Amorphous Penoptes

 My first sculpture; Amorphous Penoptes (Amorphous; without any shape/form, without any clear identity and Penoptes; all-seeing, have access to all sorts of information, immersed in information, well-ill-informed)

Amorphous Penoptes; side-view

Amorphous Penoptes; Back-view 

Amorphous Penoptes; Front-view 

The sculpture is open to interpretation. I see two trends are gaining ground: a. the efforts to explain everything with evolutionary theory, something that appears to be emerging as a modern age religion. The fossil symbolizes evolutionary theory and eyes of different sizes and patterns symbolizes the trend of seeing everything through evolutionary eyes. b. With meltdown of traditional forms of communication and ease in availability and increase in usage of smart means of communication, identity crises are deepening and I feel that even leading cultural institutions have become victims of identity crises. May be I am not a good observer but frankly, I feel like I haven't met yet a true scientist, a true artist, a true philosopher, not even a true nationalist, a true religious person, ...etc. All I have seen are self-contradicting people who aren't even aware of their contradictions and I have accepted it as human condition, something that is hard to escape from. One may say that you may have an idealistic perspective of scientists, artists and philosophers. That might be true to some extent but current stasis in these fields and the conflict between traditional means of doing things and the external pressure by social media for for new ways of communications have pushed these fields into identity crises. In short, Amorphous Penoptes is the symbolic expression of current human condition and both cultural leaders and people in general are represented in it. 

April Fool

Buddhistein

Buddhistein is the current human condition

Although change is inevitable but it appears that Nature has some frames that embody all changes. Duality is one of the frames. We hear a lot about ability of humans to mold Nature to their needs by manipulating laws of Nature but just like change, humans manipulations are also bound in these frames. For thousands of years religions had institutionalized human thinking and then the success of scientific methodologies in uncovering Natural Laws and giving  men the ability to change their certain conditions  gave hopes that humans  are now free to choose the conditions they want for themselves; Nietzsche expressed the hope by claiming that, "God is dead" and Sartre expressed the hope by saying, "We are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean when I say man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does" ...

But if  we look around and see the modern-men, though they want to be free of any institution but we see duality in their actions and thoughts are evident. For instance, for their physical and psychological well-being, they practice yoga and meditation and for life in general, they follow Science (if not scientific methodologies as Scientists do). Although knowledge frees man from Man-made institutions or human constructed conditions but it also make them realize that there are Natural frames that bound human knowledge and progress (Humans walk from condition to condition and that is how I see human progression).   

Hybrid Philosophy

It is long that I haven't updated my blog. I had a lot to say but I think, I was remained a bit undecided about what I have to say are either news or something new. The easy way to rationalize my undecidedness was to convince myself that I have a "writer's block". I am not easy with passing news but rather have the tendency to express myself or present/describe my observations and I categorize expressing myself as "Armchair Philosophy" and my observations as "Hybrid Philosophy". Don't take me wrong. I am not claiming to be a philosopher by academic definition but I consider, "the process of thinking as doing philosophy and the products of organized thinking as Philosophy". In short, I have an open-ended definition/understanding of philosophy.

You may have heard of "Experimental Philosophy" and it is an effort of contemporary philosophers to save philosophy of becoming a passive/supportive discipline and help it becomes an independent discipline by giving it a new direction with designing experiments to test philosophical questions, particularly in areas of human behavior and understanding. But what if I have observations that raise certain questions and provide me some logical clues about possible answers but I don't have the means and time to do experiments and  test their validity? To solve my this problem, I just categorize them in a separate folder and name it "hybrid philosophy". Not all might like the idea but at least in helps me to not discard my observation and save them for possible future usage.

OK, let me share two of my observations

This Knol is under construction, please visit later to read the rest of the knol... thanks

Thursdays never end

“If we wish to know about a man, we ask 'what is his story--his real, inmost story?'--for each of us is a biography, a story. Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us--through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken narrations. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives--we are each of us unique.” ― Oliver Sacks

Oliver is right. Biologically and physiologically, we are not different from others, but our narrative is different from people, who live in the "Arc of instability". We want peace and respect for all, in a part of world that people take pride for killings and look at them as a source of honor (and have distorted religion to fit their narratives). That is a mistake that we have refused to learn and hence our Thursdays never end. 

Today is Thursday again. Again? Yes, it is Thursday again and it reminded of Thursdays that I had long forgotten. Every Thursdays were hellish for me as we had to revise our weekdays lessons (Thursday was last day of the week and Friday was weekend holiday) and each mistakes had to be corrected by sticks of the Mullah.  I was weak in learning and each Thursday, I had tears in my eyes and fears in my mind. I hated Thursdays. Today's twin suicide bombings on Alamdar road (the main residential area of Hazaras in Quetta) reportedly killed more than 85 and wounded more than 170 people and it brought me back, my memories of those Thursdays that I had to face a heartless and angry Mullah, who had zero tolerance for weak learners. For last 12 years, Hazaras are regularly targeted on the basis of their ethnicity and religion in Quetta, Pakistan but may be Hazaras are weak at learning and repeat a common mistake (different narrative at wrong place) that Al-Mullahs have zero tolerance for that. 

One of the victims of today's bombing was a young peace activist, Irfan Ali Khudi  who had a different narrative in a wrong place. He founded Human Rights Commission for Social Justice and Peace in 2000 and strongly believed that, "No nation and society can progress without the awareness and values based on Human Rights and Social Justice" and was actively voicing for his different narrative. It was definitely a mistake and this Thursday, Al-Mullahs ... :(