Poisonous Pills of Absolute Truth

An interesting chain of events led me to visit Al Hasaa last weekend; nothing was on my mind but the idea of absolute ethics when I met an interesting conservative Canadian sitting quietly next to his motorcycle in Starbucks. After we talked about politics, philosophy, and religion for 2 hours he showed us a picture of his Taiwanese “wife”. Then it hit me. The idea of absolute truth came back once I saw the picture of him and his wife standing next to each others.

I will start by saying that the picture shows a lot of signals that his wife is a prostitute. To him the picture shows a loving beautiful and loyal wife, but my eye sees something very different. Two different realities and two “relative” truths. In order to achieve the “absolute” truth between me and him, we need to sit down and discuss the idea. I need to show him what I see “your wife is a bitch” and he needs to show me what he sees” my wife is not a bitch”.

But because there is no way we could discuss this idea, our absolute truth does not exist. Even if we started talking and discussing chances are very slim that any of us would be able to see the other’s point of view. I mean how can he see and understand that his wife might be a prostitute, and how can I understand that his wife is not a prostitute when I saw too many signals of that.

So, the reason why universal absolute truth does not exist is that we fail to understand and see others relative truths. The only way to reach absolute truth is for humanity to sit and discuss ideas openly in order to construct the absolute truth through “dialectic”. Although we are closer to that state now with the limit of technology we reached, I don’t think we will reach that anytime soon because what I like to call “Confined Pockets”.

The discussion of relative truth brought us to the relativity of ethics. My Canadian friend believes that ethics are not relative, i.e. absolute right and wrong exist. He brought an interesting example of the ethical value of “fucking dogs”. He said it is not relatively wrong, it is just wrong. My opinion regarding fucking dogs is clear, if I was in a tribe in Africa where fucking dogs is something of honor and tradition, I will not accept an outsider to tell me that fucking dogs is wrong. So even here I think ethics are relative, but only because I live in a tribe in Africa I am in a “Confined Pocket” or a bubble.

We sometimes think that humanity reached an understanding of absolute ethical behavior. For example, cannibalism, humans eating other humans, is believed to be universally unethical because we talked about, we discussed it, and we reached an “understanding” that it does not serve the “higher human purpose”. But we know that some “Confined Pockets” of cannibals in China and Africa exist so even in such a supposedly trivial matter, we didn’t reach absolute truth yet.

It is obvious that I think the world is gray, no absolute black and white. My Canadian friend said that people try to hide evil behind the fog of grayness. He triggered the question of evil and good in my mind. I do not think absolute evilness and goodness exist but maybe that’s when people turn to be evil. For example, today I may say that absolute evil does not exist so killing millions might not be evil and one day, when I become the absolute dictator, I kill millions and I sleep like a baby at night thinking that it was not a work of evil. The husband of the bitch is right, I might be evil!

I discussed a lot of ideas in the piece but I am going to go further to talk about uncertainty. The Canadian is 42 years old, his opinion about me was “you are still at your 20s, you still think you are superman” and my opinion was “you are too old to accept the level of uncertainty this world has”.

I start to believe that the ultimate goal of all human beings is to reach “happiness” I am not going to define happiness because it is relative. Not only relative but it really depends on how smart the person is. For example, a stupid person might overeat thinking that this is his happiness, he/she overcome the fact that it might lead to diabetes which most probably not his/her happiness. I think we, humans, are generally stupid because we hurt earth, aka overeating, knowing that it might lead to our extinction, aka diabetes.

From this idea of uncertainty I will ask you, my dear reader, to imagine a hole in the ground covered with black fog so that you cannot see what is beneath. Do you think falling in this hole would make you happy or unhappy? See how it is not easy to think “happy” with uncertainty. We want heaven to exist and we want to believe in heaven because we will have to die (aka falling in the hole). Based on this theory I think humans are prone to believe in certain “relative truths” only to reach their ultimate goal, that is happiness. Note that the existence or non-existence of Heaven, God, Justice...etc is irrelative, so absolute truth does not matter for we want to be happy even with illusion.

In short, I discussed how absolute truth does not exist because we fail to combine, discuss, and evaluate our relative truths. Moreover, it might not be in humans’ best interest in their quest to achieve “happiness” to reach any form of absolute truth because relative happiness is more important than absolute truth.

Radi Alzayer
28th of May 2011


Pic from: http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&q=truth#/disjfv

Ethics and dilemmas

The general theme among people is that they take ethics too simply… living in an idealistic world that can never be accepted by a materialist such as myself.

People, naturally, tend to believe in a universal principles and ethics. Ethics that is right every time wherever you apply them. For example, rape is always unethical. There isn’t an issue when addressing personal ethics since they are, by definition, relative. For example, I think drinking alcohol is unethical (notice the capital ‘I’). However, when we address it on a universal level, how can we judge the ethicality of alcohol, or lack of it thereof?

Some people discussed that the”creator of the world” decides what is universally ethical and what is not. However, the “Creator “changes his mind all the time. For example, alcohol was Okayed by Judaism but banned by Islam. So the unethicality of alcohol is not universal even from the “Creator”.

An argument I heard is that “The majority” decides what is universally ethical. In addressing this issue, most of the world, including the three monotheistic religions, thought slavery is ethical. Now most of the world thinks it isn’t. “ The majority” cannot be taken as an evidence that an idea is true or false for there are other factors that determine what the majority agrees on other than ethical grounds or merely rights and wrongs ( economical in case of slavery).

More importantly, and even on a personal level, I struggle to know what is ethical and what isn’t. I am loosing the sense of wrong and right because of this ethical struggle. I am loosing the answer even in clear matters, to most humans, like slavery, underage sex, killing the innocence, or racism.

On personal level, the question of ethics is very simple but when you are in a position to decide what is allowed in the society and what is not, it is most confusing.

For example, why is slavery wrong? How is it so, principally, different than working with a contract that does not allow you to leave? How is it different than the way we treat our housekeeper (not allowing her to get of the house without constant supervision, taking her passport, and decide for her even what she wears or who to have sex with.)

If I were in a position of power would I be so enthusiastic about illegalizing slavery? Not without calculating the benefits and costs of it. I know that a lot of people in a lot of societies would be willing to sell their children to slavery to eat for a year or two. We banning slavery is like telling them” no it is unethical to sell your children” without addressing the ethicality of hunger. We shouldn’t do that but exactly that is the case.

What is more unethical hunger or slavery? Hunger or prostitution?? I don’t know…

But that raises another ethical question. Is it ethical to let the father decides which of his children to sell to feed the others? Does he have ultimate ownership as to decide the fate of his children for ever through selling them in the market? Better yet is it ethical to sell children to get life luxuries (an iPhone)? How ethical is it to build a factory and employ women and men to conceive babies for sale (is it better for them than hunger)? How ethical is it for society to decide that it is better for THEM to be hungry than to sell babies?

Do you see how even a trivial ethical issue, such as slavery, might not be as trivial and straight forward after all?

Another issue could be race. We think that racism is wrong, or at least a lot of us do. However, should we ignore any research that concludes that some races are dumb, less productive, have lower IQ; even if the research isolate “Race” from other socioeconomic factors ( such researches already exist underground)? Is restricting research ethical only to preserve political correctness? Or to make some people in the world happy by lying to them? (Gender presents a similar ethical dilemma, what if we (males and females) are not equally smart, productive…etc)

I am not sure how society solves these dilemmas, but if you are not obsessed about justice, like me, these ethical dilemmas aren’t hard to solve... However in order to address this question, how to solve these dilemmas, we have to know the Ultimate Social Goal.

It does not seem justice is a goal in most societies, even though there is, always, an “optimum” amount of justice. Reaching the highest level possible of happiness is the aspiration of society and that’s where those issues get addressed. It does not matter where truth is, if most people believe that their happiness is in illegalizing slavery, that’s where society will “head” (not necessarily “reach”, the issue is much more complicated)…

Is the maximum amount of happiness prevents high ethics in some societies (does it prevent society from moving against sex with underage children problem we have in Saudi Arabia)? Why does society prevent making ethical dilemmas as complicated as I am trying to make them? Is it human nature to do so?

Radi Alzayer

16th of May 2011

Thanks Saeed Altufaif for triggering this subject

Photo is from: http://abagond.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/slavery02.jpg

حريق تحت قمع المطر

حريق تحت قمع المطر
إنها رائحة العفن تنتهي..معلنة أنك أضحيت عظاماً...ولا أزال كالطفل..سعيداً يرقص في غرفة الريح..ولو آلمته أمواس الحلاقة المتطايرة مع أوراق الخريف...ح
--
تعرت كل الأشجار.. خ
فبكاء الربيع..خ
أثقل أوراقها..ن
ولم يبقى إلا
صدء النخيل..خ
يطرد عن عيني
ثقل الشياطين...م
****
حرائق تحت المطر.. أوراق صفراء تعلن الثورة وتنادي بالدفء ملكاً.. وتقمعها حبات المطر وهي تصرخ ببردك ...ح
--
أشعلت حريقاً..ح
في المطر..م
وقبّلتُ جثةً متعفنة..م
على سرير إنعاشها البالي..م
أعالج جثةً
من رشح أصابها..ن
وأطعم بالدعاء.زيف آمالي..خ
يضحكون..خ
ولا أبالي..ن
فهل يملك الجندي
إلا القتالِ؟ م
***
لا تستكن.. إبقى متأهباً.. فتحت أوراق الخريف المبلولة حديث عن الحرية.. ح
--
لا أملك ما أرفع به أعلامي البيضاء..خ
إلا ما تعطيني.. ن
ولا أملك زواد الرحيل..ن
إلا ما تسقيني..ن
لعن الله الفقر الذي..ن
, ألصق أمامك
في الأرض جبيني..ن
أرزقني كفراً..ة
أعالج به إيماني ويقيني..م

Radi Alzayer
14th of May 2011
Dealing with Insomnia and depression... And getting bored of the emotional burden (having it sense 2001)

Pic from : http://s198.photobucket.com/albums/aa235/LEKRAFT/?action=view&current=22cfa951f65c811f.jpg&newest=1

Another tribute to Question Mark

My brain is not capable of generating any answers for my many questions… all answers seem trivial and dumb... It is only when I ask a question; my original question reaches an acceptable satisfaction…

Why do we tend to look for infinite answers? Why do we surround ourselves with lies? Do we not recognize that lies can only give us short term comfort until a guy like Prophet Mohammed disturb everything around us and force us to change?

How many illusions can we surround ourselves with until it gets obvious, even for us, that our world is fragile and unsustainable? How highly can we think of ourselves until we discover that we have been comparing ourselves to a very low average?

Do you think you are Open- Minded, Educated, Ethical and Smart? What did you compare yourself to, in order to reach that conclusion?

If you think you are “Open Minded” and can accept others like they are, how are you going to respond to your 18 years old boy/girl telling you “Mom/Dad, I am gay?” or “ Mom/Dad, I worship the devil now , and I would like raw blood for lunch” ?

If you think you are “Educated”, what are you comparing yourself to? Does our brain compare us to people around us? What if the average around you is not educated, are you far enough from the average? Do we change our environment if we are not comfortable with the average, like moving to a less professional department at work just to feel smarter around the new, lower, average?

Does formal education means you are “Educated”? Especially that the value of information is close to zero given the internet revolution. Do you still think “Educated” means holding a lot of information? Does {“Educated” = “Knowledgeable”} like it used to?

Do you consider yourself Ethical? Would you accept it if we discovered that some races are actually dumber than other races? Is accepting this unethical or open-mindedness? Can you live with such imbalance between the forces that constitute the proud “You”? How do you solve such imbalances? Is ignoring them makes you “Smart”? Would you pay the price of addressing them if the risk is being less “Proud” of yourself?

Can we apply the bell curve on ourselves? Where do you compare yourself in the bell curve below (Smartness, Open-mindedness, Education, Beauty, Ethics, and Contribution to Humanity)? What average do we always choose to compare ourselves to (Colleagues, family, friends…etc)?

Does our brain choose a low average for us ONLY to give us an illusion of comfort? How would you feel if I told you that “YOU” score in the 40% in EVERY ASPECT?

Would you accept the truth if it was: “You will leave this earth without leaving any noticeable impact”? Are you under the illusion that you will leave an impact? How much did you contribute to help your brain to spoon feed you this fantasy?

Be honest to yourself: Is your brain giving you more confidence than you should have? Are you too comfortable with your current status of mind, education, or open-mindedness? Are you living in a delusional world where you are falsely satisfied?

I am out,

Radi Alzayer

7th of May 2011

After an interesting trip to Dubai…