Tag: raafat gilani

Reflections on an Oriental nation | #36

When we think of Orientalism, the European conquest comes to mind, the Britishers in India and elsewhere, or be it the French or what have you. However, by detaching from the terminology for a moment, one looks at the patterns themselves, of not just the West in the East, but of anyone anywhere; this framework of expansion of the patterns of actions that are mostly accepted as reprehensible, academically or popularly, allow for a broader and much more encompassing understanding of similar reprehensible structures around the globe.

In 1853 Karl Marx wrote the piece “The British Rule in India”, a man who was fully aware of the havoc Britishers were bestowing upon the Indian subcontinent, nevertheless, he considered the British rule in India to be a boon in disguise. This is now very well known as an Orientalist text, as Marx believed that although Indian civilisation lost its backbone, its sustenance and culture, what was ultimately lost were the ancient, barbaric and unregenerate customs of India.

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Free Speech absolutism does not exist | Thoughts #35

For the past week a lot of ‘stop insulting’ and ‘freedom of speech’ has been going on. There are two observations that are not so conspicuous, first is that what does one mean by ‘freedom of speech’ and second why shouldn’t insults be allowed. Now I’m going to talk about this issue in-line with the recent French controversies, which I’m sure most of you are aware of. I won’t go into the religiosity of it, but will elaborate on the secular premise.

Most people talk about concepts such as ‘Freedom of Speech’ and or ‘Freedom of Expression’ like its a Divine law, as if some deity (with the connotation that a deity is the ultimate source of knowledge) came chanting its song. “Human rights are considered the offspring of natural rights, which themselves evolved from the concept of natural law. Natural law, which has played a dominant role in Western political theory for centuries, is that standard of higher-order morality against which all other laws are adjudged. To contest the injustice of human-made law, one was to appeal to the greater authority of God or natural law.” The reason why you must understand the roots of Human Rights is so that you put on your critical lenses, and not take those laws for granted, as they themselves aren’t free from ideologues.

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The problem of democracy | Thoughts #34

The most widely accepted definition of democracy is as follows; a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives. “Whole population” is the focal point here. Democracy is older than some religions of the world, it’s traditionalist in some sense, originating according to some in Athens, ancient Greece. Any country in the modern world which isn’t a democracy is considered to be unethical and totalitarian. Now there are some, but mainly two branches of democracy; direct and representative democracy. Before I get into the analysis of a democratic system’s problem, we need to understand the two briefly.

In a direct democracy, people directly deliberate and decide on legislation. In a representative democracy, the people elect representatives to deliberate and decide on legislation, such as in parliamentary or presidential democracy.

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What is the point of intellectual elites? | Politics #31

In this day and age, information spread is rapid, before a theory, a research paper or survey is peer reviewed, the catchy headlines makes its way into the minds of people. Now, not only does this hold true for mere mundane celebrity gossip, or the top tier scientific research but the thoughts of the ones considered to be the elite class in intellectual capability have their thoughts spread much faster. Imagine if Socrates, or Aristotle were alive, with all their subtitled clips spreading on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, that would be a spectacle to observe.

The “intellectual elites”, most of them have their books in the world, selling millions of copies, and that’s totally fine. In those books are ideas, thoughts, propositions that are catered to a certain area of a problem-ridden world. If one had to classify difficulty levels in any field, difficulty as in the ability required for a certain problem, there would be tiers, we call “elite” to those who tackle with the most difficult of problems, you can’t be an elite football player if you’re playing in ISL as compared to someone playing in the Premier League or LaLiga. There has been this term thrown around about an informal group called the “intellectual dark web.”

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Should governments even exist? | Thoughts #30

Okay, I’ll admit, I couldn’t think of a better title, it is a short post though. Actually the things I wanted to talk about were kind of dispersed and thus I couldn’t land on an encompassing title. So, I had been noticing the displeasure that people feel from being told that there needs to be an authority, for a long time I thought that it was obvious that authorities (or an authority) are essential. I noticed that whenever the concept of an authority or authorities is thought of, an image comes up in the head, of a tyrant ready to beat whoever doesn’t follow the rules, and a sense of oppression is generated. I reckon the issue is actually with the concept of authority itself.

Think, for a moment, a world without an authority, everyone living their own lives, minding their own business, right? No. There will be chaos, if someone’s business is to murder, they for sure will mind their own business, why shouldn’t we also mind it? But why? Why should we mind their business? Because we have defined our morals such that that can’t be not minded. The question of morality applied with degree of consequences comes to fruition. So, first a moral value is defined and then an authority is made to make sure that that rule is applied. Now this “morality” needs to be defined with its varying consequences, for example; if a juvenile steals from a shop, why should he be sent to reformation institutions and not be hanged to death?

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Is being a soldier just another job? | Thoughts #28

This one can be titled in various ways, “a soldier’s morality”, “why don’t soldiers kill their own” and many others, the reason being that because a soldier is in the field of warfare the morality shifts a bit in relation to murder, and the other obvious reasons. I’ve always thought about why don’t soldiers just shoot their commanders in the head, or rather more specifically militia, what’s stopping them from taking over each other? What’s so different about them that they have a separate court of “justice”? Now exploring this dimension leads to a few other questions about the state of a soldier.

To begin with the dictionary definition – probably one of those dictionary definitions that is quite congruent with the reality – “job” simply means a paid position of regular employment. So a job comprises of it being paid and categorically is a regular employment. Now, just like any other job, to be thinking of becoming a soldier one has had to have an idea of what exactly do they wish to gain from years of physically gruesome training – money? No. Becoming a soldier is one of the least paying jobs in relation to regular employment classification of manners. Let me explain; firstly there are even drafts in army, meaning you’ll just be picked up to go and sacrifice your life out of nowhere, second, being a soldier mostly has you being physically tough and all you do is follow orders of those who are deemed to have more brains than you, that doesn’t necessarily mean that soldiers are dimwits but there’s a strong emphasis on physical power and obviously so, third, you’ll literally be a pawn, a useful one perhaps, but a pawn, fourthly that the sole idea of someone becoming a soldier is in most cases a reflection of their economical struggles.

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Why the young commit suicide over video games | Thoughts #26

I’m sure you’ve seen the headlines, its almost every other week or so we see a detrimental act by a teen or child sometimes even adults committing because of a video game. Now all I see in response to that is shock and confusion, as to why would one kill oneself, or take loans (to buy items) for the game, after all they’re just pixels running around. Firstly I’d like to defunct the reductionist view of the matter, if video games are just pixels running around, well then we’re just atoms running around, that doesn’t mean that we don’t matter and nor do our actions. If it seems like an unfair comparison, well to give you a real life example, in 2019 a popular video game Fortnite held a competition as to who plays the best by eliminating all the other players and the winner of that tournament went home with $2 Million, the total prize pool was of $30 Million. Those pixels created a huge effect in the atom-world. This is nothing, one of the oldest game CSGO has professional players, that are paid to play the game (games like LoL, DOTA have it too), apart from the tournament prize pool they may or may not win, the monthly salary of the average top tier teams is 20,000 Euros, and this is excluding the sponsorships, the contracts (the latest one being of $1 Million), the ads they do, the streaming that some do and so on; just like a sports personality. The eSports (as they call it) is on track to beat the $1.5 Billion net worth mark by 2023, and a single game as League of Legends (LoL) has already crossed the Billion mark in revenue, which I’d say isn’t too shabby for pixels.

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