Dedicated to Malala

Intolerance and supremacism are interwoven and is a cultural trend that grow in a beaten and scared society, that finds its safety in destruction and denial of others. The cover might be any of fancy words that rationalize damning of others. It doesn't matter, what one stands for, if he/she gets scared of others' expressions or existence ..... it is the symptom for it..... Names doesn't matter as it changes with time but the symptom matters. It comes again and again under different banners. I understand, some may get irritate by usage of animal, women or stereotypical faces but I think, it is one of the ways to let this symptom show off... Sensitivity to women, animals, books, cartoons, expressions are not ..... you know, what I mean...

Rationalization illustrated

People have become sophisticated and have learned to rationalize their acts and ideas. I have tried to illustrate this process via my cartOOns (In case, you couldn't get my point, I will take blame for that).  

Science and Islam: part 3: The Power of Doubt

And the doubt continues....... "Carl Woese, Evolution's Golden Revolutionary" and Biology's Next Revolution 

Why it takes time to have a centralist position?

This knol is 3rd part of "Nature does not discriminate"  and "Pure Rationalism is destined to failure"

To me, it is wrong to think that, one of the main jobs of philosophy is to look for meaning in life. Aristotle is thought as father of logic and he had formulated his logic approximately 23 and half century ago and have remained the core of deductive reasoning. Last century new efforts were made to apply logic to mathematics and vice versa (Gottlob Fregeand Bertrand Russell among big names). But despite of BIG names in Philosophy and its long history that stretches over three millennia, it has failed to answer the main questions, that revolve around the meaning of life. Luckily, George Dvorsky has gathered 8 of these core questions in his recent article, "8 Great Philosophical Questions That We’ll Never Solve" so, I can just skip this part.

So, now the question arise, "if it is not the job of philosophy to find meaning in life, then what does it do for life?" . Well, one of its main jobs is to add value to life OR some may like to say, add value to survival. This is really fortunate that, Philosophy can't find answer to big questions that are the "sources for 'meaning' in life". If Philosophers were able to really convincingly answer these questions, there would be as many religions out there, as many philosophers. By its nature, philosophy is argumentative and appears absurd, irrational, irrelevant and non-philosophical to opposing sides. So, by questioning and arguing the accepted rationales, meanings and systems, it helps in making them to stay open and evolve (Previously, we argued, life is an open system).  Philosophical movements like Stoicism, Epicureanism and even modern one Existentialism were not to provide meaning in life but to add values in it.

 My response; People do not challenge each other on their visions but on
their identities,that are borrowed from past as they have learned past better
 than  learning from them....

Some also may like to know, if philosophy can't answer core questions in meaning of life then, why bother at first place about the meaning? What, I understand is that, it is "Human Nature" to look for meaning and Human Nature and Human Condition are two core areas around which major philosophies revolve.

One may blame a lot of thing for the great collapse of communist block in previous century but frankly, the human nature was the main force in driving it to failure (It is the favorite argument of the libertarians and I agree with it). Competition is part of human nature and it never ceases. Of course, everybody is born with talents but neither all talents are equal nor the talent of putting others' talents in use is universal.  The only way to bring equality is to manage populations and it is evident from the very beginning that, driving people against their nature is destined to failure. Likewise, the current visible cracks in the capitalism are another show of force by human nature. From ancient times, greed was symbolized by dragon or a large snake that has collected piles of gold and protects it. But, it was assumed that, the social pressure, ethics and education are self controlled systems which contain the greed to not grow out of control. The current economic crises and skinny 99% movement suggesting that, social pressure doesn't contain it. In short, the human  nature had  driven the extreme left and extreme right to failures. It really makes sense when Tariq Ali suggests, "Extreme left is most beneficial to extreme right and vise versa" (They compete with each other, analyze and keep in check each others performances). If we take a more direct and fresh example of how human nature makes questionable the most dear systems. Hatred is usually taken as childish attitudes but the movie, "Innocence of Muslims" and reactions to it have shown, the grown ups have grown up versions of it. With freedom comes responsibility but the insulting movie has shown that, in freedom, responsibility is the first victim of hatred.  Likewise, religion's main goal is to turn men into ethical beings but the violence have shown that here, the ethics is the first victim of overwhelming anger and hatred. Again, it is the religious people who are most benefited from atheists. Atheists make them think and let them not to sacrifice the core purpose of religion for things that are related to identity and are more for social and political consumption. Similarly, it is the Atheists who are benefited most from religious people and make them not to cultivate a religion out of evolutionary theory (From the missionary acts of some, it appear that evolutionary theory are used as  revelation for atheist religion). 

This knol is under construction... 

Nature does not discriminate

This knol is 2nd part of the "Pure rationalism is destined to failure"

I guess, almost all know something about Dinosaurs, some know about Trilobites and few know about Archaeopteris trees. These were majestic and hegemonic organisms of their environments and  have left impressive imprints of their existence in the rocks records but went extinct. There could be disagreements on the causes of their extinction but no one can disagree that, they no more exist. Nature has laws and do not discriminate no matter how majestic, beautiful and great is a creature. When organs worn out, Nature has one solution for all and that is death either they are great Scientist like Einstein, Newton or Geber (Jabir ibn Hayyan) , great Philosophers like Socrates, Plato or Mulla Sadra, great Kings like Cyrus, Alexander or Genghis Khan, great Prophets like Abraham (P.B.U.H), Moses (P.B.U.H) or Muhammad (P.B.U.H) or just an ordinary person. My purpose, from bringing the names of the few extinct  organisms and the names of  few historical figures are to stress that yes, men and man-made systems have impacted greatly on their environments but so are the creature before them and at the end, it is the nature that decides, which one has to continue and which one has to go into fossil records. 

"Nothing in Biology makes sense except in the light of Evolution",  Theodosius Dobzhansky... I agree with Dobzhansky except that, the traditional definitions of the evolution by Darwin and Modern evolutionary synthesis are reductionist and give a sense that evolution is an alien system (Natural Selections keep house in order) that does not follow general laws . So, we need an extensional definition to make them compatible with other systems. In the the introduction of his book,'Terrestrial Paleoecology and Global Change'1, Krassilove writes, 

"Evolution of functional systems is governed by general system laws, which, for closed systems, are the classical thermodynamic laws. Closed systems evolve in the direction of a maximal entropy production. Conversely, an open system minimizes its entropy production by drawing matter and energy from external sources and by exporting wastes. Each open system thus affects the neighboring systems and is in turn affected by them. Any talk of biotic evolution going on independently of any environmental change is therefore meaningless."

As a rational creature, all human systems have their rationales but it appears that almost all of them have a common fate. Initially, when they arise, they are open systems and hence revolutionary to previous closed systems but once they grow to become dominant, they slowly grow xenophobic and turn into closed systems. If we look to the movements that began among weak and ordinary people and spread so rapidly  due to their revolutionary appeals that, we can confidently categorize them as punctuated equilibrium  in universal  human culture. I count Christianity, Islam, Mongolian campaigns and Western modernity in this category. It would be a repetition but again just to clear my point; when Christianity appeared, it was revolutionary to both earlier religious systems and to secular Roman empire. Because it was a liberating force to masses, it spread so fast that Roman emperors could not ignore it and adapted it to embed into power structure of Roman empire. Ruling classes have their own mechanisms; they need identity more than  revolutionary forces. Islam was also appeared as a revolutionary movement with promises of equality to oppressed masses and it spread so rapidly that almost ran over Persian and Byzantine empires. Soon the caliphates adapted the power structures of Persian and Byzantine empires and identity replaced the teachings.  Although, Mongols came out as a secular force just to conquer other nations but their openness  and eagerness to learn and respect for learning was in itself a revolutionary attitude that broke the chains of identities for a while and let the learning of Middle East, Central Asia, Far East and West interact with each other. South Asia, Central Asia and Europe were the beneficiaries of these conquests. As the Mongols didn't have a cultural movements of their own, these fusion couldn't evolve further. The Scientific and cultural movements of the modern West was however, the first revolutionary movement that were based on public participation and it really swept across the cultures. It is an open system and hence have a liberating appeal to masses. Again, there is no exception to natural laws as it is evident from the fate of communism. Communism was part of modern western scientific and cultural movement. It rose as a popular movement with a revolutionary ideology but it also couldn't survive once it reduced to a confrontational and reactionary force. Currently, libertarianism is the only force that still have public appeal and spreading but the economic meltdown of US and Europe and hegemonic attitudes are revealing some big cracks in it. These cracks are serious because once people lose hope in a system and they do not have alternatives, they turn into their roots and create their own version of fascist movements. I think, it is better that I define, what I mean by fascism to reduce the risk of confusion. I recognize a fascist movement by its three basic characteristics; xenophobia, fundamentalism and supremacist appeals. I think, there can't be clash of civilizations without spread of fascism. Unfortunately, due to poverty, ill education systems and failure to catch with rest of world, Islamic world was hopeless and Salafism as a religious fascist movement are spreading fast to turn most of Muslim countries into hell. Nationalistic fascism is also growing and I don't see these fires will soon extinguish without widespread destruction. I hope and pray that my judgments prove to be wrong, but all indicators appear to me, pointing to not a  promising future.

Again, it is quite rational to have a strong identity but it is equally rational to have respect for identity of others. It is only open systems that are able to take energy from outside, grow and take waste out of system. When the doors are shut and a system becomes a closed one, it die out in its poisonous accumulating wastes. Evolution is always at work and closed systems that lose the evolvability go extinct and nature does not discriminate. 

End of Part 2

Reference,

1. Krassilov, V.A, 2003. Terrestrial Paleoecology. 1st ed. Sofia, Moscow: pensoft publishers. p. xiii.