ibn Harm

Author: harmenscholte

  • On hope

    Todays study will go into a phenomenon that is increasingly getting the attention of college professors viz. hope. Hope is a non-trivial topic to discuss since it relates to people’s expectations or ambitions and it is used in religious contexts.

    Approaching hope from the perspectives of religious non-controllable players it follows that hope is a state of wellbeing as expressed through a linear interaction between the anima and the necessary being.

    I.e. one can imagine attitudes of people who deny the existence of the necessary being as being miserable in their rejection of both logic and the imaginalis mundis. Hope in this worldview seems no different from states vis-a-vis time.

    Denying the existence of the necessary being would be as denying the existence of time however denying hope seems to deny the existence of improvement alltogether.

  • On consciousness #2

    Perhaps we should say that an inquiry into ones direct consciousness is psychology while فكرة من نفسة هو فلسافا للمومِنين إن شاء اللة

    هو شىء غير

    الحمد اللة الّذى خلقة و غفرة

    يااللة

  • Short thought on the topic of consciousness

    The topic of consciousness seems to be the topic that distinguishes arm-chair philosophers from maintained professionals. This is the case because most humans can articulate what is in their mind. This makes philosophy simultaneously the every-man discipline and the discipline that punishes every perceived weakness of logic. The later arises from academics maintaining the integrity of the graduate system while the former arises from people consuming alcohol.

  • On Boredom

    The line between tranquility and boredom can be thin at times. Perhaps boredom is a tranquil state that is judged negatively. But the judgement came from somewhere so it seems unwise to just discard it.

    In contemporary discourse-making boredom is framed to be a positive. It allows the mind to relax the argument goes and in these moments the mind sometimes finds solutions to problems that have been simmering in the background. There are also communities that deliberately reserve a day for doing nothing. In Germany a well-known concept is Ruhetag which states that Sunday is a day that should be free of work. In Judaism Saturday is reserved as a special day with Jews following the laws of Mozes choosing not to perform work or even travel or cook on Saturday.

    In religious tradition this command to reflect and admonition to meet family can hardly be said to be the same to the psychological state of boredom. So perhaps boredom is involuntary. Boredom is a feeling that arises involuntarily and is deemed negatively.

    Boredom can also be brilliant. When a college professor manages to induce a collective state of boredom-cum-peace when discussing classical works it is hard not to appreciate the virtuosity of form which said professor displays. Perhaps this is a personal experience since I recollect experiencing the same phenomenon when I was privileged to follow courses on calculus during my bachelors in business-information technology (yes it is really a pre-graduate program at University despite the name, see disclaimer on bottom)

    The sheer complexity of the topic there made your brain go lucid except for that of the brightest students. The mentioned example thus shows what people might be able to recollect from personal experience that states of boredom can also arise in community. We can at least be thankful that we are there to be able to experience the state at all. For if this state is compared to the state of navigating busy traffic on the road while driving it seems that the state of nothingness which can be so tedious sometimes might not be so bad after all.

    Ya Allah keep us safe in our travels please.

    Disclaimer

    The program was perfectly acceptable however the name just makes one associate with ather than a full-fletched academic program.

  • On Arrogance

    What psychological conditions have to be present in a society for a people to become arrogant? This study will use the definition of arrogance as “unearned confidence.”

    First it seems that bluffing should be rewarded i.e. presentation has to become higher valued than experience. For if this is the case presentation will over time come to dominate over wisdom. If wisdom is lost what remains is inaptitude. Given that confidence is relative viz. confidence in skill is measured in relation to other homo sapiens sapiens confidence in all probability follows the normal distribution (statistics and probability theory) which means that there will be individuals having confident characteristics while being ultimately without episteme. This satisfies the definition of arrogance as postulated supra.

    Another possible condition is the loss of knowledge which simultaneously can lead to arrogance since a general loss of knowledge makes people overconfident in their understanding. If there is a universal principle to which understanding can be measured a false confidence paired with imperfect understanding can likewise be classified as arrogance. However the hypothesis of there being a universal principle which acts as the universe’s ruler is not uniformly accepted. The first case thus seems to be a more fitting candidate to explain the presence of arrogance.

    These examples show why it is neccessary to keep an attitude of epistemic humility i.e. to keep oneself on the lookout for blind spots.

  • On the past

    Can we make meaningfull statements about the past? Has the past happened in ways that could not have been otherwise?

    If we answer the second affirmitavely statements like “the chances of event x happening is 1/n” are nonsensical since the event should happen with probability 1.

  • The World of Academia: Wednesday

    This article features spoilers for the series “Wednesday” seasons one and two.

    The series “Wednesday” on Netflix (2022-2025 with another season expected) stands on its own as outsider-story following the life of Wednesday Addams who is a student at a high-school in America. The world of Nevermore, which is the name of the boarding-school, is a world of outcasts. There are students who turn to werewolves, there are vampires, psychics and other supernaturals. One of the main themes the series touches is town-and-gown which describes interactions between the community of the University with the community of the city. Through the lens of freaks the students at Nevermore can be seen as egocentrical, antisocial and disruptive to social stability. Through the lens of Academia the citizens of the city are violent and unsupportive. Though both the talking heads (the mayor of the city and the rector of the school) of the communities try to bring the two groups together through outreach days and other shared activities. Through the instruments of Slurp the Zombie and the characters of Isaac Night, Pugsley Addams and Gomez Addams the series hints at the novel Frankenstein and at plagiarism. Night intends to extract the electrical powers of Pugsley and Gomez Addams in order to save his sister Francoise from an untimely death related to her condition as Hyde (one of the types of outcast). Night’s motivations are understandable but his choices seem misguided since he not once but twice decides to sacrifice the lives of outsiders to save his sister. In contrast Enid Sinclair decides to sacrifice herself to a fate of a hunted outcast by choosing to save Wednesday. The second season ends with Wednesday and her uncle preparing to find Enid in order to try to save her. The series then also transports to the house of Wednesday’s grandmother where her aunt lives and who seems drowned in her own mind. She seems particularly sensitive to her abilities as a psychic and to have a strong psychic connection to Wednesday. Thus the series ends in another Apocalyptic cliffhanger repeating the theme of Wednesday being connected to extratemporal monads. I am anxiously looking forward to the next season for the excellent investigations into the themes of prophecy and psychology.

  • Book Review: Brave New World

    The following article will discuss the novel Brave New World by A. Huxley. Spoilers will follow.

    This novel culminates in suicide, if you are dealing with suicidal thoughts call 113 (in the Netherlands). Please reach out to family or friends if you are dealing with continuous negative thoughts 🙂

    Brave New World is an interesting philosophical novel that considers the question of what constitutes a righteous society. Parallels can be drawn to Hobbes Leviathan which described human life as “short, nasty and brutish.” The society of Brave New World has solved these problems at the cost of imagination. Life is artificially kept sub-par since Art destabilizes communal life. The caste system which regulates the lives of all the inhabitants enforces social and functional predetermination which robs its civilians of freedom and beauty. Truth is also lost since negative emotions are suppressed by soma which is a psychoactive drug which is described as “Christianity and Alcohol without the negative side effects.” When a member of the society is deemed too sad by the other inhabitants they try to push the use of soma. A part I found particularly dystopian was when the character of Linda died in the mortuarium surrounded by music and television. Till the very last moment of her life Linda is a consumer. Not everything is gloom and doom however since the interaction between the protagonists and the World Controller Mustapha Mond in chapters 16 and 17 is brilliant. The main theme recurring throughout the book is that the inhabitants do not seem to be in control of their own body. The society of Brave New World teaches that everybody belongs to everybody else which means that even your own flesh is a communal commodity. Following this the institution of family is seen as primitive. When understood correctly Brave New World thus raises a powerful critique of totalitarianism. Unfortunately this did not prevent World War II which occurred after the release of the novel.

  • Cambridge English

    It is excruciating to write proper English also with modern media the voice of narration easily switches to American English.

    I am not sure how big of a deal this is but it appears that British English is the literary language used in education both elementary and higher.

    Now languages do change over time which is classified as the conservativity of languages. I think it shows good manners to be thankfull for this continuous refreshment of the oral and written languages

    It is possible to revert to Shakespearian speech if one wants to show proficiency but this can be interpreted as snobism

    The same way Arabic speakers will look estranged when one converses in Fusha Arabic one may get the same attitudes if she chooses to converse in pretentious English. The part about weird looks for spoken fusha in day-to-day interactions is something I accept prima facie since I have not experienced this myself but have heard it as hearsay from multiple sources.

    Choosing English over ones motherlanguage is a choice than can be made for multiple reasons and more often than not this is not a choice that is made uniformly for all further conversation

    For academic purposes however it is helping to keep writing in English since languages evolve so it is an ability that is lost over time

    Alas one can learn Arabic as well but it seems that English is the standard

    May God bless our souls and show us the light. May we be thankful for our blessings

  • Introduction to Religion

    As a working definition in this project i will describe God as “surpassing classification.”

    May we remain humble and thankfull and devote to truth.