Talks of Lucid Dreaming

Yesterday, 2nd of august, I had my first lucid dream. A lucid dream happens when you realize in the dream that you are dreaming but the fun part is that you can control your dream afterword. The first thing I did is to try to fly which is something hard even for experts because when you fly you touch nothing that keeps you intact to the dream so most beginners tend to wake up when they try to fly which is what happened to me.

In the second dream I decided, it seems taking decisions in the dream is possible, to take it slow and allow my subconscious to kick in and create the environment, which it did. The environment was my house; the floor was full of presents given by my mom’s visitors for my sister’s wedding. On the floor was my older sister opening presents with her Abaya. I tried to jump the presents but concentrated on keeping a foot on the ground at all times. The rug touching my feet kept me intact to the dream, since I learned that once I feel the bed I get closer to waking up.

I decided to create people instead of places, which is what I did. Before I entered the room I created one of my dear old friends that I miss so much, which was my first conscious creation. In the dream and to make sure that I can create stuff, I wanted it him to be asleep and there he was lying on a chair asleep in the room. I woke him up and we started conversing; I know that everything he said was my subconscious knowledge of him talking. Suddenly I decided to touch him just to make sure he feels real, he turned to a laptop! Then a stupid watsapp message woke me upL.

A person I admire asked some philosophical questions: do the people I created have their own feelings, world, and thoughts that are separated, yet connected, to me. I was playing God’s role in the dream. I knew what my friend would say in the room but my subconscious controlled him, therefore my knowledge of him meant that I completely controlled him.

On the other hand, my subconscious knowledge of him is a biased perception of the real him. It is what I think he would say based on what I stored about him in my subconscious, not 100% what he really is.

I will conclude this article here because I do not want to turn it to philosophy since I am not in a philosophical mode.

Radi alzayer

3^rd of August 2011

Pic from: http://cwnl.tumblr.com/post/6730323522/the-stuff-of-dreams-part-2-lucidity-and-its

رقص وقربان

ألوان الكون تهجره
أخضر
وردي
أصفر
على جسدي
أوهام الذنوب..ي
منجلٌ صدئ
يأبى قيمة الهجر..ي
ما دمتَ في أحلامي
تذوب..ي
خبِّر اللامبالي..ي
أن أطيافاً
يشغلها الرقصَ
على جفوني..ي
وتغذي بالشوق
جنوني..ي
لا تراعي حرمةً
لقلبي..ي
يوم تخفق بالحب
القلوب...ي
****
أشغلتني..ي
رائحةٌ للخوف
في عينيك...ي
ووداعٌ
بطعمٍ
لغيري في شفتيك..ي
قربان دمٍ
يسيل مني إليك
فدوائي..ي
سم زعاف..ي
خياراته..ي
يقتلني أو يبقيك..ي
وروحي
تبحث عن
جسدٍ تحضنه..ي
وكل الأجساد
في هواك.. ي
أو ملك يديك...ي


رضي الزاير
7th of July 2011
pic from:-
http://quirill.deviantart.com/art/Dream-carrier-151988960?q=boost%3Apopular%20dream%20carrier&qo=3

Do we exist?

I read this piece twice before publishing it and I think it is probably the boldest piece of philosophy I ever wrote. The reason is that the ideas in it were not criticized well; I seek your forgiveness, dear reader, for I am currently out of philosophical people around me. Therefore, I transfer the burden of criticism and objection to your logical wit.

If I told you, dear reader, that I exist, what am I telling you about myself? In other words what are the characteristics that are derived from the fact that I exist.

To me existence is all about effect. We say that something “Exists” if it affects us and/or gets affected by us. This definition suggests the relativity of existence and implies that nothing has absolute existence that is independent of personal perception.

For example, unicorns exist in my mind as an idea but it has no physical existence because I didn’t sense it with my physical receptors. On the other hand I exist as a physical entity relative to myself because I can sense my physical existence. However, my absolute existence cannot be proven nor disproven because in absolute terms I could be part of somebody else’s dream, and I do not believe that dreams have any physical existence.

The concept can be applied to God. God as a creator has no physical existence because we cannot sense him with our physical receptors. Moreover, for believers, God has a spiritual existence, which is his effect on believers. Notice that I do not think God exists at the same level to everybody. For example, God does not exist to atheists as a creator but he still exists as an idea.

Notice that everything we think about has a form of existence and the form depends on the way we perceive it. The flying spaghetti monster exists as an idea, and it could exist as a God relative to you if you believed and lived your life according to such. It won’t surprise me if it even heals from illness just like other forms of God. In short, we decide whether things exist physically, as an idea, or as a spirit through our perception and it is all relative to the perceiver.

Radi Alzayer

July 25th, 2011

Picture (wikipedia): In 2005, Oregon State physics graduate Bobby Henderson wrote an open letter about a "Flying Spaghetti Monster" as a satirical protest against the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to permit the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in public schools.

Warning: The red pill of truth is poison.

Dreams are often a reflection of reality. Sometimes we have to think deep of the reality the dream resembles. Today I had a weird dream; we were 4 guys living in a weird apartment that has only one room and connected to a small living room with no bathroom. For some reason I was the only one who is not a drug addict among them but I was their only source of drugs.

One of them, happened to be my best friend in the dream, asked me for the best drug in the market. I gave him two pills, a red one and a blue one. I told him choose one, they are both a very good drug but I don’t know which one does what. He took the red one and went crazy, and because I have a job to do somewhere I had to lock him up with the other guys in the room, who wants 3 drugged up guys around?

I came back to find out that my best friend, who got the pill, died of overdose. I only left for a while but it seems the drug was so strong it looked like he has been there, dead, for days. It looked like his mouth and eyes have been bleeding for a while, for blood was dry.
I took him like I expected the result and carried him to the garbage. Something told me that nobody will come asking about him.

Now I am thinking about this dream, and I found out it is very connected to real life. The pills of truth or happiness, the red pill of truth, death, and the fact that nobody asked, they all happened in real life metaphorically. The question remains, why did I know the result in the dream? Was the red pill poison? Did I know subconsciously that I am feeding my best friend poison that would definitely result in the ugly death? Most importantly, am I to blame for his choices (Note that I am not sure what would happen if he had chosen the blue one, I just know it is a drug too)…

Stations and Stories

What Happened in Dubai?

I am in Dubai, and Kant’s understanding of ethics revisited me. He said “If you believe that an action is right if everybody else does it, it is ethical for you” for example if you believe that it is ok for everybody to throw garbage on the street, and you accept the repercussion, it is ethical for you.

This definition was appealing to me but then I visited a broker’s home in Dubai. I have seen his car, his house, his booze, and the restaurants, bars and night clubs he goes to. I was worried that I didn’t see in myself any glimpse of wanting to be him. Even though I know that his life would be very appealing to any other guy.

Let’s apply Kant’s rule of ethics on “me not wanting the broker’s life”. If everybody was me, we would not reach the level of technology we have now. I cannot accept the repercussion of my desire, therefore to me “not wanting the broker’s life” is Not Ethical! From this point I reject Kant’s definition because I think personal desires of life style cannot be unethical.
---

To Chocolate and Espresso

Two weeks ago I went with a good friend to a chocolate place, and Starbucks in khobar’s korniche. I had too much chocolate and coffee in my system. When we started walking on the korniche, I had the feeling that everybody around me was an illusion, people, objects, and myself. I touched a guy with my finger to make sure that he is real, but the feeling did not convince me. I was in an utter state of madness, according to the normal general consensus.

I started asking random people about general philosophical questions like “What is the purpose of life” and I got interesting answers like “ I don’t know” or “ to leave life”. Those answers convinced me more that we might not exist; we might be a creation of some dreamer.

I reached the conclusion that if I can prove my existence I might be able to prove God’s existence with logic rather than mere belief. I discovered that my existence cannot be proven or disprove. I could be a dream in somebody else’ mind, created by his brain just like God might be created by our brain.

I think we live under the illusion of having a solid ground under our feet. I did skydive, I know that after some time of falling, a man lose the sense of going down and it starts to seem normal. Allow yourself to feel the wind playing with your hair while you are falling down… scary, most people would rather believe in the illusion of stability they put themselves into… are they right? Am I right? I don’t know!
---

Transition: fowl thieves, God, and Ethics.

I discovered that current writers steal old philosophers’ ideas without referencing to them. I thought the following thieves were significant before I discovered their misconduct:

1- Nassim Talib: the black Swan.. The whole story of a Christmas turkey not knowing that the everyday food it is provided with will end by a knife was first made up by Hume. The fact that Talib took “Chicken” and put “Turkey” does not make him the inventor.

2- Abdulkareem Surush: in his book “Brain and freedom; العقل والحرية” surush talked about freedom and how freedom will allow only the good idea to survive. This idea was first made up by Hegel.

Philosophy is bringing me closer to God but further from religion.

A prayer for money, cure, driving Satan away from your food, protect you in the bathroom..etc. Those makes sense in the uncertain world we used to live in. Imaging if a lot of people die in the bathroom, wouldn’t you like to know that God is watching over you there because you read the prayer? Is this real comfort or only the illusion of comfort? Do you know? I don’t...

In my opinion they turned God to a grocery keeper. Somebody needs to speak up and reform Islam; otherwise we will face an ethic-less generation soon. I think people will start taking off the religious clothes, as with more education liberalism prevails. The problem strikes when liberalism comes without a notion of ethics.

I fear the generation that believes liberalism means drinking, clubbing, and sex even though the ability to do that is part of liberalism. We need a generation that believes in the liberalism of ideas, and knowledge and produce work out of that liberalism.
---

Tigger, The bouncy tiger

I visited Shaikh Numor Al Numor in Awamia this weekend. The Shaikh is known to be an extreme form of Shia opposition in Saudi Arabia. He is very oriented and very smart, even though the Sunni-Shia divide is engraved in his brain. He sees it everywhere but he did not fight back when I discussed with him that the divide in Saudi is not Sunni-Shia, it is more government-people. The idea of Shia integral tendency to fight opposition is another issue we discussed. He is too smart to believe in the crap people demand to hear from him. The dirt of politics…

Radi Alzayer June 19th 2011
Pic from: http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&q=chocolate+matrix#/dqfesc

ترنُّح

دبابيس حادة
تتناهش عظمي..ة
آخر القطيع..ة
أعرج
تشفق الأسود
من نهش لحمي..ة
ترافق العمر
لموت بطيء..ة
أوصال تقطعت
من زيف جسمي..ة
ضريحي يصرخ
مابال هذي الجثة..ة
تأبى رحمي..ة
تترنح طمعاً
وشبقاً..ة
وتصرخ كذباً.. ة
بالخلاص..ة
***
أذانٌ..ة
أين ومتى بدأ؟
يزلزل
في علو النخيل
الصدأ..ة
مللت
من ختام القصص..ة
لكفري
طعمٌ آخرٌ..ة
يدفء أديم الأرضِ..ة
لجسدي ِ..ة
مطرك..ة
يخفي تحت رحمته
غرقاً..ة
يبعد الأوراق التي
أخفت شبقاً...ة
وأول زائر للأعماق..سفينتي

رضي الزاير
16th of May 2011
Two friends in one week is it too much?

Pic from: http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&global=1&q=ashintherainbow#/d1xebkf

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