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See “Arabian Protocol” post
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This one goes out to my Arabic-speaking friends out there, and particularly to the internet/chatting-savvy ones. But firstly, I apologize to my English-speaking friends, you’re more than welcome to scuff at this piece and ignore it :p
Simply to point out, I understand this is a WAY outdateud topic to be talking about, but it’s been on my mind lately, and I thought I’d shed some light on it.
Specifically, I’m referring to Arabic Spoken in English -i.e. Arabish-, and that’s the technique that’s been around for as far as I can remember logging on the internet back in the day. It’s the use of:
- The number 2 to represent ء
- The number 3 to represent ع
- The number 5 to represent خ
- The number 6 to represent ط
- The number 7 to represent ح
- The number 8 to represent ق
- And the number 9 to represent ص
.. And not only that, then there’s the addition of the apostrophe to mold those numbers into new Arabic letters:
- ’3 is غ
- and ’6 is ظ
Now I’m not really going to share any philosophical insight, I just wanted to point out the matter that whoever came up with it is one hell of a smart person, or persons for that matter.
So if you’re out there reading this, big props to you my friend, you’ve made it that much easier for the rest of us to chat our lives away :)
Update (23/6): Look what I found! Wiki Article
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This is a question that pops up a lot, sometimes in my questioning myself, and more often by people – the question is “why do you keep talking about this stuff?”, “what good do you get out of it?”, and why this or why that… I must have heard a thousand variations of that question, but they all pretty much lead to the same question don’t they? Why does Moadh talk to people about all this? And why does he get on this website every now and again and writes and discusses?
The more I think about it, the more reasons I’ve been able to come up with. So far, I have the following:
REASON I
If all actions are self-motivated, and we only seek what’s good for ourselves, then why should we do anything good for anyone else? Why be altruistic? Why bother?
Well, i think as human beings, as highly developed creatures, we need to recognize that we need to better our environment, that we need to be a force for good, and in some cases a force for change. I stress that this is my personal opinion and is in noway a fact – its my simple understanding and reasoning. I feel we have a responsibility to firstly look after ourselves and secondly better the environment around us with all its elements
REASON II
There really is a feel-good thing to it isn’t there? Whenever something self-less is done, one can feel this sense of pride about what has been achieved. And this does actually conform to the ‘all actions are self-motivated’ claim. So even if this your reason, go ahead and do it – It doesn’t really matter in the end, as long as some good is done and situations are bettered as a result – the motive might be a disadvantage, but in factual terms, it doesn’t take much away from the result
REASON III
Now this one’s a completely personal reason. I write because it serves as an outlet for me to express my ideas and thoughts and because that’s really always been me. I’ve always been the person to state his opinion and speak his mind, and this is just another venue for doing that. Not everyone can relate to this reason, but I consider it a reason, so :)
REASON IV
Those who know me well have probably heard of this reason quite a few times. I write, and I discuss and I try to make an impact because I would like to be a source of comfort and information to that one person.. that one person that is right at this moment going through a dilemma of self-analysis, of external-analysis, that is struggling to break away from conformity and delve into individuality, that is facing an emotional war with her or himself in the process of questioning – I would like to be there for that person
That’s all I’ve got so far, I will update this (or add another post) if I come up with any other reasons. Until then, peace.
Emotions play a huge part in people’s behavior, they really dictate how we act towards each other, whether or not we are nice or otherwise to each other, and societies have been shaped by no less than emotions -whether or not backed up by logic- related to ideals, values, or principles. But in the end, they all fall back to a certain emotion, and within these emotions lie a sea of origins and a sea of reactions.
Let me paint a picture, maybe it’ll make my point a bit clearer: Let’s say you’re walking along in a park with your significant other and out of the blue, a past significant other of your significant other happens to be walking in the opposite direction, and they meet and they say hi and maybe the person is a little over affectionate, and maybe he/she puts his/her arm around your S.O.’s waist, and maybe they hold hands for a little too long for comfort… Isn’t it just so obvious what you would be feeling? Now consider that there really is absolutely no reason to be mad, jealous, or in any way negative – let’s say it turns out the reason they parted ways was because the other person wasn’t heterosexual? Doesn’t that change things?..
Okay, now let me give you another example:
Let’s say one of your siblings got beat up, he or she came back home with a black eye and a severed arm, immediately your reaction would be anger, and quite possibly revenge. Now let’s consider that it was your sibling that started it, that it was entirely unprovoked, and that he or she was the guilty party. It would change the way you feel, you might still feel anger, but it’ll be less intense, and certainly his or her state would be justified.
Now you might be wondering what the hell I’m getting at; I don’t think that the natural reactions to those situations are wrong, its perfectly natural to feel jealous over a loved one, and to feel protective too – its human/animal instinct, its deep within us and we can’t really change that. And to some degree, i don’t think we should either. And yet, there is one thing to remember.
It seems that, through my observations at least, a majority of the general public tend to react to these emotions instantly, without taking a second to look back and think. These are who I call impulse slaves. Yes you might have grown up in a society that is extremely reluctant to change, to something new, and yes your impulse reaction might be to push it away, or even go as far as to be actively against it; but for your sake, for the sake of the people around you, and most importantly for the sake of that cause that you’re against, take a moment, have an original thought, be logical about it, keep those stereotypes out of it, and come to a clean, well-thought out, harmless conclusion.
It’s just so easy to be enslaved to your emotions, to your impulses, and if i dare say to your brainwashing, but hardly any good came out of taking the easy path.
I once heard someone say: you can’t control your emotions, just your actions
I was having a friendly chat with an acquaintance that frequently visits The Mind’s Eye, and within the conversation he/she brought up what I’ve written in my “About Me” page, to save you the trouble, this is the excerpt in particular:
“I was born in Dubai, in Dubai Hospital, went to Dubai National School, and graduated from the American University in Dubai, and I now work in Dubai… And yet, I can’t feel less nation-attached.”
The discussion started after I was asked “How could you not love your country? Do you have no patriotism?!” – to be fair, that isn’t exactly what the person said word-for-word, it was much nicer :p, but too long to recall plus I can’t say my memory serves me well.
Anyhow, it sort of brought me to something that I continually include in my discussions on various topics, and a subject that I feel is very fundamental to my mentality. It sort of hovers around this spectrum of nationalism, patriotism, and humanity in general.
This may come as a shocker, but given the outcome of patriotism, I personally think that patriotism is a horrible thing. Now don’t get me wrong, some of you might be shocked, but give me the time of day and hear me out. When I say I’m not for it, I’m saying it assuming the outcome today as the definition, there are definitions of patriotism that I adopt myself, and here it goes, let me lay it out:
When a person devotes him or herself to a cause, to a thought, even to a belief-system, there are two ways that (generally) he/she can go about it, there’s the “let me analyze this situation, see what makes sense, make logic of it, then make my decision” and then there’s the “I will die for it, no matter what, I will stand for what is mine and what i belong to, yada yada yada” – basically the usual belief vs. faith argument. Now as you might probably deduce, I’m against blind-faith – I think its horrible, destructive, and very very much ignorant. I think any person should take things into perspective and calculate the logic in any proposition made to him or her. I know this all sounds like a given, but believe me you’d be surprised if you paid attention.
Now when I say I’m against patriotism, it’s the second case that I refer to. I think blind-patriotism (we’ll call it BP from now on) breeds this horrible outcome, of which is this discriminating attitude – I am so-and-so and I am born and bred to be against so-and-so. And if you really take it all back to basics, these borders and these countries and these systems are all man-made, nature didn’t breed us to have differences in imaginary lines on earth – yes we come from different cultures, different background, and many past conflicts; but honestly, how sad is it that we have to fight and discriminate against each other simply because you live on the other side of the border?! And i know that some might say it’s not the border but blood-lines, past conflicts, and etc that create these animosities, but imagine a border-less world for one second and you might wonder how much less these negative forces would exist if we as people co-existed. In its true colors, BP is destructive, and really doesn’t bring much good at all.
Now for the other side of the argument, what I support, and what we can refer to as justified-patriotism (JP), now here’s a case of realism overcoming patriotism – I do think that ideally there should be no borders, no nations vs. nations, that we can all co-exist without having these systems that keep us apart (fluffy i know, but hey that’s idealism). Reality, though, has brought us somewhere different, we do have countries, we do have nations, we have allies and enemies and so on and so forth. So how do i, as Moadh, justify patriotism in this case? Well i think, again, it goes back to the basic argument, we can love our country for what it is, and for what it stands for, and yet not blindly – we can have good reason to love our country, for whatever reason any person sees fit, ergo JP.
Personally, I’ve had the tremendous fortune of being born in and being part of a place that more times than not, stands for what i believe in and has a great attitude about itself. Dubai is a thriving, ambitious hub that sees itself in the most positive of lights, a city that has succeeded in bringing people together, from all over the globe, to be part of its history, regardless of nationality/ethnicity/background. Now isn’t that just beautiful? It really is! Moadh’s philosophy on a grander scale hahaha! I truly love my city, and not for BP reasons, but truly for JP reasons. I’ve looked at what Dubai is, and what Dubai stands for, and how Dubai carries itself – and I love it for those reasons – not because I hold the passport, or my history belongs to it, or anything that is given to me without a choice.
So if you ask me, I’m against patriotism in the general sense, but if we can qualify it to be of a JP-nature, then yeah im jpatriotic!
Update: I found a nice quote by Voltaire that I felt was perfectly fitted to this piece:
“It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.”
Dear All,
It’s just come to my attention that some/all the links to the videos that I posted are not working. I do apologize for that, I should have known the links would be dynamic.
Anyhow, if you’re still keen on watching them, then I’d suggest you visit Google Video and search for them there.
Search “Freedom or Fascism” for David Icke’s lecture (you’ll find part 1, part 2, and part 3)
And search “Zeitgeist The Movie” for The Zeitgeist
Again, very sorry.
