ibn Harm

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  • 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.

  • On randomness

    Good afternoon

    Is the ordered “better” than the unordered? It can be described as a matter of taste. Continuing it can be argued that there is taste that is better than other tastes. Perhaps “better” is not the perfect word but it seems practical to argue that taste develops and that a developed taste is preferred.

    An example can be given by comparing the speech of babies vis-a-vis the speech of adults. A rational human being would prefer to listen to the speech of an adult over the speech of a baby. Of course the situation is slightly different when it concerns ones own child but nevertheless it is possible to imagine that a homo sapiens will become a little crazy is she only has interaction with developing speech patterns.

  • Olà #3

    I may choose to use “title #n” to indicate the n-th post in a selfcontained train of thought

    This seems cleaner than repeating “title (cont.)”

    Also wordpress might have solved the issue by using unique post ids in order to allow multiple posts with the same title but perhaps this is not how they operate

    I am not intending to test wordpress’ internal mechanisms by creating multiple posts with the same title

    We might discuss computer science history and economics as well

  • Olà cont. (some notes on conventions)

    Cont. will mean “continuation” as in the post is a continuation of the previous post

    At the bottom of the page it should be possible to go back to the previous post in the continuoued line.

    I added an icon to the site I chose the Greek “phi” over the symbol of the zero set.

    These litera will contain both male and female forms for neuter categories

  • Ola

    Welcome dear reader

    Let’s go on a journey together ; in this blog we will discuss mathematics as well as literature as well as poetry

    I might choose to leave conventional grammar at the door and I may choose to adhere to traditional grammar paradigms

    You as valued reader can leave comments notes improvisations and improvements

    Together we might be able to learn from each other