The plot thickens!

A few weeks ago, I watched a documentary called “Jesus Camp” (which was very disturbing I might add) It was about a Pentecostal children’s minister who runs conferences and an annual summer camp for evangelical kids.

“We want to reclaim America for Christ.”

(try not to imagine the words I am saying in my mind right now)

In parts of this documentary, the pastor says:

“If you look at the world’s population, one third of that 6.7 billion people are children under the age of 15. One third! Where should we be putting our efforts? Where should we be putting our focus. I’ll tell you where our enemies are putting it, they’re putting it on the kids…

Do you know that Muslims train their children from the time they are 5 years old, to fast during the month of Ramathan?...

You can go to Palestine and I can take you to some websites and show you photographs of where they are taking their kids to camps like we take our kids to bible camps and they are putting hand grenades in their hands, they are teaching them how to put on bomb belts, they’re teaching them how to use rifles, they’re teaching them how to use machine guns, it’s no wonder with that kind of intense training and discipling that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam. I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are over in Pakistan in Israel in Palestine, because we have, excuse me, but we have the truth”

(again, the same words in my mind…)

and then she adds:

“the reason you go for kids is because whatever they learn by the time they are 7-8-9 years old, is pretty well there for the rest of their lives…

I can go into a playground of kids that don’t know anything about Christianity, lead them to the lord in a matter of just no time at all and just moments later they can be seeing visions and hearing the voice of God. Because they are so open, they are so usable in Christianity”

Near the end of the documentary, a reporter asks her whether or not what she does is brainwashing, and he points out that learning is different from indoctrinating.

to which she replies, “I don’t think any child gets anything by choice, … I would like to see more churches indoctrinating…”

(I think this part doesn’t really need any comment or explanation)

Well in the end you can see in the documentary that somehow it ends up being about supporting a political party, that is not my point here. What I intend to point out here, is that a group of people have a belief, a strong belief, and they know as I do, that the most effective, efficient, fundamental and the easiest way to enforce what they believe in, is to put their focus and effort on children. And this scares me to my very core. And then I think about what I believe to be right, and about educating children…

You see where I’m going with this!?

How can I tell what I think is right, is actually right? Is there a right or wrong? Do I have the right to educate children towards what I believe in right? Does a government, any government, have the right to pick up a direction of education and guidance for children and have educators and teachers work towards that direction?! How can we distinguish between brainwashing and enforcing our own beliefs, and educating our children to become free thinkers or giving them proper thinking tools and skills to think and choose for themselves? (is it even good to be free thinkers?!?!)

There is a very thin line between brainwashing and teaching, it is extremely difficult to figure out if we do what we do because we want a better world for our children or we do what we do because we are influenced by a political party or a certain world view or whoever else, and now we are trying to influence the next generation.

So I now correct myself.

The first and most fundamental step is NOT to work on kids.

It is to work on ourselves.

Think, read, ask, talk, explore, learn…

And as we expand our horizons and learn how to think better and be better and do better, there is no doubt our children will see, learn and follow.

Let’s go straight to plan B!

Ok, after all we talked about, now is the time to plan. I know I said we are not ready. But by the time we get really ready for something as big as having a global government and being citizens of the world, there might not be a world to be a citizen of anymore! So, ready or not, here we go!

After passing the previous steps, confused and unqualified, now what’s the next step? Assuming globalization is a good thing, or at least we choose the good version of all possible types of globalization, and assuming we know where we want to go and what type of world we plan to create for the future generation. As I said before, let’s pretend we have a plan, a good one, and we want to make it happen or at least contribute to its development somehow.

The details of the strategy and the action plan depends a lot on what the goal is. But whatever the plan, there is only one thing I know for sure and that is, if you want to make a change, you gotta start from the beginning, you gotta target the foundation: the children. Whatever you want the world to look like in the future, education, especially early childhood education is the way to go. If you want world peace, you should teach the children about diversity, tolerance, dialogue of civilizations and focus the education programs on love and caring. If you want world war, you just have to plant the seeds of hatred in children’s hearts. If you want a creative future generation, you help them develop their creativity and encourage creativity. If you want a mentally healthy next generation with successful social relationships, focus your educational plans on social and emotional skills and development. I have seen firsthand how different education systems and educational methods can change the course of history. I have witnessed how a slight difference in educational approach can make huge differences in the way a society or a nation turns out.

A global world, where all people are equals, regardless of location of birth, religion, skin color and language, a world without boundaries, a world in which everyone contributes in providing for everyone, where no parent fears the future of their child because of political conflicts of their country, a world where governments don’t dodge or weasel their responsibilities and don’t bully each other, a world when one politician will not commit modern banditry, buying already sold products just because they can, a world when one government cannot use another government as the excuse of its own incompetence, a world of tolerance and dialogue and cooperation. Wouldn’t that be nice world to live in? is it worth the effort to try and make this dream come true for our children and their children? If it is, then educate your children! Prepare your children. Teach your children. And do your best to be good role models for them. You don’t have to singlehandedly change the world; you don’t have to do something extraordinary or perform miracles. All you need to do is to shift the course of history a little bit by your actions, and then enable your children to do the same. The sum of all these little shifts is all that we need.

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

...

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace

You, you may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you will join us

And the world will be as one

... No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine…                                

Source: Musixmatch

To be or not to be? That is the question!

A long time ago, 1988, Bill Moyers did an interview with Joseph Campbell.

Moyers: Don't you think modern Americans have rejected the ancient idea of nature as a divinity because it would have kept us from achieving dominance over nature?... Scientists are beginning to talk quite openly about the Gaia principle… Will new myths come from this image?

Campbell: Well, something might... And the only myth that is going to be worth thinking about in the immediate future is one that is talking about the planet, not the city, not these people, but the planet, and everybody on it. That's my main thought for what the future myth is going to be...

Moyers: So, you suggest that from this, begins the new myth of our time?

Campbell: Yes, this is the ground of what the myth is to be. It's already here: the eye of reason, not of my nationality; the eye of reason, not of my religious community; the eye of reason, not of my linguistic community. Do you see? And this would be the philosophy for the planet, not for this group, that group, or the other group. When you see the earth from the moon, you don't see any divisions there of nations or states. This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to come. That is the country that we are going to be celebrating. And those are the people that we are one with.

This is where some of us our headed for. The business side of it seems to be inevitable. Large corporations are dominating the world. Again, like mankind, with a lot of power they are not fit for yet! But the cultural and ideological side of it might take a lot longer and might never happen. Greed, lust for power and control, dogmatisms and human stupidity are very much against concepts such as “citizen of the world” or “the eye of reason, not of my nationality or religious community” because they are not in line with their interests. And they even might fight against it with all their might. Therefore, we cannot be sure if cultural and moral globalization is also inevitable, or whether or not it will happen in a positive way.

So, what do we have so far? We are not well developed, we have evolved too quickly, we are evolving even faster now, we are not fit to sit at the top of the food chain, there are way too many of us, we are destroying the planet, our collective wisdom sucks and we have too much power for our own good! (Boy this is depressing!) Now, while we have not even started to grasp things as they are, we are moving to the next step which is a huge one! We ought to prepare for something we don’t know; We don’t know how it’s gonna be and we don’t even know how it should be!

“One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations” (Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years)

So, what’s the next step? It feels ridiculous to think about the next step when we haven’t taken the previous one properly! We have kind of jumped ahead, skipped through a few steps and have landed where we are! In the TED Dialogue we watched in class, the guest, Yuval Noah Harari, talked about the lack of a good and effective governing model for a globalized world. Apparently, no one has yet come up with a practical governing model. But let’s say we do. Let’s pretend we have a plan, a good one, and we want to make it happen or at least contribute to its development somehow. Now the question is whether or not there is anything we can do? Well, I don’t know! That would very much depend on the goal.

I will tell you more about it soon.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

What is?

Last time I wrote about the fact that we are not mature enough for everything that’s happening to us.  It has not been long since we became the dominant animal on the planet. We grew both in numbers and also in power and control over our environment, so we changed (and still are changing) the environment, pretty much the whole world, to fit our needs, not paying attention to the long-term impact of our actions. Ecosystem’s check and balance could not (and still cannot) adapt and keep up with us, and with our new, unchecked powers, we are quickly destroying the very necessary means of our own survival. We try to do things the easy way even though we know very well how harmful this easy thing is in the long run.

Not only we cannot manage natural resources and our consumption of them, we cannot manage our herd and our role and behavior in it either! We are smarter than most, if not all, animals, and yet we are so primitive and stupid in some topics compared to other animals. Let’s take mating for example. We, by “we” I mean us and the other animals, mate because we are instinctively designed to want and need it. We developed this innate desire and instinct, to ensure the survival of our species, to continue reproducing. And we do it, innately to survive, and then at the same time create things and do things that can and will destroy us which kind of defeats the purpose. Male animals compete for their mates, and the females choose their mates by picking the winner as the stronger and better one. It matters to them who they mate with because it matters to them how their offspring turns out and they want to give their offspring a better chance of survival. We on the other hand, say we want a better life for our children but choose a partner that has the IQ of a watermelon, or the sense and ration of a Neanderthal or the parenting capability of a sponge! We create children and then beat them, abuse them, hurt them and mess them up. And then, since the domestic or small scale damages are not enough, we go and build weapons of mass destructions and we decide to kill millions of people at once.

If any other animal species, were to behave as self-destructive as we do, they would have been extinct a thousand times by now! The only reason we have not vanished yet, is because of all this unchecked, unbalanced power. It’s like having a strong body that prevents us from realizing the symptoms of the cancer that is growing inside our brain!

Hey I don’t mean to be negative. Not all of us are like this. But the ratio of it is way too high to ignore. I have a lot more to say about this, but gotta go now. Will write more later.

Globalization, good or bad?

I don’t think there is a single straight answer to this question. Whether or not it’s a good thing to happen, depends a lot on how and when it happens, and also on the governing model we apply for it and many other aspects of it. And even if the general and overall outcome is good, there will definitely be consequences, disadvantages, adjusting curve and a very high price to pay for it.

A while ago we watched a TED Dialogue in class when we were discussing globalization. The guest, Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the book “Sapiens” talked about the lack of a good and effective governing model for a globalized world and many aspects of the matter.

His ideas and the way he analyzed everything, got me thinking and curious, so I got the book from my neighbourhood library. I read something interesting in the first chapter, something I have been thinking about for a while (actually wanted to mention it in our discussion about technology and how it’s making our lives out of balance.) But he described and analyzed it way better than I would:

“This is a key to understanding our history and psychology. Genus Homo’s position in the food chain was until quite recently, solidly in the middle. For millions of years, humans hunted smaller creatures and gathered what they could, all the while being hunted by larger predators. It was only 400,000 years ago that several species of man began to hunt large game on a regular basis, and only in the last 100,000 years – with the rise of Homo Sapiens – that man jumped to the top of the food chain.

That spectacular leap from the middle to the top had enormous consequences. other animals at the top of the pyramid, such as lions and sharks, evolved into that position very gradually, over millions of years. This enabled the ecosystem to develop checks and balances that prevent lions and sharks from wreaking too much havoc. As lions become deadlier, so gazelles evolved to run faster, hyenas to cooperate better, and rhinoceroses to be more bad-tempered. In contrast, humankind ascended to the top so quickly that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust. Moreover, humans themselves failed to adjust. Most top predators of the planet are majestic creatures. Millions of years of dominion have filled them with self-confidence. Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana republic dictator. Having so recently been one of the underdogs of the savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous. Many historical calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have resulted from this over-hasty jump.”

Every aspect of our dominance, is somehow too soon for us. We are way too immature for the power we have in our hands, and for the changes that are happening. It is the same with globalization. We have not really matured enough to understand the existing different models of government around the globe, let alone a suitable, balanced, proper model, even for the existing classification of nations. Do we really think we are ready for something as complex, as sophisticated and as demanding as a global government? Are we ready to make the necessary compromises? Do we have a proper understanding of what we want and what we should want and “what we want to want?” [Yuval Noah Harari] It would be like asking a 2-year-old, to share their beloved candy with another 2-year-old, with whom they never get along!

The world is changing too fast. We move to the next stage before fully digesting the last one. A lion knows very well how to manage its power not to break its cub’s neck while moving it with the same jaw it uses to break the neck of its pray. Especially since it very well knows how much the survival of its species depends on proper use of those jaws in both situations. We on the other hand, have neither mastered sufficient control over our powers nor the wisdom of how to use them and what for. We still have mad politicians who can easily demolish nations, wipe a whole population of an area from the face of the earth, with a simple push of a button, and we still have people who vote for such politicians! The fact that we cast votes in favor of such politicians in form of a majority, shows that we don’t have the wisdom to use the power and authority of making such a choice.

Is globalization good or bad? It can be both, depends on us. Is globalization inevitable? Probably. Are we ready for it? Definitely not! Can we be ready for it? Highly unlikely! Will we try to get ready for it? Hopefully! How can we get ready? I will talk about it more in the next few weeks.

Video: https://www.ted.com/talks/yuval_noah_harari_nationalism_vs_globalism_the_new_political_divide?language=en

بعد از سالها

از اون ور دیگه دنیا!!

با ۸.۵ ساعت اخلاف شب و روز

با ۳۶۰ درجه اختلاف خلق و خو و فرهنگ و روش زندگی!!!

یه زندگی جدید شروع کردیم٬‌با ترس هاش و امید هاش

امیدوارم

فقط امیدوارم...

Happiness

Here we are again,
still happy,
happier than ever,
happier every day,
and wondering where on heaven and earth this happiness, this deep deep calm and joy, this total satisfaction has come from...

انتظار

انتظار کلافه ام کرده و فقط باید زمان رو بگذرونم تا آزاد بشم و دوباره ببینمش

دوباره کنارش راه برم و از آرامش و هیجان پر بشم...

کپک

دلم برای نوشتن تنگ شده اما چیزی برای گفتن ندارم.

کپک زدم...

چقدر دلم یه کتاب خوب میخواد.

چرا صمد بهرنگی کتاب جدید نمینویسه؟ چرا از فریدون تنکابنی و مسعود بهنود خبری نیست؟ پس من چی بخونم؟

اشکال از نبودن کتاب نیست. من تنبل شدم، کپک زدم، کشیده شدم وسط روزمرگی های زندگی.

باید دوباره کتاب بخونم. باید به مادر بزرگم سر بزنم. باید احوال دوستامو بپرسم. باید ورزش کنم باید...

ولی...

حالشو ببر

پای صحبت هر کس که میشینی‌، پای صحبت هر کس که به زور میشوننت (مثل توفیق اجباری تو آرایشگاه های زنونه!!) همیشه همه بد هستن!!! زن ها از شوهر هاشون میگن، مرد ها از زن هاشون. عروس ها از مادر شوهر هاشون میگن و داماد ها از پدر زن هاشون، کارمندا از رئیسشون، رئیس ها از کارمندشون، همه اونا ای که اول بد بودن همیشه بد موندن، همه اونا ای که اول خوب بودن بعدش بد شدن، همه اونا ای که بی‌ شخصیت بودن بی‌ شخصیت تر شدن، اونا ای که با شخصیت بودن شخصیت رو بوسیدن گذاشتن کنار. اونا ای که مهربون بودن بی‌ عاطفه شدن، اونا ای که مرد بودن نامرد شدن،

همه بدن، همه بدن، همه بدن…

پس حالا که همه آخرش بد میشن، حالا که تمام تدبیر اندیشیدن ها، تمام سیاست پیشه کردن ها، تمام ساده لوح بودن ها و بی‌ شیله پیله بودن ها و کلک سوار کردن ها و قالتاق بازی‌ در آوردن ها و… اول و آخر همه به یه جا ختم میشن، پس چرا آدم خودش رو اذیت کنه؟

حالا که خوبه، از زندگیت لذت ببر. اگه قراره بد بشه از حالا منتظر بد شدنش نشین و زندگی رو زهر مار نکن.

الان که خوبه، تو هم خوب باش،

حالشو ببر!!!