A couple of weeks ago I overheard some of my colleagues make fun of the language use of another colleague of mine who happens to be a native Tamil speaker, who had during one client call made a slip of the tongue saying avocado integration instead of another technology related term that sounds like avocado. Then this week he was assessing my language use and making fun of me for having made a few typos on a post I had made on social media, not knowing others had laughed at him behind his back. Then the design school children who take up the lower parts of our office building put together a typo-graphy exhibition, because some of them were born cleaver in that way. But what they failed to notice was the fact that I was overloaded, famined and had gone without proper sleep at that point for over a month. But that's not what this post is about, it's about the absurdity of assessing someone's worthiness to receive wealth or opportunities based solely on the externally accessible aspects of language use, worse yet the outright language based discrimination some of us have to deal with.
According to Wikipedia [1], a prominent linguist has captured the idea of language description as “ideologies and structures which are used to legitimize, effectuate, and reproduce unequal divisions of power and resources (both material and non-material) between groups which are defined on the basis of language”. As a post european colony with deep roots of cultural imperialism, and a history of corruption Sri Lanka is yet to flush out the elitist bigots and the ignorant masses they manipulate using beliefs, culture and traditions to enforce language discrimination.
It is public knowledge that a decade ago, I wished to migrate out of Sri Lanka because of the financial inequality and perceived ideological mismatch between me and my country. But all of it depended on me getting a superior English score on IELTS [2], which time after time I missed by the smallest margins. Unbeknownst to me the people of the country had already decided I was not worthy of such an opportunity (as discussed in my post on the brain drain [3]) and absurdly when I had not given up on getting that golden IELTS score, I went through what felt like an unending period of poor sleep with a few sleepless nights preceding the test that rendered me barely capable of writing my own name down on the IELTS paper or catching a single word being said during the listening test, and what resulted was my 7.5 band score dropping to a 3! I comprehend that experience as Albert Camus perceived the guilt and fate of Meursault in his work “The Outsider”, though I had not read the book at the time [4]. So over the decade I worked on my physical and mental endurance, autonomy of my body, thought and soul, so that whenever I had to perform for assessment (which I rarely consented to) I would fare better, and I did continue to get better to the annoyance of some. And this year I sat for the IELTS again, carrying weeks worth of poor sleep and next to no sleep a couple of days before the exam and managed to score a 7.5, sadly like the wild coyote that never manages to catch the roadrunner, I missed my chance of eligibility for a skilled migration by 0.5. But I was proud of my achievement, in a country where politicians fall asleep during parliamentary sessions on public television and incoherently decide the fate of our country, I was able to keep my brain with me.
Do you think you can do better if one half of society was hanging on every word that leaves your mouth and the other half is made to believe your barking mad? Is it rational to look at the number of occurrences of error instead of the percentage of error and the quantity of content produced? Better yet, how can you compare a 27 year old with a 37 year old? Or how can you compare the language use of someone who's sober and has autonomy with someone who's moved by the spirit? Shouldn't you value how much control someone has when they are going against societies will and opinion? If agency and autonomy were the real criteria of assessment, should be use a quantitative instrument developed through neuroethics to measure the criteria instead of using a language test?
At the heart of the problem is how the majority of us are fooled by or accept superficial assessments done in the name of distributive justice. You compare two engineers without mentioning one is 27 and the other is 37. You compare leadership skills of two engineers by the number or projects they're leading instead of looking at the level of involvement or the complexity of the projects. You compare two individuals on who is more moral without mentioning one was forced into doing immoral acts through social force and financial hardship, while the other one was sheltered by society and wealth.
When you assess individuals this way on paper it might look like justice was served, but what we have truly done is sinned against the one who received injustice. If the distributive justice system in Sri Lanka is broken, why would anyone stay? Why would anyone try to become better or make their communities better? If there is no justice, why would the bus conductor bake inside a metal tin can whole day without resorting to stealing from the weak man who's inside the mercedes? The perception of justice keeps the social classes in place! And hustice is the language of the reality, be it within us or outside us.
Why would we not have to a answer to the countless multitudes who we have deniedthe rightful place at the rightful time. Why would we think we won't pay for using the beliefs, culture and traditions of people to enforce language discrimination when those people have not given their concent for the real reasons why they are being used for the enforcement of a type of discrimination?
A word of warning. I'm not a fitness instructor, physician, a dietician, or a psychologist, so please don't blindly follow my lifestyle choices or ideologies.
I have been fasting for many years and my body and mind has gotten used to it. I do it mainly to control my sugar levels during the day which I need to keep under control to mitigate certain risks that run in my family. Please consult professionals if you're considering fasting and be kind to your body.
Sleep is extremely important and is the cornerstone of a good life. If money was not a concern I would build my life around sleep health, you should too. If you are having trouble sleeping, please consult a doctor, and use empirically and qualified experience backed resources if your thinking of self medicating. I recommend Peter Attia's Outlive [1] as a good starting point on the importance of sleep health on living a good life and an overview of remedies that are out there, but please make up your own mind.
There's a good chance my life goals, fitness goals and the constraints under which I live are different from yours, so once you know what you want from life, please sit down with a qualified instructor and see how you can build a sustainable fitness routine that will support your goals. Please don't blindly immitate me and get hurt.
Finally, please make up your own mind on any piece of advice, or idea you might come across in my content. For one you might have misunderstood something I've said, or as we are all in our individual journeys, which makes most sense to us and not others looking in from outside, blindly following advice that worked for me might not have the same outcomes in your life.
Keep improving on yourself, and don't forget to be kind to yourself.
You would think Sri Lanka has been decolonized, but the sad reality is you just can't decolonize a country without giving the majority of people human rights or financial safety. Maybe that's why Sri Lanka is yet to plug its brain drain. Especially the software engineers who have left the country in record numbers leaving a humiliating gap in talent in the middle.
It's as if software engineers graduate from our government campuses and the top tier private institutes, gain three or four years of experience and disappear to developed countries. Those who stay around either need to be lucky enough to find themselves in the right company working on the right project so that their salaries may be adjusted to compensate for what they perceive they lose out by looking at what their peers who migrated to developed countries have gained. Or they need to shamelessly pack up their accolades and wealth they earned through what passes as “distributive justice” in our country and migrate in their 40s. Then there are those who get opportunities like the US H1B employer sponsored visa and get to go work abroad and eventually settle down. This post is about this category of migrants.
Engineers who get employer sponsored visas are more often than not are older and come from lower class or lower middle class backgrounds and in most cases don't have another way of providing a better life for themselves and their families. Unlike skilled migration pathways a lot depends on the people of the local companies that they work for in getting them the visa. And as absurd as it may sound to the clueless, at times entire countries play a part in evaluating the worthiness and readiness of potential migrantants. Sadly this is all done through human rights violations, abuse and injustice. I was someone who was evaluated this way and though I am yet to receive an opportunity to migrate, or compensation for damages I am to this day abused and my human rights are violated.
The true purpose of such country wide evaluation of a potential employer sponsored migrant is outside the boundaries of this post. But the rationale that is sold to the public is, since such opportunities lead to great riches and comfort (by lower class and lower middle class Sri Lankan standards) they get to decide. And since the potential migrants will be released into the west, where the world works according to Christianity and western philosophy of which the closest they can get to understanding a Sri Lankan is through a philosophy like absurdism, which is not a day to day reality the average Sri Lanka software engineer can handle. So the country gets convinced the potential migrants needs to be tested under similar absurdist conditions to see if they can handle it, and some of the more vindictive purist lower class Buddhist (and upper class elitists, if you're really lucky like me) feel the migrants have suffered enough for their past sins and that they have have become better people. Finally there are also those who need some assurance from the potential migrants that they can hold over them in case they hit it big in the west.
I am of the opinion that the Sri Lankan society can be understood by taking Plato's republic as an analogy and that each class is in place because of palpable stresses like financial burdens and stresses that are not so easily seen by the eye “the requirement given supernatural sanctions”. These sanctions make sense to each class and a select few from each class and enforcers that operate across the classes uphold a part of this supernatural sanction. Most potential migrants become aware of this really (to varying degrees) only once they become the subject to these enforcers and the select few from each class.
I have been the subject of such country wide testing, scrutiny and human right abuse that has crossed the boundary from mental harm to physical harm (a decade and counting) I've seen demographic shifts in the assessors and the stereotype of the ideal migrant change.
I get provoked and tested on a daily basis, at work, at the supermarket and the train station on the payment and on the bus. Each instance of abuse justified with the claim of greater good to society and the promise of future opportunities for me (again, a decade and counting). When I walk on the road, people 15 years younger than me hear my narrative and try to speak over me as if I am not my own person. They comment about my day which they hear from assessors who are not qualified to assess work and work is not like a garment factory worker's work that can be quantified and assessed. When I go to the supermarket then young man at the cashier says “Thawa tikkak powala thamai muwa yawan onne” because I had a glass of wine after a few months because his classes' supernatural sanctions teach him those who drink are inferior. Over the past two years the elites have made the situation so uncomfortable for everyone involved except themselves that the lower class and the lower middle class who need to dance to their whims so that they can hold on to their illusion that I have started to hear people who're too many to be bought over openly question their sanity for dragging this for as long as it has.
Like in fable the Emperor’s New Clothes, I walk naked each day for the whole world to see, but unlike the popular idea about the emperor, I was not fooled, I pitied you and you were fooled over and over by my act of ignorance so that you may have dignity in your belief that is just a shadow on a cave wall to me.
My diet and workout habits have gotten attention from my coworkers and friends I thought I’d publish a quick official Q&A (if you're bothered to know, but please consult qualified and experienced professionals if you need advice on fitness or nutrition)
Do I fast?
Yes. I have been following intermittent fasting for the past 7 or 8 years. First it was hard, then my body got used to it. After a few years the benefits of the 16:8 fast plateaued and I experimented with longer fasts. I am not religious about fasting. I would say I have fasted correctly about 80% of the time, if my body is feeling weak or I have a demanding day(s) ahead I break the fast. I have also broken my fast on vacations.
Am I a vegetarian?
I am currently an ovo vegetarian. I grew up in a relatively conservative Buddhist family, we didn't eat a lot of meat or eat out. But in my late teens I became more independent and started eating out and ate a lot of meat. Then as I became more interested in fitness in my late twenties I tried to eat better. Around 3 years ago I stopped eating meat. I don't think I am superior because I don't eat meat.
Do I smoke?
I smoked in my twenties, but I stopped.
Do I drink?
I drank in my twenties, but I lost interest. I don't think drinking is categorically wrong if you can handle yourself and you are not a public figure by consent (more to think here). I don't mind a glass of wine every now and then (but I can't justify the cost of buying a bottle right now).
Do I sleep?
I do sleep, but like a growing number of adults in my age group I do carry a sleep debt and there are nights when I just can't get a night of sleep. I’m not convinced of medication that promises sleep, but I have taken an over the counter melatonin supplement and magnesium. ( I am not convinced these help either)
What do I do when I can't get a good night's sleep?
Over the years I have gotten better at proactively managing my sleep debt. I have gotten better at meditating in a sleeping position (no, I can't meditate an entire night away). Sometimes I read fiction using a book light.
I have also gotten better at operating with a sleep debt by educating myself on the topic and improving my faculties, through meditation, fitness and diet and other lifestyle choices. I encourage others to value their sleep and I proactively take sick leaves when my sleep debt threshold has been surpassed.
How do I meditate?
I do a version of Vipassana meditation where I try to maintain my complete awareness on bodily sensations at will. If you are doing it right you should be able to fool a sleep tracker on an inexpensive fitness band.
How do I workout?
Early on, I realized being fit has more to do with nutrition than exercise. So I educated myself as best I could and found a few over the counter supplements and became smarter with my diet.
During the first 5 or so years I focused mainly on targeted resistance training sessions 3 or 4 times a week. But as my life got busier (and harder) I changed my resistance training approach to make it more sustainable and increase the return on my investment by lifting lighter, but more consistently and focusing on a few vanity muscles. Of late I have got a pull up bar fixed in my room and started doing more cardio by rucking and spinning.
WARNING! This post may contain opinions or ideas that could be perceived as offensive to some individuals. The intention is not to cause harm or discomfort. If you feel that you may be offended or uncomfortable with differing religious opinions, I kindly advise you to refrain from reading further.
This post is meant to be read in the context of some of the other posts I have published on this blog [7][8] and I may cover some of the ideas in this post in more detail based on the availability of time.
The cause of discrimination and can it be justified as a form of deterrence
At the heart of discrimination is our sense of deservingness of another of some resource we have authority over. So like many other social conflicts, discrimination is a matter of distributive justice. Distribution of wealth, power or opportunity.
In the past, successful civilizations ruled through autocracy and through the division of the population into classes which self regulated access to resources and opportunity. Deviants to social norms may have been deterred through non-subtle discrimination and subtle discrimination, to be made into public examples (if greek myths and such are taken to have more merit than bed-time stories). The discrimination an ancient man might have faced was certainly far worse (on average) than what we may face in modern times. Access to knowledge on philosophical inquiries into morality and the nature of reality were trapped in silos in various civilizations across time and land in the hands of the great philosophers of the times. So the danger posed by such knowledge would have not been a great concern.
Over the past millennia we have made great progress towards bringing many forms of discrimination to light where we have tackled them them through social change and laws. It is much harder now to discriminate someone based on gender, race, religion or level of nationalism. But we still allow subtle discrimination .
We may use subtle discrimination as a form of deterrence to regulate our communities and at times even our countries. Greek myths (and such) suggests how communities may have used such subtle means to tackle social issues, dissent against social norms and authority. For example, the myths where Athena ties Tiresias for seeing her naked and Artemis turning Siproites into a woman for seeking her naked can be interpreted as symbols of how poverty and shame based denial of reproductive success may have been used as punishment against non conformance to social norms. We still see synonymous situations to such myths in some modern day communities.The problem with such subtle forms of deterrence is its lack of transparency and objectivity with regards to the guilt of the accused. Further, the debate on moral relativism makes the use of this form of punishment even more questionable . This is why when such subtle forms of discrimination against a group or an individual gain country wide or global support that it turns into something that harms all humanity. I am of the opinion that subtle discrimination should not reach the point of bodily harm, dehumanization, or denial of reproductive success or be used to prevent fair access to wealth and opportunity.
What is autonomy?
We usually use the noun “autonomy” in the context of care for differently abled people or the elderly but this concept has been pondered by many philosophers (from Plato to Kant) as a general human characteristic. It conveys the degree of agency we have over our own minds, bodies and, and lives. To think this concept through analogies, we may be able to understand how an Olympic gymnast has more control over his body than the average abled man, we may also understand how the average abled man has more control over his body than an elderly man using a walker. This is autonomy over the body. We may be able to understand how Sam Harris (a popular western advocate of meditation) has more control over his own mind under the influence of alcohol than an illiterate man who has been consuming alcohol all his life. This is autonomy over the mind.
Autonomy over life must be conceptualized as two distinct parts. The first part easy to observe and comprehend, we may be able to understand how a secretive billionaire has more control over his life choices than an outcast from a lower socio economic background from an undeveloped country.
To understand the second part autonomy over life, we may consider ideas found in religion and philosophy. Both Plato and Aristotle believed in a God and gods. Plato envisioned solving the psychological issue of man and the moral requirement by creating classes of men through the myth of the metals and enforcing the classes with supernatural sanctions. With the highest honors bestowed upon philosophers [1]. Aristotle having bread a Philosopher in this context, saw gods as powerful but pitiful creations to whom the world moves as a total motive of the operations of the world. Much like a gift of a golden necklace moves the heart of the lover [2]. He envisioned the gods as pitiful creations as the gods were seen as objects as opposed to a living things and as they were restrained in their actions. By the time the western civilization had progressed to the time of Francis Bacon, these philosophical concepts had been assimilated into catholicism and possibly into protestant forms of Christianity. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor is a fictional tale of such a god being allowed to be made in the 16th century era and how it could not be allowed at the time because of the narrative of the church.
Bacon being credited by some as the father of modern science, was able to continue the western pursuits of philosophical inquiry into the nature of reality in a secular manner. Becon writes “For a while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go no further, but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to providence and deity” [3]. While his reference to Plato’s allegory of the cave is an acknowledgment to the explainability of empirical truths deliverable by science, his choice to justify the need of providence and deity as a means of explanation are contradictory to the analogy that accompany the Idol of the Theatre, one of four idols he went out to identify as hindrances to the pursuit of western philosophical progress. Further, though he is considered a pioneer of science he had repeatedly renounced atheism, such as when he wrote “I rather believe all the fables of legend, the Talmud.. than that this universal frame is without a mind” or “a little philosophy inclineth a man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth man’s minds about to religion”. (the use of the noun philosophy must be put in context of his time). Taking into consideration the influence of classical greek philosophy, his Christian upbringing, and other incidents that took place in his time, I am of the opinion that he was able to comprehend the perspective Aristotle’s gods would have had as they existed among mere men. How such gods caused events around them and how the world to them was at times a metaphor reacting their actions. He may have tried to overtly communicate this insight in the analogy he used in the Idols of the Theatre. I believe if my claim is valid, his intentions were well meaning as not everyone who might have godly insights into reality could handle it, let alone discern insights from the noise or have the moral maturity to not cause harm. This may be why he held the opinion that philosophy should be considered a separate way of expressing and comprehending reality from art and science. That philosophy should direct the course of science.
This idea of causal gods, has some resemblance to the concept of providence and the eastern concept of Karma. A humanist may even speculative if they are conceptualizing the same phenomena at different degrees of accuracy or to cater to social preferences and needs. This how we can understand the second part of autonomy over life using western philosophy.
What is autonomy based discrimination?
Autonomy based discrimination is when someone is discriminated against for having more than the average amount of autonomy over mind or life or seeming to have to have less than the expected amount of autonomy over mind.
Lets first discuss the the side of this spectrum most of us are aware about and want to avoid. Most of us would agree we want to avoid enabling someone like ‘Meursault’, the protagonist of Albert Camus’s the outsider [8]. An able bodied man who’s autonomy over mind may have been compromised who finds himself having committed a murder. Camus’s absurd philosophical inquiry asks us if it is moral to allow the legal system to allow such man the death penalty? And if we are all partially at fault if we fail to comprehend the cause is possible lack of autonomy over mind. I am inclined to believe Camus being a renowned philosopher, was aware of Plato’s view on what distinguishes a man from a beast is his ability to develop the faculties that allows him to keep the beast at bay and exercise it in a civil manner.
But what about the other end of the spectrum? Hypothesize a world where we are living among gods and our actions and even the very world moves for them. Would it be fair to up root our lives, our beliefs, give up on our dignity and possessions for such gods? Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” looks at this problem from the perspective of the 16th century church. The author conveys why the church would not have allowed such a god to have lived among us as his existence and acceptance would disprove the authority of the church over man. Since the western enlightenment, some of the classical greek philosophical meta-physical explanations that were assimilated into Christianity, have been rediscovered by secular philosophers. But unlike with the church, since there is no central body to regulate access to such information and discourage the misuse, some ideas found in philosophy and speculative fiction (such as the possible hidden meaning in Bacons Idol of the Theatre) are being used in the modern capitalistic system for profit making motives. This may not be categorically wrong, but it can lead to disastrous outcomes (I will cover one such outcome in this post).
One of the philosophical inquiries of Camus’s homage to the greek myth “The Myth of Sisyphus”[6], is the motivation of such a god to keep on living, fighting against the restraints of the rulers of society enforced by classes of people divided by superstitions given supernatural sanctions (myth of the metals). The lowest classes may enforce the restrains out of pure greed or ignorance. The middle classes being more religiously and culturally affluent, require supernatural sanctions and depending on the level of access they have to their version of the sacred, they are given justification on the condemnation that must befall on Sisyphus. The ones that avoid the philosophical death (as Camus had put it), may go onto become the rules, who may end up justifying the restraints using egalitarian arguments, fear or through supernatural sanctions others have given to their new age beliefs. Speculative fiction such as Philip K. Dicks Minority report, Blade Runner and even some allusionary ideas found in Douglas Adams Dirk Gently series may give insights into some of the means of these sanctions and the motives of such a hypothetical ruling class with regards to portraying a Sisyphus as a Meursault.
The moral danger of autonomy based discrimination
To Plato morality is the effective harmony of the whole [1] and one motive of philosophy is to better understand this whole. As Bacon writes “Nature can’t be commanded, except by being obeyed.”[5] And this is what humans have done over the millennia through beliefs, religion, philosophy and science. Understanding nature and using it in ways that are of benefit to them. Such as discerning the flow of things through the idols of the theater and aligning their lives and businesses with what they have discerned. For example, we see how some companies use subtle means to assist employees who are on the cusp of personal revolutions to have these revolutions, and in turn they profit through the alignment they have made with the natural phenomena behind such situations. But the motivation of the company and the employee needs to be genuine. Both individuals who pretend for their benefit and or insincere or ignorant well wishers who use such individuals for short term profit do so at moral danger to themselves and at the expense of compromising their own autonomy, as nature has its own plans that we may not stray too far away from.
The danger of autonomy based discrimination to others is in the way it is enforced when the discrimination is done at the level of a country or globally. As discussed earlier on in this post, to gain support to discriminate an individual or a group at a systemic level of a country or globally, a social system like the “myth of metals” must be used, and using such a system across a morally relativistic landscape can lead to large number of individuals and groups being pushing into committing immoral acts. Plato has expressed that we are member of each other and as such we carry a moral requirement.[1] This idea of the moral requirement and the repercussions of not meeting it is learned by followers of Abrahamic religions. But such lessons are harder for followers of some forms of Buddhism to learn. The situation is even worse amongst followers of new age religions and beliefs. When members of such belief systems are used to discriminate against an individual or a group, due to their blindness of the eye (allegory of the cave) they are unintentionally failing to uphold the moral requirement and they bring repercussions on themselves and others.
In closing, Profiting off of Sisyphus’s is unsustainable in modern times and we must walk away as suggested by Ursula K Le Guin’s novel “The ones who walk away from Omelas” if we are powerless to change the situations and let the systemic imbalances made by such abuses bring about retribution on those who are at guilt. And in turn modern day Sisyphus’s may educate themselves, from martyrs of the past like Spinoza and possibly Camus, and modern institutions of human flourishing to carve out fulfilling lives among mere mortals.
[1] - The republic as interpreted by Will Durant in The Story of Philosophy.
[2] - Metaphysics as interpreted by Will Durant in The Story of Philosophy.
[3] - Of Atheism as interpreted by Will Durant in The Story of Philosophy.
[4] - New Organon as interpreted by Will Durant in The Story of Philosophy.
A couple of years ago I came to the personal conclusion that human rights such as the rights to privacy are fundamental for an individual to thrive. But at the same time, in order for a state to function smoothly and perform its highest function of making citizens, some encroachments of privacy must be allowed.
However, there may be exceptions to the states need for encroachment, where in the act of making citizens, due to limitations of resources or errors in decision making by authorities, harm may fall on the societies the state is bound to protect through the unconcensual breach of privacy it may conduct on individuals. In such situations, it is the moral responsibility of the individuals in question to do what they can to improve their personal privacy.
Having come to the personal conclusion that it is far too easy to violate and abuse individual privacy in a country like Sri Lanka, and due to my personal academic interests, it would be irresponsible of me to take actions that are available for me to improve my online privacy (as online privacy is an important facet of individual privacy for me). To this end I have decided to use a VPN and improve on the security of my home tech stack.
The idea (until a better solution is found) is to make the VPN and any possible back doors built into the key software be the weak link, trusting anyone who might have access to my content would be responsible with it (e.g. 13 eyes). As the intention is to prevent abuse of my personal privacy to harm me and not allow the possibility of my personal content to unconsensually and indirectly harm others.
WARNING!!! This post may contain opinions or ideas that could be perceived as offensive to some individuals. The intention is not to cause harm or discomfort. If you feel that you may be offended or uncomfortable with differing religious opinions, I kindly advise you to refrain from reading further.
I am of the opinion that every mature individual should make up their own minds on important social issues and express them so that if anyone cares to know about them they can. But there may be some social issues where sharing your opinion may add noise to a topic that may have been discussed at length. However, if you are unfortunate enough to find yourself in a situation where you have no other alternative but to share your opinion as a definitive source, then sharing it in a kind manner can be helpful.
1. I’m of opinion that religions are created but they are necessary
I have personally come to the conclusion that reality needs creation to explain itself. But religions like Christianity and Buddhism are human constructs that were required to explain certain phenomena in a way that secured the moral requirements of the times they were thought of. Plato may have shared the same sentiment as in the Republic, it is claimed that religions are required to give the moral requirements of a community divine authority. If Plato and Aristotle had heard of the jews exodus out of Egypt and the birth of the 10 commandments, I’m of the opinion that they would say the jewish race, and it's god needed those 10 commandments to thrive in those times.
I’m of the opinion that as different as religions like Buddhism and Christianity may appear on the surface and the stark differences in their explanations of reality, the phenomena that are discussed operate under the same principles in one reality that accommodates them. It’s just that the moral requirement of the jews at the time of the 10 commandments was different from the moral requirement of the Buddha and his followers at the time the religion was thought of.
2. I’m of the opinion that Christianity was a great achievement in human history
I'm of the opinion that Christianity as we know it today was not birthed 2000 years ago but that it gradually evolved, and assimilated over the last 1000 years. As far as religions go, it has one of the lowest barriers of entry, which in my opinion is a good thing. But the growth of the practitioner depends greatly on their own comprehension of the texts, personal revelations, the maturity of the denomination and the leaders whom they belong to.
3. I’m of the opinion that fundamental versions of religions are obsolete
As much as the 10 commandments were needed to keep the jewish community functioning smoothly all those thousand years ago, they are obsolete now. I’m of the opinion that if we had access to those times, and we had investigated the moral requirements of those tribes we might have come up with similar laws and explanations . Then as the religion grew, for the same reasons Plato proposed the need for a governing class (The guardians), the justifications of such commandments and explanations of phenomena were needed to be kept away from the ruling class. This separation helped the religion and its followers to thrive.
Over the past 1000 years the society has radically changed in ways the religions can’t explain without altering the texts which can’t be done in our connected, digital world without drawing unwanted attention. So due to shortcomings of the religious community leaders, more and more of our youth lose hope in religion and fail to find alternatives elsewhere.
4. I'm of the opinion that discrimination and subjugation of people based on religion is wrong.
I have witnessed outdated religious laws being used to exclude individuals and groups. How such laws are used to subjugate and keep individuals captive by deeming them guilty and deserving of punishment (specially converts and the curious). Or justifying discrimination based on non membership. I am of the opinion that it is the religious fundamentalist who discriminate against others in such blatantly obvious ways, and that non fundamentalist religious practitioners, at least for the sake of financial motives, understand how to get along with non members of their religion and their own outcasts. As such they pay the way for a better future.
5. I’m of the opinion that some of us have a moral responsibility towards practitioners of fundamental versions of religions
I have personally known fundamentalist Buddhist in the past whose intentions were misguided and pushed nationalistic agendas in the gais of religious indignation. I don’t personally know any western christian fundamentalists, but through movies I’ve seen I can empathize with individuals who care for fundamentalist Christians who are not Christians in the general sense of the term. You can understand how some of these non-fundamentalists, especially those who are more humanistic and are educated, are looking out for the fundamentalist even when at times it seems they’re out to bite the hand that feeds.
I am of the opinion that if you find you are morally responsible for a religious fundamentalist, you still need to find a way to treat them with respect and dignity. Understand how much you are willing to compromise for that individual and understand your personal limits of compromise. You should not push your beliefs on the individual. It may genuinely be a case where the individual in question is not cognitively capable of changing their beliefs or be able to cope with the complexities or responsibilities of a different belief system. Or they may be socially or financially constrained. In such a situation most would agree an individual that follows the 10 commandments is still more favorable to an animal.
What if an individual tries pushing the 10 commandments on you? Claiming according to the first command he must object to your corrupt definition of God? What if he misunderstands your attempts to avoid discussing the matter with them out of your sense of moral responsibility? These are questions I myself have thought about at dept and if I have concluded the person who is asking me the question is not capable of handling the answer, then it would be immoral for me to answer it honestly and completely. If there was no other alternative, I would tell them of the Allegory of the cave[1]. The prisoners who see the shadows are right to a degree when they make conclusions about reality based on the shadows they see on the walls. The prisoner who breaks his chains and crawls out of the cave would see the objects that casted the shadows inside the cave. The conclusions he makes on reality based on these objects would be even closer to an objective reality than those made by the prisoners who are still chained inside. But this prisoner might understand that those truths other prisoners hold are a subset of his own truths and that they are constricted by the parameters of the cave. This realization should humble him to think that even his truths might be a subset of someone else’s truths. He would realize that the prisoner who is still inside the cave is not completely at fault for not understanding his truths.
I am of the opinion that if the worst comes to worse, you do your best to do justice by fundamentalist, cut ties (if this is an option) and move on yourself.
So in closing, At 37 years of age, I am not religious, I believe religions can be a force for good so I am tolerant of them when they are not used as an excuse for abuse or discriminate.
WARNING!!! This post may contain opinions or ideas that could be perceived as offensive to some individuals. The intention is not to cause harm or discomfort. If you feel that you may be offended or uncomfortable with differing religious opinions, I kindly advise you to refrain from reading further.
At 37 years of age, I hold the view that reality constitutes creation and that most people if they are not being forced in some way would at least confess to agonism. Including Camus if you take the translation of Sandra Smith to be loyal to the original and that Camus meant to capitalize and uncapitalize the noun God in the final act between the Christian priest and Meursault.
I found 'The Outsider' extremely interesting and well written. It was short and to the point. I enjoy it when authors take a philosophical position or a question and use a story to investigate it and draw conclusions. This is probably one of the best books I have read.
As I see it the main concept being investigated in this story is moral responsibility and justice.
Salamano and his dog can be a metaphor that investigates how we can fail to comprehend our commitment when we become morally responsible for another. Camus ties Salamanos narrative masterfully with that of Raymonds in the early parts of the story.
Meursault is the protagonist of the story. He is a young man with low affect, who seems disillusioned by society but showed an interest in life till his end. There are many references to sleep deprivation in Meursault’s narrative. Even at the point where he commits murder Camus brings this point to readers' minds. We learn that he has lost affect possibly since an incident in his youth where he was forced to abandon his educational pursuits. Although it is also a possibility that Meursault was born with low affect as this is not uncommon in some eastern cultures. Regardless of the cause of his affliction, Camus implies that Meursault is unable to rationally manage himself, his emotions and his actions when he is in the diminished capacity brought on by sleep deprivation and is at times portrayed as an observer of his own life. Camus asks the reader if it's moral to hold such a man at guilt?
Camus fictionaly implies external agency for the acts and situations that brings Meursault to commit murder. He nudges the reader to think Salamano who is likely an elderly ostracized Muslim, the Christian Priest and the Judge who offers him pardon if he repents his sins can understand the cause of his affliction and influence of external agency using their belief systems.
Camus asks the reader how just can a justice system be when the decision of guilt depends on the beliefs of those who decide on behalf of the accused? I wonder how many of our lawyers, juries and judges have read this book or agree with its message.
Having read this book, I can understand why in 1942 Camus may have thought life was meaningless and absurd, but if he had lived to our days, inlight of the advances we have made in understanding the human experience, I believe he would have been intelligent enough to have seen enough meaning behind the mess. Too bad automobile safety was not what it is now back then and he was born in a terbulent time in his country.
