Everything good must come to an end

I am nearing the end of my almost three month vacation in Turkey. I am bittersweet about the whole affair. On one hand, I will miss the peace and the quiet, the abundance, the flavour of an array of fruits and veggies, and yet on the other hand, I long to return to the anonmity that living in a big-city Western home affords.

I wonder how my body will react to the onslaught of mechanical and metallic sounds. All these weeks, and months I have been shielded from the intrusion of these sorts of sounds. Right now, I am thinking of the shiny, lonely, vast spaces that airports are, devoid of human warmth, and surely, entirely stripped of nature. No colours, no textures, no tastes, no smells that serve to balm the nerves. Just a tide of electronic sounds, and a loneliness that one can only describe as gut-wrenching. Perhaps, not everyone feels that way. Some might be happy to be in collision course with humanity.

Speaking of loneliness, a famous Henry David Thoreau springs to mind: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

And the longer version goes a little something like this:

"Do not catalog me upon the "mass of men." For the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
They wait, and hope, and pray that someday they will..
Sadly that is about it. They wait, forgetting that nothing comes to those that wait. They hope, forgetting that hope requires action.
...And so they wait. Clenching their heavy hearts, overwhelmed by life. Suffering quietly. After all, noone must know."

Definition of delusion - APA

The American Psychiatric Asssociation defines "delusion" as the following:

"A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary."

As any clinician can attest, delusional patients often suffer from religious delusions.

Nature has me thinking...

about the oppressive nature of city living, how it deadens our senses, and impoverishes our soul.
How it turns ours our day-to-day living into day-to-day dying, into a relentless grind from which the the mind, the body and soul has no escape.

It makes me think deeper about our overall societal, economic, and cultural infrastructure that keep the masses oppressed with hopes of a better, shinier future when nothing could be further from the truth. How can societies as a whole have a better future without some degree of solidarity: recognition of the exploitative forces which then translates into collective action. If we don't allow suffering to speak in the first place, how can we even ever dream of achieving a better future?

It is as if everyone is sleepwalking into catastrophe while the corporate elites, and wall street oligarchs suck the blood out of everyone's livelihood. But we are ah-so-busy to even notice it, right?
Let's just keep lullying ourselves with our "weapons of mass distraction." Keep those ipods, cell phones, computers, tv sets plugged in people. It just must be all those shiny, bright screens that might be blinding us, after all.

How Science Can Determine Human Values: Sam Harris Book

I took a copy of Sam Harris' Book with me on vacation; I knew I'd need an oasis of rationality amidst the irrationality.
The main premise of the book is that science and science alone (that's right - get off your asses scientists!) can determine peaks and valleys of the human moral landscape. For the longest time, scientists have remained silent on how values guided by science, and not religion or hardened supersititious beliefs, can determine the well-being of earthlings.

In the end, religion has failed to maximize our well-being. Beliefs predicated upon irrational thought do not give rise to societies that are happy, confident, equal. Religious societies do not flourish as irrational thoughts/beliefs have real, irrational consequences. How we ought to behave morally falls within the purview of science.

Reading Sam Harris' new book, to quote Lawrence Krauss, has been akin to "drinking water from a cool stream on a hot summer day. He has the rare ability to frame arguments that are not only stimulating, they are downright nourishing."

Misery, Inc

Funny name for a subject heading, but I've had these words on my mind since venturing out of my apart hotel to visit the veggie/fruit bazaar of the week. I overheard a young British girl talking to her puppy in a sweet, tender tone, and it did strike me as unusual. I realized how accustomed I have become to the distant, belligrent behavior of Turkish people that her innocent behaviour struck me as out-of-this-world. It is definately a dog-eat-dog world here; altta kalanin cani ciksin misali. It would be down right naive to suggest that the US is not free of the dark side of humanity, but with money, one can easily isolate herself/himself from fellow beings. I've done so for the last three years. Otherwise, it is too much to bear as a sensitive melancholic.

I've had the word "discrimination" on my mind as well. Discrimination, based on class, gender and yes, skin color is well and alive. The vast majority of its people are unhappy. It doesn't take years of sociological training to observe that discriminaiton lends itself to misery. Inequality breeds unhappiness.

Part II

Here is another pearl of wisdom I've been longing to insert into my blog:

There does not seem to be a great deal of disparity between an uncivilized and civilized woman, but a world of difference between a civilized man versus uncivilized man. Uncivilized man is no more than a shaved ape.

I try to balance the excess of negativity about humans with the lightness the natural world offers. I swam in the deep waters of Akyaka, eyes wide open beneath the sea, observing friendly fish. I run in the forest, dodging sexually-repressed Turkish men between the ages of 18-25, taking note of turtles, lizards, different varieties of spiders, and large size insects with protruding eyes, and lips. No kidding, insects have faces! They are adorable. I should have studied the world of insects instead of concentrating my efforts on the study of human mammals.

I will see if I can post photos of forms of life in this Gulf at a later date. Animals are certainly worth it. But they are to be experienced directly with all our senses, not just to be read about.

Animals whom we have made our slaves, we do not consider our equal.
Charles Darwin

Turkey

I've been in Turkey for exactly a month now.
It has been an emotionall taxing process for me. The first three weeks I felt somewhat physically ill from culture shock. One of the first things one finds shocking is the level of gender inequality. Patriarchy in this country, just as any Islamic country, reigns supreme. Men, of all ages, roam the streets usually in groups of three, four in that boastful, confident taking charge of everything and anything in their way. Women are almost always with family, or with boyfriend/spouse. It is a rarity to encounter a strong, independent woman, alone, confident free. By all mannerisms, it is clear that women are socialized and conditioned into being passive, uncritical vessels for the needs of men- perhaps even the greatest cheerleaders of patriarchy.

Surely, had it not been for the Turkey's revolutionary leader Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s, and 30s, women's rights would have fared worse. I am not an expert on the issue at hand, but I'll venture to say that Turkey would have had precisely the same fate as its Middle Eastern neighbors.

I realize more than ever how fortunate we are as Western women to have the rights (and consequently respect/dignity that comes with rights - men in Turkey treat women with as much respect as the poor dogs in the street), but we certainly have a long more way to go in equality.
With the present state of affairs in the US, achieving true equality seems more fantasy than reality.

All is not bad. I am presently sitting atop a balcony overlooking mountains whilst my ears pick up the songs of crickects. There is a lone cat slowly making her way to the cement home across from the cobbled street. Tonight the chirping of crickets is interrupted by a distant, and yet loud enough, sound of drums which is typically played in Turkish villagean weddings. I can't rejoice; I am thinking of the limitations, obligations, responsibilties, oppression that await the bride.

Notes from Running on Emptiness John Zerzan

Why do modern societies have such a hard time producing adults capable of intimacy, work, enjoyment, and ethical living? Signs of damaged life are so prevalent. Chronic pain and depression, often linked and occasionally regarded as a single disorder, constitute an immense crises in postmodern life.

Freud predicted that the fullness of civilization would mean universal neurotic unhappiness.

Contemporary society exerts a ban on living in favour of its representations; images now in the saddle, riding life.

Symbolic culture inhibits human communication by blocking and otherwise suppressing channels of sensory awareness. An increasingly technological existence compels us to tune out most of what we could experience.

A "future primitive" is called for, where a living involvement with the world, and fluid intimate participation in nature will replace the thingified reign of symbolic civilisation.

1623 William Drummond, "what sweet contentments doth the soul enjoy by the senses. They are the gates and windows of its knowledge, the organs of its delight."

Emotional desolation comes from a severe restriction of the sensual.

Rainer Rilke: Now from America empty indifferent things are pouring across, sham things, dummy life. Meanwhile the whole natural world has become an object."

Tommy cried out in the Who's rock opera, "see me, feel me, touch me, heal me.."
The senses have come to be isolated and subdued.

Aristotle once declared, "each sense has its proper sphere." An alienated counter-world driven to estrangement by ever-greater division of labour, humbles one's own somatic sensations and fundamentally distracts from the basic rhythm's of one's life.

It is all about the environment

For weeks now, I've felt as though I've been constipated and constrained by the famished, noisy environment. The sky has refused to bestow upon us the 'blessings' of the winter, and now it seems it is gushing with a vengeance. When I discovered upon waking up, the smooth, silent falling flakes, I wanted to jump up and down jubilantly in the manner of a child.

Just as a famished, super technosized (perhaps I've invented a new word) environment can bring me down to my knees from intense pain and anguish, snow has the uncanny ability to placate my frazzled nerves. It is akin to shooting valium up my veins, only without the horrific side-effects. Snow washes away the dust of everyday living; the anguish of having to endure a mechanical, inorganic environs. By blanketing the unnatural world around me in powder white, it takes away decades of world-weariness and cynicism.

Simply put: I love the snow. I could spend an eternity in it. Canada, when will you claim as one of your own?