readings

I was a little amused when the librarian typed Fraud instead of Freud when I inquired about one of the things I returned but they did not register it.

I finished The Immoralist, finally, and am puzzled at what sort of actions that he did that was so immoral. (That is, compared to the current generation). He likes little strong boys, and finds delight in the wild. Resisting temptation to fall into individualism, that is to reject what is normal (deemed by society/religion), and to pursue one’s own desires. It is a wonderful book nevertheless, but I quite disagree with Menalque’s statement “the worst people are people with principles”. What if our principle is to not to abide by any principle? And what shall guide one’s course of direction in life? Intuition, pleasure, impulsion? Are we not better off grounded, to find some permanence, somewhere?

I guess in the 1920s everyone in the West still held on to some moral values, as opposed to today’s generation. The Great Gatsby is a fine example of that. That was why this book (The Immoralist) was famous back then. 

Then there was the question of Metaphysics. Man and Nature. The removal of the religious aspect from science. Truth (of nature) consists of things that can be seen by the eye, evidenced, experimented, quantified, measured, replicated. Concrete. Such it was that we only learn things without knowing the meaning behind it all. Is the pursuit of science itself the reason to study it? To what end, then? It is said that the ancient people studied the stars in order to understand their own nature, their own existence. What, who governed them? There you have all the Greek mythologies. Then came Aristotle with all his clean logic and they cast out the gods in order to understand the natural world as it is. 

When I enrolled into the Human Geography class, (and later dropped it), the lecturer said that the relationship between Man and Nature can be viewed either as science, an enemy, holistically, or by their usefulness. It was Descartes who introduced this kind of thinking (science), separation, making Man more superior than nature (I think, therefore I am). Hobbes saw nature as an uncivilised, harsh, untamed thing, and aligns nature with the female (must be possessed, taken control of). John Locke perceived nature as a resource, where man can rightfully claim nature and use it to his will. Finally, holistically, where there is exists no separation between two entities, one integrates,feels,  ‘understands’ each other, as advocated by the religions.

It is important to re-instill purpose to science. Are we to advocate ourselves, to put ourselves at the center of everything, or are we to have some sort of ground, to understand and use science?

This morning waking up I looked around A’s desk and found Yasmin Mogahed’s book. I fell upon the verse that in the end, everything else desists and only Allah endures.