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The Rules of the Game, intro

Ever since my brother sent me this essay by Carl Sagan called "The Rules of the Game", I've fallen in love with it. It talks about the evolution of our morality.

Probably the best and easiest way for me to relate all of it to you is to simply post a link to it, as I did. But I would like to post it in parts so we could discuss and talk about each part separately and at leisure.

Where does Your morality come from? What set of rules do you use to determine right from wrong? here's a very early attempt at answering that question:

Everything morally right derives from one of four sources:
It concerns either full perception or intelligent development of what is true;
or the preservation of organized society, where every man is rendered his due and all obligations are faithfully discharged;
or the greatness and strength of a noble, invincible spirit;
or order and moderation in everything said and done, whereby is temperance and self-control.
CICERO,
De Officiis, I, 5 (45-44 B.C.E)

I did not personally like this answer, it seems a bit lost and unhinged. Translating an arabic parable "he explained water, after much effort, with water". Sagan used it to start his essay, so..

He then relates this simple yet to the point story from his own childhood:

I remember the end of a long ago perfect day in 1939... a day that powerfully influenced my thinking, a day when my parents introduced me to the wonders of the New York World's Fair.
It was late, well past my bedtime. Safely perched on my father's shoulders, holding onto his ears, my mother reassuringly at my side, I turned to see the great Trylon and Perisphere, the architectural icons of the fair, illuminated in shimmering blue pastels. We were abandoning the future, the "World of Tomorrow,", for the BMT subway train. As we paused to rearrange our possessions, my father got to talking with a small, tired man carrying a tray around his neck. He was selling pencils. My father reached into the crumpled brown paper bag that held the remains of our lunches, withdrew an apple, and handed it to the pencil man. I let out a loud wail. I disliked apples then, and had refused this one both at lunch and at dinner. But I had, nevertheless, a proprietary interest in it. It was my apple, and my father had just given it away to a funny-looking stranger... who, to compound my anguish, was now glaring unsympathetically in my direction.
Although my father was a person of nearly limitless patience and tenderness, I could see he was disappointed in me. He swept me up and hugged me tight to him.
"He's a poor stiff, out of work," he said to me, too quietly for the man to hear. "He hasn't eaten all day. We have enough. We can give him an apple."
I reconsidered, stifled my sobs, took another wistful glance at the World of Tomorrow, and gratefully fell asleep in his arms.

So, the dilemma was, the boy Sagan could not comprehend or understand why giving the apple (that he did not like or want) to someone else. His dad explained by immediately trying to get his boy to "empathize" with the homeless person by listing his problems "poor", "out of work", "hungry", and then pointing out that it won't "hurt us". Point being, if it threatened our own "wealth" in any substantial way, then we might not give him the food. So if they had 4 apples and NOTHING else, 1 for papa, 1 for mama, and 1 for little Carl, would they give the 4th apple to the homeless person? probably they'd save it to share it between them when they became hungry tomorrow, since they were homeless hungry people themselves :P

What are the boundaries of goodness?

Us wealthy kuwaitis don't think about such matters. We think about going to chocolate bars in the afternoon. Which flavor, size and caramel or non-caramel of starbucks coffee I'm going to get this morning. And the agony (Oh the agony) of deciding which fancy restaurant to have dinner at tonight. (3asalla la yghayer 3alaina ni3ma, o yzedna ba3ad)

We don't face critical decisions like not knowing what you'll be eating tomorrow and whether or not to split your lunch with another writhing-hungry person sitting on the opposite side of erraseef.

Well, who's more relevant? us? or the hungry people? obviously us because its us. but also obviously we are a very obscure minority in the world. The vast majority of people do NOT share our careless bored existence. But to care about them we'd have to do that awful thing called Empathy :P

So, next post in this series will be about the first and highest of the moral rules:

The Golden Rule.
Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.

Til then, enjoy :)

Strong vs. Smart

Imagine yourself sitting with your best friend, and you attempt to lift a chair and move it to the other side of the living room, to see how it would look. And as you try to heave it up grunting, your friend says to you:
"Stop, you might hurt yourself, its too heavy, you're not strong enough, I'll help you lift it."

You'd happily accept their offer. And thank them.

Imagine however if the situation did not involve moving a heavy sofa, but was about something that requires some high mental abilities. Say wisdom or intelligence. for example: You're trying to figure out your accounting figures for your small business. Or trying to solve some mathematical equation for a statistics class. Or maybe even trying to figure out how to diplomatically work your way out of a sticky argument at work with some stubborn manager. Take any of these examples or think of one of your own, and imagine that you're failing in dealing with it, and you're telling your best friend about it, clearly in need of help. And the friend says something like:
"Stop, the way you're handling this is wrong, you're not smart enough, let me offer you some advice."

I don't know about you, but the "not smart enough" bit would very likely piss me off.

So, what's the difference between these two situations? both involve your deficiency, and both involve someone else criticizing you in that lack of ability. The first is a muscular ability, the other is a brainy ability.

But we're way more sensitive to criticism when it is directed at our intelligence than if it is towards our athletic prowess.

Lets go down to a childish level. Kids do tease each other based on physical abilities all the time.
"I can easily outrun you and run circles around you. You're SO slow! wahahahaha"

But now as grownups, if someone sneered at how slow you ran, you'd point them out to your friends and laugh at how irrelevant the comment was. "what's this crazy person on about?"

But if the remark mentions anything about how stupid or unwise we are, even if the intention of the remark was friendly and genuine, most likely we'd be very offended and defensive about our mental abilities.

We're all too willing to concede that black athletes are more proficient in speed, jumping height, strength and so on. But dare to mention any hint of academic achievement or mental ability differences between blacks and whites, and you're likely to get scornful and chastising stares from all around you. just incase, here are some references:
The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability
Chapter 11 of The g Factor fully documents that, on average, the American Black population scores below the White population by about 1.2 standard deviations, equivalent to 18 IQ points. (This magnitude of difference gives a median overlap of less than 15%, meaning that less than 15% of the Black population exceeds the White average of 50%).

So my question is, Why?

Why are we more sensitive towards our mental capabilities, but not so much towards our physical ones?

I'm guessing one possible answer could be that in this day and age, being smart is more important for prosperity. If you're smart and handicapped, you still can get a PhD and be an overpaid consultant. If you're strong and dumb you might end up a janitor on foodstamps.

So was the situation reversed in hunter/gatherer communities 1000's of years ago?

Stone Age Muscular Joe says to his Thinker friend Archimedes : "Oh man, Archie, you're still fiddling with that round rock with the hole in the middle? why don't you get off your ass and hunt some more deer with us? I hate to be so crass and rude, but its sort of straining my family's food supply to always have to trade a deer's leg for the bone hair clasps you make. Don't get me wrong, my wife likes using them to hold up the wet laundry and even hold up her hair, but give me a break, you can't really feed them to your kids now can you. Poor baby timmy even tried and almost choked on one of them."

So what do YOU think?

As If Teddy Was Watching

So I'm watching this movie called "Resurrecting the Champ", and if you plan on watching it, I might spoil a certain twist in it for you. Anyway, if you don't or you don't think its a big deal (its a 60% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the twist can be expected anyway), then read ahead.

So the main character is a reporter who's having trouble at the paper, they don't think his work is good enough, and he's separated from his wife and has a 6 yo son who he visits on weekends. The reporter catches a lucky break and writes a super good article and starts getting nation-wide attention for it, only to realize later that what he wrote about is a lie and that he didn't check his sources thoroughly enough.

So he and his wife (who works in the same paper) are arguing what to do. He's asking "who'd know if I just stayed quiet?", and his wife is insisting that he should print a retraction of his article, and admit that he was wrong. That would ofcourse mean the end of him and a major embarrassment.

So in the end she tells him:
"Let me put it more clearly to you: You need to act as if Teddy was watching." (Teddy is his son)

And hearing that, I immediately hit pause and started writing this post.

So to this man, if he could visualize in his head that his 6 yo son was present, he'd be too ashamed and embarrassed to do something dishonorable. He would be afraid that his son will either learn to be dishonest, or even that his son will not be proud of him as he grows up. So the movie expected from us the viewers to all relate to this feeling and understand it. That if we could only try to be respectful of our children's feelings, it would make us become better people and do the right thing.

Ofcourse our kids are extremely important. More specifically, their future is the most important thing we care about. So in order to protect them from future disappointment in their own parents, which might destroy their sense of self-worth, we stop ourselves from doing the wrong thing.

But we muslims have an even larger reason to behave don't we? If we replaced Teddy with God, it would be: Act as if God is watching. And God IS watching, all the time, all day, minute in, minute out. We learn something like that when we're young. No more than 4-5 years old and you've already heard that Allah foog, o Allah yshoofna shinsawe.

And our kids will grow old one day, and they'll get over any complexes we might have inflicted on them and they'll die, leaving kids of their own. So the impact of potential damage is limited to his/her lifetime. But if we do something bad infront of God, isn't He more deserving of our embarrassment and shame?

And the consequence of our shameful behavior does not affect your kid in the future. It affects your OWN life for eternity in the afterlife. So any smart person would instantly realize that the latter situation is of compoundedly more gravity to you.

Niste7e min yahel wala niste7e min Allah?

Banning Election Primaries is WRONG

Yes. I think that the law is wrong, unfair and Unconstitutional.

Which law am I talking about? I'll explain a bit 1st. It is currently illegal in Kuwait to hold Primaries before an election (i.e. inte5abaat far3iya).

I think banning them violates our right to freedom of speech and our right to freedom of assembly.

If you think the US democracy is a good model, then isn't what Obama and Clinton doing nothing other than "inte5abaat far3iya"?

If you tell me that it should be banned to prevent tribal voting and sectarian voting, I say to you, who do you think you are to tell people how to vote?

If people want to vote to a tribes-man. LET THEM BE.

If they want to vote to an extremist sectarian cleric, LET THEM BE.

Trying to control other people's ideas is called "Wesaya Fikriyah". The voters are dumb? so what, we already know that. mo sheghlek what they vote for or why. The "Masses are Asses" its been said before. This is Democracy. Is Democracy wrong? I don't necessarily love it, but I'm giving it a chance. I believe that: "innama yowalla 3alaikom minkom". Regardless of the method of selection. be it democracy or hereditary rule.

Whatever your "perfect" candidate should look/think like, if you had the choice to choose between 3-4 of these "perfect" candidates, wouldn't you rather hold primaries (your own far3iya) within your circles who share your ideology to make sure that all of "your people" concentrate your votes to back only a certain few to make sure they WIN?

This activity is being done ANYWAY since we first started having elections. Before election day we go around the dowaween to ask the guys who are they going to vote for, and get news from the other diwaniyat and try to figure out which of "our" candidates has the wider support, so we can all back him and insure his victory.

Primaries are:
- Unstoppable (its silly to lay a law that is un-enforcable)
- Useful
- A pretty Sophisticated form of organization that we should be proud of, not ban.

They also ruin the plans of some candidates who only put out their names for nomination in hopes that the other "strong" ones will give them a monetary "bail-out" offer. Sleaze bags.

The LAW in this case is WRONG. agolha belfam ilmalyan.

Don't succumb to the mentality of "we like democracy as long as it produces people we like".

I'm not a bdewe, and it is not in my best interest to have a higher presentation % of tribal MPs belmajles. but.. what's wrong is wrong. and what's right is right.

Ma yse7 illa essa7ee7.

The Challenge to Empathize

Empathy is the ability to feel what the other person is feeling.

Beautiful meaning. Some even choose this quality to measure how "civilized" we are. The true yardstick of civilization. Not Technology, not cleanliness, not punctuality, but something broader that is inclusive of all of these things.

We clean our McDonalds messes only because we care how others coming after us to sit on the same table will feel. We care not to disgust them.

We choose to be punctual and On-time because we think to ourselves how annoyed and frustrated they would feel to be waiting for our late selves.

Even technology is a form of caring about others. The scientist or inventor goes through long and arduous efforts to come up with a new idea, and then implement it in the real world and make it commercially viable. What drives him/her to do it? to use the invention himself? to make his own life a tiny bit easier he would spend years of his life? doesn't make sense. Curiosity? Recognition? nowadays most pioneering inventions are only possible through large collaborative groups rather than individuals. The time of Great Singular Inventors is long gone with the 1800's and early 1900's. What drives technology these days in my opinion is the desire to do good. pure and simple. You hear it often said by innovators as "The gift to the future". Which is very apt because most likely the fruits of such advancements will not be felt in the present, but in the future. So Technology is also a form of Empathy.

Almost every form of Good-doing has to involve in its core the ability to "feel what the other person is feeling". Put yourself in their shoes. Feel their pain and misery. Once you do feel it, you'll start to act, not before. The action comes almost as a way of saving yourself from the pain you're feeling through others, through Empathy.

But again, why do we Empathize? true, lots of people DO know that when they empathize they will be inclined to do the right thing. But, people can learn from that experience and later choose NOT to empathize. They can choose to say "to hell with it, I don't want other people's headaches, I've got enough of my own.". Often I hear women (because I think they have a lesser defense against empathy) say "please don't tell me about that painful story.", or how my wife gets seriously troubled when she sees someone getting beaten or shot in a movie, because she can't help but "feel too much" for them. It disturbs her. Really gets to her.

Often you hear lawyers talking in a movie about a person on trial, about how it would be wise for the defense to mention the defendant's name, or bring his mother to the trial. They say this tactic helps force the jury to think of him as a "person", which causes them to empathize with him, and this way they'll be more capable of understanding the circumstances through his eyes, and therefor may be able to excuse him of ill intent.

Is Empathy "always" a good thing to do? I think so. yes. Even if it was a murderer or a rapist? yes I believe so. I do think that usually we can't over-do it. We have our limits. Up to a certain point where we refuse to subject ourselves to other people's pains anymore. We refuse to suffer emotionally as they suffer. And ofcourse we have every right to shield ourselves. Mo malzomeen.

I can go on and on about this.. it is perhaps one of the things that affect me the most when I think about my own sense of morality. And I am VERY lacking in my ability to empathize. But its already a very long post.

So what do YOU think?

Movies This Week & What's Usury?

Update (21st March):

Since Rotten Tomatoes only had 2 reviews of this movie (both fresh), I decided to go check it out for myself. And I'm glad I did, so I can review it for you with my own experience.
Result: It's a damn good creature movie! If you loved the old Jaws (part1, none of the other ones) then you'll like this one. It stays true to the ways of creature movies while still trying to be smart and surprising, which ends up being truly mesmerizing and scary. It uses actors that are not superstars, which makes it less distracting and easier to think of them as normal people, and therefor relate to them more and be more scared for their safety. The low-key nature of the film made me enjoy it all the better.

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Ok here's what's new this week in Kuwait from Cinescape:

Horton Hears a Who!: Rotten Tomatoes rating 80% out of 104 reviews.
The lovely kids story comes to the cinema screen with Jim Carrey's voice on top. And with such a high rating it's bound to be atleast Entertaining as heck.
(Take your younger sibling and Go!)



The Spiderwick Chronicles: Rotten Tomatoes rating 80% as well!
OMG! 2 movies over 75% in 1 week from KNCC? mdal3enna 7ail sara7a.
oh wait, they're both kids movies, so it's ok.
(Take both your younger sibling and the 2nd younger too!)
o 3ayed ya s3ayed

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So.. What's Usury?

That's what I set out to find out last week. I first heard of the term while watching "The Merchant of Venice" when a boat full of christians passes under a bridge in the Jewish ghetto and one of them yells up at the Jews:
"Userer!!"

Then again last week I looked up "interest" in Wikipedea and in the end one of the "See Also" links was "Usury". So I followed the link.

To put it shortly, it means what we muslims know as Reba.

So I'm highly intrigued because I've always been curious about this specific Sin. Why? well because as far as I've seen, the similarities between the main 3 Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) were always clear and prevalent:

- We stone adulterers, but Jews stoned adulterers way before we did.
- Muslim women wear 7ejab, Jewish women (the orthodox old ladies atleast) wear hear pieces to cover their "real" hair. One jewish friend told me its a religious thing. His grandmother and old aunts have to cover their hair so they get fake hair. (typical law dodging in my opinion, just like the story of beni Israel who set up their fish nets on Friday and collected the fish on Sunday so they could circumvent the law that they shouldn't catch the fish on Saturday) ilmohem.
- Irrasool tells muslim men to let go their beards, and so do Jewish men are also directed to have beards.

and on and on.. the similarities in the laws of 7aram and 7alal are very similar between us muslims and jews. My only guess explanation of why the similarities are not shared with christianity to that level is, I think that Jesus came to "lift" some of the restrictions that were on the Jews, and not to replace the religion entirely. So Judaism survives with lots and lots of Do's and Don'ts, while Christianity is a more spiritual message in general that complements what the Jews had at the time.

But anyway, I was always curious why is Reba such a grave sin in Islam, but modern day Christians and Jews do it freely. This was my ignorance I was bound to discover. For in that simple Wiki page, it shows passages from the Old Testament (Torah) as well as from the New Testament (Enjeel, well atleast what survived untouched from them). Passages that clearly condemn Usury and very clearly: Interest

If thou lend money to any of My people, even to the poor with thee, thou shalt not be to him as a creditor; neither shall ye lay upon him interest. Exodus 22:24

The list of passages goes long and as I read and read, it was very clear that even among normal people and the common culture it IS considered a grave sin. In Dante's Divine Comedy for example he describes the Userers as being in a level of Hell so low its even bellow the suiciders (the gravest of sins according to all the 3 faiths) in the 7th and lowest circle.

I'm not writing this post to preach how bad Riba is by evidence of old religions and history. I'm writing it because for the longest time when I discuss Riba with some ignorant muslims who deal with Riba on a daily basis, they argue with me as if Islam came with something new and alien to human nature. That charging interest is a necessity for the modern economy. I will discuss that in a future post inshalla. But evidently the issue is ALOT older than Irrasool Mo7ammad PBUH. How could he have known the history of it all?

The first time it became legal was in the time of Henry the 8th (ilmaynoon) who instead of divorcing his wives (because it was 7aram), he beheaded them (ya3ne killing them is better yal Ahbal??). He was the 1st to legalize it, against the huge protest of the churches of the time.

Even to this day, alot of the current "interest rate" laws are rooted in a "moral" foundation. In the state of New York, if you give a loan to someone with an interest rate higher than the Federally approved rate at the time, the borrower can sue you and the loan would be void and illegal and he won't have to pay you a cent. Which is why loan-sharks don't depend on the law to collect but on the threat of breaking your legs. i.e. Muscle.

So my question is, does any of this shock you guys? wella bs ana was too naiive and ignorant about history?

And do you think that interest is fine? and if you do, what's your definition of the 7aram interest?