Camel and desire for meaning

A Persian parable goes like this,

“One day Sa’adi (a Persian poet) was traveling by foot from one village to another. The footprints on the trail caught his attention. There were footprints of a camel and a man. After a while, he saw print of camel in sitting position and prints of hands shanks, toes, foot (the sign of difficulty in climbing down and climbing up of camel), and of low pressure pee beside it. He concluded, “A pregnant woman must be sitting on the camel”… and then he noticed that there are flies at one side of trail and bees on other side trail flying here and there, “Hmm, the camel must be loaded with ghee at one side and honey on other side” .. While continuing to follow the footprints, he also noticed that grass at one side of trail is grazed upon and other side is untouched, “Aha, one eye of camel must be blind”… On his way, he meets a man with a stick who was looking desperate. As he reached the man, the man asks, “Haven’t you seen a camel on your way? I stopped for rest and fell into sleep and after waking up found that my camel is missing”.. Sa’adi replied, “Was your camel blind at one eye?” …”Yes” the man becomes excited… “Was it carrying a pregnant woman and was loaded with honey and ghee?.. Sa’adi continued asking… “Yes, all the signs are correct” the man becomes hopeful … “Well, I haven’t seen your camel”… Hearing the answer, the man loses his temper and starts beating Sa’adi… “You must have stolen my camel”… It took a few hit of sticks and lot of explanations before he could convince the man that he has just seen the prints and marks not the real camel… It is said that after getting out of trouble, Sa’adi promised to himself that this good lesson, if people ask me, “Have you seen camel?” even if I have seen one, my answer will be, “No”….

Though this parable was created to warn for unnecessary zeal in expressing quick conclusions but my aim here for it is to illustrate the deep desire of mankind for finding meaning in everything is basically originates out of their ARROGANCE. Men basically want to appear right because proving wrong or errors wounds their ego and self-confidence. Men try very hard and even at great costs to appear consistent and absolutely right. And it is why they try to relate themselves with something that “That is always right”… Some men try to be consistent with nature (Naturalists), Some try to be consistent with a form of “Infallible Truth” coming from a higher source like that of “God” (Religious people), Some try to be consistent with logic (axioms that have passed the tests of falsifications; Philosophers) and some try to be consistent with Science (Hypotheses that have passed the tests of both falsifications and evidences)…

You might say, “OK, that is what we all know… What is the problem?” … Well, quest for consistency is not a problem in itself. It becomes problematic with the emotions are invested in it. You know, mankind is basically “Slaves to their emotions”. Emotions are system of rewards and punishments within each person. When something is consistent with our emotions, our emotions reward us with good mood and feeling good. As a joke makes us laugh, similarly by feeling “Right” or be on the right side, our emotions reward us with feeling good. On other side, by feeling that we are wrong or we are on the wrong side, our emotions punish us with sadness and guilt.

Men are in fact slaves of their emotions and it is why, they usually do not listen, read or investigate what their opponents say. They fear that by being wrong they will be punished by their emotions and they try by every way to escape it. It is also the basis of our prejudices and standing on one leg and stressing on “Our truth” against “others false”…

The Venus Project, Jacque Fresco -

Usually, we take the Utopian thinking and its products, "utopias" as something "more than real" and as our sanity ends at reality so they look "unreal", and un-examined. It is the same as when we say, "more than happy".  It has nothing to do with happiness but is just an expression. But wait a moment, how the science progress? error and trial.. How the philosophy progress? thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis... how human experience grow? by learning from mistakes... Does the fear of errors and mistakes stop us to not practice Science, Philosophy or interact with each others?

Of course, we go but there is a way to go safely for them and that is to first test them in small and pilot projects in a manageable environments to learn the costs and benefits out them and to perfect them before putting them in practice...

You might have heard about Venus project of Jacque Fresco. Of course, it is utopian but just because it utopian doesn't mean it is totally unreal. Utopias are in fact mirrors in which we see the reflections of our current reality. So, I hope you will enjoy seeing some reflections...



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Hungry eyes

It was raining. After a week of clear and sunny sky that I used to know March with, it was again cloudy and rainy. I like to see the pouring sky especially when it dances in mild wind. I like rain because I see it as a soul of life on earth. The water that rains have been part of every living being on earth, from bacteria to vegetables, Dinosaurs and men and after going through us, they are going to be part of coming living beings. Yes, rains are transcendental and they carry life to every corner of earth. Usually when I sit and watch it raining, my mind goes blank and it makes the sound of rain loud and I can feel the cold touches of raining deep to my bone marrow. This time however, my mind was not blank. The pictures of old women and old men who invested their lives to raise their children and now just in snapshot of time with few spray of bullets, their sons and daughter gone forever and it was troubling my thinking. The pains of mourning families and their despair had dominated my mind and for a while I was deaf to hear any raining and numb enough to feel any cold. Then a car passes on Avenue and I come again to my conscious. I was standing for long out on the porch and I was cold. I came inside and turned on heat and sat next to heater to warm myself but the apartment was looking much smaller than usual. Now it is more than six months that I had shifted to this new apartment and it is well designed to fit comfortably a person and I was comfortable in it especially because of considerate, respectful and quiet neighbors.

Every generation has its own traditions and these traditions are based on their visions of life. There were a tradition of building spacious rooms in previous generation and the reason as I was told, to make children’s hearts and minds grow big. They believed that living space effects on thinking and personality of children and to make their children think big and have big hearts, they were making spacious rooms. I don’t know how much truth it holds but I respect the philosophy, it is based on. Parents were trying to go beyond their limits to make sure the availability of abundance in basic needs of their children. There was the concept of “hungry eyes”, something as a signature of bad upbringing. To install content in the children, one could hear again and again the proverb, “if one is hungry we can make him full but if one’s eyes are hungry then nothing in the world can make them full”..

My feeling was that the people who were targeted killed on Thursday (March 29th) was brought up in spacious rooms, they were raised to be content and have big hearts and think big, much bigger to think mean for others. Their heads and hearts were targeted because they were much bigger to be places for narrow-mindedness. They were raised to work single-mindedly for progress and of course their “progress” in this narrow-minded and envious environment is looked upon as a crime punishable by death.

The first time that I saw the real demonstration of “hungry eyes” was in Rawalpindi. I was early and had to wait for the bus to go back to Quetta. The waiting wasn’t boring as this overcrowded bus stop had a lot to observe. The buses go to all major cities in four provinces from there so one sees people from the provinces and northern areas. The diverse outfits, languages and behaviors and most importantly attitudes invite any curious person to observe. It is not just bus stop, the hotels, food stalls, costermonger, street vendors, cart pushers and taxi drivers, all trying to earn a living for their families. Whenever a bus arrives, the taxi drivers and cart pushers surround it to get passengers or offload and carry their goods to taxi.

A bus stopped in the middle of this narrow road, as usual taxis and carts surrounded it. A fat, bald and waddling old man that was appearing, the father of the family escorted the three women, two young girls and an elderly woman to other side of road and got busy offloading his goods on carts and then into taxis (A lot of goods, rented two just to take his goods and third one for his family). The women were looking different from crowd; they had fair skins and had half covered heads with dupatta but what I had never seen was that a lot of people had stopped and were looking at them as they were aliens or something strange. One could see the uneasiness and urgency in the girls, their mother (who was trying to cover her daughter by standing in front of them...notch.. huh) and the father who had difficulty in walking and was trying hard to get out of there. It was the first time that I had realized, how the normal looking crowd is terrifying when they have “hungry eyes”. There wasn’t anything unusual in dressing or behaviors of those girls. It was just their fair skins that had caused uneasiness for them (I could imagine that how something that should be a plus point make lives miserable in a crowd that are suffering from hungry eyes)

The same is true for Hazaras in Quetta. From journalists to former President of Pakistan (Pervez Musharraf) is saying the same thing. The crime of Hazaras is that… they are progressive and in short amount of time have “progressed” to appear as outliers and it has attracted the “hungry eyes”… Again, if some are hungry, their stomach can be filled but if their “eyes are hungry” then even the lives of people can’t fill them…

The invisible specialist workers

Bioleaching



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Bioremediation

Conscience VS popular tide

I don’t know the real appetite of a bear for a honey hive but I use it as an analogy to illustrate my craving for ice creams. It is just beastly. To me, if anything is close to ice creams are biographies, especially autobiographies. I really can’t afford missing any “bear-time” (the chance to read biographies or eating ice creams). Thanks to technology and those who develop Apps, especially those Apps that allow downloading free eBooks, now I can get bear-time, every day that I use bus to go school. These days, I get almost 15 minutes of bear-time in bus (both ways) and use it to enjoy reading the “The life of Abraham Lincoln” by Henry Ketcham (You can download to read it free on Google books). Though by reading this biography, I get a feeling that the writer was a real devotee to Abe and had written the book having the picture of a saintly figure in his mind but of course, I am in a stage of life that I can imagine a human figure even out of most revered saints. Reading the book, the thought that struck me again and again was the repetition of history. Of course, the events do not repeat themselves but the forces and processes that drive the events do not change and repeat themselves. Let me illustrate this by borrowing the event of the Lincoln-Stone Protest from the book,

….“ The prophetic event of his legislative work was what is known as the Lincoln−Stone protest. This looks to−day so harmless that it is not easy to understand the situation in 1837. The pro−slavery feeling was running high, an abolitionist was looked on as a monster and a menace to national law and order. It was in that year that the Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy was murdered martyred at Alton, Ill. The legislature had passed pro−slavery resolutions. There were many in the legislature who did not approve of these, but in the condition of public feeling, it was looked on as political suicide to express opposition openly. There was no politic reason why Lincoln should protest. His protest could do no practical good. To him it was solely a matter of conscience. Slavery was wrong, the resolutions were wrong, and to him it became necessary to enter the protest. He succeeded in getting but one man to join him, and he did so because he was about to withdraw from politics and therefore had nothing to lose. Here is the document as it was spread on the journal:

Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having passed both branches of the General Assembly at its present session, the undersigned hereby protest against the passage of the same.
They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils.

They believe that the Congress of the United States has no power under the Constitution to interfere with the institution of slavery in the different States.

They believe that the Congress of the United States has the power, under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exercised, unless at the request of the people of the District.

The difference between these opinions and those contained in the above resolutions is their reason for entering this protest.

(Signed)

DAN STONE,
LINCOLN,

Representatives from the county of Sangamon.”……………..

What really moved me is that Abe got only one person on his side on his protest against “Pro-slavery resolutions”. It might have seemed a failure on those days but today no one sees that a failure as his stand based on his conscience has won over what were popular trends and sentiments in those days. Though, today, we don’t have physical slavery in the sense of those frontier times but the issue of “Human Rights” is an equivalent issue as to that of issue of slavery was then. The deep desires for supremacy and monopoly of values or religious beliefs have much popular appeal than to give in much for sake of “Human Rights” even if it appeals to conscience.

I agree that Human Rights have been misused as a foreign policy tools and even as a warfare tool against opponents and opponent governments. I agree that Human Rights have been used as a political tool or even economical tool by people who don’t really believe in it. It has been misused to an extent that if you talk about Human Rights, all and I really mean all try to find what you really want to conceal, using it. Some see weakness in it, some see ambitions and others see cowardice and betrayal in it. So when Abe protested against pro-slavery resolutions, he got just one supporter on his side but it didn’t stop him because his conscience was much bigger than the whole popular sentiments and judgments out there.

Although my bear-time is beastly but it gives me some humanely thoughts and let me to not wash out by current sentiments and events but see the processes that is going to repeat again and again…