Thoughts to stay cool

The Case for Quality, Calm, and Focus in Media

2025-03-14T09:24:00.004+01:00

1. The Frenetic Push for Lower Quality

Technology has delivered incredible advancements that have transformed our lives. AI now serves as an indispensable ally in my writing and research—one service transcribes lengthy voice notes while another provides rapid answers to my queries. Yet, as we celebrate these innovations, market pressures have pushed technology to deliver content at breakneck speeds.

Social media platforms capitalize on brief, superficial videos, while companies like META (the owner of facebook and instagram) plan to generate content with AI bots trained predominantly with synthetic data rather than authentic human insight. Streaming services, pressured to rapidly churn out new content, frequently sacrifice quality for sheer volume. Additionally, the rise of microdramas, particularly popular in China, underscores a trend toward brief and ephemeral entertainment. Worse yet, streaming platforms often fail to deliver the vivid colors and depth associated with high-quality physical media.

Depth and quality have been sacrificed for the sake of convenience and market competitiveness. This undermines our cognitive health and satisfaction. A return to intentionally designed, slower-paced technology can provide deeper, calmer, and more meaningful experiences.

2. The Harmful Effects of Low Quality Content

Low quality content is either fast paced, or it can be generally poorly written, acted, produced, and directed. Both are harmful to viewers.

Netflix has increasingly leaned toward producing content designed for passive viewing—shows meant to run in the background while audiences multitask. This approach encourages lower standards, offering shows that are neither engaging nor thoughtfully produced. Passive viewing habits can dull personal standards, making audiences less discerning and less appreciative of higher-quality content or complex thought.

Fast paced shows, can also have profound effects on our cognitive and emotional well-being, especially for children. Studies show that even nine minutes of watching fast-paced cartoons can impair executive functions such as self-regulation and working memory. These shows may decrease attention spans, overwhelm sensory processing, and increase the risk of attention problems later in school. A great resource is the Instagram account @uschooler, which examines various aspects of children’s programming, such as screen transition frequency and overall stimulation levels.

However, this fast pace is not only harmful to children—it is tiring for adults as well. One such show was Arcane on Netflix, which received a rare 9/10 rating on IMDb. While the show features a complex narrative set in a richly imagined world, coupled with striking animation, it often feels overwhelming. The visuals and sound design are intensely loud, with a relentless barrage of rapid scene changes that flood the senses. This frenetic pace leaves little room for moments of quiet reflection, making it difficult for viewers to fully absorb the story.

This awareness of the dangers of overstimulation naturally leads us to consider what truly high-quality content looks like—and how we might embrace technology in ways that foster a calmer, more focused experience. In contrast, slow-paced, educational shows offer cognitive benefits without overstimulation.

3. What High-Quality Content Looks Like

Quality content is defined not by complexity or speed but by intentionality, depth, and measured pacing. Research shows that slow-paced, educational programming offers cognitive benefits without overstimulation. Programs that feature rich vocabulary and natural dialogue support language acquisition, while carefully paced storylines nurture empathy and emotional intelligence. Iconic children’s shows like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and modern favorites such as Bluey exemplify how a measured pace can cultivate young minds. If such care is essential for our youngest, then why shouldn’t adults—bombarded by relentless digital stimulation—also seek out content that allows for reflection and focus?

This principle extends beyond children’s programming. Classic films like Ben Hur and the measured storytelling of the Sissi the Empress series invite audiences into thoughtfully constructed worlds where every scene is savored rather than rushed. These narratives show that when content is crafted with care, it captivates and educates without inducing stress or sensory overload. This is the style exemplified by Japanese Studio Ghibli—a model from which more creators should take inspiration.

Moreover, high-quality content engages our senses in tangible ways. Consider the tactile richness of a 4K Ultra HD DVD of Planet Earth—its vibrant colors and detailed imagery deliver an experience that streaming services rarely replicate. Similarly, the 1440 kbps audio quality of a CD far surpasses the compressed 320 kbps found in most streaming music. When every detail is preserved, the overall experience is significantly enriched, reinforcing that quality and intentional pacing matter.

The book is the ultimate technology. When children see books in their parents’ hands, they are more likely to develop a habit of regular reading. With that, they’ll develop the calm, focus, and discipline to fully be immersed in what they are doing. Something they won’t benefit from when their parents are constantly on the move when holding phones, tablets or e-readers. This is proof that technology, like media, doesn’t need to be complex to be good. Often, the most effective approach values simplicity.

4. The Benefits of Simplicity in Other Technologies

Innovative technologies often demonstrate that doing more with less can yield richer results. For example, DeepSeek—a Chinese AI system—selectively activates only the necessary components for each query, achieving remarkable performance with a fraction of the investment of its competitors. This focused, efficient processing model reminds us that precision and thoughtful design trump sheer power.

Similarly, SpaceX illustrates how embracing simplicity in design can lead to groundbreaking achievements. By opting for cost-effective, streamlined rocket designs using significantly cheaper components, SpaceX has challenged the complex, resource-heavy models of traditional aerospace giants like NASA. Their approach shows that technological advancement is not solely about rapid output or complexity but about thoughtful engineering that maximizes impact while retaining clarity and focus.

The video game industry further reinforces this principle. While some studios chase hyper-realistic graphics with enormous budgets, the success of games like Roblox and Minecraft demonstrates that simplicity and engaging, intuitive gameplay can be far more compelling. Even the contrast between the high-powered capabilities of consoles like the PS5 and the more accessible, straightforward design of Nintendo systems underscores that a calm, focused approach can resonate deeply with users. In each of these cases, efficiency and calm—not frenetic production—unlock the true potential of technology.

5. Conclusion: Prioritize Quality and Calm for True Empowerment

Technology holds the promise of making us more powerful, more connected, and more creative. Yet its full potential is only realized when we harness it in a way that cultivates calm and focus rather than overwhelming us with speed and superficiality. We have a choice: continue chasing convenience at the cost of quality, or opt for experiences that are intentional, high-quality, and calming.

This then begs the question: why is there such a demand for low-quality content? It may stem from living in an era marked by relentless pace and high information frequency—a world where stress and anxiety are all too common. In our daily lives, we often chase fleeting dopamine hits to assuage our nerves, a phenomenon exemplified by “revenge scrolling” in bed after a long day. Perhaps we have inadvertently become addicted to a fast-paced world, sacrificing depth for momentary relief.

I frankly don’t know how or why the acceleration of life got so out of hand. What I do know is that nature rushes nothing, yet accomplishes everything. We do not listen to a song merely to reach its end; we listen to enjoy its journey. This is how our activities, our focus, our consumption—and indeed our lives—should be approached.

By selecting media that is rich in detail and thoughtfully crafted—whether through a pristine 4K documentary, a deeply engaging film, or a game that values intuitive design—we set the stage for a more meaningful interaction with technology. In our fast-paced digital age, the challenge is clear: reclaim the benefits of technology by prioritizing quality, embracing a slower pace, and allowing space for deep focus. Only then can we fully leverage the true power of these innovations to enrich our lives.

متساوون لكن مختلفين : تعاون المُحبين

2022-06-12T07:14:00.000+02:00

ولدت وترعرعت في فرنسا لوالدين سعوديين حاولا جاهدين تعليمي العادات والتقاليد السعودية منذ صغري، ولكن في ذات الوقت كنت أتعرض للكثير من القيم والمبادئ الغربية بحكم معيشتي وتعليمي هناك.

عندما انتقلت للمملكة عام ٢٠١٤م وأنا في عمر الثامنة والعشرين، كان أمامي العديد من الأمور التي يجب أن اتأقلم معها حتى اليوم، ومازلت أتعلم وأراني أصل يوما بعد يوم إلى توازن صحي بين القيم والعادات السعودية والغربية، ومازال أمامي الكثير لاستيعابه.

يشغل تفكيري مؤخرا العلاقة بين الزوج والزوجة والأمور المالية في البيئة التي يعمل فيها كلاهما. حيث أن المعايير والمبادئ التي تعلمتها في الغرب في هذا الموضوع مختلفة تماما عمّا أشاهده هنا. وخلصت إلى أنه هناك ايجابيات في كلا وجهات النظر وأساليب التعامل مع هذا الأمر.

وهذه هي خلاصة افكاري:

• الزواج هو صداقة تعتمد على الشركاء الأذكياء عاطفياً والمتعاطفين الذين يرون بعضهم البعض بشكل كامل. الحبيب ليس تابع مرهق لك مادياً ومعنوياً. والصديق ليس دكتاتوراً متسلطًا ومتطلبًا. بل يساهم الشركاء الناضجون عاطفياً بشكل استباقي في الدفاع عن كرامة بعضهم البعض واستقلالهم سواء كان ذلك من خلال الدعم في المنزل أو العمل. يساعد الشركاء بعضهم البعض على الاستكشاف والارتقاء بأنفسهم.

• في المملكة العربية السعودية، كان الزواج ومازال مبنيا على تقسيم الأدوار والمهام المعتادة بين الذكور والإناث بناء على التقاليد الدينية. حيث يقوم الزوج بتوفير اساسيات الحياة في حين تقوم الزوجة بخدمة الزوج والمنزل. لكن في الآونة الاخيرة، طرأت على المجتمع وعلى الحالة الاقتصادية العديد من المتغيرات التي جعلت استمرار تقاسم الأدوار والمهام بين الزوجين كما كان سابقا امرا غير ممكن.

• منذ ستينيات القرن الماضي، استثمرت المملكة في تعليم وتمكين المرأة لتلعب دوراً أكبر في المجتمع والاقتصاد. وحالياً يقوم ولي العهد الأمير محمد بن سلمان بالعمل بشكل حثيث لإزالة كافة القيود التي تعيق نجاح المرأة في مسيرتها المهنية.

• أدوار كلا الجنسين قد تطورت ماوراء التقاليد ، بفضل التكنولوجيا، تجاوزت الحضارة الحالية والمُجتمع الطبيعة الخاصة للرجال والنساء بما في ذلك تقسيم المهام المُعتادة، إلى تمكين قدرات الرجل والمرأة وجعلها متكافئة بالاعتماد على ذكاء الفرد وليس بقدراته الجسدية.

• من أجل بناء مؤسسة زواج صحية، يجب أن يساهم الزوج والزوجة في رفاهية الأسرة، مادياً أو بشكل آخر غير ذلك. لاسيما مع دخول المرأة إلى سوق العمل وزيادة تكلفة المعيشة وقيام الزوج بالمساهمة بشكل أكبر في واجبات المنزل ومسؤولياته. يمكن أن تأخذ هذه المساهمة المُشتركة عدة أشكال. حيث يمثل الحساب المصرفي المشترك بين الزوجين بالإضافة إلى الحسابات الفردية لكل منهما، طريقة قوية للتعاون الجيد.

• تكتسب الزوجة المساهمة في دخل الأسرة صوتا في قرارات المنزل وكيفية إدارته. لم يعد نهج تفرد الأب بالقرار هو الأنسب، حيث لابد أن نستفيد من مقولة " عقلان يفكران خير من عقل واحد".

• إن روح الجشع والمنتهج بعقلية "دخل الرجل هو ملك للأسرة ودخل المرأة هو ملك لها" تضر بالأسرة وتهددها بالهشاشة ويولد الاستياء لدى الطرف الآخر. يجب أن يسعى كلا الشريكين إلى حماية استقلالية بعضهما البعض، مع الحرص على تجنب إثقال كاهل الآخر. ويكون ذلك من خلال العطاء المتبادل للذات والمال والمادة بشكل سخي وبروح الثقة.

• تخوف الزوجات وتوجههن لحماية دخلهن أمر مبرر ومُتَفهم، حيث لا يحصلن على أي ضمان من قيام الزوج بتطليقها من جانب واحد والاحتفاظ بكل ماساهمت به مادياً طوال سنوات الزواج من حر مالها ومن عرق جبينها، فيحق لها أن تكون حذرة. كما أن لها ما يبررها في حماية استثمارها في الأسرة ومساهمتها مادياً إذا كان معرضًا لخطر الزوجة الثانية أو الثالثة أو الرابعة.

• عندما يتم تخصيص جزء من دخل أي منهما لدعم أحد أفراد أسرتهما الآخرين (مثل دعم الزوج لوالدته مادياً) ، يجب على الزوجين إخبار بعضهم البعض لتعزيز الشفافية مادياً والوصول إلى تقدير دقيق للوضع المالي للأسرة.

• لمنح زوجته الثقة، يجب على الزوج استخدام عقد الزواج لحمايتها من الإساءة والإستغلال. يتم استخدام العقد ليضمن حصول زوجته على الطلاق إذا طلبت ذلك، وللتنازل عن حق الزواج بأربع زوجات. سيحد العقد من الطلاق من جانب واحد بجعل الطلاق مسموحاً فقط إذا فشل الزوج أو الزوجة بشكل منهجي في الالتزام بالعقد أو أضر أحدهم بالزواج بشكل متكرر، إما عن طريق الإهمال أو الفعل. عندما يرغب الطرفان في الطلاق، ولا يوجد أي تعدي قانوني، يوافق الزوجان على تقسيم الأصول التي تم إنشاؤها أو الحصول عليها معًا بشكل عادل. في حالة وجود طلاق بسبب تعدي، سيُطلب من الطرف الذي وقع منه التعدي أيضًا دفع تعويض مادي، يعتمد حجمها على القدرة المالية وحجم التعدي.

• على الرغم من أن البعض قد يعتقد أن هذا يتعارض مع الشريعة، فإن التنازل عن حق بشكل شخصي واختياري لا يعني التخلي أو إهمال أمر أو حق شرعي، وإنما هو مثله مثل الشخص النباتي ، الذي يتخلى عن أكل اللحوم بكامل إرداته لأسباب غذائية وليس لأسباب شرعية ولا إنكاراً لإباحة أكل اللحم.

• حتى إذا كان للزوجة العاملة زوج داعم يشارك في المنزل وواجباته، من خلال المجهود الكبير والتضحية الجسدية أثناء الحمل، فإن الزوجة تعطي المزيد للأسرة. سيكون الرجل الذكي عاطفيًا ممتنًا لذلك وسيؤدي امتنانه إلى تفانيه العاطفي لزوجته وعائلته. وهذا بدوره سوف يغذي امتنانها وثقتها، مما يخلق ديناميكية فاضلة للنمو المحب.

On Beauty

2021-10-26T05:48:00.018+02:00

I have been long frustrated with conventional beauty standards. I understand why society emphasizes them so much. Seeing a beautiful person can be striking, arresting and bewildering. There\"s a temporary enchantment when we\"re put under a spell. It\"s powerful and certainly sells well, but it\"s an easy illusion that reduces a person to a wanted commodity. What happens when we compel ourselves to sit with beauty for more than a moment and dive more deeply into the person before us?

One discussion with a particularly intelligent woman showed me how being called beautiful felt like a cheap compliment. She had a point : by normal standards it translates to being desirable for biologically inherited traits. We’re not beautiful for our accomplishments, character, sacrifices, efforts - only that which is given. .

I had the chance of living in a city where the women are famous for being beautiful, elegant and strong. They were more than their style and gait, and it became obvious that over time the outer beauty takes a secondary position to the beauty of character. I have met beautiful people that became ugly within minutes of speaking, and I’ve met average people that grew into the most stunning humans I’ve ever known.

What a person finds beautiful says a lot about them. We typically seek what we don’t have, to complement ourselves with it and be more complete. What is beautiful in one place is often not in another. Bigger bodied women in Africa, unibrows with Bedouin tribes: beautiful to their community but doubtful in the west. A lady with the features of a model is thought to be unattractive and weak for the Mennonite community. There are many such examples but ultimately they have something in common.

Beauty is a balanced composition of traits that aim to create, sustain and grow life. Beauty is love practiced. The beautiful is that which is pleasing, soothing, inspiring and appealing. Beauty, the sublime, the good, the lovely are all synonyms for each other.

Beauty, elegance, grace, have a divine origin, and that which is divine is hard to define because it is infinite, and to define something is to limit it. How can we limit the limitless? The Jews name God "he who cannot be named" specifically for that reason. Islamic tradition says Allah has 99 names, each one of them an infinite feature that is part of a larger infinite whole. Some names can only be felt intuitively, not understood critically, by the likes of Sufi and Zen masters.

I have attempted to define some of the features of beauty, but I can do that only from my own perspective. I do not know what I don’t know, and surely other beautiful people see things differently. In the end the more I dug, the more complex my understanding of beauty grew. I understood more than ever why artists keep creating. The world is abundant with beauty ever growing and evolving to be captured. The only thing left to do is to trust our intuition and be open to feeling beauty when it is in our presence.

Beauty in humans is an intelligent trait that is grown consciously. To be beautiful is to have high standards and to practice excellence as much as possible. This is where sophistication, charisma and seduction play a romanesque game that goes beyond mere inherited genetic traits and has a far longer lasting impact. What is certain is that it is a question of character and worldview that expresses itself in the physical composure and appearance of an individual.

I don’t think that anyone can have all the traits of beauty. We are human with our own shortcomings; we can\"t be perfect. We all have tragic flaws of character and often wish there were things we could change about our physical appearance. The imperfections add to our beauty but in all cases the beautiful always strive to be better.

Ultimately, one cannot see beauty in the world if one cannot see it within oneself. To see the divine and miraculous features of existence we have to see the divine miracle within us. We see the world as we see ourselves, it is imperfect but there are plenty of things worth celebrating, honoring and growing. There’s tragedy when we lose sight of that, but remedies are possible. It is the work of psychologists, authors, poets, shamans and priests to spark the fire back to life and fan its flames in the spirits of the sodden.

The Ideals of Beauty

Beauty starts with the mind. A self loving mature individual will look after himself without being selfish or narcissistic. He is self aware, humble and emotionally intelligent. He has a strong mind and his speech and actions convey clarity, consistency and reliability to his entourage. He says what he means and means what he says, his actions are aligned with his speech.

He is generous with himself, making the people around him feel safe. The beautiful are socially embedded, with meaningful relationships and being of service to their community. They are kind, understanding and forgiving without being so foolish as to be taken advantage of. They are fully present with the people they engage with. They are good teachers to others and better students of life. They are patient, meaning they know how to act while waiting.

Such a person has grit, with the ability to suffer life’s pains gracefully, struggling meaningfully towards an objective rooted in making his environment better for himself and for his loved ones. They do not give up easily and welcome a challenge. The beautiful have a clear idea of what they stand for and defend it, showing an occasional fierceness when they need to. They can put up a battle, they have a backbone and can refuse the objectionable. Such a person is educated, able and productive, creating value through his effort for his community. In that way he is strong, but is humble enough to know when to ask for help.

The beautiful are spiritual and are aware of their place in Nature’s Greater Web. They are deep, thoughtful and well read. They are actors, taking responsibility and facing challenge with calm, focus and diligence. They are rational, non-naïve optimists able to envision solutions. They hold their peace thanks to a faith they have in the purpose they have chosen for their life.

The beautiful are adventurous and curious seeking to understand the world around them and be fascinated with it. They are able to feel awe and they inspire others with it. Because they can marvel and behold, they are lanterns, inspired and inspiring. They feel and express gratitude for the blessings they enjoy. They laugh with plenty of heart, have a good sense of humor and can laugh at themselves. They are passionate but practice restraint. They feel the full spectrum of their emotions and manage them well. Though they appreciate the burden of living, they keep their inner child alive; they are playful and adaptable.

The beautiful are attractive in appearance and behavior through their precise, neat and graceful elegance. Such traits are taught, unlike luxury which is merely bought. They focus on quality over quantity, fearing excess and the vulgar. They balance their pleasures with their efforts and pamper themselves tastefully.

They maintain healthy bodies. Understanding that it is their temple and that a healthy mind comes with a healthy body, they exert themselves regularly to remain strong, agile and enduring. They have the discipline to protect and maintain their health and hygiene.

Wealth here too is an attractive feature, but it is worthless without a beautiful character. To quote Marylin Monroe: “Don\"t you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You wouldn\"t marry a girl just because she\"s pretty, but my goodness, doesn\"t it help?”

Pleasure and Moderation

2021-10-23T09:41:00.019+02:00

Saudi Arabia famously criminalizes alcohol; it is illegal to sell, transport or consume. But that hasn’t stopped it from being eagerly sought after by many Saudis. Some say there is more alcohol in the Kingdom than there is than there is in all of the other GCC countries combined. It's similar to the USA’s alcohol black market during the prohibition era.

As they say, that which is forbidden is most desired... So should the country legalize it when there is such a popular demand for it? The state could enjoy a nice tax windfall, but is the social cost worthwhile? Of all the substances, alcohol is the most harmful.

If we take the Netherland’s example where marijuana and psychedelic truffles can be freely purchased and consumed, we see that the Dutch have the lowest per capita consumption rates of these substances in Europe. Would alcohol in Saudi become demystified and made uninteresting to the popular opinion?

I don't think so, but I believe in the freedom of the individual to learn from his own mistakes. Sheltering a citizenry or a child from danger doesn’t make it stronger. It makes it naive, weak and prone to excess as pent up frustration risks being released at the slightest temptation. A child learns not to touch a hot stove because it burned him, and many become teetotalers because they've hit rock bottom, or have seen others gone there.

All pleasure is potentially dangerous. The difference between medicine and poison is dosage. Granted, it used to be believed that a glass of wine a day was good for blood circulation. Today we know that even one such glass a day is enough to harm other organs and increases risks of cancer and chronic diseases. Regardless, some argue that alcohol plays a crucial part in humanity’s history because it helps people come together.

Small doses act like a crutch for socially uncomfortable individuals and facilitate broaching difficult topics. A little liquid courage, a little social lubrication, can help the gears turn well. Sociologists have found a good reason behind drinking. This article from the FT explained that the endorphin system activated by alcohol helps individuals see the world in rozier terms and this positivity is crucial to building trust when bonding.

It makes sense then why the Chinese won’t do business with you unless they get drunk with you first. It’s a trust building exercise. Sadly, it’s easy to tip into excess that translates to useless conversation. Those that practice dry January tend to leave parties at around midnight, just as conversations get sloppy. One sober friend was saddened by how little people remembered the great conversations she had with them the night before.

Alcohol is only one of the many pleasures that can harm us. Cigarettes, meats, excess sugars, processed foods, adrenaline junky sports, TV, and the list goes on. It reminds me of Kanye West’s line : “why is everything that is supposed to be bad make me feel so good?”. Should we ban everything that’s bad?

No. We shouldn’t. We should inform individuals of the dangers and have no taboo about any of the indulgences a person can be tempted with. Be it social media, drugs or alcohol - full transparency and rational, truthful demystifying is a required first step. A problem fully understood is half solved.

It's because I know how addictive and destructive cocaine and heroin are that I have absolutely no interest in associating with them. It's because i know how much of a timesink social media is that I stay away from it. But sometimes that's not enough.

Some will harm themselves and indulge even in full knowledge of the effects of excess pleasures. Pleasure can devolve into an escape from reality that’s pursued at all cost, even if it harms our lives and that of those we love. All this to avoid confronting a trauma, and left unchecked it can easily degenerate into addiction.

Alcoholism isn't the only culprits. Drugs, shopping, food, gambling and many others can take hold on a life and destroy it. They have in common that at their root an inability to be in reality because it implies confronting trauma. Vice massages trauma but it's a trap, it doesn’t heal it.

There is no way to heal but to confront the trauma and go through it; the obstacle is the way. What we seek lies on the other side of fear, and an unexamined life is not worth living. Unfortunately too many are ill equipped to do so alone and proper guidance is out of reach. To add insult to injury, healing is harder to do when a society vilifies and marginalizes those that have fallen too hard.

But what happens when the culture is forgiving, an individual does the work and forgives himself and others and moves on with his life? What happens when there is acceptance for the things we cannot change and a big dose of self love? The kind of self love you would give to the 5 year old version of you that lives inside you. What happens when you give yourself the kind of love you deserve because you are responsible for taking care of yourself?

You start seeing the bigger picture and how you fit in it. You start to understand yourself, your history, and to know where you want to go thanks to you understanding of where you are from. Pleasure for its own sake loses interest and mental capacity is freed up when there is no need to resist desire to consume. With clarity, you start living a life of progress. You stop being in the short termism of pleasure seeking behavior, and start finding satisfaction and pleasure in a job well done.

We start to understand that our life energy is productive and fertile when it is channeled through our work. It is exciting to see how we put of ourselves in the world as we exert effort. There is pride in the contributions we make of ourselves, big or small, to better our community. That becomes the priority because it is more interesting than senseless pleasure. We start focusing and getting control over our lives for the sake of something meaningful.

Pampering oneself and indulgences become healthy rewards. The goal we set ourselves through the meaning we find in being of service becomes too appealing to sacrifice. No one with a goal wants to lose a whole weekend nursing a hangover or clearing their mental fog from too much pot. That is not to say they’ll be workaholics, but even in their rest, their pleasures will be constructive. Work and pleasure become part of a dynamic of optimizing a life experience that is rooted in the real, in truth. There is no escapism anymore, because we see the beauty around us.

Emotionally intelligent, well balanced individuals are made, not born. Difficult situations are bound to face all of us at one point or another. When we confront the issue and heal from it we become more resilient to reality, confront it better, grow better and can moderate ourselves with our pleasures.

As we grow more confident and comfortable with ourselves, as we grow to like ourselves better, we will avoid altering ourselves with substances or hiding in video games. Moderation becomes second nature.

But it begs the question of how pure we are. The Christian’s say that humanity has in it the original sin but are made in God’s image. Eastern philosophy says that there is unity in duality, that the existence of one thing implies its opposite. We are not pure, nor are we mindless beasts of desire. The optimal version of a human is one where she is continuously growing healthier, wiser and stronger as she acknowledges the challenges that come at each stage of life. It's a never ending process of purifying.

That which is sinful is that which hurts the process of life optimization.

Getting an occasional drink and talking about our light and our darkness, in truth and courageous vulnerability, can make it easier to cope and to grow. But the famous teetotalers of history are proof it's not the only way, and if we want to look anything like them, we'd do well to avoid the glass (but it's not the end of the world if you don't so long as you deal with your issues and are moderate).

Post Scriptum :

I personally am blessed not to need alcohol to be sociable or to confront reality. I've done the work to be able to be comfortable in my own skin. I love my mind and body, they are my temple, and I love reality - the world and the living experience is too beautiful to dilute with illusion.

Famous teetotalers include, Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Trump, Bruce Lee, Warren Buffett, Joe Biden, George Bush, Muhammad Ali, Franz Kafka, Zac Effron, Natalie Portman, Jim Carrey and many more.

Equal But Different : Lover’s Collaboration - Summary

2021-05-30T22:09:00.009+02:00

I was born and educated in France to Saudi parents. They tried very hard to educate me with our customs and traditions, but I was still exposed to many western values. When I moved to Saudi Arabia in 2014, at 28 years old, there was a lot of adapting to do. I continue to learn and get closer and closer to a healthy balance but there’s always more learning to do. The latest topic I had to think a lot about was the relationship between husbands, wives and money when everyone works. The west taught me different standards on that topic, and I was surprised by what I learned here. I found there was a lot of good to get from both sides to better the situation. Here’s a summary of my thinking:

In Saudi Arabia, marriage has been based on gender roles founded on religious tradition, where a husband provides the essentials and a wife serves the husband household. They are not equals. Society and economics have changed and the status quo is not working out.

Since the 60s the kingdom has invested in educating and empowering women to take a larger role in the economy. MBS has struck down many of the limitations that hindered women’s professional success.

Gender roles are evolving beyond tradition. With technology, our civilization has transcended nature giving men and women equal ability by relying on their intelligence in doing their work. Society gains when men and women are given a chance to cultivate themselves and form a stronger sense of their identity and what they believe in through work.

As women enter the work force, and the cost of living increases, men also become more invested in the house. For the health of the union, where husband and wife work they both ought to contribute to the well being of the household, financially, in kind or other. This mutual contribution can take many forms. A joint bank account existing alongside the partners’ individual accounts is a robust method for good collaboration.

A divided mindset of “what’s yours is ours and what’s mine is mine” harms the household, threatening it with fragility. A spirit of greed breeds resentment in the other. Both partners ought to strive to protect each other’s integrity and independence, with a concern of avoiding over-burdening the other. This is done with a generous giving of self, money and materials in the spirit of abundance and trust.

By contributing the wife also gains a say in the direction of the house and how it’s managed. It’s no longer a “father knows best” approach. We take advantage of the saying “two heads are better than one”.

Wives are justified in protecting their income where they are not given security. If a husband can divorce her unilaterally and keep all that she has put into the union, she is justified in being precautious. She is also justified in protecting her investment if it is at risk of being given to a second, third or fourth wife.

Where a portion of either’ s income is earmarked for supporting other family members, the partners ought to tell each other to have an accurate appreciation of the financial situation.

To give his wife confidence, the husband ought to use the marriage contract to protect her from abuse. He'll use it to guarantee his wife has a divorce if she asks for it, and to forgo the right to marry four wives.

The contract will limit unilateral divorce by making it actionable only if husband or wife systematically fails to live up to the contract or otherwise repeatedly hurts the marriage, either by neglect or by action.

Where both parties wish to divorce, and there is no offense, the couple will agree to fairly split assets built or acquired together. Where there is divorce for offense, the offender will be required to pay a penalty, the size of which depends on financial ability and the extent of the offence.

Though some may think this goes against the sharia and the Koran, Giving up a right is not the same as giving up an obligation. What is suggested is similar to being vegetarian and giving up meat, which doesn't offend the Sharia or the Koran.

The suggested adaptations alter how we traditionally view marriage, and that's not a bad thing. Marriage is more than a material exchange for the right to make children. Marriage is a respectful partnership of equals sharing fundamental values and a vision of the future they both agree to work towards. It is a collaboration. Marriage is the promise to help each other heal, grow, and discover ourselves and each other. It is the promise to always work towards becoming better people, alone and together.

Marriage is friendship depending on emotionally intelligent, empathetic partners seeing each other wholly. A lover is not a burdensome dependent. A friend is not a domineering, demanding dictator. Emotionally mature partners help each other explore and become more of themselves. They proactively contribute to defend each other’s dignity and independence whether it is by supporting at home or by working or doing both.

This is not an excuse for men to abandon their duties. It is a call to let go of abusive rights, do more at home and with the children. Wives, where they work and have their dignity and assets protected, are called to pitch in to support the household and enhance the shared quality of life.

Even if a working wife has a supportive husband that’s involved at home, by the sheer effort and body sacrifice of pregnancy, she will be giving more to the family. An emotionally intelligent man will be appreciative of that and his gratitude will drive his passionate devotion to his wife and family. This is in turn will fuel her own gratitude and trust, creating a virtuous dynamic of loving growth.

Equal but Different : Lovers’ Collaboration

2021-04-17T13:44:00.032+02:00

I am a romantic, but being a French born Saudi my flavor of romance comes with a twist and mix of feminism and Bedouin chivalry. I moved to Saudi when I was 28 and by then that approach was hard baked in me. I thought maybe the Kingdom would be compatible with me, but I was confronted with a reality that didn’t mesh as well as I hoped it would.

There are commonly accepted Islamic rules and traditions that dictate the dynamics of how a husband and wife interact. A man takes a wife as his dependent for whom he is responsible. He owes her material security (food and shelter), a monthly stipend, new clothes every year, and if she was raised with a servant then he owes her one too. On the other hand a wife is to be obedient, protecting his assets and honor, and she ought to strive to make herself beautiful for him. On the surface, that’s all very noble. I would even say that it makes sense in a society where physical danger looms and brawn matters more than brains.

The traditional perspective trickles down and infuses every aspect of how men and women interact in Arab society in general, and Saudi society specifically. Boys and girls are inculcated with this code from very early on and its hard to unlearn. But society has evolved and gender roles have changed as we adapt to new realities. Women work, men take care of households, and brains matter more than brawn. Still the status quo means unchecked power leaves unacceptable room for abuse on both sides, sabotaging a relationship’s chances at success from the start.

How can trust and respect grow in a dynamic of dominant and dominated? By some estimates 70% of all marriages in the kingdom fail. That leaves one wondering about the remaining 30% and whether they are happy at all. Many women actively resent their captor husbands and many men see their wives as burdens. Something is off and it must be remedied. Repeating the same method expecting different results is insanity. The solution lies in balancing the scale and it starts with the State.

I. The Kingdom’s Feminism

The world is quick to criticize the kingdom for its late support of women. What the world forgets is that women around the world suffered men’s oppression well into the 20th century. As a relatively new state, Saudi Arabia has caught up rather quickly. Through his reign from 1964 to 1975, King Faisal pushed to open universities for women and the government has done what it could to empower them since. Socio-cultural resistance was a very real and limiting factor; in my grandmother’s time it was shameful for a woman to be literate and many against King Faisal would have preferred it stay this way. I’m proud to say that though my grandmother was illiterate, my mother has a PhD and speaks 3 languages. The progress is tangible.

The push continued under King Abdullah’s scholarship program which for over ten years offered many women the chance to enjoy university education around the world. Prince Mohammed Bin Salman opened the doors wider still and made a space for women in the work place. It would have been unimaginable only 10 years ago to see men and women work alongside each other, but the situation is very different today. They now drive, hold leadership positions, keep shops, and are very present in the many jobs created in delivering his ambitious Vision 2030 program.

These policies worked well with the wider adoption of contraceptives that gave women more control over their lives, as they delayed pregnancies and were freed to join the work force. This equal opportunity to education and work has done our nation a great deal of good, in economic and psychological terms. Economically speaking, half the population is empowered to create value and more talent is available in driving meaningful change. In psychological terms, society gains when men and women are given a chance to cultivate themselves and form a stronger sense of their identity and what they believe in.

II. Disjointed Reality

Unfortunately some ideas and values haven’t evolved to keep up with our new reality. As women become more financially independent many continue expecting their husbands to be solely responsible for shelter, food, clothes, etc. Their income is for them to enjoy, while the husband’s is for the family’s. There’s no unity or collaboration towards the betterment of the shared fate. Tradition gives them grounds for their position, but they fail to see that “united we stand, divided we fall”. Something needs to change.

To be clear, where men make multiple times the income of their wives, there’s no need for her to contribute financially to the family project. It is in men’s DNA to want to provide, and for women to want to be protected. But our civilization has transcended nature by giving prominence to our minds. As men are more involved at home and women more involved in the world, the line between gender roles is blurred and it makes men and women more equal than ever. What matters is that we be “all in” with our whole being contributing to the best of our abilities (in kind or other) to the family project.

There are cases where wealthier women marry men of humbler means, and one could hardly say it subtracts from their manhood. In other more traditional cases, a husband works and a wife runs the household and raises the children and that’s fine. However, where a couple makes similar amounts and the wife refuses to contribute is hypocritical and ultimately harmful to the couple. Why not pool resources and raise the shared quality of life?

Consider the example of a man and woman making 5000 USD a month. Together, their household generates 10000 USD. If the monthly budget required for them to live a comfortable lifestyle is of 7000, wouldn’t it make sense for the husband to pitch in 4000 and the wife 3000? Many would believe that it would be better for the quality of life to be degraded and for the husband to spend all his income, whilst the wife keeps her money o herself. In this scenario, how could resentment not build up and harm the relationship? How would a man feel if he doesn’t believe his wife is supportive of the family, but only cares about herself? How does that spell division rather than unity?

It is not that she is obligated to contribute to the family, but that she should deeply want to as a full fledged equal partner. In doing so not only does she take pride and ownership in boosting the family quality of life, she also gets a seat at the table and a greater say as to the fate of the family. Whether she is indefinitely pausing her career to raise children, or working and raising children, what matters is that husband and wife be “all in” and supporting one another, contributing with individual efforts.

There are many ways to go about money in a couple. Whether they have only one account, or a third joint account, or two accounts they take turns spending from - it doesn’t matter. In all cases a spirit of mutual support should animate their transparent collaboration on life investments and expenses.

Where wives are more successful than their husbands, husbands must quiet their threatened egos and calm their pride. Husbands and wives aren’t competing against each other, they are each other’s first and foremost cheerleaders encouraging one another through every challenge and victory of life. What matters is that integrity, independence and power be preserved for each one of the partners while they continue feeling useful in the relationship. This too can take many forms with in kind or financial contributions varying in degree. After all, if all the jobs a traditional housewife were charged for, she’d be making at least 6 figures (in dollars) per year.

Let me not be misunderstood: this is not an excuse for men to cop out and become their own form of parasite on their working wives. No one wants a burden of a partner. Both partners need to be proactive and contributing in one way or another to the household, generously giving of themselves for each other’s wellness and self respect. Neither is this a discounting of women’s sacrifice of their bodies in making giving life - no. This is an observation of a changing socio-economic set up that demands adaptation.

Unless this mindset of equality replaces the convenient cherry picking, we can consider that men are primary providers being unfairly competed against by women. They should be favored in the work place because their responsibilities weigh heavier than a woman’s. Many are the women without fiscal discipline, that spend their money on vain social status items, failing to plan for the future or their family’s interest. Why should this precious resource go to vanity when families are more needing?

Thankfully, this is grossly caricatural and sub-optimal, as women bring a distinct added value to the culture of the work place, innovation, and productivity. An adaptation is required, but with a caveat.

III. A Sad Exception : Security

A wife keeping her income to herself is justifiable to the extent that the power of sudden divorce lays completely in the husbands hands. Whereas she has to go to court and prove her husband has been deficient, a husband can simply utter the words any time anywhere to have her instantly divorced. Her instinct of self preservation is even more justifiable if she is in a relationship where the power dynamic is one of dominance and submission.

There are many horror stories of men that abuse their power as they push their wives to work, collect their salaries and buy essential items in their own names. The wife will work, raise her children and give away her money only to see everything go to her husband in case of divorce. The wife would be left with nothing. She gets no alimony, has no right to any assets ; she’s entirely exposed and vulnerable, her life wasted, her contribution unrecognized, often seeing her ex-husband move into the house she bought with a new wife.

Another area of abuse lays in the man’s right to marry four. Wives will refuse to contribute to the household and enrich the husband’s independence out of fear that he will abandon her if he’s too comfortable. Worse yet, he would give the second wife all the benefits of the first wife’s hard earned income. The thought alone is enough to leave anyone be dizzy with grief and disgust. I have heard stories of women that encourage one another to spend all their husbands money to avoid him becoming wealthy enough to afford a second wife! The risk is real, so why entertain it? It happens far too often to ignore the possibility.

These tragedies cannot be ignored and need to be remedied. Until they are, a wife has the right to preserve her financial independence to the greatest extent of the possible. In this framework, trust is cracked and the spirit of collaboration will remain protracted.

Why would anyone fully invest of themselves in something they could lose in a flash, robbing them of their years without warning? In fact many self sufficient women do not see a point to getting married at all if that translates into restricted freedoms and subservience along with an ingrained precariousness to the union. Lovers cannot successfully be together if there is any sense of entrapment and distrust. Love depends on trust and free will, which is inseparable from integrity.

I have heard of parents that have refused to allow their daughters to marry because they risked losing a primary bread winner, or women that have refused to contribute because they didn’t want to reveal their family’s ordeals. But where there is healthy love, even in these difficult situations, we are vulnerable and open to one another, and we shoulder one another’s burdens.

IV. Adapting Around the Marriage Contract

Thankfully, Saudi tradition allows for a large margin of liberty with the marriage contract. Typically, the families agree to some basic concessions. For instance, that the husband not marry other women, that the wife be allowed to finish her education, or that she be granted a driver or whatever else. It’s scant on details and to the point - nothing like an American prenup, but with everything discussed above, maybe it should be.

The first thing to remedy is that in case of divorce, all assets acquired together be divided up fairly and that the choice of divorce should be granted to husband and wife.

I concede re-aligning deeply ingrained social expectations with economic reality, and psychological / marital health will take a lot of work. When broadly accepted traditions are taught from a young age and seen in practice, they are hard for a society to break away from. A problem has been detected, diagnosed and now unlearning limiting beliefs and replacing them with empowering ones is not only intelligent, but also necessary for the collective well being. Nothing worth having comes easily.

Unless people know how to be repeatedly courageous in vulnerability, there will be failure. Between men who cannot admit they need help & women too proud to support their men the spirit of unity and collaboration is destroyed. Husbands will need to learn to give up some of their power and make a space for their wives. Wives will need to learn to take custody of the responsibility that comes with their new found power.

The change goes both ways. As wives venture out into the world, so too will husbands need to take more responsibility at home, changing diapers, feeding children, helping clean, cook and more. This is the joy of a collaboration of equals, knowing that we are supported by our respected lover. Many fathers have learned of this pleasure during the COVID-19 quarantine, surprising themselves at how much they enjoyed spending time with their children. There is no reason why this change cannot stay with the return to normality.

I am aware that the perspective of fluid gender roles I am proposing puts into question the motivation for marriage. As I speak about this with Arab women of various ages they ask me why they should get married at all if the roles are different? Why should they share in the rent? Why can’t they enjoy married life as they were promised, free from the burdens of the world?

V. Friendship in Marriage : Shared Values and Vision

Marriage is more than a transaction whereby husbands take proud ownership of beauty, lineage, inheritance, and child rearing ability in exchange of a dowry. That sounds more like glorified prostitution than dignified partnership. What is marriage for then if not these things?

Ideally, lovers are friends before they are lovers; in other words, they should enjoy spending time together. What one seeks out of friendship, one would also seek in a marriage (amongst other things). So, what does one seek out of friendship? The excitement that comes from contrasting spirits, exploration of minds, vulnerable healing, learning, growing wiser, companionship, play, fun, and more. Friends, in admiration absorb each other’s virtues and encourage one another’s healthy growth and self expression. One can more aptly provide these things from their character if they are mature and well developed individuals, with the emotional intelligence to be repeatedly vulnerable in love.

Lovers and friends are accomplices in this way, but how can we sustain all these beautiful things without a sense of equality? Why would I be friends with someone that didn’t reciprocate my generosity or tried to limit my expression and activity? It is worth repeating : accomplices protect each other’s dignity, and this is not compatible with dominance, submission, power and control.

This builds the strong foundation for a couple to collaborate on building a life based on deeply held shared values. They are “all in” for this joint future, trusting each other to look after one another. But to get there one needs to be a mature independent individual with a good sense of self before being interdependent with someone.

Lovers also need to respect and trust one another. They need to mutually protect each other’s individuality and integrity, which cannot happen in a dynamic of inequality, submission and dominance. To respect one another implies the acknowledgement of the other’s independence, the admission that one has zero control or power over the other.

Rather, loving respect is the encouragement of self discovery, wherever that may take us. This allows the total freedom to be where we want to be, and an absolute guarantee of never being constrained. After all, it is more pleasant to be with someone that wants to be there rather than has to be there. This is how love is liberating.

VI. Parting Thoughts : EQ & Reciprocal Empowerment

I am of the absolute conviction that a woman is never to be a man’s dependent. She’s too smart for that and a man doesn’t need a burdensome wife as a partner. She is not a child. She’s a hero, a captain, alongside her partner. Any less does not make sense to me. In fact, she may be more valuable than a man; she can also give life and sacrifice her body in the process. Truly, to be in the service of our wives is to be in the service of life.

Our role as husband or wife is to empower our partner and help them become all that they want to be, without constraint of tradition or pressure of liberalism. What matters is that the needs of life be fulfilled and both husband and wife can help ensure that as they work. We proactively contribute to defend the dignity and independence of our partners, whether it is by supporting at home or by working.

I am not proposing that men give up their duties. I am proposing that men give up some rights and take on some obligations, as wives are given rights, securities and get more involved in the building of a household. I am aware that between working, being an encouraging partner to her husband, and bearing the burden of pregnancy, a wife takes on more than her husband.

An emotionally intelligent man will be appreciative of that and his gratitude will drive his passionate devotion to his wife and family. This is in turn will fuel her own gratitude and trust, creating a virtuous dynamic of loving growth. The generous giving of oneself and mutual empowerment are the antidote to resentment. Besides, good love is not about mutual taking but about mutual giving.

What makes a man mature is not his dominance, his ability to make more money, hide his feelings, or be tough. A mature man is an individual that can provide a safe space for growth for the people he loves. He is adaptable, capable and willing to do what he must. A man is able to confront himself and feel the full range of his emotions, so that as he connects with himself he can equally connect with others.

This sort of empathy is emotional maturity and it exists identically in both men and women. It is rarer in men, but it is an essential ingredient to a successful marriage.

VII. An Example of Marriage Contract Clauses

What I propose can be brought into our lives without having to wait for the legislation to catch up. It is something people can opt into rather be obligated to. Lovers, husband and wife, can agree to the foundational principles that regulate their matrimony. Some will protest that by adopting the suggested rules we are showing poor faith, but the reality is that no one gets married thinking they’ll get divorced, but it happens. It is good to be clear and structured.

1. The spouses owe each other respect, loyalty, safety and support. The spouses promise to practice speaking their minds in sincerity and honesty, with courage and vulnerability, as they listen intently to understand one another.

2. The spouses will strive to share the burden of life to the best of their ability, in similar and/or different forms, whether in kind or financially with a spirit of abundance and generosity. The spouses will contribute in a balanced manner to the common household project and to each other, to the best of their ability.

3. Both partners will work to maintain and strengthen each other’s power, independence and individuality.

4. Budgets must be jointly defined and discussed for each spending category in order to optimize the outcome for each category, and in turn best develop the home and family plan. (examples of spending categories: fashion, travel, maids, drivers, savings, investments, children, home renovations, real estate purchases, groceries, personal discretionary spending, appliances, rent, insurance, emergency budget).

5. Discretionary spending stipends must be allotted to the partners on a periodic basis to preserve their independence.

6. The husband will work his best to cover all categories. Where the wife generates an income she is invited to contribute to the categories where she sees a lack, in the spirit of the described above and to raise the collective well being and standard of the family higher than it would be if the husband were to contribute alone.

7. The spouses will be transparent on all financial matters outside of personal discretionary spending.

8. The power to divorce is granted both to the husband and wife, and in case of separation all assets built together are to be divided fairly.

9. The husband forgoes the right to marry more than one wife at a time.

Where wives work and are self realizing, with faith that their interests are protected, that whatever they put into the marriage is not lost to a wanton divorce, that as they are sharing responsibility, so too they are sharing ownership, then they can happily contribute to the financial and material well being of the household alongside their husbands.

In this scenario, a wife will not be a dependent. She will have a seat at the table and be seen for all her divine power, ability, and love - as any human should be.

I promise you this mutual empowerment makes for a formidable union.

Forgiveness : Community's Healing Balm

2021-03-27T20:08:00.004+01:00

I. Exploring Forgiveness

The depth and variety of our social bonds is a great part of our wealth; the people we know help us make things happen. Yet so long as we are alive and members of society we will inevitably end up being hurt by someone or guilty of hurting someone. It’s to be expected but we must confront the conflict to heal it or we risk losing the relationship. Our bonds are sacred and deserve our utmost care in maintaining them. As the old saying goes : “to err is human, to forgive is divine”.

Though an apology is always nice, it is not necessary for forgiveness. An apology is almost always necessary to maintain a bond because it signals respect. However, not all offenses require an apology ; some people are very easily vexed by things that do not affect them. That is their problem. A disobedience against evil orders, or a reasonable action against an attempt at controlling someone’s life has no room for apology. Disrespecting the faith and creed of another means no relationship needs to be maintained.

Acts of cowardice, or acts with consequences of material, psychological or bodily harm on the other hand require an apology. Abandonment, failing to fulfill one’s relationship duties, a lie, theft, manipulation, dishonesty, and disrespect require an apology. Generally speaking failing to live by the creed of doing unto others as you would unto yourself requires an apology.

II. Talk About Two Halves of a Story

We hurt each other but rarely with malicious intent; it’s more likely that an oversight or slight stupidity caused the offense. Unfortunately emotions can get the better of us, inviting us to jump to easy conclusions. We become quick to build negative impressions based on a sample of bad behavior and cast one another as harmful villains.

For the sake of peace we must check ourselves against being delusional with hasty judgement. It is comforting, seductive and tempting to judge oneself better, more noble and honorable than someone who made a mistake. In truth, it is more noble to untangle the misunderstanding and work to clear it up. The best, and likely only tool, is a calm conversation.

The method is simple, but not easy. For a sound dialogue to take place the offender and the offended need to have faith that they abide by a certain code We must have faith that we are keen to be good people, with scruples and morals guiding our behavior. With that, we should prepare to speak clearly and sincerely, with the courage to be vulnerable, the humility to admit we may have been wrong, and the wisdom to keep pride out.

If we come to the table with the assumption that the other wants to do us harm, or that they are evil and not worthy of consideration, then our initial reaction will be the fruit of irritation literally stressing a response out of us. It’s physical: our hormones will call on us to fight or flee, our entire being will be tense and quick to jump to conclusions.

Our faith in one another is so important that based on the measurements of the physical response of couples disagreeing, scientists could accurately predict which were going to divorce. In fact those couples that discussed things rationally and with faith in one another were far more likely to remain together 16 years later.

Separately, the offended and the offender have only part of the full picture. Their initial discussion must calmly convey to the other the things that they do not know. The goal of the discussion is to diagnose the conflict, to understand it fully so it can be solved. In two well adjusted individuals, this process leads to the two individuals understanding and acknowledging each others’ situations.

III. Empathy & Remorse

As we come to understand the full picture, our empathy kicks in with regret and remorse taking the stage. The sorrow we feel for having caused another grief or pain is the price to pay for a true apology. It drives the change in behavior; the effort of alignment, of understanding, of correcting one’s world view - that is what repentance is. Consider Henry David Thoreau’s perspective that we ought to “make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh”.

Our hearts break to let the light in. Khalil Gibran said it elegantly : “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore, trust the physician and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility."

Regret, remorse and shame are powerful concepts that can quickly get out of hand; they must not overstay their welcome or they will crush a spirit. The tension in the contrast between who we think we are, and how we really are (as perceived through our actions) is often hard to swallow. We want to be the good guy, we can’t believe we’re the bad guy - and when we’re faced with unquestionable, undeniable evidence of the contrary, well - it hurts a hell of a lot and it can be traumatically confusing.

IV. Love Thy Neighbor as Thy Self

The situation is all the worse when liking ourselves can be difficult and can even make cowards out of people. Being comfortable with the fact that we are bound to make mistakes, while having faith in our basic kindness helps keeping remorse from degenerating into self loathing. To do that right not only must we have faith in the goodness of people, but people must have that faith in us too.

Ultimately, people respond to what is expected of them. When we are sincerely forgiven, it makes it easier to be kind to ourselves and to forgive ourselves, especially for the things we did not know before we knew them. It makes sense that we extend the favor to continue this virtuous cycle. To help make forgiving each other easy, it pays large dividends to be kind to one another.

In The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace, Jack Kornfield describes an African forgiveness ritual: "In the Babemba tribe of South Africa, when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, and every man, woman, and child in the village gathers in a large circle around the accused individual. Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, each recalling the good things the person in the center of the circle has done in his lifetime. Every incident, every experience that can be recalled with any detail and accuracy, is recounted. All his positive attributes, good deeds, strengths, and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length. This tribal ceremony often lasts for several days. At the end, the tribal circle is broken, a joyous celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe."

No one of sound mind wants to betray expectations of basic kindness. Luckily, our role as the bad guy in someone else’s story is not permanent; we are malleable people without any obligation to continue being the same people we were 5 minutes ago. Sometimes the change brought by the pain of remorse and regret is enough to absolve the offender. Other times, the offended requires the ledger be balanced before a pardon can be granted.

The concept is biblical ; an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. But that makes the world go blind and toothless. In Islam the relatives of a victim of murder can choose to replace a death sentence with blood money to compensate for loss of a loved one. Nothing can bring back the loved one that is lost, time that is lost, or home that is destroyed. Beyond restoring that which can be, what’s past is past and vengeance never satisfies. It is a beast that grows hungrier the more we feed it.

V. Forgiveness Fuel : Loving Kindness

There are powerful tales of forgiveness where parents forgive the teenager that murdered their own son. They understood the fundamental kindness of the child, and that forces around him led him to an awful path. With abundant love and relentless belief in his kindness, they would face their son’s killer and erode the toxic shell off of him until the boy was healed enough to see the victim’s parents as his own. Kill one life and you have killed all, save one life and you will have saved all.

Some cases see people that are initially remorseless for the harm they cause. The reasons are many, many of them can be healed. Whether it’s a deeply ingrained self loathing, or cowardice, or a character that is the result of a long history of neglect and/or abuse - relentless love is the key; care is the cure.

By no fault of their own, some neglected children can become troublesome teens and then poorly adjusted adults. To quote Victor Hugo “There are no bad weeds, nor bad men, only bad cultivators”. Re-education is the only option to cancel out the behavior that is fruit of miseducation, In Scandinavia and the Netherlands, where prison populations are dwindling, prisoners are separated from society to be readjusted. Their dignity is protected as they live comfortably while being skilled, reskilled or upskilled. They rarely are recidivists and the practice stands in stark contrast to many other countries.

I was told of a lady that would host in her home the most dire of anorexia cases. The girls would be brought to her after other facilities failed to treat them. Her secret was patience and relentless love, care, and positive affirmation. It worked. Whether you are harming yourself or someone else, something is off with how you see yourself in the world, and in one way or another loving care is needed.

VI. Leaving the Stubbornly Unapologetic

Then there are the wrongdoers that are absolutely unapologetic. Forgiveness is key for the sake of the injured, but forgiveness does not mean reconciliation. They are to be forgiven in the sense that no debt is owed, the slate is wiped clean, so no expectations can hold us tensely anchored in the past, but by no means does this mean that we must rekindle a relationship with them. If we must leave a situation to be at peace, then so be it.

In the sorry situations where one cannot leave a vexing situation, then one can be considered a slave. Our integrity, self love and respect demand that we take a position and resist abuse where it is persistent and it is impossible to leave it. It is urgent that abuse be nipped in the bud or it’ll only grow worse until it finds something to limit it. Human nature needs a limit pushing back against its excesses, otherwise we’ll see delusional bullies and tyrants run rampant.

VII. Let Go of Poison

By holding on to the pain and the desire for “justice”, the offended drinks the poison expecting the other person to die. To hold on to anger and resentment even after the offender stops hurting us hardens our hearts and darkens the lens through which we see the world. We continue to to hurt ourselves by focusing on the grievance and not letting it go. This is its own hell.

The pain is not just mental but physical as well. The hormones associated with anger and stress destroy areas in the brain associated with judgement and reason, all the while weakening the immune system. This is where forgiveness is to accept the situation as is, to let it go and ultimately allow ourselves to carry on. There is a common misconception that to forgive benefits the wrong doer first. This is false. It is a healing balm for the hurt individual to accept a situation and move on.

In all cases, forgiving does not mean forgetting. It is important to avoid denying how the incident has shaped us and our world view, and how it made us less naive and more realistic about human nature. People are good, yes, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

An apology for a transgression that has been repeated cannot be given as easily as it was the first time. Trust is broken every time, and like a plate repeatedly broken, it gets harder to piece back together. In the end, the best apology is a changed behavior proving the other was understood and respected. Actions speak louder than words.

Living the Simple Economy

2020-09-29T10:21:00.008+02:00

Imagine we made it. Imagine we managed to get 4 day work weeks, with 6 hour work days, shared jobs, automation and AI taking over most jobs and a universal basic income distributed to all. Imagine we convinced all of our baser instincts to tame our urges for prestige and social acceptance, and became minimalists. We’ll be free, balanced in leisure living with ourselves and our loved ones. But, it is human nature to seek a challenge. We are by definition ambitious explorers, adventurers. It’s what made conquerors out of us, it’s what got our curious spirits risking our well being through danger in finding new islands to inhabit. If the necessity bred by scarcity is out of the equation, how do we invent? What do we do.

I. The New Challenge of Society as a System of Communes

So, in our simple economy, what is the challenge? What will we collectively aspire to? The goal is to increase harmony and beauty, reduce pain, increase synergy between the living members of our earth (plant, animal, and human). The goal is to heal ourselves, each other and nature, to maintain the elevated states and upgrade ourselves in it. The foe is misery, disease, global warming, waste. The goal is to leave the place a little better than how we found it, and that means we are caretakers. It means we are custodians responsible for the sustainable continuity of life. This cannot happen if we are alienated from one another.

The next step will be to modify the organization of how we live in alignment with that which is healthy for us. Cities are great, but combined with unchecked capitalism they have distanced us from everything that matters. How can we think of others when we barely have the time to think of ourselves? How can we think of others when we do not know what it’s like to be connected or truly valued for our contribution, however humble it maybe? You, I, we are more than a paycheck. A system that reverses this alienation and make the most of our existence needs to be put in place.

with the benefit of hindsight and data collected, it is growing more obvious that the best way for humans to live is returning to basics. Communal living, basked in simplicity, nature, community, meaningful work, art, philosophy, and education, is not only what is best for us as individuals, but also as a community, and for the environment around us.

There have been many examples throughout history of such attempts at utopian communes. From the hippies of California, The Synergia Ranch, to Robert Owen’s 19th century attempts in the USA, and Jacques Fresco’s techno-utopian dream of the 20th century. Many have failed and turned cultish under a leader, but these are western adaptations. If you consider the Native Americans and their nomadic habits, they persevered for centuries without trouble. In a more modern sense, the Israeli Kibbutz is a fantastic model that is ripe for export around the world. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need was a creed that drove their charm, appeal, and their success.

2. Reversing Alienation : Getting Closer

We evolved to function best in smaller groups. According to Oxford anthropology professor Dunbar, no human can have more than 150 active meaningful social connections at any time. People will fade in and out of our lives as we carry on, and we’ll know thousands of people, but at any given point, we’ll be able to consciously manage just about 150 regular connections.

There is something to be said about the arithmetic of compassion. We tend to be desensitized the greater the number of individuals in pain. We are significantly more moved by an individual’s plight and suffering than by a family’s or a community. A thousand victims hurts less than an individual victim. But the city packs us densely together with millions upon millions close to one another. Scarcity makes us value one another and cherish each life, but if we are billions upon billions we cease to welcome the stranger, but rather look at him with disdain and distrust. This is all the more true when our neighbors are so close that peace, quiet and tranquility become rare luxuries.

The city has too many people too closely packed together moving too fast to build meaningful bonds. This is no way to build social fabric but it is a natural killswitch activated when we find there are too many of us.

In the city the nature of most of our connections is transactional. We have a contract to give or receive goods and services, and this mostly is what our bond is built around. It is not the individual that counts, but the money around the individual. The offense is subtly dehumanizing. The wealthy can hire people to do that which our tribe, our community should naturally do (take care of the elderly, educate the young). The rest individualistically fend for themselves.

What if we bonded and helped one another for the sake of making our lives better, in a spirit of abundance and generosity, confident in our mutual desire to support one another? A bond between two is more than just work and entertainment, it is also healing and growth - but the latter require deep and intimate work which cannot be afforded if we do not have the time to think of even ourselves.

It is very appealing to think of your neighbor as your chosen family, living alongside you and abiding by a set of rules and principles defined by reason, justice, empathy and truth. To look out for each other, comparing one another not to make sure that we have been slighted, but to ensure that our neighbor has enough. To imagine our children playing together in abundant greenery, exploring and learning about nature around us. This is what we must aspire to; if we do not love our neighbors now, how can we love the idea of future generations?

3. The Place of Nature : Space, Peace and Food

Something about big spaces makes us feel very small and humbled. I feel this every time I walk into a cathedral or compare our size to that of the infinite universe. But this is also true when we spend time in nature ; the effect of greenery around us is spiritually and mentally healing. The effect is powerful enough for Japanese doctors to regularly prescribe forest bathing to burned out, tired or otherwise sick individuals. I know of families in France that choose to live an hour’s drive from their work place in major cities, only so that they can smell fresh air, see wide open spaces, and have peace of mind. Nature is God’s cathedral, and it is priceless.

In contrast, the city stands as a concrete jungle, a showcase of man’s power in imposing his will over nature. Samples of forest are scattered over the city, and instead of humans being guests, we invite nature as gardens in our conquered domain. The tragedy is that we forget we are not separate from nature, but from it, of it, emerging from it and at one with it. I cannot envision a world more delightful than one where there is symbiosis between its elements to protect and strengthen the balance of life.

Luckily there is a resurgence in the collective desire to live simply and in harmony with nature. Country side barns and forest cabins are refurbished for good living, and homesteading whereby people live in a self sufficient way is gaining popularity. Indeed, in Spain, Greece, and Italy, the youth suffering the whiplash economic effects of the credit crisis of 2007 found it more fulfilling and dignified to return to rural living.

That trend ought to be amplified considering the futility of excess material aspirations and the growing risk of food scarcity. The topsoil, the nutrient rich layer critical to crop growth, is eroding as a result of industrial farming techniques. By some estimates, we have only 60 harvests left to collect in many of the breadbaskets of the world. Intensive agriculture of one crop on given land, (“monoculture”) is the main culprit.

In contrast nature is designed to be diverse with delicate ecosystems of living things coexisting to grow ever more life. Polyculture is the way. Our hunter gatherer ancestors would take a walk through a forest and forage for whatever foods they needed and return to the tribe. This can be intelligently recreated today with permaculture.

Permaculture design hopes to have a synergistic mix of insects, plants and animals serving one another to grow more. There is a symbiosis between the elements and the top soil is further enriched with deep rooted plants, mushrooms and more. There is a fantasy that permaculture can see us stroll through a food garden of our design and pick whatever is ready to be eaten, but it does tend to require more work than one anticipates.

Alongside the plants, animals would be populating the casts of our lives, and not as pests but as helpers. Goats, sheep, horses, chickens, cows, dogs and cats and all the animals we can imagine on a farm. Not only can they provide nourishment with eggs, milk and their occasional flesh, but they also have profound psychological effects. Seeing their ability for emotion, love and empathy softens our hearts and humbles us as we see ourselves in them, making us at one with nature. They also reduce stress, anxiety and depression, they ease loneliness, encourage exercise and playfulness. It is no wonder then that Mongolians take advantage of their deep connection with the horse to offer (often pricey) equine therapy, or that cow hugging has become an equally valid therapy (and just as pricey).

Being in nature, managing permaculture and spending time with animals is also great for children. Scandinavians have moved away from the traditional model of homework and testing, preferring young students fan the flames of their curiosity and wonder with learning by exposure to nature. It is a much more effective method, and the boy scouts have known it and they make for better adjusted adults.

Being in the material world has the advantage of teaching us functional, impactful and very real skills that can help us survive. It is far more empowering, at a subconscious level than any desktop job we can imagine. Affecting the world materially and visibly is more impactful by magnitudes comparing from 0 to infinity. Knowing how to make and use rope, tie knots, make a fire, build a shelter hunt and just how to generally survive in the wild makes us more resilient and serene.

Ultimately it all sums itself to being aware we are not separate from nature, but from and of it, and living in alignment with that truth.

4. Efficient Consumption, Minimal Waste : Composting & Leave No Trace Behind

Being so far away from nature we tend to forget that we are a part of it. Food prices being so low, we become insensitive to how much time it takes for it to grow, and waste far more than 30% of our production. Just as terribly, we forget how long it takes for things to decompose. Far from sight, far from mind.Yet the cycle of life depends on matter decomposing so it can nourish the earth, which in turn will nourish us.

Rural people living without technology (like the Amish, the Mennonites, and many around the world) are acutely aware of these realities. As a result they are reverent towards produce and waste, so much so that they maximize utility in every part of the process. Whatever can not be consumed, preserved, conserved or otherwise put away for future use is put into a compost heap to serve the soil. The breakdown of complex elements into simpler nutrients is necessary for life to continue its cycle. However, not everything decomposes at the same rate; intelligent waste management is necessary.

Poorly managed decomposition can turn toxic for the environment. In the natural world scavengers, insects and fungi play a critical role in digesting the dead into ingredients for life. Waste water, urine, defecations, carcasses and other organic waste can and must be processed to return to the cycle of life.

What is not useful in this scenario are plastics because they do not break down into nutritious elements for the soil. The ubiquitous use of plastics and society’s convenient ignorance of its fate once disposed of is proof of our alienation. China stopped accepting plastic waste for recycling from the rest of the world, and other poorer nations are resisting the import of wealthier countries plastic waste. Why? because recycling is a sham and no one wants to have their country’s ecosystem choke with plastic. Most products being a mix of several plastics are unusable in the recycling process, and so end up as waste in nature.

More tragic and toxic than plastic is electronic waste, but it is all the same. Products must be made to last, fixable and upgradeable, containers made to be reused, and absolutely nothing must be left haphazardly to nature. Recycling must be aggressive. It is costly, but cheaper than omnicide.

5. Uniting Over A Universal Imperative : A New Culture

The truth is that the way we manage waste is only one of many symptoms of our civilization’s disease. There is a religion of profit at all costs, where things dead are worth more than when they are alive. A whale, a tree or the scorched mined earth, are worth more dead than alive. And we push in this direction even as we know it is destroying the planet, and inevitably, will destroy us. We all know it is happening, and we are overwhelmed in dealing with it. Something has to give.

This is specifically what humanity can unite and bond over. We, as groups, have been capable of great achievements in the face of calamity. Be it commandeering an entire economy’s industrial complex for the war effort, as the USA did during World War 2, or the manhattan project and the development of the Nuclear bomb (and then energy), or when it raced against Russia to be first to space. Calamity is a great unifier, and history is replete with examples.

Our common foe to unite against is present and future misery in all its forms. Even today, in major cities, isolation, loneliness, malnutrition and a myriad of threats against our mental, physical, social and spiritual well being exist. The disease we are sick with is not only eroding the natural world, it is also eating away at our humanity. It makes sense, people are too busy surviving to nurture relationships, and deaths of despair have been rising around the world. They are a consequence of the fast paced capitalist system. This must be rejected, and a new found healing unity must be pursued.

Culture must reflect this priority in the common lore, from the stories we tell our children to the messages we repeat to ourselves as adults. This is no different from the World War 2 propaganda used to lift and rally efforts. Yes, it is a form of indoctrination, but it is no secret the media’s influence over our spirits today is more pernicious. The media bombards viewers with alarm and social media has made us more suspicious of the opposition than ever before. I ask my reader to consider the possibility of an indoctrination with integrity.

I am wary of the possibility of dictatorship - many a proposal for a utopian goal degenerated into misery and brutality. The communist dream under Stalin is a tragic example. Any community must be small enough to be managed by way of a direct democracy, and with a minimal role of a leader, limited to that of a coordinator. Different situations will call for a different individual to take a leadership role, based on his qualifications For this to work well needs to see members receive solid education and an ability for critical thinking. A culture of scrutiny, dialogue and plurality of thought should permeate the social fabric fending off any eventual rigid dogma from taking root.

Uniting against the demise of life and for its flourishing in our ideology is lofty, but no idea is useful without implementation. Rituals serving the common good are to be designed, adopted and tweaked as we learn more over time. One can envision annual marches against injustice, inequity and ecocide. One can imagine ceremonies around great clean ups, tree planting, or the installation of solar arrays. We can design celebrations to gather the courage and hope to carry on for the future despite the bleak outlook. We can develop rites of passage with mystical experiences to foster a sense of unity with nature, history and the future, make our hearts humble and our minds aware of our souls’ interconnectedness with the world.

It is very humbling to understand how we are ultimately insignificant in the grand scheme of things. It is far more meaningful to understand that a life well lived is one of service to our community. And even then, what we do echoes in eternity. Our service is to the next generation, and to make sure they are better off. It really is that simple. We must shift towards generational thinking, but we can’t do so if we are not meaningfully social.

In sum, all efforts are to go towards the collective, general interest, in the pursuit of innovation for the larger goal of making beauty, increasing harmony, reducing pain and healing ourselves, each other and the world. It is hard to disagree with prioritizing the flourishing of life over the long term. This necessarily implies a balance with the natural world that supports us. There is certainly plenty of work to do.

6. Work : In Service to One another

Coming closer together, healing nature, becoming more involved with our food, developing a culture aware of future generations and our duty to them - all these things are important and an intelligent civilisation would honor its duty to them. But capitalism as we know it does not reward or punish that which lays beyond the financial realm. Whether an investment or action is harmful or beneficial to nature, the individual or society, in the short or long term is not sufficiently considered. Sure, gas guzzling cars and cigarettes are more taxed, carbon credits are set up and renewable energy is subsidized, but it took a long time to get these results. Profit must be redefined to include all the positive and negative externalities of one’s business endeavors.

Social credits can be awarded to those that, through their work, add significant non financial value to their community. Whether they are teaching, researching, inventing, healing or nursing - they must be rewarded so they can live decently. Environmental credits, similarly can go to those that plant trees, set up recycling plants, organize clean ups or install renewable energy systems. We must take account of all value creation, even those that are not directly involving us. We must consider the total bottom line of our actions, considering the financial, social, environmental and cultural effect of our investments in time, money and labor.

Any community’s goal is to make the existing situation better, more harmonious and accommodating for its members. Members of any given community work individually and collectively towards that goal, in service of one another and of themselves. We help each other heal ourselves and our environments, we help each other’s maintain our new found personal and environmental health, and then we upgrade. This cycle is endless. This is where meaning is, not in power, vanity or prestige. The pleasure is the reward of doing good for others, as we deepen our own skill.

The commune dweller will be expected to be a generalist on multiple fronts and a specialist on at least one topic. We will know how to be caretakers for infants and the elderly, healers of the mind and body for all, builders of homes and furniture, educators and weavers. No these are not jobs that are typically considered prestigious, but consider Scandinavia where teachers are as revered as doctors. Or consider the trash collectors of New York City that receive six figure salaries. These are front line jobs that are crucial for the fabric not only of a community, but of society at large.

7. Economy & Work : The Industrial Heart of the Network of Communes

Woodwork, agriculture, and social care will be some general skills expected out of any community member. But we won’t be expected to or desire to live without technology, devolving to a more primitive states. Smartphones, tablets and the internet have proven extremely useful in informing and educating us. They are formidable tools in our making of the arts and humanities at large. Cars, trucks, bikes get us and products around quickly, and factories produce marvels of civilisation. Even the more menial tasks are made more convenient thanks to the tools provided by manufacturing. I do not want to have to plow a field with my bare hands! To be in balance with nature does not mean not flowing or innovating, we just ought to do so at a decent pace.

Decreasing consumption with a minimalist and collaborative culture, introducing a culture of production not for profit at any cost, but for the collective well being, to create abundance, defeat scarcity and hunger. That being said, these products of advanced manufacturing need ecosystems of massive factories to function, and typically they are manned by hundreds if not thousands of people. A humble commune wouldn’t be able to handle that kind of work alone.

However large or small the network of communes is, it cannot be be separate from any economy. It is reasonable to assume different communes and groups of communes will have different specializations in goods and services to offer. Trade and people must flow freely between the communes, and between the communes and the more orthodox economy.

A group of communes, and a network of groups of communes can pool their resources together for the general good. I imagine the network of communes to have various currency systems coexist. Between cryptocurrency, barter and virtual currency as well as classic fiat money. Each community would have a warehouse that stores the community needs. Where a community’s warehouse would be lacking, other’s would provision it with their excess on credit. As such, a virtual currency would be set up and backed by the products of the communes. This virtual currency could then be used for trade.

Much like today people commute to work and back, one could imagine the same in the network of communes, with self driving cars and much shorter work days (thanks to automation, AI, etc.). Consider the network of island villages the architect Bjarke Ingels proposed. A cluster of 6 villages, would combine into an archipelago of 6 clusters of 6 villages, and the archipelago would then be a unit of a supercluster of six archipelagos, and so on.

In this manner the advantage of the city’s population density, the cultural, intellectual and technical excellence that come with it, would be preserved. However, the city is far denser with more inequality. I concede, it would be very difficult to reorganize the world today in communities similar to Bjarke Ingels’ vision (unless we explore the sea). Besides, Cities today are making great strides towards more holistic living.

Paris aims to be a 15 minute city where all needs are no further than a 15 minutes walk or bike ride from any point. This will cut air pollution and provide urbanites with a more pleasant environment. Barcelona has developed the superblock concept which groups buildings into single blocks and carols residents into their center, forbidding cars from going in and boosting social well being. Other cities are increasing their rooftop gardens, edible gardens are sprouting worldwide and vertical forests are flourishing- but is it enough?

For many scientists, sociologists and economists the momentum with which our capitalist system is going forward, and its intricate complexity make impossible to reverse course and stop an environmental catastrophe. The efforts of urban greening are commendable, and they may mitigate damage, but sooner or later we’ll need to have an upheaval. It is best to be preemptive in our organization than to be surprised by disaster.

Germany is a strong example of towns preserving cutting edge technology manufacturing, going so far as to have a higher GDP than major cities like Berlin. There’s no reason this can’t be reproduced elsewhere. Granted, such a development would take time, but communities can start by working on simpler outputs and see complexity increase over time as a technology and the network of communes become more mature.

One can imagine communes around the world preparing their produce for export, from coffee, quinoa, cashews, chocolate and more, without the use of middle men. The communes can add value by processing their produce into consumer ready finished products with fatter profit margins for to reinvest in their own development. Eco-resorts, health spas, addiction rehabilitation facilities and all sorts of services best suited for a natural setting could be provided. As their wealth increases, their profits are reinvested in more complex industrial operations, with the aim of localizing and mimicking the German model.

This isn’t as far fetched as one would think. The Spanish town of Marinaleda, in the Seville province, has 3000 citizens living on an area of 24 square kilometers, living according to leftist leaning principles. They are a flourishing agrarian community with factories and equipment to process their own produce. Theirs proved to be a robust model able to resist even the catastrophic 2008 economic crisis. While 30% of the active population in Andalusia was without work, Marinaleda had full employment. What’s more, residents can buy their own home for 15 euros a month thanks to self building program. It’s no small home, 100 square meter gardens and 3 bedrooms for that price is a good deal.

8. The Fallacy of the Tragedy of The Commons & Free Riders

What makes the Marinaleda exception is their unwavering commitment to the concept of social democracy. They’re very clear about their principles and aspirations. Their website defines social democracy an unlimited access to all forms of well-being for all, that liberty without equality is nothing, and that democracy without real well being for people is an empty word, a tool of deception for unnecessary people. They have a strong sense of togetherness that isn’t so easily matched.

I unfortunately get the impression that outside of this sphere, in most of the rest of the world, being collaborative, sharing and generally supportive of one another is considered weak and a cop out of good hard work. This world view builds on a very brutal, Hobbesian perception of human nature, which assumes we are at our core selfish and mean. It helped popularize the woefully false concept of “The Tragedy of the Commons”, according to which common resources will be dilapidated as individuals seek to abuse them in order to secure their portion.

The usual illustration is of commonly held pastures and herders recklessly hoarding the best grass for their sheep to secure his lot at the cost of the general well being. It sounds off, but the man behind the idea was an islamophobe, a racist and eugenist. He was biased and wrong ; it turns out humans set up institutions to prevent that kind of abuse from taking place. In short, people are better than many teach.

When the individual is embedded in a community, and that community is embedded in a community of communities, then we all carry honor in doing good work and providing to each other to the best of our capabilities. It is an idealistic world view, a very hopeful understanding of man kind, but the founders of the Kibbutz network in Israel believed in it. It is the basis upon which the Kibbutz ran themselves and avoided any problems of free riders or leech like members. Their system is still up and working a hundred years later, with over 200 such communities all over what was once called New Palestine.

9. Protection : The Non-Naive Society

As lovely as everything described so far sounds, we must not be naive to internal or external threats. What is proposed is very different form of society that erodes the base of those that currently hold power and fortune. Suffice it to say that without classic debt, with far less consumption, those benefiting from the game of capitalism will see their advantage eroded. They also tend to outgun and outman any small group of peace mongers. The commune and its dwellers will therefore need to have a strong sense of legality and judicial process to defend their rights and mode of life.

Threats of physical violence would also come from marauders, hooligans and other vagrants. Martial arts, strong bodies and the knowledge of how to use weaponry would be expected from the dwellers. The first thing the kibtuzim did upon setting up was build barriers to protect themselves. Today, the Israeli Defense Force teaches the most brutal form of martial arts, Krav Maga, and it has been effective in protecting them (many would argue far too effective).

Physical harm could also come from the natural forces. Bears, wolves and predators could roam into a remote commune and reck havoc. Just as much, floods and fires could engulf a community. But history and perspective are on the designer’s side. Concrete, adobe or stucco can keep fires away better than wood in defending against fires. The dutch have managed to keep an entire ocean out for hundreds of years, and where they used to have many annual casualties to floods, they haven’t seen a single on in over 50 years. Lessons can be lifted to solidify and protect dwellings, and most of the design tricks are surprisingly low-tech.

The final threat is internal. In the spirit of openness no person should feel obliged to stay within any commune and must be free to roam the world. The mormons are some of the communities that allow for their young to go and explore the world in their early twenties, so they can make their own mind about staying with the community or not. It is a sort of voluntary exile of self discovery.

Those who prove themselves destructively rebellious will face a kind correction. I was told of an African tribe that forgoes admonishment. Instead they gather in a circle around the culprit and remind him of all the ways they are a good person. It is an extremely effective method, because ultimately we get what we expect out of people. Believe they are good, and they will be.

10. Epilogue : The Mystery of the Georgia Guide Stones

The Georgia Guide Stones are huge slabs of granite in the USA with instructions for rebuilding civilisation after the apocalypse. Each slap is 16 feet tall, four of them weighing more than 20 tons apiece. Nobody knows who commissioned the monument or why. A nearby plaque gives the dimensions and explains a series of notches and holes that correspond to the movements of the sun and stars. There are the slabs as well, on which are written 10 dictates, or instructions in 8 languages ranging from English to Swahili. Along with providing instructions for the future, the massive granite slabs function as a clock, calendar, and compass. The monument was commissioned in 1979, after 20 years of secret planning. Consider Henry James' observations of Stonehenge: "You may put a hundred questions to these rough-hewn giants as they bend in grim contemplation of their fallen companions, but your curiosity falls dead in the vast sunny stillness that enshrouds them.” (to learn more click here)

These are the tenets :

Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
Unite humanity with a living new language.
Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
Balance personal rights with social duties.
Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
Be not a cancer on the Earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.

What Does it Mean to Know Yourself, and How To Do It

2020-07-31T13:27:00.001+02:00

For a long time I mistakenly took for granted that I knew myself. In reality, I was so caught up with the pleasure and speed of life that I didn’t take the time to really observe myself. I had one milestone to reach after the next, and that’s what my mind was focused on. That’s what I was, with in between fun. When I started to investigate inwards, I realized I was a stranger to myself. As it turns out I am not the only one.

But what does it mean to know oneself, and how do we go about it? Socrates tried, but after years of inward exploration he concluded he could only know nothing about himself. I can see how he got there, but only in esoteric terms, there’s a lot that happens in between.

Let’s consider the story of Lebron James. At the 2012 eastern conference final, he failed to defend the hoop - costing the team a win. All the hard work, dedication, discipline, intimate knowledge the game and passion was replaced with a feeling of “nothing”. For two days leading to the next game (6) in Boston, he felt nothing. He was empty. He lead the team towards a dominant victory. Losing that game would have meant the end of his career. Prior to that his performance wasn’t that good, and the fans were aggressively against him. But he rejected that persona. He kept saying to himself :“i’m not that guy”, actively killing his ego and letting the emptiness of nothing guide his intuition to victory.

We’ll see that the process of knowing oneself is one of healing with the ultimate goal of abandoning the ego. The impressions of the self are let go in favor of a larger, more serene state of mind, that allows us to live with our whole being, intuitively with the world.

Freedom is a Prerequisite to Being

To know yourself, you must be, to be, you must think, and to think you must first be free in the world ; free to experience it and express yourself in it. This life experience is the essential building block of awareness. One cannot be expected to have an accurate representation of oneself in reality without having been in it.

One cannot have an accurate understanding of one’s state of mind without being able to express oneself. Think of the violence you’ve been dealt you thought was small till you spoke out. Think of the anxiety before an exam, or speaking to a girl, that evaporated upon action. When we express ourselves, things take a truer dimensions.

With our bodies and minds we must be free to explore the world and our thoughts, or else we’ll know ourselves only in the limited spheres we’ve encountered, unaware of how we’d react in new situations. But even with the luxury of existing and expressing ourselves freely, thinking is a daunting challenge.

2. To Exist Meaningfully, Courageously Align with Truth

Our ability to perceive reality is limited by the plethora of biases of the mind. Our subconscious is much more manipulatable and in control of our conscious decisions than we think. We must resist the urge to act emotionally and balance ourselves with reason. We are easily malleable, so much so for each person that knows us a different version of ourselves exists, even in relation to ourselves. To quote Carl Jung “In each of us there is another who we do not know.”

And that’s just while we’re trying to understand ourselves. If we try to understand the other, we’re confronted with the brutality and meanness of man and nature. The more you know, the more life becomes a struggle. So why think at all? Ignorance is bliss.

To think is to courageously confront reality, especially when it doesn’t make sense against our preconceived notions of the world. The longer we hold off from the truth, the more violent the disorientation will be when irrefutable evidence makes your understanding of the universe suddenly irrelevant.

There is chaos and the known is replaced by the unknown. It is terrifying, but if you’re going through hell, you better keep going. This is what it means to be intelligent : to continuously adapt to reality, favoring truth over ego. We think to mine for truth and make sense of the world around us.

This painful correction is healing the foundations of being. Once we heal, we get stronger and paradigm shifts don’t have to be calamities. At a more day to day scale, it is human nature to be entertained with a puzzle or challenge when we are confident in our abilities; we have an urge to solve it and make sense of it. The challenge becomes fun as we exert ourselves on it. Fundamentally life’s a game like that. But this is true only if the struggle is based on truth, if the struggle is meaningful.

To be is to exist, and to exist is to struggle in reality. Life is not a bed of roses, it is more thorns, pain and effort. But it’s not without meaning; discomfort pushes the mind into a state of necessity that gets us busy inventing, striving to fix and enhance ourselves and our environment. All pleasure is relief from pain, in one form or another (achievements included, consider the pleasure and satisfaction of a job well done).

3. Meaningful Work : Merging With Nature

The question is then what is a meaningful struggle? It is a purpose, a direction in our lives, rooted in truth. I have personally found peace of mind in the conviction that a meaningful life is one of contribution, of service to community to make things better. I’d like to see us existing in symbiosis and harmony with nature. I’d like to see us healing ourselves, each other and nature. I’d like us to intelligently invent and upgrade the world, with science and art, making beauty and reducing pain.

To contribute well we must be well educated, sound observers of our environment and world at large. When we invest our time and effort towards those things that make us marvel and wonder at how they work, we start to become inventors, breakaway innovators. In this way to think makes us coexist as one with nature, and therefore to be nature.

But first, before we can break and bend the rules into an upgraded state, we must deeply and intimately understand them and why they were there in the first place. This requires inquisitive thought, analysis and learning.

In sum, we diligently align our minds with reality, seeking to understand it to upgrade it with invention. In this way, reality shapes us, and we become what we do and at one with our environment.

But knowing yourself is not about what you are doing, it is about your motivation for doing it. Life is not about prosperity, it is about the maturing of the human soul.

4. Interlude : Media’s War On Consciousness

To be able to think in truth we need concentration. In concentration we get to a state of flow, where time melts away and we make as we learn. It is a sacred state of being that breeds important insight; but our attention spans are under attack by an endless barrage of media. It amounts to nothing less than a war on our consciousness.To protect our state of flow, media distractions must be muted.

All media is but a caricature of reality designed to either entertain or artfully elevate our consciousness (the latter is a minority). The entertaining kind prevails and is designed to be addictive, gluing us to our screens to be exposed to more advertising. Entertainment bamboozles us, normalizes the exceptional and provokes us with fear, shock, awe with a variety of thrills to wow us out of boredom. It’s fun for a couple of hours, but it’s fantasy, and even though we suspend disbelief, in our minds it pretends to be reality. The confusion engrains itself more deeply the longer we are exposed, and our primitive instinct based reptilian mind grows stronger against our more evolved thinking self.

An artist strives to make reality more obvious, an entertainer cares only for the thrill, like an illusionist. There is value in that, sometimes even therapeutic, but content has simply become too easy to make and distribute for there to be any editorial filtering work to check on quality. We must beware of pleasure or pain for their own sake. They are major addictive distractors; one is mind numbing, the other is meaningless. Pleasure and pain are good indicators but very poor masters.

You become what you behold, what occupies your mind, therefore be mindful with what you feed your consciousness.

5. Evolving Away from the Biographical Self

Living in truth, events start to shape us. At a given stage in our lives, we’ll look to our past to understand why we are how we are. After all, we are the result of our experiences and thoughts. The traumas, the pleasures, the loves, the misunderstanding and so on that have been lived, compose how we see the world and behave in it.

They define what we like and dislike, what we want and our objectives ; our history directs us. Out of those experiences we grow some pleasures and disgusts, and it is good to explore whether an identity is defined by those things that repel and attract us. Are we a contrast between our fears, disgusts and our pleasures and joys?

Arguably, yes, that is a part of who we are, but it is a drop in the ocean of the total of the individual. We are more than our biography. We are also our also what we do, and underpinning that is how we think (because to think is to be). But the thought process is fluid and ever changing. We are not human beings, we are human becoming.

Unfortunately we fail to embrace the concept of an evolving self, and we grow attached to the identity we assign ourselves so. I don’t blame me or anyone that did it, it’s very comforting and securing to know that there’s such a thing as a definitive me. Absolute constant to fall back on is reassuring, especially in such a rapidly changing world.

Unfortunately, there’s no such thing and there’s hard science to back it. Neurologists finally agreed with what Buddhists knew since always : there is no self, the ego is an illusion.

6. Growing Awareness is the Key to Knowing Ourselves

To know ourselves requires us to stop and to take a look at ourselves inwardly, like a spectator, separated from ourselves and taking an objective look. We stop living on autopilot and start taking an active role in our being. This is where we start to calmly observe ourselves and reflect (and often be startled with what we find).

There is a space that should create itself between an event and our reaction to it. In this space, we take a moment to ponder and decide on the action we wish to take next. This activates our responsibility and adds substance to our being. The wise man masters his mind, the fool is mastered by his mind.

We must calm ourselves and patiently suffer the emotion that would otherwise drive an impulsive and foolish pattern of behavior. Separate yourself from your mind from the sadness of a broken heart, a betrayal, a rudeness, understand the pain and let it go. Do not let it overstay its welcome. It is a hard balancing act to perform right, but it is a reliable antidote to foolish impulsivity.

In knowing how to feel ourselves like so, we connect with ourselves more, and we become able to relate and empathize with others better. To connect with the world you must first connect with yourself, even the hard bits.

The legendary Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg owes a lot of her success to her mother’s advice : “never get mad”. We will always be submissive to the forces around us, things happen in the world we’re in, it’s the way of things - but we can control our thought and perspective and this will make the struggle easier. There is a tremendous amount of consciousness to mine in there.

7. Thought Systems as Tools of Truth

Once we take the mental space to observe ourselves, the next job is to figure out how to think. To know yourself well you must know your thought well .The method of reasoning is the engine of our creativity and unique identity.

However, it is important we do not associate ourselves with our conclusion. Much like you are not your khakis, car or bank account, you are not your conclusion. You are more your method of reasoning, because this is what breeds your thoughts, which breed your words, which generate your actions in the world.

It follows then that we owe it to ourselves to develop a robust method of thought and enquiry to investigate the world and ourselves. Learning to think philosophically and scientifically can steer us to truth; indeed, the better we can understand the world around us, the more we can understand ourselves in it.

To fight against the entropy of our minds, we must constantly update and develop our thought process, our scrutiny and skepticism, so that we can remain objective and closer to truth. The human is ever changing, self developing, and so the more we observe our thought, the more we enhance it.

8. Writing as a Mirror of the Full Self

To write gives us an opportunity to practice stepping away from out thoughts and to dialogue with ourselves. In the calm we can let our fingers flow uninhibited and observe ourselves. As we practice writing, our thoughts become sharper, clearer and we learn to convey them better, concisely and precisely. If the thought is sharper, then so is the being.

To write is a tool of self exploration, and self love. There is focus and reflection on our state of mind and being. We exercise an intentional “feeling” of oneself, as we strive to express ourselves on paper. There is a care to master the art of understanding oneself, and a patience in allowing oneself to flower as we discover oneself in the process. These are all the components of love.

Writing is the practice of acknowledging and accepting our lot. The past is unchangeable and it brought me here, there is no sense negotiating with it because it changes nothing. As a practice of self acceptance, it must be unfiltered, uncensored and entirely free. The writing must be free to be intrepid and blasphemous if necessary. Nietzsche did not boost our collective consciousness by writing “God is Dead” out of a place of cowardice.

To know oneself is to understand that you have parts of darkness and light. Anger, outrage, violence, gluttony and all the sins we can imagine are part of us. We must not look at those that have committed crimes or sins as lesser than ourselves. We have been spared the circumstances that lead to such a result. Darkness is in us, and the less aligned we are with ourselves the more it will flare up as an escape from self, ceding control over ourselves to potential destructions. It is good to understand and accept them as a part of oneself to know how to manage them, and to be merciful with the guilty.

It is worth noting once again that we are not our conclusions. Conclusions are open to change based on evidence in the world, they are not to be held on to. Attaching oneself to the conclusion of our thought is to grow the illusion of the ego. The more we hold on to preconceived notions, the less we can receive new inputs to more accurately understand reality.

To seek truth is to continuously shatter the delusion of self knowledge. One cannot know what one does not know, and what is known is an infinitely small fraction of the knowable. In the end we know nothing, and it is healthier to abandon the illusion of security, though far more terrifying.

9. Intuitive Thinking

As we get to know ourselves in experiencing the world, feeling ourselves in it, thinking and understanding ourselves as we write, as we come to peace with who we are and how we came to be, it becomes easier to detach ourselves from the biographical and material identity.

Our luxuries and traumas stand in the way of our consciousness and they become easier to abandon upon understanding them. We are under no obligation to continue being the person that was attached to their things and history.

The ego is an idea of yourself you carry around -to know yourself is to understand that you are forever changing, the sooner you let go, the sooner you can be infinite, the sooner you can overcome the illusion of separateness. All consciousness comes from the same place, and each one of us encapsulates a portion of it ; truly we are other selves to each other.

Unburdened, one understands that one is from and of nature, for harmony, beauty and growth. There’s less cognitive dissonance, less of a disconnect between what we feel, think, what we say and do. The thought no longer stands in the way of being: it is just being. You are love in human form, nurturing existence.

Now, that you are aware of your universality, you can live as though you are already dead. Not morbidly, but in relentless focus and dedication for what you know is true. To know yourself is to have the courage of your intelligently found convictions.

10. On Meditation

The ultimate and final tool in our know thyself toolbox is meditation. The act of emptying one’s mind and focusing on breath, in stillness, grows our consciousness. It enmeshes and aligns the being more intimately in the fabric of reality allowing for us to live ever more intuitively. Now, Intuitive focus is the opposite of intellectual focus, where the entire body is crunched up to get something done. In intuitive focus, the entire being is fluid, like water, adapting harmoniously to reality.

Just like Lebron James in Boston in 2012. He became fluid, a machine of intuition.

This self actualisation is no easy feat, requiring the constant balance of our intellectual and emotional reactions to reality, what was at first requiring a great deal of effort, becomes a second nature, an intuition - and before we know, we are in a constant balance between being overly confident in our abilities to be unbiased, and our surprise at how we have become biased, and ready to upgrade our world view all over again.

To know thyself is to understand thyself as a tool for the universe to know itself. A servant of knowledge, with the pleasures of life received as a byproduct of living in truth.

To know thyself is to discover oneself as a gardener in the eden of life, a custodian for others.

To know yourself is to understand you are infinite, and to abandon the illusion of separateness.

It’s a hell of a lot to handle and it certainly drove even Socrates to understand trying to know himself was futile ; his infinity made him ineffable and ultimately unknowable. Just be.

"We share clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. We hammer wood for a house, but it is the empty space inside that makes it liveable. We work with being, but none-being is what we use." - Lao Tzu

An Ode & Apology to My Body

2020-07-15T07:03:00.005+02:00

I stand in profound gratitude for my body. Hundreds of millions of years, eons have passed with subsequent mutations and adaptations for my being to come into existence. You, me and every other human being is a product emerging from nature, in symbiosis with it, a conscious and intelligent expression of nature.

I am speechless at the miracle of my senses and mobility. It is a capsule of innumerable simultaneous chemical reactions allowing me to move in space and to perceive reality. it is a ship for my soul to experience the world through. But I betrayed it, took it for granted and insulted the eons of evolution that produced me. I am aware this sounds epic, but it actually is. Do not take for granted the wondrous piece of biotechnology at your disposal.

Leonardo Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man - The sacred geometry of the body as taken from ideal proportions of man, as measured from the bodies of several models around Milan.

I am guilty of having neglected my body for four months, to the point that it feels like it atrophied. My movement consisted of moving from bedroom, to office, to living room, to dining room, in alternative sequences. There was no walking, exercising, or any sort of motion beyond this basic stasis.

I have been known as a dancer, a tenacious CrossFit athlete, an amateur yogi, a distance runner. My grandmother loves to see me move and when she asked me to dance to a Michael Jackson song for her, I went all out. After four months of sitting near idle, I aggressively shocked my system into motion... It was enough to lose my breath for 20 minutes and to heavily pant. From one song.

I also couldn’t walk.

The ninja acrobat I envisioned in my mind was a far cry from reality. It was humiliating, but it’s my fault ; I let this happen to me. It is all the more painful considering I know very well that a sedentary lifestyle is more damaging than smoking cigarettes (doing both is obviously worse).

To be free with our bodies in the world is a gift. I used to break dance and trampoline, hurling myself in the air and defying the laws of gravity. The flow, the energy, the strain, the struggle, effort - it was physical, but it fed my grit. It fueled my mental fortitude; It made me stronger in terms of what I could endure mentally. Exercising meant the difference between a stagnant body of water or a torrential flow rich with life. Exercising increases your energy flow and makes you more resilient.

But at times, I would exercise to madness and avoid the pain in my mind, be distracted with strain till I was too tired to think and confront whatever it was that bothered me. I didn’t realize working out for 2 hours a day was dangerous until I left the context that harmed me. Neglecting my issues took a toll both physically and mentally.

The body and the mind are intricately entwined. There must be a balance between mental and physical upkeep ; the mind without the body is inert, the body without the mind is destructive. It is very similar to taking action without a plan. However, when they are maintained in concert they can release some powerful synergies.

Not only does our endurance, strength and flexibility get stronger with exercise; the blood flow is stimulated in the brain as well. This starts a process called neurogenesis, or the growth of new brain cells and it helps us think more clearly. People who exercise before a test tend to perform better than those who don’t. The endorphins released from exercising relieve symptoms of depression and anxiety.

The hardest part with anything is to start. This is common to physical and mental exercises, and getting into the habit of swiftly starting makes it easier to engage in new endeavors or to keep practicing.

The Marine's 40% rule says that when your mind tells you you've given 100%, the reality of your body is that you have only given 40%. When you know this, you can push yourself harder than you knew you could. We are far stronger than we know, and sports can be a good way to see just how much. Michael Jordan's 1997 "Flu Game" where he defied crippling symptoms to win a championship is one example of sports and mental fortitude.

Excellence is a moral obligation and it depends on a sense of discipline. Sports is a perfect generator of such a sense of discipline and it carries through into the intellectual realm. Exercise can teach us just how true the saying "mind over matter" is.

I knew of a man that was raised in the harder suburbs of Paris. He furiously dedicated himself in equal parts to his football and his schooling ; he aced everything because he did it with all the strength in his heart. First of his class, winner, he graduated from a French Ivy League equivalent and went on to have a sterling career. He avoided the hoodlums and protected his destiny to become a great foreign affairs worker ; and it was thanks to books and sports.

A study was conducted on rugby men whereby they were asked to imagine very carefully, in full detail, the process of a big work out and all the strain and effort that came with it.

When I was sixteen I went to my first shrink. To heal my mind he told me to imagine myself doing something I loved well. I told him I loved the mountain and I loved biking. He hypnotized me and let me envision my ability, my strength and endurance in great feats of adventurous alpine cycling. It made me love and be proud of myself. It made me feel competent and able. Even in our imagination, our bodies are vehicles to our flowering fulfillment. I returned to reality more confident, competent and able. It was quite something. My GPA shot up.

Today, at 34, I meditate similarly but imaging in myself to be more like Tarzan swiftly surfing and jumping through the branches of a jungle, easily swinging from vine to vine, at one with nature. A perfect mix of the agility and balance of a cat, with the strength of a gorilla and the flexibility of a martial artist. I don’t have to be as strong and able as Tarzan, but it is liberating to know one can rely on one’s body. It is a formidable tool.

The more I train, the stronger I am, the more enduring and flexible I am, the more I can experience the world and be inspired by it to affect it beautifully. The body is truly a temple worthy of our greatest care and reverence. Strength, Endurance and Flexibility must be tended to with some level of rigor and commitment.

I will not let my body down again. To let it down is to rob my mind of a turbine of inspiration and energy. Now, as I grow older, I aim to become like Wim Hoffman, the 61 year old man able to withstand ice cold waters thanks to his breathing technique, and able to dance with all his might.

And I hope to live longer still. The single greatest thing we can do for ourselves to live long lives is to train for endurance and strength. Understanding that food is either medicine or poison, and choosing wisely is another. The very least we can do is to make sure we use our bodies, even if lightly, walking an hour a day.

Musing on Healing, or How to Know You Have Healed

2020-07-09T05:44:00.003+02:00

I don’t think we ever heal a 100%. I also don’t think we can go through life without being damaged. From our childhood and seeing things that we shouldn’t, having things happen to us that shouldn’t or even missing out on things that should happen but don’t. Betrayals, deaths, misery, violence and loss...the list goes on. We all have our battles and the goal is to heal and to become resilient. After all, life keeps happening and so long as we continue to exist, we will continue to collide with reality. We must know how to cope.

Volumes could be written about the topic, but to put it simply, as a friend of mine wisely said: “you will know when you are healed”. The discomfort, the pain of the trauma is like a nagging constant cacophony we get used to to the point of forgetting it’s there. But it’s there, and the day it stops - when it goes quiet - the difference will be noticeable.

This change can be brought on gradually and through a lot of work, or suddenly. It’s what the Japanese call “Satori” - or “sudden enlightenment”. There are two schools to bring about Satori, either by aggressively and intensively shocking one into it, or through years of reflection, meditation and mental exercising. But in all cases, once it happens, the difference between before and after is clear. The same is true with healing.

But what does that mean really? To heal requires of us that we work through the trauma and talk about whatever it was that bothered us, explore it, understand it, and then understand ourselves in the world. The first step is to acknowledge something happened, and to allow ourselves to feel pain, to cry and yell.

Caution must be applied to avoid letting the pain stay longer than it is welcome. Pain for its own sake, martyrdom, can be seductive and addictive but it is useless. There is no meaning or valor in wallowing in self pity. There is a subtle art and a profound wisdom in knowing how to hold on just long enough to learn, and to let go before the pain becomes burdensome and counterproductive. To digest the pain well, get what there is to get out of it, and to then let it go is no easy feat.

So long as we fail to confront our pain, we cannot let go of those things that are toxic to us. Khalil Gibran, the Arab philosopher said “your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding”. If we fail to explore it, we fail to learn from it. Instead of profiting with added wisdom, the pain festers in us, like a debt unpaid accumulating interest.

The most beautiful part about pain is that it allows us to feel other people’s pain better. It allows us to practice sacred love, empathy, in abundance. When we are familiar with our pain, we can relate and understand others better. There is no choice but to go deeply and intimately with the pain, for the more we connect with ourselves the more we can connect with the world.

Once we understand how we got to where we are, and once we understand ourselves, we can start to forgive and to let go, and to move onwards. Pain, discomfort, creates a necessity and necessity is the mother of all invention. When we are comfortable and content, we do not move to change things.

Confronting pain is often difficult and ugly. I find that the greatest pain is the regret at not having done things differently, because I forget that hindsight is 20/20, and I am harsh on myself thinking I should’ve done better. But that thinking forgets the context where the “mistake” happened; it neglects the pressures, the lack of self awareness and the lack of knowledge about the tools I could use to be resilient. To be kind to ourselves, it is good to know of our own biases and how are minds work.

Once we are at peace with ourselves and our present lot, then we can become more realistically hopeful about a sustainable personal future and to work towards that. To heal means to like ourselves enough to want to invest in our own progress and harmonious coexistence with our environment, all teh while maintaining our integrity.

The more we put ourselves to work in that direction, the more mind space we give to our own self realization and the less mental energy is directed at the pain. The more distance we put between ourselves and the situation that caused the initial harm. We are distracted away from the trauma long enough for it to become a benign memory as we become a new version of ourselves.

And some wounds carry on like a scar or a limp, and we learn to live with it. The sudden memory of a deceased beloved family member can surprise us in a wave of grief at any time, years after she passes away. But we learn to manage by being self aware, forgiving and kind to ourselves. It doesn’t happen on its own, certainly, healing requires a proactive and determined mind.

Those thing that I will mention below are only signs of having healed enough; they are symptoms of healing and cannot be pursued individually, in a task oriented managerial manner. They are an expression of a wholesome spirit that has made the investment of working towards a higher wisdom.

Once we heal, we work on becoming more human. We are not a human being, we are a human « becoming »; in a constant state of evolution, of maturing. We are not fully wise, we never can be - it’s an unreachable asymptote and dangerously arrogant to think otherwise. It is a constant work in progress.

I must warn against an obsession with healing and spirituality and all that. It can get counterproductive and disconnect us from reality ; it really can become its own addiction. But all the spirituality, all that soft mind psychology work is for naught if we are not grounded, rooted in reality. We must put it all to good use, and when you are healed enough that you can be resilient, and have faith in the unknown, then you can creatively and confidently build the road you walk on.

To heal :

To heal doesn’t mean to forget, it means to accept those things that you can’t change, understand those things that you can, and the ability to know the difference so you can carry on.

To heal allows one to start becoming wiser, kinder, more emotionally intelligent and generally more courageous in being sincere, spontaneous and vulnerable. To heal allows for one to live in truth.

To heal means to see more clearly, more confidently and to slowly take out clouds of confusion. To heal means we stop holding ourselves back from asking uncomfortable questions and to explore their answers, even if they’re not clear.

To heal allows one to have courage in embracing the unknown, valiantly facing uncertainty and instability of life. To heal means having faith in our creative adaptive abilities and in god/the universe/existence.

On a parting note, allow me to explain what resilience is as far as I can see. Resilience is the ability to feel pain, place it in a larger picture relative to your being, and carry on. Resilience is to forgive quickly and to love deeply.

Letter to a Young Disillusioned & Curious Rebel

2020-07-07T20:03:00.002+02:00

I stumbled on the profile of a young lady expressing disappointment at how meaningless and futile work life can be. The anthropologist Graeber has brought up the rise of bullshit (irrelevant) jobs, and Yuval Noah Harrari keeps ringing the alarm about the dangers of an emerging useless class. Still, I found her

It is unsettling when we realize the steady path we’ve been led to live leads to a sham destination. It’s scary cuz it’s a betrayal. All our efforts feel wasted, our reality is in shambles as the ways we used to guide our lives no longer stand. There is instability and uncertainty in admitting that what was once known is now unknown.

It’s worse when we realize the career, job or company we imagined is so far from what we thought it would be. When we see we’re being overworked and drained of our life force for something that’s not worth it.

But It is also an awakening. We start to examine life a little more closely and find the courage to admit the extent of the dysfunction around us.

Scrutiny, an unwavering loyalty to truth, and a desire to continuously improve marry each other well to breed resilience in any person, organisation or system. Those that hold on to dysfunctional methods or ideas disconnected from reality are not only insane, but doomed to fall apart at the first crisis.

The philosophers amongst us, humble seekers of truth & wisdom, will fill the new found void with the meaning they’ve derived from their inquisitive thought. It takes courage and creativity to figure out a better way for a more meaningful life.

For me, work is my sacred life energy expressed productively in service to the world & others. I take pride and pleasure in making the place I was born into a little better, by contributing to raise our collective consciousness through intelligent discourse.

When we have conviction in what we do and how we do it, when we love it, then I don’t think I’m working a day in my life ; I’m having too much fun, even when it’s challenging I feel like I am growing meaningfully. It is Interesting - as in, it is fun and meaningful marry one another well.

The trick is to correct course and lead a life taking us somewhere we can be proud to arrive to. It’s simple, but it's not easy.

The hardest part is getting to be honest with ourselves and to have the courage to be sincere in our expression of self through work. To speak out and say what we think even if it's contrary to dogma or popular belief, to have the courage to live according to our conviction is the only way we can get ourselves out of a meaningless life funk.

When we can imagine a sort of future that’s more enjoyable, less dysfunctional and less aggressive on our psyches, then it is our job to work towards making it a reality, in every small or big way we can.

In the end it all depends on how deeply you can connect with yourself. The more you can do that, the more you can sincerely connect with the world and have an impact you can look back on and be proud of.

Be Chaste, Respectful and (Don’t) Marry Four

2020-06-23T21:22:00.001+02:00

In the second season of the hit TV show “Ramy” the protagonist is a confused Muslim-American of Arab origin seeking to balance himself between tradition, custom and the western reality he lives in. Many Arab men in a westernized world associate with him and feel a sense of kinship, but he repulses me. He’s a self indulgent irresponsible boy outsourcing his duty to think, seeking a leader to guide him rather than trying to figure things out with his own thought and conviction. In the process he’s conflicted about his loose sexual morals and divine retribution, not so much his effect on the muslim women’s self esteem, emotional well being or their marital bliss. He’s a selfish and stupid little man.

I’ve previously written about how men and women can be friends, and why I started to think about the problem after I found I was guilty of certain mishaps. I hate to admit that in some ways I was Ramy. Regardless, I’ve learned from the pain and I sat with my cousins, young men between 22 and 25 years old, to discuss women and men in the Islamic context. They asked me two questions, and i was honored to hear them think my input was useful.

What do we do with the duty to not look at women?

The Quran, in verses 30 and 31 of the 24th soura, obliges men and women to observe modesty: “Say to the believing men that they restrain their eyes and guard their private parts. That is purer for them. Surely, Allah is well aware of what they do.”

The more archaic and shallow interpretation would have men and women be completely separated to protect chastity, but the reality of the modern world makes it very inconvenient to do. Besides, not only was that not the practice during the prophet’s time (PbUH), but discriminating against any gender in any domain is stifling and counterproductive. Sure, men can make it easier on themselves and force women to cover up so they have nothing to look at, but that’s a little bit like cheating. There must be a balance, or a nuance in the meaning; a better solution.

In arabic, the Quran uses the word Basra, which is different from Nazra. The latter refers to the act of seeing with the eyes, the former appeals to what might be called an insight, or seeing within, or seeing with the third eye if you will. It does not ask us to avert our gaze from one another, this would be impossible in modern society. No, it asks us to avoid having our basic instincts devour each other in our minds. It requires us to respect each other not only in outwardly behavior, but also within the intimacy of our thoughts.

Looking at men and women with respect, even in our thoughts, rather than primal lust is key. If we are taught from early on that men and women are equal, that the soul has no gender, that the mind works the same in both bodies, then we can give primacy to the spirit of the individual rather than their body. When we relate to one another as conscious beings, we can relate with greater empathy and see ourselves in the other’s shoes.

In other words, the goal is to honor what the Hindus call “namaste”, in the sense that we recognize in the other the universal divinity in us all. There is no doubt that this is easier when children and young adolescents can spend time together to discover this in one another. The more they are separated, the more of a lustful fantasy of the other will grow in their absence.

God is beautiful and loves beauty; to see it and appreciate it does not equate being lustful. It can be an appreciation for effort, skill and dedication to elegance and sophistication. Do note, these elements result from one’s own effort, not a chance gift bestowed at birth.

I admit, I have been gobsmacked by a woman’s beauty before - it felt like I walked into a wall and it left me quite literally stunned. I had no choice but to avert my gaze, but only so that I could keep some level of composure. More importantly, I did not want to make the lady feel uncomfortable, nor did I want to appear a weakling fool, and I did not want to favor her for her beauty. Still, I wouldn’t ask her to cover herself up for me like her beauty is a handicap. No, I rather grow my resilience by remembering the importance of inner beauty and the universal divinity in us all.

The shame/respect dynamic I experienced is not so easily preserved in the era of self imposed voyeurism through social media. Beautiful women and teenagers pout their lips and highlight their physical features as they sway and dance sloppily on tick tock and instagram. Men are going to gawk and creep on profiles for hours on end, without getting the feedback that they’re being inappropriate, as they otherwise would in a real world interaction.

The whole point of averting our gaze is to feed the conscious self awareness with intellect and the universal divinity in us all. Reinforcing visually induced lust reduces men and women to their primitive instinct and erodes their free will. It’s like drug addicts getting ever more entrenched in their soul killing habits. That is not to say we are to deny that part of us, but only that we are to release our lustful demons in a controlled manner, playfully, with our significant others.

This is where the chaotic passion of love can flower as a celebration of the pleasures of the body and flesh, and in the celebration of the union of mind and soul. But you can’t have that if you can’t honor namaste first. See the soul, see the mind, grow that in you so you can grow it in the other and you will be elevated. Do not burry yourself in the trappings of lust and appearances.

What of having four wives?

Islam emerged at a time of brutality and warfare. Men died in great numbers and often. This decimated society and left many vulnerable widows and orphans to fend for themselves. The idea was to offer refuge through marriage for the most vulnerable. The prophet, PbUH, was the exception. He had 9 wives, but there was a reason behind each marriage (either political alliances or protection) some which were never consummated.

Alongside refuge, repopulating society was a natural priority. Seeing as there were far more women than there were men, multiple women to each man made it so the physical burden of pregnancy was shared. Consider France after World War 2. The population had dwindled and french women that carried many children were considered national heroes, given medals and recognized by the head of state. It is easier on a lady to birth 3 children, than to birth 12.

It is in this noble spirit that the rights of the four spouses are protected, each requiring equal attention and the permission of the first wife being required. Unfortunately, the reality is that people play favorites and often the first wife doesn’t know about the second.

With what we have learned on parenting, the power of the tribe and the need for a village to raise a child, we now know that polygamy doesn’t yield the best results. The jilted, jealous or slighted woman will carry a stress she’ll communicate to children, and the absentee father will give a poor model to his children. It does not make for an emotionally wholesome household, and that will harm the mental well being of the citizens we put into the world.

The meaning I am gleaning from the concept of four wives is the notion of a great endeavor. Meaning that because our time and focus are limited, there are only so many things we can do well in a lifetime. Being married and having a family is one great endeavors, but there are 3 others one can devote oneself to. And it is important that we choose those things well.

Warren Buffet knows it. In a famous story, his personal pilot, Mike Flint, recalled some great career advice the billionaire gave him. Buffett asked him to write down his top 25 career goals and then to circle the top five. He then said to put away the rest of the list because smaller goals can take away attention from the main five goals.

One thing that needs to be made clear. The option of marrying four women does not exist to satisfy lust. Crude and inhumane as it may be, a special category of slaves with rights, called concubines, were there for that. Indeed, it is permissible for a Muslim to have extra-conjugal sexual relations with his concubines (the same is not true of women, and thankfully slavery no longer exists). That’s why the wealthy had big harems guarded by eunuchs (men without testicles). That doesn’t meant that having sex slave concubines is OK. But that’s besides the point. It likely was considered a necessary concession to win over wealthy and powerful merchants and politicians to the cause of Islam.

Men and Women Can be Friends - Here's How

2020-04-24T14:38:00.001+02:00

I. A shocking wake up

After centuries of normalized machismo, men are finally expected to befriend and coexist with empowered, independent women. But the reality on the ground is a little different. Arabs, like other Mediterranean people, are more jealous and protective over the women of their tribe. In both worlds, how women are treated is founded on respect, but I found a stronger balance between passion, tradition, desire and culture was needed.

A couple of experiences in Saudi Arabia left me acutely aware of our nature. A bystander aggressively reprimanded me for tapping a female colleague on the shoulder, and a friend’s fiancé got very upset when I told her she was beautiful in public. I would have thought such behavior to be friendly and would quickly fade out of memory, but I forgot the traditional and conservative roots of this society. It may be excessive, but it is a heightened sensitivity to an essential truth about humans: we are sexual beings, and there’s an ever present tension between genders. How can men and women be friends in that context?

Even as I researched western sources and spoke to my friends, there was no clear cut answer. Here and there I found confusion as to what is a healthy balance between being conservative and being liberal about these matters in an open society.

In today’s world men and women can play any role in society, including those that were traditionally closed off to each other. Women are now welcome in academia, the c-suite and the military. Men, increasingly can take paternity leave and be stay at home fathers. In such a reality where boundaries are erased to empower the individual, there is no choice for the collective but to let men and women freely coexist.The benefits of doing so in cordial, friendly terms, far outweigh the costs. This is a new situation for humanity and we must understand our dynamic to make it work; we need clarity. If it were straight forward, there wouldn’t be any tension.

The changes revolve around 5 pillars :

A. We must have strict equality of genders, and recognize that any man or woman can fill any existing role in society, even those that were traditionally reserved for one gender. This does not harm our eroticism.

B. We must recognize the harm a collective obsession with external signs of appeal do to the individual and society’s potential.

C. We must manage our erotic drive by striving to understand it the danger of repressing it.

D. Growing a culture of inner beauty depends on affording individuals with a variety of activities, endeavors and hobbies to stimulate higher creative and intellectual pursuits.

E. Mature individuals being aware of their own appeal, should act with humility, as practical rules of engagement are put in place to safeguard social harmony.

II. Changing Gender Role Expectations : Raising the Bar

Now that men and women share a greater space in society, the men that have dominated for so long need to make allowance for women’s reality and adapt to it. The Me Too movement made many of us painfully aware of how oblivious we were. Our evolution has started but can only continue and thrive in a context of a respectful community, on an equal footing with women. Cultures of dominance and gender submission are incompatible with a world where women play a more active role in society.

This can be done by having teachers, the media, parents and the wider community strive to communicate mutually empowering values to children. Boys and girls will learn to be equally inquisitive and well mannered, viewing one another as equal and capable partners. The principle of “do unto others as you would unto yourself” must extend from the individual to all other men and women, as if the soul had no gender.

Ultimately, how we treat each other says a lot about ourselves. To paraphrase Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the legendary US Supreme Court Justice, women’s rights come only when men are free as well. I take it to mean that we be free to break from gender roles and there be no shame in how individuals contribute to society. Not only are stay at home fathers OK, so are male nurses and masseuses. On the other end of the spectrum, female soldiers in even the most elite of units , and as nuclear engineers or tank mechanics can be legitimately expected and respected.

This spirit of gender equality was well captured in Lego advertisements from the 60s through to the 80s, depicting boys and girls building together.

To inspire women and make men more humble, iconic independent women must be highlighted in our education. Hepatia of Alexandria, Juana Ines De La Cruz, the 17^th century Mexican prodigy, or Khadija, The camel riding, powerful and successful woman married to prophet Muhammad’s (Pbuh) and all these rebel women of history; these are the models to follow and admire worldwide.

Universally, men have more work to do in correcting this situation. We need to learn to understand women not as objects, property or submissive subjects, but as fully dignified, equal, independent, smart and able human beings worthy of respect. This is how we can grow a sense of admiration that fuels a gallantry and chivalry towards ladies. Ultimately, what does it say about an individual that does not hold his friends and colleagues in high regard? It certainly helps when we value the mind at least as much as the body.

III. The Treacherous Obsession with the Body

For men, women and any people that would be attracted to one another, to bond as friends they must learn to appropriately value the individual’s personality and creativity. Bonding with our personality and creativity is a more sincere and profound connection than the body is.

The physical aspects are more visible, require less effort to know, are immediately stimulating and rewarding, and fuel vanity. Where there is a lack of intellectual culture, the culture of the body tends to prevail. This is the case in Brazil and to an extent, recently, in Lebanon and Russia where plastic surgeries abound. In the Arab Gulf, women and men have for a time been legally and culturally compelled to be strictly separated in all walks of life. In so doing they couldn’t know one another for anything more than their outward appearance, and therefore these were valued above character, because character was unknown.

As a result, there is a widespread obsession with fillers, breast and buttocks augmentations and other plastic surgery. Such a reality, in the Arab, Russian and Latin world, will see men excessively objectify and sexualize ladies, and women will respond in kind. Whomever gets the attention will signal what a winning strategy looks like, and others will emulate the first to win acceptance and social positioning. But the position will be granted based on the body, not her person. Besides, the body fades with time.

It is an insidious reality where men and women learn and perpetuate toxic standards. Here, social acceptance and respect depend on vanity. So, beauty and health magazines flood the market only to make readers feel ugly.

Men too will be valued for outward signs of reproductive abilities: their wealth and physical appearance – but these are easily manipulated and give way to abuse. Where that happens, men are more likely to reveal their predatory nature, which can justify a general vigilance and restrictions by the elders. Though the obsession with outer beauty is insulting to our potential, its underlying forces must be acknowledged to be rewardingly managed.

IV. Understanding & Managing Sexuality

The physical attributes, the body, wealth and sexuality are natural, and powerful forces of attraction. Even in nature, birds of paradise flaunt their colorful feathers, build elaborate nests and conduct intricate dances to charm their lady birds. That humans are sexual beings with a powerful erotic drive must be peacefully acknowledged; it’s how nature designed us.

The more this truth is repressed, the more our nature is frustrated, the uglier its inevitable expression will be. If sexuality is shrouded in opacity then people will explore it clandestinely, associating something beautiful with crime and building an unhealthy relationship to it. As their sense of self-loathing and shame grows, a greater difficulty in relating to others respectfully and meaningfully emerges.

It is a shame for such a beautiful natural gift of the human experience to yield such results. To diffuse the tension of the unknown, sexuality must be addressed in clear and straightforward terms, in a safe environment where discussions are unblemished by shame or fear. To explore it with absolute transparency and acceptance is the least it deserves.

Alongside learning about sexuality in general, the proper precautions to avoid disease and pregnancy, there’s another deeper power to sex. It is potentially the ultimate bonding experience, where we are in our most vulnerable state, and therefore our most trusting. The playful chaos it inspires puts our very physical integrity at stake. In its highest form, it is the celebration of the full mind, body and soul of the partners, in a joint exploration of self and other. Sadly, in its lowest form, it is a basal satisfaction of a need: two slabs of meat rubbing against one another to fulfilment. It tragically denies anything divine about the act or of other partners. When we are aware of this, we can tread more carefully with the sex of interest, unwilling to denigrate such a sacred trust.

Where culture and education celebrate intellectualism and creativity, where we understand our own sexual drives, and understand the gender we are interested in, we can more easily fully include the mental with the physical and learn to appreciate both together in balance.

The next step is for institutions, culture and broad society to foster the individual’s personal development. Indeed, we see the world as we see ourselves, and we can only love the world as much as we love ourselves. In other words, we cannot appreciate other people unless we are appreciative of ourselves. If one’s own mind is not properly loved, nourished and cultivated, there is a great risk of primordial forces dominating the psyche.

V. The Healthy Channeling of Life Energy : Productive Activity & Inner Beauty

In every individual there is an ever present creative and life giving force, drawing us to that which is enriching. This life energy’s primitive expression is sexual and lacks concern for anything but immediate pleasure. However, it can be cultivated into something making its bearer enlightening.

This depends on society facilitating access to extra-curricular activities for the many. To sing, to dance, to create stories and act them out, to criticize life in all its forms through reflection and art are to be celebrated. A holistic education including academics, athletics, arts, and social outreach will form diverse minds fully confident in their abilities to contribute well to their surroundings. The holy hungry curiosity about the world and how its parts work must be nourished and grown without reservation. All questions welcome.

Where adults properly direct the attention of youth, they train them into citizens with great potential for developing a powerful inner beauty. In a healthy society valuing minds, the beautiful individual is the mature individual, regardless of gender. Such an individual continuously invests efforts in all aspects of the self: mind, body, soul, social (friends and family) and work. The better they are at growing while being well rounded, the more attractive they are. By recognizing these fundamental elements exist and matter to all, a deeper appreciation emerges for the opposite sex. It is worth repeating : “by so loving oneself one is able to in turn love the world”.

The sexual is on a constant backburner but can dominate the idle mind; a persistent lack of options will squander an abundance of life energy as the mind reverts to a primitive sexual drive and perspective of the other. In other words, Boredom, a lack of challenge, a lack of stimulation, will quite literally make for a bunch of wankers with a poor sense of self-worth. They’ll see the world as they see themselves and treat it as poorly as they think they deserve to be treated. It is a tragic sin to blunt the ambitions youth by allowing for the pull of basal urges to dull their soaring minds.

Applying our expectations of the ideal individual to all regardless of gender, to value all noble aspects of the individual, will ultimately inspire and empower all members of society to meaningfully grow. This last far outlasts any outer sign of beauty.

VI. The Good Samaritan in an Erotic Reality

When adults are mature and self-actualizing they are rightfully confident in their demeanor. They walk lightly, but effectively and are powerful in their being. Their spontaneous and sincere expression of self are signs of a strong psychological and spiritual alignment. To them, work is play and their engagement with others is full of life. Their sex appeal is strong, and left unchecked it can be damaging or wasted.

While single, such men and women must work to be humble in their appearance and character in order to avoid attracting less mature individuals. Rejection or abuse is inevitable in unequal bonding, and will translate in pain, resentment, and distrust; all which would compromise social harmony. This must be avoided.

For the most part, it is easy to do. A natural distance sets itself between honest people when they understand they have different interests and values. In that distance there is a comfortable space for being civil, cordial, and to explore the infinite different ways of cordial coexistence. In this context professional alliance, acquaintanceship, and a general brotherly love can emerge.

If difference are acknowledged and respected, relationships between people that could otherwise be attracted to each other can grow infinitely closer. There can be plenty of appreciation and affection, without the relationship ever being fusional. This is necessary for an intelligent society, it widens its members’ horizons and fosters emotional intelligence.

However, this reality can be sabotaged by the individual’s vanity or ill adjustment. The less mature individual will find self-affirming validation not from his productive activity, but from the attention they garner from the gender they are attracted to, purposefully leaving them hanging in ambiguity. In the more serious cases, the immature, ignorant and ghastly will seek self-affirmation in the sexual conquests they rachet up without concern for the hurt they’ll cause or the lower expectations they’ll set.

Holding each other to a higher standard will protect society from spiraling in that direction. To quote Victor Hugo, “there are no bad seeds or evil men, only poor gardeners”. We are each other’s teachers.

Two mature individuals that are attracted to one another, that can be playful together, and share fundamental common values will naturally pair-bond if they are left alone for long enough. The way they invite one another to grow and develop will be uniquely fascinating, exciting and enticing. In this dynamic, a close friendship will form, driven by growing trust, vulnerability and intimacy. A joyful playfulness will arise between the accomplices and a lifelong sacred bond will emerge. It is a fragile process that can be compromised if consummated too soon.

VII. Practical Rules of Engagement Between Men and Women

Individuals that would be attracted to one another can safely spend time together in groups, especially when they band together over a common interest. The intimate setting of a one on one meeting is absent, and the members respect each other for their strength, determination, care and focus at the shared activity. There’s camaraderie possible without ambiguity.

The younger one is and the less one is thinking about getting into a committed, serious relationship, the easier it is to have an intimate friendship with the sex we are attracted to. The older we get, the readier we are to settle down and start a family of our own, the harder it is to secure such an intimate friendship.

Friendships between individuals that would be attracted to another can be forged and bloom if their seeds are sowed as we come of age. A lasting bond is created when we accompany one another into full adulthood, enduring and forgiving one another’s stupidity and many lacunae. Such friendships can also exist where individuals are too different in languages of play and values, but still know how to appreciate one another. However, in such a setting, a natural distance settles in that prevents a deepening of the bond into something more committed.

Even such relationships see complications arise when married. If an individual faces a hard time with their husband or wife, when he/she seeks comfort from her good male friend, the vulnerable state mixed with the familiar safety will make it hard for mistakes not to happen. Vulnerable men’s advances tend to be turned down, whereas a vulnerable woman’s advances rarely are.

In truth, where non-romantic relationships form between people that could be attracted to one another, women tend to have the upper hand. They decide whether a relationship will be more or not, and men tend to carry on thinking it will likely evolve into something. Women everywhere have the burden of being more restrained and conservative because men tend to be more impulsive and prone to succumbing to their passions. But this can change if we modify our expectations of each other and raise the standard of expected behavior in men.

VIII. Concluding thoughts

Life energy well channeled in youth, with sexuality properly addressed will translate into a fire’s warm glow. Men and women would be able to enjoy each other’s company for their full being, in respect, admiration and appreciation for their character, capabilities and contribution to their communities. We are beautiful, God is beautiful and loves beauty, so let beauty abound and let us be free to express our fascination for it.

It is entirely possible that men and women master their minds rather than be fools mastered by their drives. They can freely, fluidly coexist without a furious unchecked sexual hunger taking hold. In equality and respect, philosophy, art, and society will thrive.

We get what we expect of one another. We can either choose to inspire one another upwards or downwards. If we expect gallantry, chivalry, sophistication all the while recognizing the power of our natural instincts, we will practice restraint and raise the general well-being of our community. If we approach each other with distrust and suspicion, engaging in a battle of the sexes, favoring bodies over minds, we’ll remain primitive and stifling our more noble aspects.

Let us hold each other to a higher standard. Let us teach each other, and expect more out of one another.

Christian Monjou - How Art can be Enlightening in a Time of Crisis

2020-04-18T14:50:00.002+02:00

I had the pleasure of attending a webinar organized by HEC, in French, by Christian Monjou, discussing how art can be Enlightening in A Time of Crisis (you can catch the recording of the session here). I was so inspired and floored I had to take notes and convey what I learned in English to you.

In the 16th century several events took place to dislodge the Christian understanding of the world. From the discovery of the Americas in 1492 to Copernicus’ 1543 heliocentric proposal that the sun and NOT the earth was at the the center of the universe, and even the realization that the body is far more intricate, complex and detailed than we had previously known. All of a sudden, the simplicity and reliability of both the workings of the inner personal world of the body and of the external celestial were shattered. We were absolutely lost both in and between the infinitely large and the infinitely small.

We’ll explore how to make a crisis into an opportunity and understand our nature in such unpredictable times through the works of Pierre Brueghel The Elder, a 16th century painter. In sum, we need to have the courage to embrace the new and unknown by abandoning the old framework along which we built our understanding of the world. We need to have the love and compassion to shoulder one another as we navigate uncertain times. Do not stay in a bubble, do not close yourself off to the world, and do not abandon your own judgement to the profit or benefit of the all too ready and willing guru.

For an in depth explanation, read on.

1. Hieronymous Bosch - The Temptation of Saint Anthony - 1501

The discovery of the American Continent in 1492 wrecked the understanding of the biblical world, according to which the 3 sons of Noah each inherited a continent. Where was the 4th son? What is this new continent? Whatever is on that 4th continent looks human but cannot be human for they haven’t received the totality divine message of the holy book.

He recognizes this by saying I cannot name the new, but I can attempt to do so by destroying the past and reassembling it’s formerly organized bits that once gave sense, into something new, to approximate the new. Whatever orderly framework once helped navigate the world, is being blasted apart. To be unable to name things because our sense of reality is disconnected from reality, is terrifying, but there’s an attempt. To name things, to recognize things, is to have a sense of control and reliability in our world.

There’s a mixing of elements (mineral, plant, human, animal) t Why? as we discover the new and unknown the best we can do to understand it for now is to break down the known components of reality, which made sense of the world by being separated , and to mix up them up to approximate an idea of the new. It’s a desperate attempt out of panic and fear to grasp at some reality, but it just makes it further unrecognizable.

In the left side, in the middle of the painting, a man is also merging with nature becoming a sort of a hill. These distortions are a show of panic, of unfamiliar, of being completely lost.

2. Margot L’Enragé - AKA Mad Meg - 1561

Brueghel the Elder was inspired by Bosch. That the things emerging from the 4th continent are inhuman non biblical monstrosities is repeated in the chaos, where in the background, a monkey emerges from an egg with a black harp played by a spider, amongst the chaos, underneath demons dancing atop of caged dear.

We see in the center there are people in a bubble, on a boat on a cadaver, much like in every crisis there are those that are stuck in their own reality and refuse to move on. Underneath them, on the right, there is a group of women engaged in battle, not providing peace, comfort or nurturing as their traditional role would suggest. In the left side, we see that a tower is becoming a man, or a man is becoming a tower - and that the distinction between matter and man is becoming less obvious as humans merge with their environment.

Margot is there with a sword in hand, trying to save herself. That’s her only concern in the chaos, as everything is out of proportion and the sense of scale is lost, as everything is pervertedly mixed up and making reality unrecognizable, she has her collection of random items in hand and she’s escaping, trying to survive. But in accumulating all those items, in crisis, she’s avoiding the effort of “being” and confusing it with the security of “acquiring”.

3. The Conversion of Saint Paul - 1567

The whole point of this painting is to convey how crisis means losing the organizing story; to lose the thread along which we organized our lives. Once that happens we have no choice but to mourn the loss of the organizing story in order to start creating a new one. Abandon that which has proven itself not working, or failing, to start building a new story. Unless we do this we will find our demise.

How does this On his way to Damascus from Jerusalem to bring christians back to reason, Paul falls off his horse and has a vision calling his name and saying, “Paul why do you persecute me so?” and it changes his destiny. To distract from the center, warm colors on the right and a hollowing out on the left attract the eye. But the center of the painting is where the subject is, where Saint Paul is falling off his horse and having a vision. Crisis appears as the course of history changes and the painter distracts us away from the event.

4. The Blind Leading the Blind - 1568

In times of crisis, where everything is unknown and our sense of direction and stability is thrown into disarray, some of us are tempted to latch on to the truth some gurus peddle, for hope of salvation, for hope of guidance and security. But we forget that those pretending to have figured it out are at least as blind as we are. Following a blind guru, the men in the painting are solidary together, helping each other, trying to traverse the chaos - but their choice in leadership and lack of self reliance is ill fated, as the fall of the guru will bring their own downfall.

5. The Tower Of Babel - 1563

The effort of construction of the tower is represented, with the supply chain issue - where do resources come from? There’s a lot of technology used, but it could be that man is being used for redundant problems, and is being crushed by the materials used to build the towers. We are losing individuality for the sake of a collective project. And even when he comes to the heights, man becomes puny, like an insect on the surface of this bigness on which he is lost.

(If that’s not a commentary on the erasure of the individual in a hyper-paced capitalist machine, I dunno what is…)

In the face of a crisis, we must tend towards the simplest and most straight forward solution, and avoid going with a solution that is as complex as the situation at hand. Simple is not easy, it is hard. So we tend to avoid the difficult by designing complex solution. But this is not the result of a general agreement or consensus, so, we use more power, more authority, to enforce complexity. This stuns and deceives. We are being servile in this relationship.

In times of crisis, we must not build towers of babel, but to fix the simple elements of everyday the regular. We must continuously enhance the small things, and we must be humble in the face of the task at hand, devoting ourselves entirely to it. This is indeed more difficult, but more rewarding and is represented in the painting by the neglected village in the background.

6. The fall Of Icarus - 1558

Icarus’ father, Daedalus, the architect of the Minotor’s maze, grants him a pair of wings made of wax and feathers. The father warns the son not to fly too close to the sun or the wax will melt and the wings will fall apart. The son is overzealous and forgets his the warning. He falls. But where is icarus in this painting? He’s already in the water. Just like in the previous painting, we have a difficulty reading the overall story, because we can only subtly notice Icarus’ legs flapping in the water, almost comically.

Notice that the sun is setting; in the Middle Ages, the science of a sun rise and a sun set was not understood. When it disappeared, we weren’t sure where it went or whether it would return! With the discovery of the Americas, we understood that when it disappears for us, it appears for others, but which others and what relation do they have with us?

The worker is anchored in the present, with a firm footing on the ground. He’s not locked into the present, but making the most of it. The worker’s foot on the stairs is diagonally linked with the setting sun, which implies a perpetual continuation and universal linkages; that there is no elsewhere without a here, and no here without an elsewhere - we must be aware of the elsewhere to be fully present with our immediate surroundings without being closed off to the world, and to some extent, the elsewhere must be rooted in the present and here to be more than a simple illusion. We must remember that.

In the background, we also see a city and a closed off fortress which indicate two possibilities for when we no longer know how to read the world. Either we close ourselves off in a fortress by instinct of self preservation, which by itself is an admission of its fragility and downfall, or we remain in an open city which allows the free flow of trade and the clash of ideas, for dialogue and renewal by the meeting of the other and the foreigner. This is fundamental for our era of quarantine living.

The sailors are not where they are by accident. They represent salvation, continuation of life, highlighting the icarus’ solitude - Icarus is on a vertical axis; he wants to go up but he’s falling, the sailors on the other hand are horizontal, navigating into the depth, the thick of the real.

7. Hunters in the Snow - 1565

There’s a lot happening in the painting. A fireplace is raging and consuming a hosue in the background, people are working everywhere, some are skating, and there are returning hunters. The hunters are returning from a far away journey, where they saw, discovered, and experienced strange, new and distant things. They could have been tempted to stay in the far away place they came from, but they returned because all these things they have discovered and experienced will only make sense, will only have value, if they are shared. Flaubert said “we only possess well that which we share”. In time of crisis we must not close ourselves off in the illusion of possessing a solution or of being in control of anything; the only thing that has even a sent of such hoped for absolute is the act of sharing. We can only be sure of ownership, of control, of mastery, through the act of sharing.

8 .The Fight Between Carnival and Lent - 1559

It is not easy to see the subject of the painting. There’s a variety of incidents which cannot alone accurately explain the full picture. Carem and Mardi gras are in the bottom fighting, with a glum character representing the hardship of merely existing.There are shows of generosity, there are the crippled and handicapped whose suffering is heightened in times of chaotic crisis, yet still there are those continuing the party with their costumes and instruments (all crises have a counterpoint of derision and humor).

The ultimate meaning is in the center of the painting. A Motley Fool, holding a torch, is lighting the way - but in times of crisis, do we have the courage to listen to the fool? The fool brings reality back to the community when truth becomes dogmatic. A community exists only because it places its truth, what it knows how to do and say, to the service of reality. If the community becomes more committed to its version of truth rather than to reality, then truth becomes dogma, and this is a problem where community closes itself on itself and avoids asking itself about reality.

This is a classic situation of the reality changing depending on your point of view (anamorphosis). Is a crisis an opportunity, or is it a crisis? It’s all a point of view we can choose, which the fool (read “the innovator”) points to. In crisis we have a constant duty to seek out how to change a crisis into an opportunity ; to surface the almost invisible, but always present, elements of opportunity. These must be found and shared with the community, Like the Hunters in the Snow.

Finally, we can cross the sea of noise and anecdotes, we can have the courage to follow the fool, only if we serve as a support for others to lean on through times of crisis. Only those that do so can successfully come out of a crisis. A life worth living is a life of service.

Leaving and Returning to God

2020-03-15T08:01:00.000+01:00

Walking around the Cartier Foundation, I saw islamic art and it made me understand the mathematics behind it highlighted the non-visual, more intuitive dimension of the divine taught in Islam.

Growing up in a Saudi family in Paris, the mood at home contrasted sharply with French joie-de-vivre. Don't get me wrong, my parents were delightful, but they extended a Saudi Reality. At the time Saudi Arabia was exporting, teaching and practicing a particular brand of Islam. Its stern and austere Wahabi clerics dominated thought and believed that Allah was an angry, jealous and punishing supreme authority. Anyone that didn't agree with them would be bound for hell, naturally.

There were more ways for life to be dark and unhappy than gleeful with them. They found music, theatrical and public expression of joy in general to be sinful. This sad version of reality was widely taught and normalized in Saudi society. Only the Taliban were worse : they beat those found laughing or sharing joy in public. It’s dangerous when people think they are divinely vindicated to judge right from wrong; mass moral high horsing always yields ugly results. It happened with the inquisition, and it happened with the Saudi religious police. People were more terrified of them than of the normal police; men wearing shorts or with long hair were berated, girls were threatened with more for less.

Being in France, I was far from the clutches of the cleric bullies and I was surrounded by diverse people. Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Buddhists… Frankly their creed never mattered. We were all kind and curious about our origins, gently inviting one another to explore them. The importance of openness, curiosity and free thought were encouraged everywhere. On public television, I’d watch documentaries for children asking the wildest questions. At school we’d visit museums and the homes of artists. It was a unique privilege, and I grew up to love the world, ever hungry to discover it.

As a teen, my friends would worry about me every time I would visit family in Saudi Arabia. They knew that I would return mildly brain washed, believing that they would end up in eternal hell fire lest they convert. It was rather medieval, and they were right to worry. As a Saudi young man in an international setting and without a clear sense of community, I didn’t have an identity and would latch on to whatever resembled me. I was impressionable. Islam was a north star guiding me as I struggled to find myself.

On the road to self-discovery were many minefields. The bearded men my family hired to teach me Islam would smile, speak softly and gently (a clever rhetorical ploy), but their words were ugly, intolerant and philosophically lazy. Still they managed to light a fire of outrage at the so called infidels. How could anyone dare insult the almighty with their arrogant freedom and indecency. How dare they question the order of things?

I was lucky my friends patiently bared with me, waiting for the deep Islamist groove that carved itself during my trip to fade out with western life. It wouldn’t take much. They’d tolerate me during a studious school week until we’d go out on the weekend. I would see girls, music would play, we would dance and laugh, and the beauty of life would hammer out that dent on my psyche. How could all these kind, loving and hardworking friends go to hell? How could harmless joy be sinful? That didn’t sound right.

Though the clerics made a bad impression, my family lovingly enchanted me with Islam. I was touched by the magic of storytelling, of myths, legends and their eternal archetypal lessons. As a child, I was inspired and intrigued as my grandmother would teach me the kind, soft and compassionate chapters of the Coran. The magic of creation and the universe, the mystical power of souls, the epic battle between good and evil… it was thrilling. Sure there was hellfire, but that was for the others… not me.

I was lucky to often go to Mecca and Medina, Islam’s holy cities, and feel a real, material dimension to the stories I was told. I’d often visit the Prophet’s (pbuh) tomb and see the House of Allah, the Kaaba with my family. My child mind was enthralled by the reality of our folklore. They gave me a sense of wonder the clerics failed to inspire me with. I grew a belief in a magical harmony by a loving and almighty God, and a heaven with everything lovely. But the influence of the cleric’s brand of angry Islam was never too far away ; they permeated all of society after all and exercised strict mind control.

Wahabi clerics led a war against enlightenment from the moment they were empowered after the 1978 terrorist attack on the Kaaba. For a long time there were few if any libraries, congregating to share ideas was illegal, philosophy was banned and hard questions were prohibited from being asked. School had about 4 or 5 different classes on religion, was about memorizing and repeating, not thinking. Alas, they didn’t know that to think is to be, and to not think is to not be. Obscurantism was rampant, censorship was aggressive, and minds were muted. My father dodged a bullet; he was being educated in Egypt at the time. My mother on the other hand bore the brunt of that brutish education, and she struggled to raise us in a liberal world that was very foreign to her.

One year during the holy month of Ramadan in Paris, my Egyptian friends invited me and a bunch of class mates to have iftar, a breaking of the fast, together. Typically, we’d pray before we started eating… and being the “Saudi” I was presumed the most suited to lead the prayer. As if I was holy by association with the country that housed the Kaaba. In the middle of the prayer, the television in the room next door turned on, music played from it and I was furious. It interrupted the flow of the prayer, the spiritual channeling. The moment the prayer ended, I yelled out “whose the bastard that turned on the TV?!” and my Egyptian friends laughed. They smiled and mocked my outrage. My outburst was very out of place in a loving, generous and kind time. Right then I was ridiculous and I realized something was off and I started to think.

I was too rigid and quick to be outraged. This “holier than though” behavior was addictive, but so is an absolutist world view. Seeing things in black and white is simple, easy and seductive, but it is flawed. I was humbled to realize there are no absolutes, that fluidity and adaptation are key to survival and that the only thing that doesn’t change is death.

I was told that on judgement day we will all be made to walk a very thin wire, thinner than a hair, over a pit of hell fire. The virtuous will run through it easily while the sinners will promptly fall. Today, I understand this image to mean we need to learn to be balanced and nuanced, without giving in to lazy understandings of the world or of God.

To be comfortable with uncertainty, to admit that we do not know everything, that in fact we know nothing, requires an intelligent intellectual humility. The dunning Krueger effect was fully at play in the Kingdom: the less an individual knows the louder he is, the more an individual knows the humbler he is, for he has an idea how much there is left to discover.

I started to develop an audacity to doubt, to think and to start shaping my own spirituality, my own rites and rituals. The drastic difference between the moral reality of my home and the reality of the society I lived in was difficult to bear. It was too much to handle on my own, I couldn’t speak about my spiritual transformation to my family… it would be too shocking and I risked being labeled apostate.

I didn’t have a strong conviction and I didn’t relate to my family anymore. I lost my north star and without a spiritual anchoring I was lost. The next challenge in my life would break me and fate would have it so that I would find respite with an old Jewish lady. She was the psychologist that served as my spiritual teacher for ten years. Her name was Estelle, which coincidentally means “star”.

I started seeing Estelle when I started college. It was hard to be kind, loving and patient with myself when for so long something as intimate as spirituality was mixed with guilt and punishing authority. Self-loathing was a natural result and she helped me heal with courageous, vulnerable and sincere conversation. She helped me adapt, leaving my preconceived notions behind and obliterating the taboos I was taught. She helped me make sense of what is healthy.

Estelle gave me the courage and self-acceptance to explore the furthest edges of my thought. I learned that authority is not the truth, rather, truth is the authority, and I learned to build the values I now consider robust foundations to my worldview. It is simple ; be kind, live and let live, your freedom ends where that of the other’s starts, and contribute well to your community, however small a contribution you may make.

With more psychological and spiritual scaffolding, I could venture out further in thought, and I devoured more knowledge. I became a philosopher. Questions like whether god can create a rock so large he can’t lift it and what came before god were asked without fear. I was reading books where God is frail, scared and tired, old and dying. I was reading about Buddhism, killing buddha, and psychology. I was learning about metaphors, symbols, literary techniques, and mythology. I was learning about history, putting all of humanity into perspective, and realizing that holy cow we just may be wrong. Through it all, Estelle was patiently helping me find my own truth, in a safe environment.

They say when the student is ready, the teacher appears, when the student is truly ready the teacher disappears. Five years ago I moved to Saudi Arabia to work and I was on my own. I am adapting, learning to know a place and people very different from what I knew during my childhood visits. Since my arrival, the Crown Prince publicly defanged the religious police and blamed them for a “Dark age to which we won’t return”. There are now concerts, raves, fun fairs, and theatrical productions ; the arts, entertainment and culture are encouraged.

It is an abrupt and hard transformation as we re-learn to live together under new liberal rules. In all this fun and change there is an obvious confusion and crisis of faith in the minds of the many. It is hard to forget and pretend the years of severe indoctrination did not take place. Yet, more than ever, there is a need for a loving spiritual anchoring.

I am a thinking Muslim. Along with Estelle, I have had the honor and pleasure of learning from many moderate and well balanced Muslims from around the world. I do not drink or eat pork (as a matter of fact I try to minimize my animal protein intake in general), I fast regularly because it is healthy for the mind, body, and soul. I give to Charity, I believe in our Prophets, and I find peace and strength in taking a meditative break to pray five times a day to a more universal God than the one I grew up fearing. Let me explain.

A French monk told me that the work of spirituality is in breaking the meaning free from the cage of words. Literary techniques must be applied to sacred texts if they are to survive the ages and be useful to humanity. Such an approach shows us that all beliefs are different doors to the same house; they communicate the same messages with different words. In this regard ultimately there is no “us” and “them”. There is only “we” sharing the same concern of ordering the world around us with love. Consider that the word Allah carries the “Ah” sound of the breath of life, similar to the KAH of the Polynesian tribes, or the AUM of Hindu meditations. They serve the same function in anchoring us to a divine dimension.

All religions say that God knows all. When I was 10 I thought that if god knows everything then he must be everywhere, and if he’s everywhere then he must be everything, the universe included. The Koran validated me as it describes the size of Allah in a way to daze the reader with vastness, all to convey infinity. Jews understood the infinite nature of god and refer to him as the “unnamable one” because naming him would by definition limit him. Some Islamic scholars think 99 names of Allah are not enough, not even 99,999 million would be enough. And I agree.

As I thought more of infinity, which is a God attribute, I saw that the concept of “nothing”, the 0, is infinite. It boggled my mind; not only is nothingness infinite, the 0 shape, as a circle, has an infinite number of points in it. Even in Arabic writing, 0 is represented by a dot, the opposite of a circle, and a representation of the origin of the universe; the singularity. That not only is god a formidable unfathomable force, but it is both the alpha and the omega, the start and the end, everything and nothing.

It gets better. The mathematician Georg Cantor discovered that infinites could be of various sizes. Consider concentric circles of various sizes each composed of infinite points. If god is the largest of all circles, then each individual, is a smaller circle within the larger one. In this respect, each human is divine and a part of the infinite God. Indeed, our own minds, souls and characters are infinite too. As the great Sufi poet Rumi said : "I searched for God and found only myself, I searched for God and found only God".

I marvel at how we are part of and at one with a harmonious, natural and orderly system. Consider how all matter burst out of the singularity and evolved into a more complex order, how stars exploded and released the ingredients for carbon based life forms. There is a common thread between everything that exists; everything is connected and we are fruits of the universe. We are conscious manifestations of the universe.

At a very human level, we are motivated with a concern for living, thriving and to safeguard our families and tribes. With our ingenuity and holy curiosity we make sense of the world around us and work to eliminate danger so we may grow. When people work together for a noble cause, they make manifest a divine creative force through their work. That is God : an infinite loving energy for progress, reason, justice, empathy and harmony.

This is how I’ve come to conceive of a God I no longer fear, but love and towards which I have the greatest gratitude for the joy of existing. In prayer as in meditation, I temporarily return to a state of at one-ness with everything.

And god is more than all that still. Being infinite, it is whatever we need it to be to help enlighten us through the different stages of our lives. Religion loses its spirituality when it is organized and politics are introduced. When we practice spirituality well at an individual, personal and intimate level, we take responsibility for our beliefs and are empowered. We learn to be better with ourselves, better with our other and ultimately, we become better as a society. Teachers can guide exploration and discovery, but no form can be imposed. Truth is a pathless land.

Namaste, and peace be upon you.

Verse 35, Chapter 24 – Surat Al Nur – of the Koran

Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth.

The example of His light is like a niche with in which is a lamp,

The lamp is within glass, the glass as if it were a pearly [white] star,

Lit from [the oil of] a blessed olive tree,

Neither of the east nor of the west,

Whose oil would almost glow even if untouched by fire.

Light upon light.

Allah guides to His light whom He wills.

And Allah presents examples for the people,

and Allah is Knowing of all things.

In Favor of a Simpler Economy

2020-03-09T14:59:00.000+01:00

You can arrive at two types of simplicity: Either you can reduce the complex to a level of stupidity, or you can shape complexity into clear genius.

For a time, our socio-economic system did humanity well. Stephen Pinker, author of “Enlightenment Now” says “we live longer, suffer less, learn more, get smarter, and enjoy more small pleasures and rich experiences. Fewer of us are killed, assaulted, enslaved, oppressed, or exploited.” This has been true, but for the first time in history, the next generation of humans will have it worse than the previous one.

Education is failing to teach citizens to think critically and independently enough, to empower them against the influence of mass media and to discern the truth. They are left open to manipulation and their sacred right to vote is usurped. Our capitalist system promotes mindless consumerism with tragic consequences for the world. Citizens have a broad sense of inadequacy, are lonelier, and are more anxious than ever. Oxford trained professor, Yuval Noah Harari speaks of a future where a new class of useless citizens will emerge. LSE anthropologist David Graber bemoans the present day explosion of bullshit jobs” that leave employees feeling awful.

Holistic integration should be the priority of an all-encompassing economic machine. With a long term perspective and thinking of the big picture, the priority here would be to increase harmony between all the living and non-living things that compose the ecosystem of the earth. What other way is there to intelligently nurture life, increase harmony, and reduce pain? There are several angles to tackle to make this a reality.

I. The Economic Directive is Off

GDP, a perverted notion of economic growth, neglects the well-being of humanity. It is nothing but the sum total of all transactions that take place in an economy. If you and I trade the same piece of corn 1 trillion times for 10 dollars each time… that would represent a GDP of 10 trillion USD. For a piece of corn… the measure is grossly inaccurate, neglecting the state of culture, of nature, of education, of public health, happiness and much more. Bhutan measures a National Happiness Index, but it is the first and rare country to do so. French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s pushed for it, but it was rejected.

I first suspected something was wrong when a professor explained that economics is the science of optimally allocating finite resources to satisfy infinite wants. This flew in the face of what was starting to emerge as true in consumerism. More stuff, more money, past a certain point does not mean more happiness or fulfillment or satisfaction. This same science pretends humans are rational in regards to money ; we’re not… the concept of humans upon which the “science” of economics is based on is largely false.

We are not rational animals, we are passionate and emotional. We are not competitive beasts, we are collaborative and participative ; it is a natural corollary of social nature. People can be wise enough to feel fulfillment, satisfaction, being content and knowing generally what enough is. To have infinite wants, is to have a tumor’s mindset - continuous, relentless growth. I refuse to believe the human race is a cancer on earth. This paradigm sucks and I think we should move toward something better.

II. There is Little Wealth in Materialism

The only way I can imagine man to have infinite wants is if the individual is compensating for a deep sense of worthlessness; to feel alienated, alone and lacking in spirituality. In such a scenario one seeks connectedness and acceptance by flaunting wealth, to signal success and ability. But vanity and prestige are the worst reasons to do anything. Not only is public opinion never satisfied for long enough, but vanity doesn’t say much about the good heartedness of an individual. In reality, we are not measured or appreciated for the stuff we have, but for how we make people feel. It’s really that simple, and it is so fundamental that our sense of self-worth is largely influenced by our impact on the people around us. Ultimately, community, family, and friends play a larger role towards fulfilment and meaning than material wealth does.

Unfortunately, the predominant media narrative distracts us away from this truth, glamorizing the opulent lifestyle. The young, rich and beautiful are idolized with their big muscles, yachts, fast cars, mountains of money, designer brands and jet setting antics… It all fascinates a simpler mind and fuels a dangerous ambition to satisfy empty desires. It is a partial idea of success that leaves the have-nots feeling inadequate and resentful.

For the haves, some are well adjusted and manage to be decent human beings. However, many are ill-adjusted and see vanity become addictive, gradually substituting sincere human connection for material wealth as hearts become shamelessly reckless and wasteful in their extravagance. It is nothing short of diabolical. No wonder then that vainglory is a deadly sin.

If such behavior only harmed the consumer, one would be inclined to let it be, but the impact on the environment is terrifying. Consider fashion & food and energy. Fast fashion depends on toxic fabric dyes and other chemicals that contaminate fresh water, producing a tenth of the world'scarbon emissions, and employing people in miserable conditions. Despite an impending global water crisis and food shortages, we still waste over 30% of all food made.

This tragedy wouldn’t be so if we consumed with more intention, with gratitude and appreciation for how the product or service is made and delivered.

III. Man’s Fundamental Needs are Few and Simple

Charlie Munger, the 96 year old right hand man of the famous Sage of Omaha Warren Buffet recently gave a crowd of young people some life advice :

“This modern world is radically different and I’m not sure if I were starting out in your world how well I would do,” he said. “It would be a lot harder than it was to get ahead in the world the way it was when I came up. My best advice, I think you would be happier if you reduced your expectations.”

In light of Munger’s wise advice it seems “utilitarian minimalism”, or “conscious consumerism” is the approach we are encouraged to have with the goods and services we consume. This means that we do not take more than which we need for a specific function. The aim is to be living with gratitude, understanding and fulfilling our needs, minimizing superfluous wants, and fully appreciating whatever we are consuming. This shouldn’t be difficult when we have a sense of contentment and perspective, confidently knowing our needs will be met.

I am of the opinion that when we have our fundamental emotional and social needs met, we are less likely to hoard goods and money. We wouldn’t feel the fear, insecurity or uncertainty that would compel such behavior. Put simply, I am more confident my basic needs will be met when my social fabric is strong, and when that is my reality, I will be animated with a spirit of collaboration, sharing and generosity. When there’s no hoarding there’s more to go around.

I must concede that exposure to wealth makes the heart full and convinces one of the virtues of minimalism more readily. Buddha himself was a prince in a castle tasting all the luxuries life could offer before he escaped his golden cage and lived a life of ascetism. Envy and outrage at the injustice of inequality are monstrous obstacles to freeing one’s heart, but having a taste of wealth can give way to understanding the futility of vanity.

What matters are the relationships we have and the meaningful contribution we make to our community through work. With these and clothes on our back, a roof over our heads, food, good health, means of transportation and access to culture and knowledge, we’ll be plenty satisfied. Louis CK said it wisely in an episode of his TV show, while speaking to his daughter : “We should never look at our neighbor to see they have as much as we do, but only to check if they have enough”.

IV. Conscious Consumerism

To live with simple wants and appreciating our needs being fulfilled does not to mean depriving oneself of modern conveniences and luxuries. No, a frugal lifestyle means consuming intelligently, as needed, and with full awareness of how the consumed item reached us. Anything too often and too readily consumed loses its value. It’s the principle of satiation.

If I have 20 LV bags, I won’t cherish them as much as if I had one, that I fully use and appreciate regularly. Likewise, if I have 10 slices of my favorite cake... well I’ll be quickly sick of it by the 3rd slice. When we are aware of the effort invested in making the cake, bag or whatever, we are more likely to consume with appreciation, and needing far less to be satiated.

This is true for everything. Too big a house separates its inhabitants and feels eerie when we’re alone - too much food and we’re bloated, too much sleep and we’re foggy, too much TV and we’re a zombie. How much more delicious is the meal we take the time to savor and enjoy slowly. How much more enjoyable is the apple the miracle of which we understand.

This approach creates a sense of appreciation, gratitude, and satisfies the minds away from envy, greed and competition. The effectiveness of sincerely expressing gratitude in healing and strengthening a mind has been established over and over again.

Ultimately, simplicity creates generosity and abundance. Greed, vanity and envy create the illusion of scarcity. As Louis CK says “everything is awesome, and nobody’s happy”. Besides, to own too much is cumbersome - property is responsibility, the more things we have, the more we have to worry about, and the things we own end up owning us.

A simple approach to consumerism clears the mind as our intellectual capital is freed from making unnecessary choices between marginally different items. It is why the likes of Barrack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg wear variations of the same clothes everyday – it is that much more intellectual capital freed up for something more meaningful. When the world around us is clear, there are no hidden distraction mines, and our minds can be securely calm and clear, primed for focus. Simple order is an antidote to a cluttered and distracted mind. In so many ways there is elegance in the optimal use of resources. Often, that means sharing products that are only intermittently used.

V. Towards a Sharing & Circular Economy

I noticed in Saudi Arabia that there are no or very few public gardens, and libraries. The wealthy on the other hand have walled themselves into massive estates with gigantic gardens and multiple homes, barely ever needing to leave them. In contrast, the libraries and gardens of Paris are bustling with people inspired by shared greenery and knowledge. So it must be with all goods that are seldom used: they must be shared so their utilization rates are maximized for the sake of efficiency and for the greater public good. Cars, homes, power tools, wedding dresses and designer bags, etc. are all valid contenders. This is especially important because if we don’t have to produce as much, then it means all that more earth we avoid plundering for resources.

Alongside how we buy and consume, we must also take special care with how we discard products. The environment cannot afford the varieties of junk we throw in to it, from plastics to electronic waste, they all threaten us. Products must be made to last, with a modular design to fix, replace or upgrade specific parts rather than the entire product. Programmed obsolescence, whereby manufacturers produce goods intended to last only a set period of time, should be banned outright. Where modular design is not possible, the item must be disassembled and completely recycled with 0 damage to the environment. (It would also be nice if we didn’t need to use single use plastics and had reusable packaging).

VI. An Inevitably Slower Economy

The issue is that if we consume fewer products that last for longer, we reduce aggregate economic demand, which threatens the entire economic machine. Jobs would be cut as factories need to produce less, miners and loggers extract less, less is shipped and transported etc. It’s definitely not favorable to the status quo. But the present economic game is detrimental to all of those playing it, creating enormous inequality and social resentment, all the while presenting a threat to all life on earth.

The machine needs to be rejigged to produce a different outcome; it must slow down. Goods and services will still need to be developed and provided. As society exists it will need to consume goods and services, entertainment, lights, music, and all the necessary to let a nice show go on. However, with a conscious approach, we’ll need less and waste less : we will be more efficient. The economy doesn’t need to run as hot as it does. In terms of consumption, for the last 50 years we have been consuming all the resources the planet earth naturally produces in a year at an earlier date every year.

Even as the economy slows down, there’s a concern humans won’t have much real work to do. Yuval Noah Harari claims that the useless class will emerge as a result of advanced artificial intelligence and automation playing a bigger role in the economy. Even today, radiologists and musicians can see their work done by artificial intelligence better than by humans. Driverless cars and trucks are on the horizon, cutting out taxi and long haul truck drivers.

The technology owners will become wealthier as swaths are made redundant, creating more inequality in society. History doesn’t need to go in this direction. Let automation and artificial intelligence take over the dull jobs. Sure there will be fewer jobs, but these can be shared. And in regards to economic inequality, taxation on the world’s richest must be enforced to redistribute wealth either with a universal basic income, or increased public services, or both (consider the grotesque reality that the world’s richest 26 people have the total wealth of the poorest 50% of the world). High tax rates didn’t stop Sweden from excelling, being a star pupil of progressive policies.

Automation and less demand for goods will eradicate many jobs, leaving us with plenty of time to use our productive energies meaningfully. With the right social protections, we’ll be free to contribute meaningfully to our community however we can and wish to. It’s a better reality than today’s where we spend long hours at a job we have to do to live. More free time can be spent with family, in the arts, research, reading, debating, healing a friend or whatever charitable spirit may inspire us.

This is the Google 20% rule applied to life. Good work is anything where our energy is expended on for the sake of progress, at whatever scale. A life worth living is a life of service. The ultimate goal is to grow and raise or collective level of consciousness. To echo The Beatles, “the love you take is equal to the love you make”.

VII. More Time for Desired Work and Collaboration

People will work less, earn a basic minimum income for merely existing (for many it looks like an old but gold idea) and will live more fulfilling, meaningful, and useful lives to the world. John Maynard Keynes hypothesized that by 2030, the world would be a place of so little work people would suffer to wonder what they would do with themselves. I wouldn’t go so far – we’ll still have needs to be met, and we’ll still need to understand the machinery we built to service us. I think we’ll be glad to work 6 hour shifts, 4 days a week, and share employment, if only to feel useful.

The luxury of time will allow for us to work more meaningfully, be more instructed, critical and more importantly, available to cater to the various social, intellectual, athletic, and spiritual dimensions of our being. With more time on our hands we will be free from the tyranny of the world’s unnecessary urgency, infecting us with deadly stress, and an aggressive impatience with trivial matters.

Gone will be the days where after long stretches of intense work we find ourselves facing a void of free time, without any idea of what we used to enjoy. Gone will be the idea of retirement, where with old age, we make way for the new and wait to die. We’ll continue contributing in different roles throughout our lives, at a gradually gentler pace. We’ll be good friends and family members and our social ties will be stronger. This is the stuff of life.

Fewer work hours do not translate to sloth and mediocrity. Excellence is a moral obligation, and in everything we commit ourselves to, we must commit to do it well or not at all. This isn’t to be enforced, but rather a way of life permeating culture. Consider the Japanese term “Ganbaru” which is the idea that no job is too small, and all tasks should be done with total focus and a sense of absolute importance. This means that all roles in society are important, from the teacher to the garbage collector, to the investor and doctor.

Where sufficient time is accessible, citizens can adapt to new realities by reinventing themselves. They would share and learn new skills throughout their lives, ensuring they always feel useful, empowered, reliable and dignified. The only constant is change, and to thrive we must be adaptable.

When Ganbaru is combined with a spirit of collaboration, greater historic achievements can take place at a civilizational, literally epic scale. Consider that some of the greatest technological innovations resulted from the discoveries of the space race between Americans and Russians, or from the intense competitive spirit of war throughout history. In all cases, what is true is that necessity in the face of calamity was the mother of invention. What if all of humanity mobilized against the invisible enemy that is global warming, water scarcity, hunger and the destruction of the natural world?

One would be tempted to respond that man’s nature is competitive driven by a hungry ambition for conquest and domination. More savage societies embodied this version of humanity ; Vikings, Conquistadors, the Mongolian hordes and the Barbarian invasion of the Holy Roman Empire are just some examples. But I dare believe that we have accumulated enough history, experience and wisdom as a civilization to know that this is not the version of humanity we wish to make real.

Aggression must be stomped out for the emergence of a peaceful culture. This is what happened when a clan of baboons had their ultra-aggressive alpha males die from eating spoiled food. Without the influence of their aggression, a peaceful culture emerged and remained for multiple generations. This is not to say a society must work towards docility and complacency – failsafe must be set up to correct against any excesses of greed, in economics, martial arts and national defense. To live and let live, to be an iron fist in a velvet glove, to do no harm and take no shit, and to never confuse kindness for weakness.

This is a formidable paradigm from which to operate and to achieve the mission of increasing harmony and reducing suffering in the world. If we are more content with less, consume less and have more grateful hearts, if we have the dignity of meaningful jobs, if we have time to think with integrity, to discuss and learn freely, then a conscious, an intrinsic militant approach to harmony can be grown in every citizen. A society and economy inclusive of all living things could see the day and be continuously improved upon by our conscious and creative efforts.

Struggle is good for the soul. A wise and conscious life strives to exert itself in bettering its environment by virtue of its free creative and inventive efforts. As a mature and fully developed individual, we realize ourselves through work, putting pieces of ourselves into what we put into the world, and in so doing enmesh ourselves back into the world. To work like so is to work lovingly, towards harmony, beauty and the elimination of pain - it is why good work is sacred.

VIII. Parting Note

Consider the Drake Equation ; The math says the universe is so vast that it is absolutely impossible there isn’t other conscious intelligent life out there. However, if that’s the case, then why haven’t we made contact with any yet? This is the Fermi paradox, and one of the explanations is that civilizations always reach a point at which they destroy themselves before their technology develops enough to allow them to communicate with other star systems or galaxy. I think what happened is they realized how futile creating work for work’s sake was, that being laid back was plenty enough and good to live. They never destroyed themselves. They reintroduced greenery in their cities and used bicycles to have cleaner air, they cleaned up their plastic and electronic pollution and stopped wasting food and water.

Maybe not, but it would be nice if they did.

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PS : Paulo Coelho retold a traditional story of the virtue of a simple economy.

There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small Brazilian village.

As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish.

The businessman was impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so many fish?”

The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.”

“Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The businessman was astonished.

“This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said.

The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?”

The fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”

The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman.

“I am a PhD in business management. I could help you to become a more successful person. From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats, set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and to Sao Paulo, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.”

The fisherman continues, “And after that?”

The businessman laughs heartily, “After that, you can live like a king in your own house, and when the time is right, you can go public and float your shares in the Stock Exchange, and you will be rich.”

The fisherman asks, “And after that?”

The businessman says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a few fish, then return home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!”

The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what I am doing now?”

13 Reasons Why Porn Is Unealthy

2019-10-01T20:50:00.002+02:00

The longer version of this article was written to provoke thought about sex and to blow the lid off a natural but taboo topic. Despite the proliferation of technology enabling mobile and free porn viewing, we're not very conscious of the impact it can have on the individual, the couple or society. This article attempts to clear that up. Here's 13 major points from the piece :

On Porn in General :

1. Humanity’s interest with erotic material dates back to the prehistoric age and even drove the evolution of a lot of technology. 30% of internet bandwidth is used up for smut.

2. The antiquity of our sex fascination shouldn't be surprising. Sex is a primal fundamental drive and has a potential for a lot of sacred power to bring harmony to chaos. That depends on it being fun, in a respectful and consensual setting.

3. Porn has a tradition of being made by men for men, with a focus on visual appeal and little care for sensuality or touch. Probably those that couldn’t find success with women paid for it and expressed their resentment which tainted most pornography as humiliating and power based.

Porn's Effect on Performers :

4. This aggressive pornography poorly informs young men and women’s expectations. The more shame and secrecy around sexuality there is, the more they will gravitate towards such media. Sexuality must be clearly and easily talked to avoid misinformation and potential harm.

5. In porn, performers are lured in at the tender naive age of 18, become gradually desensitized and don’t last more than a year, but the video rights owners make money for as long as the video exists. The performers are only paid on a per shoot basis.

6. Few and far in between are the performers that have lasting careers. Their mental health is poorly assessed, as many find it difficult to form relationships, become lonely, leave the industry, and/or commit suicide. Where sex is meant to bond us, in pornography it alienates us.

7. Porn must be more regulated by the state to safeguard actors and protect their interests ; at least making sure they continue being paid royalties (Mia Khalifa only received 12,000 USD but her videos have been seen over a billion times) and that the age limit goes from 18 to 21 at least, to allow for maturity to form.

Porn's Effect on the Viewer :

8. The endless parade of naked bodies commoditizes the body and robs it what makes it special: without intimacy, bodies look the same. At the same time unnatural beauty standards are normalized and influencing people’s self body image.

9. Pornography accustoms the viewer into approaching sexuality as a spectator. Watching porn and having bond building sex (in all its forms) are two very different activities, but watching it has made many men impotent and puts them in danger of forming compulsive habits.

10. Everyone is a sexual being, but watching pornography risks putting the emphasis on that aspect of a person rather than the mind. As a result, the more porn you watch the more you subconsciously sexualize everyone around you. It is shallow and alienating, but we don’t realize it’s happening.

Modernizing Porn :

11. A new genre is emerging made with a greater focus on trust, respect and playfulness, portraying a more realistic approach to sexuality in what is called “Ethical Porn” (but really it should just be called… normal).

12. Studies show that watching porn harms the couple overall - those that watch it together are more inclined to cheat, those that watch it separately even more so, and women always underestimate just how much porn their partners watch (when they know about it). In more conservative settings, women feel betrayed and as the super stimulus of pornography make husbands lose sexual appetite towards their wife.

13. Porn must come with a warning label to inform people how it’s made, and it’s impact on society and the individual. Something beautiful poorly consumed can be extremely traumatic.

The Corrosive Power of Porn

2019-09-22T13:05:00.004+02:00

Throughout history humans have been very creative in soothing their appetite for sex. Some argue it drove the evolution of art and consumer technology. 7200 years ago, hunter gatherers gawked at erotic statues and wall paintings. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, it fossilized Pompeii’s vast trove of erotic material. Even today the collection is a monument to humanity's timeless fascination with kink. As civilization evolved people masked their perversion by going to museums to spice their erotic imagination with nude art works.

With the Gutenberg press we became more literate and read more erotic novels, blushing with pleasure and anticipation. With the advent of photography nude pictures were taken and shared. Film brought the first video of a lady undressing. Shot in 1899 Le Coucher de La Mariée is the first erotic movie ever made. From black and white silent films, polaroid cameras and instant intimate photography spread, Super 8 projectors for 8mm film took hold for home savoring (a favorite of frat houses) and porn’s presence on VHS killed Betamax. Online Video, compression (for speedier delivery), and online payment were pioneered to serve porn and our hunger for racy content. Today over 30% of the total internet bandwidth is used to consume porn. That’s a lot.

(From the New Yorker Magazine)

All of this is natural and shouldn’t be surprising or shocking to us. The more one attempts to suppress the sexual instinct, the uglier its expression becomes. Sex is absolutely beautiful, it is where all of existence, including all the opposites, symbolically materialize and become one ; tender and rough, giving and taking, taking and giving, elegant and primitive, fast and slow, dominating and dominated and switching it up. Where from the moment we are born we are separated from one another, in sex the two fuse in a whirlwind of love and flesh, temporarily becoming one in cosmosapiens harmony. We trade energy, and bits of our souls rub off on one another. So much is happening in such a concentrated form, the singularity itself is represented waiting to explode in a big life giving bang.

Sex being so ecstatic, it should be no surprise then that humans of both genders are wired to be visually stimulated. Indeed, men and women’s brains react identically to pornography. The ideal form of pornography would respect the fundamentals of healthy sex, that is consent and respect. Only then can the partners be trusted to dive into the ordered chaos of passionate intercourse, and only then can they convey it as an art form celebrating humanity and its gift of sex. It can be healthy, it can be arousing, fun and inspiring - but to get it right takes a lot of calibration, and both local & global society are far from it.

1. Broadly : The State of Pornography

Unfortunately, for the longest time pornography has been made for men by men with a degrading approach to women. This shouldn’t be a surprise; pornography started gaining popularity in the 60s, at a time when women had a less favorable position in society. It’s only been during the last decade or so that productions have considered their female audiences. Regardless, more men watch more porn more often and so the majority of content is still made with men in mind.

As a result it is difficult for pornography to reflect the sincere and natural balanced fun in the chaos of intercourse. Even in the more tender categories of pornography, the emphasis is not on intimate nourishment but on the spectator’s entertainment. This translates into the degradation of the performer’s humanity. For long stretches at a time they assume unnatural poses ideal for framing genitals, the woman’s beauty, curves, and penetration. To minimize visual obstruction hands are unnaturally placed anywhere other than the partner’s body; there’s little to no sensuality.

Most categories of pornography share a primitive focus on power, translating into a raw show of humiliating force and dominance. One can only speculate about why it is at all like that. I assume some of the men attracted to this work saw their advances towards women be constantly rejected. The Involuntary Celibates, or incels, believe sex is their god given right which women withholds from them. They’re not a nice bunch, and they’d have enough resentment to be aggressive, misogynistic and chauvinistic as needed to cater to their fantasies.

To add insult to injury the actresses are instructed to pretend to enjoy it in an obviously exaggerated way. It is a fantasy, an act - but the sex is real and the aggression around it is very unsettling even to the actors’ psyche. Chauvinism directly contradicts the fundamental condition of respect for decent sex. It is a tragedy that many actors have committed suicide at a young age in what’s being called “Death of Despair” (August Ames 23, Karen Lancaume 32, Turi Luv, Shyla Styles 35, Olivia Nova 20, and the list goes on).

I cannot speak for women or performers ; I am neither and the industry is notoriously opaque to protect itself. However here’s what I know: Porna in Latin means prostitute, and graphia translates to documentation. Pornography is therefore documented prostitution and it is hard to believe that becoming a prostitute is anyone’s childhood dream. What can also be confidently asserted is that performers find it difficult to build relationships and end up lonely. Louis Theroux’s documentary “Twilight of the Porn Stars” reflects this, and the superstar Tori Black, whom started performing at 18, quit the industry for this reason at 24 (she returned at the age of 31 as a mother of two).

With the proliferation of free porn sites where users upload pirated content, the industry is seeing less revenues being generated and performers are suffering for it. Where actresses in the 70s went on to have careers spanning 25 years, the turnover is now far greater. Actors are not paid royalties, only a one time fee with rates ranging between 400 to 1000 USD per scene (sometimes more depending on what they’re asked to do). Of the many hundreds of girls that turn 18 and join the fray every year, only a sliver of them last longer than 3 months, and even less remain to have a successful career.

Most new entrants, aged only 18, are roped in with promises of glamour and excitement and the occasional kind words from the men in the industry (these guys are getting sued for it). Girls like Mia Khalifa are told they are beautiful, sexy and fun and in the compliments find cheap but sufficient validation. They mostly do not fully comprehend what they are getting themselves into; rapidly, they become desensitized to sex with strangers on camera.

To keep receiving roles, they fear saying no and end up doing things they would’ve preferred not to. The competition is tough and they are easily replaceable. They enter a dynamic reinforced by their pay, and they justify it with a false sense of empowerment. Yes, pornography is one of the few industries where women are paid more than men, but they still get a bad deal. After 3 months in the industry, Mia Khalifa only made 12,000 USD. Though her videos continue to be watched, she does not receive a cent for any of the 927 million views accrued to date (on pornhub.com alone). It seems the cost the performers pay is far higher than the revenues they make.

The top performers that are notorious enough to negotiate their fees and choose the performers they work with are very rare. Even then, they tend to strike out on their own following Porn millionaire’s Jenna Jameson’s example. These women are unnaturally beautiful and perform very enthusiastically and convincingly with a sort of devilish possession in their eyes. But I don't think they can do that so well without suffering some sort of dent to their psyche. I suspect that with common drug use, the actors are desensitised to their psychological well being for the convenience of their short term career development.

2. Porn & The Viewer - Sex Education

The preferences we have around our sex lives vary widely and can be quite unsettling to the spectator or the newly initiated. Up until the 90s Sadomasochism was considered a mental illness by the bible of psychiatry, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders. It was later removed, but many newbies found it to be cathartic; it had a healing power. However, to watch such an act is very different from practicing it. Without the vulnerability, intimacy, touch and general immersion, one is left with just the violence. How can it not be shocking? Porn circumvents the pre-requisite initiation.

As it stands porn is free and ubiquitous. There is material from around the world dating as far back as the 60s that is widely available to stream on any device. Whereas pornography was bulky to transport (VHS), expensive and hard to watch intimately, smartphones, tablets and laptops made them very easy to secretly consume. Kids having access to these technologies makes it is only a matter of time before they stumble upon some raunchiness. Either they find it by accident or are guided to it by their peers and we shouldn’t be surprised. They are curious, have a pulse and speak to one another. The only thing that can be influenced here is the response to the content.

A good way to neutralize confusion is to be transparent and provide a safe space to talk things through. The more mystery we shroud an intimate subject in, the scarier it becomes. “If young people see that sexual matters are surrounded by silence, secrecy, shame and fear, they will quickly come to believe that there is something wrong with their own feelings about sexuality” (Boethius, 1985, p.278). The more we are forced to learn about sexuality covertly, the more likely we’ll do so from unsavory sources with far from optimal consequences.

Clarity brings understanding, and the Scandinavian model of sex education follows this creed rather well. Sexuality is approached in a matter of fact way without shame, with fascination, and tenderness. In this framework children’s innocence can be preserved by ensuring they understand pornography is far from representative of real love making. Boys in particular are more likely to understand it is a performance, a fantasy, and that a lot of women do not naturally enjoy what happens on screen. Women can feel safer knowing that men are informed of the illusory nature of pornography and both genders can learn the importance of and skills around intimate conversation. The entire subject can be approached more solemnly and respectfully when the sacred and powerful nature of sex is emphasized along with its biomechanics and its psychological impact.

Unfortunately, most societies have built rigid paradigms around sexuality to secure lineage and inheritance all the while safeguarding society against a decadent fall into general nymphomania. In doing so they have perpetuated a culture of shame and secrecy around the topic of sexuality. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, and Turkey are some of the strictest countries in the world, but with some of the biggest porn consumption per capita. There’s definitely a tension that needs release. (The bonobo chimpanzees, for reference, live in matriarchal societies and solve all conflicts with intercourse. They are some of the most peaceful creatures on earth. Just saying…).

3. Porn & The Viewer : Unintended Harm

Because pornography is a lot of young men’s first encounter with sex, they learn their sex mannerisms from what they see. Whereas in reality they would receive their partner’s feedback, with pornography they are left to believe the illusion of women having pleasurable from excess dominance. Until they are told, the importance of foreplay, starting slow, sensuality and touch, will be alien to them. A visual representation without conveying touch gravely alters the nature of sex, reducing it to vulgar slabs of meat rubbing against one another.

The assault continues as budding men are exposed to endless varieties of unnaturally beautiful women. With long eyelashes, carefully crafted make up and hair done, young men do not realize how artificial the porn star’s appearance is. Sadly, the relentless objectification of the body takes away the uniqueness of the individual body. It becomes fungible and melts into the mind’s sea of flesh. Breasts, legs, genitals and unique facial features are rubbed out of the mind. The commoditization of the body removes the mystery and the sacred from the art of the body; there is no element of surprise or anticipation. The body is known, but without the emotion, the sensuality or the meaning, it is just a shell.

It is against this backdrop that expectations partners’ bodies are insidiously set. With this pressure, girls start to modify even their intimate appearance. Plastic surgery to modify breast, lips, behinds and even labia are on the rise. One surgery seeks named “The Barbie” aims to erase the labia entirely, because just like the doll, there’s nothing there. Porn has somehow convinced girls that their natural state is ugly. Is that what we want to tell girls? That to be worthy of love they need to be worthy of sexual desire? to look like a porn star?!

Even as men grow dissatisfied with their beloved’s body, they grow dissatisfied with their own manhood. They believe all good sex depends on a good big dick and forget the importance of being attentive, generous, sensual, and charming. Intimidated by the giant penises, they start to seek ways to enlarge their manhood (often with disastrous consequences).

The diabolical offense continues as men reinforce their role as spectator instead of actor and forget how to perform. Indeed, as men have taught their bodies to seek pleasure with porn and masturbation, they have grown increasingly unable to become erect before a woman of flesh and blood. This is a true pandemic.

Pornography slams one more nail in the coffin of wholesome sensuality by perpetuating a man’s childhood, leaving him immature by delaying his initiation into manhood. To paraphrase the psychologist Jordan Peterson : “... Porn is like treasure island in Pinocchio, it’s all pleasure without responsibility. It’s deadening, it’s parasitic, and I’m not making a value judgement, it’s no wonder the young guys are caught up in this, it’s an unbelievably powerful technology... it taps into one viciously primordial motivation, so these guys are being constantly blasted by what biologists call super-stimuli, and the porn stars have their provocative physical elements exaggerated, and men being very visual are pulled into it. Ethically, it’s not good - it’s an easy out. We should be going out and finding someone to have a relationship with. If you can’t find someone then that’s an indication that you should change, because what better indication are you going to get than that no one wants to be intimate with you? If you can gratify yourself without transformation, then there’s no growth”.

Pornography leaves men impotent, isolated and more sexually frustrated. It sets unhealthy beauty standards and expectations, and often leads to divorce with wives and husbands feeling betrayed and insufficient (in some cases, they enjoy watching it together, and that’s better than watching it alone, but more on that later).

4. You become What You Feed Your Mind

Most humans are not as conscious as to intentionally direct their thoughts. We get primed and influenced by the concepts, ideas and the world around us all the time without being aware. Porn doesn’t end when the browser/tv/tablet is closed. It stays in the back of the mind even if we don’t want to think about it. The more it is fed/reinforced with repetition, the more it becomes a part of us.

By consuming films of unbalanced sex with commoditized bodies we deny the divine of humanity and the sacred nature of sex. We then tend to sexualize everyone and are blind to the other parts that make up a person. It’s very shallow and primitive at its worst to forget the thinking, creative, compassionate mind. The very components that nurture meaningful bonds and relationships are increasingly neglected.

But when we watch porn our primitive reptilian mind overrides our conscious being. As the flames of our lustful passion are fanned, we pleasure ourselves and shower our brains with dopamine. The hormone is released every orgasm and whatever releases it wires us to do more of that activity. Whereas as an actor, a participant in the act of love making, the sense of touch is activated and dopamine is balanced with a bigger dose of the “love hormone” oxytocin. Some say porn is not physically addictive, but without the bigger dose of oxytocin it can lead to some nasty compulsive behavior that risk jeopardizing a viewer’s life.

And in that dynamic we compulsively watch chauvinistic, mysoginistic pornography that teaches men to be selfish (if not cruel) in bed. It warps our perception and conception of the greatest bonding tool available to humanity. It’s very alienating.

I have a theory that when we have low self esteem, we get pleasure from receiving confirmation of our negative messaging in a sexual context. We enjoy being dominated and treated poorly, even as it pulls at the strings of our integrity and mental well being. When young girls are fucked and told cruel things and insulted in such an intimate context, even if they want it, they are seeking pleasure from confirmation. When it’s confirmed, the belief is more firmly ingrained and it’s harmful. By watching this sort of pornography, we condone such behavior. The same way I refuse to condone debilitating heroin and methamphetamine use, I refuse to condone this sort of sexual practice. We are all starstuff, children of God, we must elevate one another not degrade each other.

5. Can Porn be OK to Watch?

That is not to say that all porn is like that. Luckily in many places the law is involved, limiting freedom of speech/expression with the barrier of public decency and morality. That which falls under child pornography or obscenity is banned. The latter is notoriously hard to define; justice Potter Stewart in Jacobellis V. Ohio (1964) notoriously refused to define it but said: “I know when I see it”. One can say that which is obscene violates contemporary community standards and has no serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value. Some porn is so degrading there’s no choice but to ban it ; for the more conservative/sensitive types, all porn must be banned.

The sad truth is that if porn addressed all the issues I have brought up it would make for boring viewing. The whole point is to stimulate lust and shock our systems with very fit humans in athletic romp, so we can inspire ourselves to please ourselves. This is not unhealthy in itself ; getting to know our bodies, and pleasure are healthy. Even for men 50 years and older, it decreases the risk of prostate cancer (but increases it in younger men). It should also be comforting to know that most people, though stimulated by raunchy stuff, don’t think they would like to participate in such a practice. (Then again, people often surprise themselves with the things they are willing to do or have done to them).

But does that mean it can’t be raunchy and respectful? Visual and sensual, and where the woman’s experience is of the same importance as that of the man’s? Feminist porn tries to be this kind of ethical porn, depicting agency, consent, being sex positive and prioritizing women’s pleasure. There’s even an Award for the genre in Toronto, where Erika Lust screened her high value production films.

As for the safeguarding of the performers well being and interests, the state must regulate the industry to make sure the performers know their rights, that they can say no, and must secure minimum wages and royalty payouts while banning all free content. Users must pay for their content the same way they pay for their films or risk a lawsuit. The industry must be organized to secure the mental and physical well being of the performers, and that very well may mean raising the minimum age to 21-23 (also because it places a higher barrier against under-age performers). The power to regulate the industry has been established ; performers have to use protection in the state of California.

For now, the performers are taking their lives into their own hands thanks to technology. Cam girls and cam couples perform in the safety of their own homes, on their own terms. This medium is less alienating as they communicate with their fans and are paid by them directly. With that and feminist porn, there could be a tool to augment one’s sex life and have a healthy relationship to porn, but one cannot conclusively say so for lack of data.

What we do know is that women tend to vastly underestimate how much porn their men watch. We also know that when men or women in a couple and watch porn alone, they are more likely to cheat, and less so when they watch porn together. Still, not watching porn at all makes them more loyal to one another. In rare cases, it even sparks passion and interest back into a marriage gone cold. Some couples don’t mind being open, it’s called polyamory - but this raises the question of whether polyamory truly works, how much society tolerates polyamory, or extra-conjugal relations. Regardless, porn does more harm to the couple than it does good. Makes sense, the more we are used to super raunchy stuff, the more normal sex life feels less exciting. No wonder then that partners don't feel good about solo porn watching.

In any case all porn must come with a warning label, just like cigarettes and alcohol do. The potential for compulsive behavior is huge, and the risks to the couple and how the opposite sex is perceived are real. The more niche the pornography, the more primal and complex the recesses of our minds being explored are, the bigger the warning should be. Something beautiful poorly consumed can be extremely traumatic.

As a parting note, something crazy is happening : as proliferous as porn is, Hollywood is shying away from examples of healthy sex. The perfect canvas to artfully showcase wholesome, complex and rich sex is diminishing. In an era of proliferating porn, it would’ve been a great counterbalance. At least there’s feminist porn.

What It Means to Be Open Minded

2019-07-27T11:34:00.002+02:00

My entire extended family is convinced that because of my French upbringing, I need an "open minded" partner. The term seemed to be a blanket statement lumping everyone on the liberal spectrum together. Commonly, so long as an individual is not traditionalist, reserved or conservative they are deemed open minded. I needed a better definition.

My notion of open mindedness revolves around the independent and inquisitive truth seeking spirit. Because they know that courage without fear is madness, they understand that faith without doubt is madness too. They are not afraid of the unknown and are comfortable with uncertainty. With this comfort comes a fluid and evolving approach to uncovering truth.

There are two stages to being open minded. The first revolves around the serene acceptance of our natural limitations, courageously and humbly admitting that we do not know, or do not understand. The Open Minded accept that no matter how much they know, there will always be infinitely more they don't know.

The open minded never denigrate the foreign or alien concept. They rather intentionally nourish diversity knowing full well the importance of difference in developing thought. In a more active manner, the open minded expand their understanding, intuition, and ultimately their empathy by engaging with the unknown through exploration.

The open minded are disciplined in their exploration. Though they are curious and fascinated with the workings of the world, they investigate information’s integrity and do not take anything at face value. They entertain ideas without accepting them, they listen, ask questions and seek to understand before being understood. They are humble as they seek to constantly update their perspective and understanding of what is healthy or not, to the best of their abilities. In this manner they are more closely aligned to truth and live with stronger conviction, rendering them free from the shackles of social convention. Armed with Truth, they more easily dare to be different.

Open mindedness presumes the freedom to stray from the beaten path, to experiment, test check and repeat. To be open minded is to be tolerant and patient with ourselves and our community as we learn from each other’s varied perspectives by safely talking them out. We speak of failure without fear of reprimand and together grow closer to Truth. Learning how to think is how we become true individuals with robust value systems we can proudly stand by. Dialogue and the art of disagreeing are key ingredients. One's freedom ends where the other's starts.

Without the freedom to think, to experiment and to express, we are oppressed and that can have tragic consequences on thought and self-development. There is a category of once oppressed individuals being suddenly exposed to a variety of overwhelming freedoms. For instance, they are unequipped to navigate themselves with the once off limits opposite gender, drugs, alcohol or general entertainment. For lack of experience with the world, their instincts and desires are untamed and unleashed to dire consequences.

Worse yet, the resentment against the institutions that suffocated their self-expression translates into a rejection of the morals they have learned. They become provocative rebels without a cause other than to reject the status quo. This is not open mindedness. It is rather a mindlessness without discipline or identity. There is no depth or meaning in being a slave to our desires.

A wholesome society depends on its ability to foster diverse set of open minded individuals. That means providing a safe space for exploration, discovery, dialogue, critical thought and scrutiny in all domains. That is what it means to be open minded; to be a genuine, cooperative and peaceful servant of Truth.

13 reasons why I pray

2019-07-27T09:55:00.002+02:00

I’ve always intuitively known prayer to be important but I didn’t understand it intellectually. So to avoid being a hypocrite, I didn’t pray for a long time. After much thought I’ve come to have a deep conviction in its usefulness. I wrote a very long article about it, but I think a list might make it easier and faster to digest. Here are 13 reasons why I pray.

1. It gets you to get up and move a little, and break your routine.

2. It gets you to think about the eternal and timeless. Feeling small is awe inspiring.

3. Becoming more aware of the essential in the big picture, you become less obsessed with material gains.

4. Big picture thinking makes you more appreciative and grateful, and gratitude gives perspective making life lighter. Think of the overview effect astronauts feel when they see the earth from space.

5. Reciting verses of goodness helps you stay connected to strong growth oriented values.

6. Unraveling the deeper meaning of sacred texts through symbols, metaphors etc. is awe inspiring and enlightening.

7. It’s meditative aspect, feeling wholly present, calm and focused on breath makes you feel connected to everyone and everything. It helps you stay calm and focused, all the while feeling your emotions more.

8. When you are inspired and feel connected to everything, you become a kinder, gentler, and more selfless being.

9. It allows you to slow down and take stock of the day, so you can remain in control rather than be controlled by the events of the day.

10. The more focused you are, the more of a flow state you can be in, the more creative you can be.

11. The calmer and more focused you are, the more you can be in control of your emotions, the less reactive and more proactive you can be.

12. The calmer, more focused, inspired and grateful you are, the more aligned you become, and the less distracted by destructive temptation you become.

13. Speaking your wishes and desires with intention and sincerity through supplication helps you visualize them more, and that makes you strive towards them more.

So there you have it. That's why I strive to pray as often as I can. I am sure there are many more esoteric gains to prayer, but if only for the above, and no matter what creed you follow, I urge you to meditate and supplicate. Be calm. Namaste.

Why I Pray

2019-05-28T21:15:00.000+02:00

I’ve had a conflicted relationship with prayer. For a while I prayed because I got a sense of self worth from a paternal figure’s approval (God’s). But then I stopped praying because I didn’t want to be stuck in a permanent state of childhood. I then rejected the transactional idea of praying as a payment for a happy hereafter. I was also panicked by seeing so many people move blindly in unison, as if they had given up their free will to become part of a hive. Worse yet, I saw many vile men and women pretend to be pious and pray ardently only to behave monstrously. I was afraid to be a hypocrite like them. I had to make space away from that negativity for a more wholesome option of communion based on unconditional love and robust conviction.

I wanted to think for myself and discover values I truly believe in; only then could I grow a different understanding of prayer with which I am truly aligned. I now know it is a practice that above all empowers me to be a better human being for myself and others. It feels like a gift god commanded us to give him, only because it was a bigger gift to us still.

At first I tried to design my own method of prayer. I knew there was something in there that was right mostly because I learned about meditation and gratitude and understood their importance. I wanted to innovate, not knowing the product was perfect as is. Call this the folly and ignorant arrogance of youth.

Prayer, like meditation, comes in many forms. It is a ritual that marks a pause in the day and calls for practitioners to slow down their rhythm. We ritually go through ablution, the act of washing ourselves methodically, and then pray alone or together by reciting verses from the Koran. We punctuate the ritual with different movements, such as bowing down and a sort of genuflecting. Done correctly, one is fully present in the moment and focused on the phonetics and rich multilayered meaning of the recited words. The meaning is so rich, it is transcending and compels a state of “flow”. It is a meditative, calm and quiet trance where the mind is emptied for Communion with Existence.

There are outwardly benefits that must be briefly explained. The sedentary life a majority of people live with is killing them faster than they realize. The movements of prayer are soft, like in Tai-Chi and Yoga, they are gentle on the body and keep it active. Being attentive to good posture through different poses inspires vigor and calm. The sedentary lifestyle has been dubbed the new cigarettes, and studies have shown that not moving is worse for you than smoking. The little bit prayer offers is enough to ward off a lot of unnecessary suffering.

1. Meditation as a Component of Prayer

Dan Aerlye, the famous Duke University psychologist shows that meditation makes you capable of withstanding more emotion. It makes you more focused, more resilient, and more serene. It helps one grow one’s own will and consciousness and so enables us to confront ourselves and acknowledge a wider range of mental states. As we grow more aware, we become more resistant to the entropy of an autopilot life, of mindless, distracted living.

Meditation, like prayer, comes in many different forms, but they all share common features. One must be focused, present, aware of the Now, and pacing one’s breathing. It is a quieting of the mind in favor of as much a state of blankness as possible. It is not easy and requires practice; when a vagrant unwelcome thought comes, the only thing to do is to acknowledge it and let it go to resume making space for nothing.

More incredible still is that the way we think directs the evolution of our brain’s biology; our thoughts physically transform the shape of our brain. Indeed new synapses are formed between neurons depending on how we think. Those that have meditated for a long time have managed use their practice to change material structure of their brains to be calm and serene. Imagine the difference between a brain that lets thoughts run wild and another that has learned to tame them. As René Descartes said: “I think therefore I am” and it follows that if I don’t think, then I am not. Prayer helps you think in calm and so it helps you exist.

The more we are capable of focus, the more we can be productive and contributive members of society. As we grow more mindful we feel and hear ourselves more, becoming more proactive rather than reactive in our actions. I believe that we are endowed with intelligence and creativity to act as God’s ambassadors. In that role, we must work to increase harmony, reduce pain and make more beauty in everything that we share space with; the natural and human world. By cultivating calm and focus, meditation helps this effort. If only for that, it is Holy.

2. Decelerate & See the Essential

Though I knew the importance of meditation, I didn’t have the discipline to do it regularly. I would instead find serenity in reading and learning about other religions. But something was missing; it’s the difference between learning something from a book, and learning something by living it. It helps to be called for prayer 5 times a day, to break the rhythm and be nudged towards meditating and slowing down. An external stimulus is teaching me to grow the discipline to commit to prayer more easily than I would learn if I were to rely entirely on myself.

Stopping what we’re doing to pray forces the deceleration of society and imposes calm - without it, we’d be continuously accelerating till we reached a frenzied pace. The danger is that the faster we go, the harder it is to slow down. The faster we go, the less we can stop and enjoy the scenery; it is far too blurry.

When we anchor ourselves to a prayer schedule, we intentionally order our day around the prayer rather than letting the random chaos of the day form our life. With each prayer, we neutralize frenzy with doses of calm. It is the difference between being a guided sail, or a dead leaf in the wind. Prayer offers direction and fends off confusion.

In the calm, one sees we do not need much to be happy. The science backs it: above a certain amount of money, more doesn’t equate more happiness, and experience is more rewarding than stuff. Calm highlights the beauty of the simple pleasures of life. It is clear then that the solution to healing the world is simple ; consume less to assuage global warming, share more to assuage inequality, do not take more than what you need. The wealthiest man is the one that wants for nothing. The Prophet, pbuh, died poor, but he was the wealthiest of men.

3. A Code in the Verses

By reciting holy verses rich with meaning while praying in a meditative, receptive state, a sort of beneficial subliminal messaging takes place similar to guided meditation and hypnosis. We rewire and realign our subconscious to inform a more wholesome way of living. I admit that it took a lot of work and lessons in a variety of disciplines (physics, philosophy, psychology, history and literature) to find more meaning to the verses I read. I imagine this is true for every religion. Everyone needs to go through an apprenticeship in deciphering the deeper meaning of scripture.

By quieting the mind and experiencing the Meaning of the verses, I foster focus and bring to light the essentials of existence. I stop thinking in a self centered manner and on a short term quarterly basis. I think of the big picture, the eternal, the infinite, I start to feel a lot like what astronauts describe when they see planet earth from Space; this vulnerable pale blue dot rich with miraculous life, and the unity of all that is alive in it. When I meditate with the bigger picture, I feel the interconnectedness of everything and become part of it.

I start to think compassionately on a divine plane of love, in terms of hundreds of years as a continuation of a species, seeing myself as custodians of a land, in charge of harboring life. We see that in life there is nothing but meaningful work and love, all for God and Its creations. I realize The values of a loving, growth oriented, productive and harmonious divine energy is what I love more than I love myself. It is what I pray for and to. When I share prayer with people I work with, strangers and family, these realizations are multiplied exponentially.

Rumi said we should “stop acting so small, you are the universe in extasy of itself”. The science backs it, physicists confirmed we are made of carbon matter from the core of exploding stars. I believe Rumi, and though i know no one is God, I know each one of us is singularly infinite. Thank God for the mathematician Cantor who went mad trying to solve infinity, and in the process showed there can be smaller infinities within larger ones. I know that I am part of God’s infinity.

Prayer is an act of reverence and remembrance for this infinite harmonious cosmic interconnectedness. It’s mind blowing and awe inspiring, fueling a constant sense of appreciation for the miracle gift of existing. It makes existence more pleasant and I am all the more grateful for it. It is pleasant to honor God like that.

Even when we do not understand the words; the careful enunciation and diction inspires discipline. More powerfully still, the droning, much like “om” in hinduism, sets our consciousness on rails of elevation. It is like a white noise vibration of consciousness connecting one to the center of existence, I dare say even the origin of the universe.

Sometimes, the meaning is not so cryptic and it is good to remember simple but deep lessons with each prayer. Repetition, after all, is the best teacher, and often the lesson appears in different mediums. For example, verse 286 from the second chapter (The Cow) says: “Allah does not charge a soul except [with that within] its capacity.” Jordan Peterson echoes the lesson when he says: “life’s tough, it’s harder than you imagine, but you’re tougher than it is hard”.

Poetry and art with powerful deep lessons can echo the lessons of the Coran and the quotes by the Prophet (pbuh). For instance he said: “You will not enter Paradise until you have faith and you will not have faith until you love each other. Shall I show you something that, if you did, you would love each other? Spread peace between yourselves.” This message of peace and love not only reminds me of Jesus Christ, but also of Max Ehrmann’s “Desiderata” and Rudyard Kipling’s “If”. We are One.

4. Repetition Against Hell

There’s no denying that a big part of scriptures deal with torturous, horrible hell and eternal punishment. For a long time I didn’t pray because I was outraged by the idea of an angry God commanding respect and obedience with threats. I refused to inspire my faith with terror; one cannot love that which one is afraid of. But never does it say that God hates humanity. On one level, this fear was useful in instilling compassion in otherwise brutal barbarians with too much power.

On another, deeper level the fear is as a reminder of the worst that could be. Hell is the soul’s eternal regret for squandering an infinitely great opportunity to live as well as possible. Imagine falling alone in a dark and silent well for all of eternity, without ever feeling a wall. The threats, fear and pain in sacred texts underline the urgency of living well, to avoid the horrific fate of such regret.

Most importantly, the terror of hell is a reminder to keep one’s inner light alive. What is called the “original sin” is our innate instinct to seek pleasure and be both physically and mentally lazy. When there is no effort or thought, there is no self or will power put into our actions. When we are slaves to our desires and impulses, there is chaos and with it destructive patterns emerge. This is the gradual substituting of light for darkness, and the slow snuffing out the divine touch of Being.

These basic instincts of darkness won’t go anywhere, they are part of us and must be channeled towards good. Desire and pleasure are nice after all, but left unchecked they are very sub-optimal. Just as we become what we eat, we also become what we place our focus on. The more we feed an ugly habit, the bigger a monster it becomes and the smaller our virtue is. The opposite is true as well.

The more we grow our consciousness, the more receptive to the miracle and beauty of existence we are, the more robust and vivacious our state of being is. With that dynamo, we become more intentional & creative, directed towards healthy progress. To channel basic instincts in harmony with our higher selves inspires us to create and make beautiful intricate things worthy of praise and desire. This is how excellence is a moral obligation.

With consciousness and discipline practiced in prayer, the energy of basic impulses is diverted. Desires are replaced with an awe inducing connection of self with the infinite and eternal. When we realize we are the universe in a drop and always at one with It, it makes earthly desires seem more trivial and so, easier to manage.

5. Supplication & Gratitude

Often, one would accompany the verses with supplications which serve as requests to a Higher Power. Prayer is the right time for supplications because it offers a safe space for the practitioner to freely express his goals and desires. In the same way that most often people only need to freely speak about what bothers them to feel better when they’re down, the same is true about speaking freely to discover what it is we really want.

Prayer offers a calm and focused mindset that makes it easier to intuitively feel what we really want. The beauty is that the more attention we put on clearly describing the things we pray for, the more we can visualize them in our minds eye. Everything exists in two realities, at first it is imagined and then it is produced into the world. When you know clearly what you want, you then have a clear sense of direction and God, after all, helps those that help themselves. The power of infusing desire in our visualization is a powerful tool to help align the psyche for proactive action in towards that goal. It is as effective as it is simple, but by no means is it easy.

Along with supplication, prayer is the perfect time to count one’s blessings and to express gratitude for every small and big thing one can think of. As far as I know, this isn’t a requirement, but it is a powerful tool for preserving mental fortitude and warding off dark thoughts. The thoughts we have wire our brain and it is better to ensure we have more positive connections than negative ones. The act of listing the things we are grateful for regularly affects the way we see the world and it makes us fundamentally better human beings. The more positivity we put into focus, the more positivity we see, the more positivity we put into the world. Gratitude is key, for even the smallest of things.

7. Imperfect is Fine enough

All that I listed is a lot to get right every time you pray. It takes a lot practice to get to that absolute mindfulness and it can be a fragile fleeting state. It can be very tempting to return to prayer over and over again at the slightest blemish and spend a disproportionate amount of time in that effort. One of the Prophet’s (pbuh) closest allies, Abu Bakr Al Siddiq, beat a bunch of followers that were constantly prayer and berated them. He urged them to get active and participative in the real world instead of becoming hermits. We must all contribute to society and community in one way or another. If you don’t get it right, it’s okay, carry on; you are still coating yourself with a divine color, even if it's light, it's better than nothing.

8. Breath

I leave you with a thought on breath. To breath slowly and deeply for 10 counts is the best thing we can do when the world is going fast and our thoughts are escaping us. It is a core component of Yoga and of meditation, but it also works in calming us physiologically. In many cultures, the sound of breathing often makes up the word for the most venerable of things. Allah of Islam, and Hakkah (the breath of life of the Maori), emphasize the “AH” sound of exhalation. It is no coincidence that our religions associate the breath and the divine; they are both powerful and very subtle.

Consumer Tech is Boring - The Next Era of Tech

2019-01-27T13:19:00.004+01:00

I was always curious why corporations had mission statements, but not humanity. We are an organization after all. Chaotic as we maybe we are united at least in that we share the same planet and race. After much thought I concluded our mission is to create beauty so life may be pleasant, and to stimulate harmony between everything so we may continue to exist. We live and work for progress, for life. Progress is abundance for all. Progress is the making of robust wholesome cooperating systems in the individual, society, and the environment. The purpose of all technology is to empower humanity in its quest.

It’s worth repeating: technology vastly empowers us, but I think we tend to lose touch with that reality. We become accustomed to our powers, they are normalized and taken for granted. But consider the Scientific American Magazine’s parallel between the condor and the human. The condor is the most efficient creature in moving from one place to another. In contrast, humans are some of the least efficient at locomotion, until they are given a bicycle, in which case they became the most efficient. Steve Jobs famously said the computer was like giving the mind a bicycle. Technology makes us more powerful than millions of years of evolution intended.

Once our upgraded minds were connected with the internet and smartphones, we came to be informed about anything anywhere very conveniently. This isn’t a privilege of the affluent west anymore; the technology has become so affordable that India’s population saw a 1400% increase in smartphone penetration between 2014 and today. The smartphone has been commoditized (they all look the same and do the same thing) and the consumer application are largely the same from person to person. Social media and entertainment dominate.

The next evolution for consumer technology is for it to blend in to our environment seamlessly, usable with as little friction as possible. But voice activated smart devices & assistants, thinner phones, and bigger screens won’t change the world. Despite the tremendous amount of brain power invested in this direction they are not paradigm shifting.

Our smartphones are far more powerful than we’d ever know what to do with. The best and brightest are working tirelessly to make them more powerful still with neural networks, machine vision and artificial intelligence. All for what? I kid you not: cooler (but ultimately useless) animated camera filters. Consumer tech is touching on the the law of diminishing returns ; more efforts are needed for less meaningful innovation.

As a matter of fact, the more tech we introduce to the population the more distracted our minds are, the less we can think, the more agency we are ready to give up for convenience. Automation and artificially intelligent robots could take the jobs of even lawyers and doctors.

IQs are dropping when they used to increase 3 points every decade, and I’m pretty sure part of the reason is too much tech. We’re not using our memories to remember phone numbers or studying maps to get to our destinations. Our minds are too dazzled with a constant avalanche of enticing new content from media streaming giants and (often dubious) news outlets. Even cars are about to drive themselves!

That’s a lot of brainpower left unused (or misused), and a known principle of how the brain works that “neurons that fire together, wire together” and if you don’t use it, you lose it. This is not empowering at all. The more agency and free will we outsource, the less we exercise our mind, the stupider and more useless we become, the more vulnerable to becoming a useless class we are, destined to be at the mercy of a benevolent despot AI.

But things aren’t so bleak yet. If one is to read Hans Rosling & Steven Pinker, things are far better than they have ever been. Life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide.

This kind of progress is as exciting as tech development used to be. Consider the global outrage at the polluted world seen in BBC’s blue planet led to the EU banning single use plastic, which drove corporations to adopting reusable containers for consumer goods. Or genetically enhanced crops that generate 40% more produce, the record breaking spread of renewable energies and toilets that make excrement into fertilizer.

Tech that would be a gimmick in consumer tech is very impactful elsewhere. For instance, machine vision on drones in agriculture can spot troubled/diseased patches, virtual reality can be provide surgeons with precious training. Even smartphone accessories can be useful for specialists : engineers and doctors use them to more readily collect and organize data to easily extract meaningful insight.

Silicon Valley’s big wigs are not short on audacious big picture long term goals. Google’s X is all about these moonshots (which often fail), going so far as to try to cure ageing and death as if it were a disease. Elon Musk is famous for his more immediately impactful big (and risky) ideas. He is breaking tremendous ground in transportation above and below the earth and in Space. He’s also backing brain-computer interface technology to eventually have augmented minds (the mind not on a bicycle, but on a rocketship).

Even the smaller actors are taking a stand. Startups are increasingly refusing to accept venture capitalist money for fear of losing control and being pressured to prioritize profits above anything else. BaseCamp gives its employees 4 day weeks and Patagonia’s new mission is to save the world. Millennial investors are placing their money in funds with strong environmental and social governance (ESG) where impact is more important than profit. The will to do good is real, and the course of action is very clear.

Bright as the current picture maybe in contrast to the past, current trends draw a menacing future. Food, water, and air security & carbon capture, waste management (and recycling) infrastructure, transportation, clean energy and urbanization, are only some of the pressing issues at hand. In the battle for sustainable progress great minds are being squandered in underemployment, non creative prestige careers, or busy making filters and streaming algorithms to distract consumers.

The market responds to consumer behavior and companies seek and respond to demand. As such, consumers vote with their spending and must do so in an informed and militant fashion. We as consumers have a responsibility to reliably inform ourselves. As our understanding grows, we’ll become more excited about topics that are traditionally considered boring but are essential to our survival (like waste management or carbon neutral infrastructure). Corporate and government efforts will go towards that which we pay attention to with actions.

For that to happen the consumer must learn to be more serene, materially and mentally decluttered, free from wanting anything useless and gimmicky. When that is done, we’ll be free to look outwardly, see the big picture and consider the long term (really long term) state of the world and where to act from now. The strategy works, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffet are the world’s wealthiest men thanks to such an outlook.

I think that just maybe the silver bullet to fulfilling humanity's mission statement: progress for life’s sake.

Addendum:

I thought I’d throw in a worthwhile consumer technology prediction.

The last bastion of smartphone differentiation is the camera. Photos appeal to our emotions but are not likely to save the world. The improvement on the smartphone’s camera will allow it to replace giant cameras. I can imagine Apple getting inspiration from the pocket sized 16 lense Light Camera that takes SLR quality photos. After all, there are rumors Apple’s next flagship phone will have 3 lenses instead of the 2 the current model carries.

In the same theme, the devices and their services will need to help us sort, sift and choose from the many photos we take so we may enjoy quality over quantity. If we’re flooded with content, we become overwhelmed and far more likely to dismiss it. Google Photos & other photo decluttering apps already exist. Apple is rather shameless in integrating successful apps into its own services. Good artists borrow, great artists steal.

On Fear

2018-12-12T12:12:00.001+01:00

The only thing to fear is fear itself, as Winston Churchill said - this is a passage from a book I am attempting to write. There are still many re-writes to pursue, but I figured having some passages out here might help stimulate some discussion that can further enrich the text. I hope you enjoy it.

10.5 Fearless Holy Curiosity

Doubt and faith go together hand in hand as fear and courage do; one without the other is insanity. In our quest for understanding we question, we doubt, we investigate, and we learn. As we go forward in life and discover and learn more, we realize that there will always be infinitely more that we do not know compared to that which we do know and so we are destined to know nothing. We move forward humbly knowing that things are a certain way, for the time being. We may always be corrected.

This forces humility, eradicates absolutes and with a courageous open mind we seek wisdom in that reality. I believe in intelligence. A person is smart not by what or how much they know - but how completely they understand what they think they know. Under that framework, we constantly update our worldview and test it with new knowledge to make sure it stands the test of scrutiny. Where the old understanding fails, the intelligent explores and invents views that are better fitting with reality. You see, by its very nature intelligence is humble and gentle, giving primacy over itself to Truth, it can entertain ideas without accepting them.

The further our worldview develops, the bolder our questions and lines of inquisitive thought become. There is no sacrilege in curiosity; everything that is made is to be questioned and understood. Anyone that blocks this process and pretends to be pious is a hypocrite in any school of thought. The absent minded rather fight and shout to bend reality to their illusion favouring egos over truth. Self respect, harmony, and love are the drivers of this understanding. This I know. That is my true North.

10.5.1 Fear is Toxic

Fear in the natural state was a great tool to stay away from danger. We inherited the fear of heights to avoid falling off cliffs, dangerous bugs and snakes to avoid getting poisoned etc. However as we build civilizations and control our environments, less fear is needed. The more sophisticated and developed a civilizations, the more of a reasoned rule of law it is built on, the less brute force is needed for progress. The brutal rule of the primitive merchant class in Quraish lacked any compassion. It compelled the prophet Mohammed (Pbuh) to instill a great fear in them to force their cooperation towards what would be the great golden age of Islam. Indeed, while the Dark Ages engulfed Europe, the Muslim world held on to the light.

While the golden age reigned, the europeans used fear, intimidation, violence and the idea of a jealous angry god to compel cooperation and extract taxes out of ignorant peasants. For a long time, religion had an important role in education as sermons were where the illiterate overwhelming majority of the world would go to learn about the world. But that world was limited to biblical stories and did not encourage enquiry as philosophy would.

It is easy to hard code fear into the hearts of people through the vehicle or religion. Religion and its mythology is taught to children to make sense of the world. Religion appeals to the fundamental, essential core or the self and the beliefs taught are crystalized there. The younger the pupil, the more trusting he or she is, the more imprinted we are with the stories and the harder it is to challenge them. When an element of fear is added, we are crippled from early on and find it much harder to challenge ideas, even when they’re false.

For instance, it took Saudi Arabia until the 1950s to understand that it was a good thing for women to be educated and until the 70s to understand slavery should be banned. Even then, only recently has the education stopped putting so much emphasis on intolerance. To this day, philosophy, the science of doubt and enquiry, the love of wisdom, is banned in the Kingdom.

In more primitive societies, religion played a great role in resolving the mysteries of the natural world and helping man find meaning in chaos. However, the powers that be often abused their religious influence at the detriment of global consciousness. The Wahabi Salafist muslims, the evangelical christians and other fundamentalists convey an absoluteness to their mythology and combine it with fear to ensure their own power and control. This approach to the divine has fueled a raging moral crusade of fundamentalist religious police around the world and throughout history barring progress. Instead, we got many absurdities holding civilisations back.

Indeed, inconvenient scientific truths are often ridiculed and dismissed with leaps of logic. It is not uncommon to see commentators saying there is no visible resemblance between rabbits, frogs, lizards, humans and apes to disprove the theory of Evolution. It’s not uncommon to hear commentators say that global warming cannot be an act of man because it would be arrogant to think man could affect god’s creation as such. Evangelists, for instance, insist that humans and dinosaurs coexisted to justify their belief that the earth is no more than 5000 years old. Muslim scholars attempted to dissuade women from driving by stating it would threaten their fertility! The tragedy is that the pursuit of Truth and Progress are driven by crystalized elder perspectives rather than by spirited reason.

This approach is marked by a simplistic literal interpretation that baffles all scientific or reasoned knowledge. This is tragic because the susceptible mind of a child absorbs the false tales of a trusted adult to build a fundamental understanding of the universe and how to position themselves in it. The only path forward is riddled with fear of punishment and divine reprisal from a jealous, angry and easily offended divinity.

That understanding then takes a fundamental place in the psyche and largely determines the scope and quality of one’s world view. It becomes rigid, fixed and as easily threatened as it is terrified. Intolerance and fear becomes part of the core of the individual whom cannot think outside of the convention he is brought up in.

As adults, the courage required to upend such an understanding is titanic and the risk of intolerable trauma is huge. One grows less inclined to invite doubt & scrutiny to his understanding and grows more comfortable in his ignorant world view. In effect, critical thinking fades as it threatens the comfort of the status quo. From fear of trauma, one becomes a staunch defender reinforcing conformism amongst the ranks. Unorthodoxy is met with furious outrage and false tenderness. The system treacherously self polices.

To add insult to injury, out of fear of reprisal and out of an instinctive need to belong, the individual is inclined to conform rather than explore, experiment, wonder and uniquely become. Indeed, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia has formally made atheism an act of terrorism punishable by prison, apostasy is punishable by death and philosophy is banned. Out of a concern for self preservation from social and political forces, one becomes passive with his natural holy curiosity. It becomes easier to remain shallow and avoid depth of thought; fear grows ignorance.

Marx famously said that “Religion is the opiate of the people”. But this is true of all collectively shared dogma, including blind patriotism and adoration of football teams. When group think overwhelms the individual’s thought, the individual ceases to exist. As Rene Decartes said, “To think is to be” and therefore, to be is to think: if there is no thought there is no being. There is no authenticity when one merely copies. To rob the individual of the freedom to learn from one’s own life experience, to learn from practice rather than theory is to rob him of life and the seeds of wisdom.

After a natural stage of rebeliousness in transition from innocent youth to hardened adulthood, one eventually grows to accept this reality. In doing so, one particiaptes in the creation of a binary culture where everything is black or white; you’re either with me or against me, salvation or hell fire. As the Japanese say: “the nail that stands out gets hammered in”. Such a binary approach has made for a sad and twisted citizenry, alienated from themselves and each other and passive in their quest for truth, self knowledge and progress.

When powerful people deviate religion for their own political and material enrichment rather than use it for collective enlightenment, they commit a crime against God. To teach austerity and hate in lieu of love leaves a hard to forget foul taste that turns people away from God, and that is a crime.

10.5.2 The Courage to Find Your Own Infinite

That is not to say that beliefs are not to be had and that one must turn his back to the world of spirituality. As a matter of fact, Humans behave better when they know they are being observed. Hacking the mind into thinking it is being observed by Karma, the Universe, God, Yahweh or whatever is alright if helps make people kinder. One thing is certain, having a belief system inspires kindness & order ; what must be changed is the motivation to remain faithful to a belief system.

All religious texts and all religions have the same objective: the teaching of compassion to its followers. They only seem different because carry the same message coded differently to adapt to different cultures and times. Compassion was, is and will always remain at the core of it.

Sure, the rituals and traditions vary from one religion to the next but their goal is the same : to foster reverence in the hearts of the believers. Reverence, or the notion that life is bigger and more epic than we consciously realize, grows in us a more grateful and gentle approach to life.

However, in order to see the universality of religion, and therefore of man, one must have the courage to let go of literal interpretation and instead embrace one’s own interpretative skills. This means taking risk and responsibility for one’s own thought and therefore affirming one’s own individuality and existence. This means being comfortable with uncertainty and not knowing - it means giving up the false confidence of certainty in absoluteness. It means embracing doubt as a necessary ingredient to faith, as doubt brings scrutiny, reflection and critical thought to belief. For this, one must constantly practice a humble intelligence. To bring for a greater enlightenment one must accompany his creative and independent critical thinking with intelligent discussions.

Literature by masters is rich with meaning coded into the symbols and metaphors behind the mere texts and stories. Why not then bring literary analysis to spiritual texts to unravel deeper meaning and wisdom? This is true of the Bible as well as the Coran, both which are books meant to last humanity throughout eternity. But if that is the case, then that can only be possible if the understanding of followers adapts to the reality around them and the new scientific knowledge that is discovered. To persist with old understandings that become obviously unhealthy or untrue is a disservice to the holy books. It takes away from their credibility and pushes truth seekers away.

The divine within is a divine of reason, compassion, justice and truth. With that in mind and heart, one must always speak what one thinks, and must correct one’s view when proven wrong; this is how intelligence is practiced and grown. It is not easy, is scary and requires a lot of work but the sort of conviction that comes out of such an effort is tremendous. The determination such conviction is unstoppable. Because ultimately it doesn’t matter what one thinks or what one believes. One is judged only by one’s effect and impact on the world. Behavior, temperament, and inspiration is what we are judged on. All tales are fair game if they make us kinder, more harmonious and more productive. The elegance of existence and God’s intended state of harmonious being is obvious in the beauty of everything artistic.

Had the Universal Divinity intended to enlighten our hearts with fear, dominance, authority and control, the very purpose of humanity would have been defeated. The divinity of man lies in his ability to imagine, create, make and empathize - to rule by fear is to quash that.

10.5.3 The Legacy of Fear

The effects of fear on the brain are not conductive to enlightenment. There is no rational thinking in fear and it damages our bodies. Fear can have long-term consequences on our health, including “fatigue, chronic depression, accelerated ageing and even premature death,” according to the University of Minnesota.

When doubt is denied the opportunity to test our own thought and take responsibility for our own becoming is denied as well. In this manner, fear and blind faith kill the opportunity for diversity and quash the courage of holy curiosity; the hearts of any great civilizations. Indeed, it becomes safer to conform rather than to quest for truth, wisdom and enlightenment in discourse and dialogue. Whatever discourse does take place is wanting for a variety of opinions and so there is no contrast in thought. We remain stuck in a monochromatic echo chamber confirming each other’s blindness.

Surely then it is more interesting and enriching to admit the possibility of a multitude of equally valid paths to truth, wisdom, love and beauty rather than to force a binary spiritual reality of "you are wrong and I am right, take hellfire”. When there is more variety, there is more color and one can see more. Take the parallel of the binary and quantum computer; a binary computer dealing with either 0s and 1s cannot even come close to the computational power of a quantum computer which admits the simultaneous existence of 0s and 1s for each processed signal. A quantum civilisation is a diverse civilisation, is infinitely more inventive and productive than a binary one.

Promoting conformity through fear and blind faith does not make allwoance for possibility. Authorities eschew it in favor of reliability and predictability, even if that yields a boring existence. Fear and blind faith have no place in the making of any great civilisation; for to be great requires boldness and inventiveness. Innovation and invention comes from the meeting of ideas in an open, safe and inviting space. Bold ideas will not emerge if their originators fear reprisal; Galileo himself retracted his findings that the earth is not at the center of the heavens, but rather that the sun is after being threatened to be burned at the stake by the Catholic Church pretended.

Where conventionality is reinforced with violence, no new thought can emerge. The habit of thinking outside of hte box is nipped at the bud and with it the general appetite for risk. Without new thought, there is little if anything at all to experiment and take a risk with. However, all great discoveries do not come from moments where things go as expected, but where results surprise us.

Instead, in fear we become misers afraid of possibility and without faith in the abundance our inventiveness can yield. Not only do we not have a rich vision of what could be for want of a varied sources of inspiration, but even if we did we’d be too afraid to pursue the vision. Risk is a critical ingredient of innovation, and this requires courage, courage being the ability to act despite feeling fear. Where fear is crippling, we cannot take the risk to pursue a vision. No wonder then that Saudi Arabia, despite being a G20 country, has so few patents come out on an annual basis, and most of those that are granted touch mostly on the petrochemical industry. There is nothing innovative here.

If fear as a political tool does not decrease as society evolves, we remain stuck in the past celebrating past glories and forgetting to build new ones. Though a terrifying jealous and angry God may work on selfish wanton barbarians needing the order of law, it may also perpetuate a brutal, blind, and archaic culture. The Taliban, the Salafist, the orthodox jews, and any tyrant entrenched in power will have little incentive to let go of it in favor of reason. This selfish attachment to power has come at a great cost to progress. The Borgias of history must not be repeated. Truth, science, curiosity, and compassionate invention must take the forefront.

10.5.4 Reframing Fear as Order & Boundaries

In the quest for wisdom and enlightenment, there is no room for fear, only respect and reverence for the almighty: that which is infinitely bigger than us in a myriad of ways. I fear the absence of love, not the presence of God. A legitimate fear to have is for the brutality and terror of the raw natural state: the darkness absent of Light’s compassion. The darkness without an order built on reason and truth. Truly, one cannot love the very same object one fears - it is neurologically impossible. God is not a captor enjoying Stockholm syndrome.

In the spirit of artistic interpretation all biblical/coranic mention of fear must be reframed and redefined. To be sure, fear is good in the sense that it provides a framework of order; an order which is not understood cannot be respect and deeply revered. The trick therefore, is to understand why the boundaries are there in the first place. This cannot be taught by example; a far deeper conviction is forged when one tests the boundaries oneself. To live from the errors and lessons of others is to forgo living for oneself.

This is the approach one must adopt in buidling one’s own values, morals and principles: a scientific, reasoned and constructive approach built on enquiry, without fear of asking questions. Luckily, Christianity and Islam greatly emphasize the lovingness and forgivingness of God. Though Apostasy is a crime punishable by death, the Koran is clearly confident individuals will return to Islam when they are permitted to leave it without fear. Being exposed to new thought and knowledge whilst in exile, one’s own understanding of spirituality and dogma evolves, and the person that returns is not the same as the person that left. In this way, the dogma itself is open to reinterpretation with an adapted understanding and evolves.

A Higher Lust

2018-05-19T13:48:00.003+02:00

I used to think that lust was disgusting, reducing people to raw animal instinct. However, I realized that there are two polar opposites in how we express our attraction for each other. On the one hand we can reduce ourselves to pleasure objects to be consumed (absolute selfishness), or on the other hand we can be lost in a reckless abandon of self in romance. Yet, in the middle, there is an appreciation of beauty that can inspire poetry. A beauty in the expression of character in the way one carries oneself, a beauty that strikes an empowering enchantment within. This is a healthy expression of lust, right where it dances with an appreciation of the character of the other. When beauty and respect come and dance together, you have the best manifestations of love (spirit) and lust (matter) making life happen.

Lust’s initial pull stems from an impression of charisma. A friend told me: "Please don't take me where there are so many beautiful women. Each one is so elegant and stunning, I fall in love and get heart broken at the same time all the time". Indeed, the power of confident & approachable demeanor and posture is charming enough to dazzle our biological wiring. Real as this feeling maybe, it is passive and built entirely on a first impression.

Impressions are easy to misread and manipulate. Charmers must wield their powers of seduction responsibly, sincerely being themselves. Sincerity and the alignment of self are key conditions to genuine attractiveness. Inconsistency will inevitably yield to mutual disappointment. More importantly, inconsistency is a form of mentally taxing self delusion. ^{^[1]}

The seduced must be aware of the inherent flaw in attraction built on impression. To fill the gaps left by the unknown we tend to project personal ideals on an individual; the person becomes an idea, a fantasy. The pull of this illusion is natural at an initial stage and should be leveraged towards the engaged work of digging deeper to the reality of ourselves and the other. To forgo such a personal investment is a great disservice to beauty and, ultimately love. When one is aware of the tendency towards the fantasy of the other, one learns to be more open and understanding of the other, free from any preconceived ideas or expectations.

Such freedom and readiness to proactively understand the other opens the doors to a more profound and ecstatic experience of lust. The kind of beauty that inspires soundly originates from a work of understanding that bears appreciation and admiration for the desired. With these ingredients, love making becomes a unique celebration of each other’s humanity. However, to unlock such extasy one must be willing to understand and be understood, with the courage to be sincere and vulnerable in revealing oneself. Only then is a bridge made between two to truly feel at one with each other’s humanity. Therein lies the ecstasy.

That being said a lot of the time people just want to fuck. I believe a lot is lost in foregoing each other’s humanity, favoring illusion for selfish pleasure is empty. Physical beauty has its role to play, but in an era of tinder and social media stalking, models and pornography it all gets boring and commoditized quickly. It is wiser and more satisfying to let the importance of physical beauty be gradually replaced by one’s deeper appreciation of the other.

The Japanese practice of Kintsugi consists in fixing broken pottery with precious metals such as gold. Similarly, our greatest beauty and the greater lust it can inspire can only be seen if we are courageous enough to reveal our golden fissures, making love and lust inseparable.

^{^[1]} See Neil Strauss’ “The Game” - a pick up artists handbook. A terrible show of manipulation to incept consent in unknowing ladies.