!!

IT used to be that unassuming listeners and the general public cultivated their minds through periods of elections, more so in a general election year, with it's heated debates, which feeds curiosity, and furnish imagination.

Good politics, moreover, are part of the general culture, morals and literature. Today that source of culture has dried up, as well ; it has been delegated, and professional politicians no longer write or debate for the public or the citizen but for one another.

Lately their narrow subjects and bickeries have ceased to be of any real interest to most. Such topics are not expected to attract the general citizenry.

The great questions about being and becoming, the test of truth, and the contradictions  of common sense, have not lost their fascination among most of the populace, but politicians and their related media  professionals no longer write for or address the intelligent, only their fellow politicians and professional media collaborators.

The elaboration of modern politics and governance go far beyond assertion and counter assertion on such simple matters of merit and quality of this or that politician candidate.

WE should have no wish to reprove any honest use of the intellect. Our aim should only be to contrast implicit claims with actual results, rhetorical slogans with performance, and to ascribe discrepancy not to individual fault but to the temper of the world and the deceitful march of our times.

WE are mistaken when we believe that culture, the humanities and our economical welfare are being served by politicians, their debates, and their election machines.




Thanks for your time and patience in a year of elections.

PARALLELISM AND CONFORMITY

A technical definition of Fascism as a political philosophy, and the characterization of political systems that are widely described as Fascist would certainly include two current models,  Islamic/theocratic movements or monarchies and autocratic/ despotic regimes. Both either aspiring to govern or actually in power.

IT'S proved by the fact that Fascism as well as our two models have created a living faith, and that this faith is very powerful in the minds of men devoted to them, it is demonstrated by those who have suffered and died for them as much as a result of them.

This Fascism under both faces is a political philosophy that is avowedly authoritarian, and seeks the supremacy of it's own, over others through the institution of absolute power. In the use of Fascist as a pejorative description, the term can apply to individuals and sub-states groups and actual reigning regimes.

In such regimes - as the Assad's regime in Syria, or any theocracy for that matter, Bahrain and it's neighbors for example - whether existing or aspiring to govern. There is not much use for , or presence of democracy, civil liberties, or due legal process. Human rights are arbitrarily at best and extensively violated, summary arrests, detentions without trials, and capital punishment for offences which include dogmatic, theocratic or political opposition and dissent to any rule, whether by the established regime or an aspiring and forming power trying to over throw an existing regime.

IF there are any elections they will be a sham, rigged, or influenced by various forms of coercion.  Close control of the media and extensive censorship is the rule, and it's shared religiously by both types of governance. Typically such regimes are conservative economically and morally, favoring business and business-owners over working people, outlawing  trade-unions,  and entertaining continuous suspicion of intellectuals, writers, artists and academics, all types of free thinkers are unwelcome and not tolerated.

These common  characteristics and tendencies so typical of both types of  absolute and despotic rules , define them both as Fascists. these two models of existing or aspiring forces, are unfortunately the only models fighting it out nowadays in the Arab arena  and beyond, in most of the Islamic world. The lack of a third , secular and democratic alternative is very disappointing and alarming.





Many thanks to Mr. Grayling for his insightful notes in defining  aspects of classical Fascism, and as usual to my readers for their patience and time, salamat.

THE ARAB SPRING

Human rights and civil liberties, none of these are  mere abstractions. The difference they make to the lives of individuals is so vast. Only compare the life of the ordinary man and woman in a western country today with the lives of many of their fellows in developing countries, especially those where religion remains a dominating influence over people's lives.

Religious inspired and backed-up revolts and uprisings, have all their own dynamics, which gradually makes them turn against the values which facilitated their own rise. They therefore change from being a weapon against repression into a weapon of repression, and everything they had set out to destroy re-emerge in new and worse forms.

Sectarianism and tribalism,racism and the praise of war and violence are the results of all Arab revolts and uprisings, which attempt to revive the kind of dictatorships and absolutism once exercised by dictatorships and monarchies. Regimes where the word "democracy" meant a term of horror, and the people were regarded as anarchic and dangerous. WE by now tragically know the results all too well.

TO place reliance on reason, and champion the autonomy and rights of the individual, and oppose absolute monarchies and absolutist regimes, organised religion and the reign of autocratic regimes and  groups are unable to give or do justice.  Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self imposed  immaturity, immaturity in the Arab case is the inability to use one's understanding to his or her problems without guidance from another, whether it be a religious dogma  or foreign powers. And their inability to use their understanding without guidance from another is the state of affairs throughout the whole region. THE freedom to use reason publicly in all matters is practically nonexistent and not tolerated.

PEOPLE of the Arab world can not frame a just constitution or even think about a just political order , until they first figure out who they truly are and consequently the best way to live. Islamic or secular, democratic or theocracy, Shii'sm or Sunnism, to the left or right, liberalism or religious conservatism or even an amalgam of all this, the people of those countries do not know which they want nor are they in any agreement among each other about the way to craft an acceptable living model.

ON all sides we only hear: DO NOT ARGUE !!! OBEY, do not argue; believe, pay and don't think. WE live the culture of the "do not argue."



MY special thanks to all for your time and patience, salamat.

A HECK OF A SITUATION !!!

The founders of western philosophy, the ancient Greeks, guys like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle,thought that the most important philosophical question in the universe, the question to which all other philosophical questions lead, is the question " How should we live ?" The awkward situation in Syria is that all parties ask this same question and each claim the answer opposing the other.


Assuming the question here is whether it's okay for Bashar Assad to run Syria the way he does, or did for the past 12 years, or even the way his father before him did for over thirty years.

I may not know what the best moral or ethical theory is, but if I have any moral knowledge at all, I know that what MR.Assad is doing and might be up to is wrong.

THE Syrian regime and as a last resort for it's survival and the close ones surrounding him, is willing to go into a civil war,and a very bloody one for that, that result in the disintegration of the political structure of Syria as we know it, and the formation of many smaller states, including an Alawite one on most of the coastal geography of actual Syria.All under the same question of " how should we live?"

SO why play around the bush ?? indeed, it's tempting to say that anyone who thinks it is okay for MR. Assad to wreck his country , and ruin the lives of thousands upon thousands of people is a moral incompetent, regardless of the outcome if or when there is a regime change.

A goal of successful countries ought to be to help pull failed countries out of their nightmare.




Thank you for listening and salamat.

PICTURE AT AN EXIBITION !!!

THIS year's election debacle between president Obama and GOP's Romney is just about to start, at least officially.....

SOME of the most hard -fought political arguments of our times, take place this year between two rival camps. The laissez fair camp and the fairness camp. Media is calling it "the middle class or the ninety nine % against the one % rich."

Leading the laissez fair camp are free market libertarians who believe that justice consists in upholding and respecting the voluntary choices made by consenting adults, and legislation to oblige. The fairness camp contains theorists of a more egalitarian tendencies. In their view, justice requires policies that reform and restore social and economic disadvantages and disparities, and give everyone a fair or at least better chances at success.

Often the disagreements are among partisans or rival advocates in the public realm. Sometimes the disagreements are within us as individuals.

Can we reason our way from the judgments we make about concrete situations to the principles of justice we believe should apply in all situations?? That's what moral reasoning consists in.

Disagreements about right or wrong, justice and injustice are part of life in democratic societies, some believe fairness requires taxing the rich to help the poor, and help preserve social benefits, while others believe it is unfair to tax away money people have earned through their own efforts, no matter how they did it as long as it's legal. Elections are won and lost on these disagreements and premises.

What we take to be public debate about justice and rights would be nothing more than a reflection of our moral convictions, and as much as we might be tempted to think that our moral convictions are fixed once and for all, by upbringing, faith or philosophical maturity, sometimes, an argument can change our minds.

WE must rise above the prejudices and routines of everyday life, to grasp the real meaning of justice and fair life for most. Elections this year are going to show us what we really think and who we really are.




Thanks to all for your time and salamat.