Proverbial myth 3: Great minds think alike

Before saying anything, let read this  conversation between two great minds of golden time.... This conversation is taken from "Lives of the Ancient Philosophers"..........

Alexander, passing through Corinth, had a curiosity to see Diogenes, who happened to be there at the time: he found him basking in the sun in the grove of Craneum, where he was mending his tub. 


"I am," said he to him, "the great king Alexander." 


"And I," replied the philosopher, "am the dog Diogenes."


"Are you not afraid of me?" continued Alexander. 


"Are you good or bad?" asked Diogenes.


"Good," rejoined Alexander. 


"And who need be afraid of one that is good?" answered Diogenes.


Alexander admired the penetration and freedom of Diogenes; and after some conversation, he said to him, "I see, Diogenes, that you are in want of many things, and I shall be happy to serve you; ask of me what you will." 


"Retire, then, a little to one side," replied Diogenes, "you are depriving me of the sun."


It is no wonder that Alexander stood astonished at seeing a man so completely above every human concern. 


"Which of the two is richest," continued Diogenes: "he who is content with his cloak and his bag, or he for whom a whole kingdom does not suffice, and who is daily exposing himself to a thousand dangers in order to extend it?"


The courtiers of the king were indignant that so great a monarch should thus honor such a dog as Diogenes, who did not even rise from his place. Alexander perceived it, and, turning about to them, said, "Were I not Alexander, I should wish to be Diogenes."

This legendary conversation is between two great minds looking for different goals.... so you might be thinking that if both were following same goals with similar means they would definitely thinking similar....

Well,  this is unlikely... In previous century two great minds of Physics, Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg disagreed over principle of uncertainty and Einstein spent from 1927 on till his death struggling to refute the theory but failed.... Though these two great minds were using similar means and looking for similar goal but they weren't thinking alike......

So..............

Proverbial myth 2: “A good beginning makes a good ending”…..

What is missing in this proverb is the definition of “good”. One doesn’t need to have a philosophical head for cracking the differences in “good”. Let me start with a few very commonly known famous events to illustrate. Taliban started for a good cause to end the lawlessness (a “good” beginning ) but the “laws” that were the source of their “good” were the worst ever known in human history so it led to series of tragedies…….. that is still continues….

Lenin begin with a good beginning to liberate the people from tsar’s feudal system but it turned out that the “good” was another prison… so this good beginning had a tragic ending by a lot of tragic left over…….. We can extend this line of thinking to a lot of other political and religious movements…..

But the question is……. is “good” beginning has tragic endings only in social and ideological systems with wrong sources of “good” or is it also true in our personal lives? Of course many tragedies happen to good people. The reason is in blindly believing that good things happen to good people. Of course good things happen to good people, if the good is really good. If a good is not understood well it would be miscarried and that is where good doesn’t come to good people. Saving a snake is good but it is not the guarantee that snake will not bite because it was saved.

Coming to proverb, a good start, of course helps a lot… but if the good beginning is miscarried, one may lose all good that have earned at the beginning and may end not in the way it began. If you look around… you may find some disappointed people with very good and promising beginning and disappointed endings………..

The good part is, “there is no end unless one decides to terminate..so……..

Proverbial Myth 1......

Proverbial myth 1:”Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today.  Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.”….. Chinese Proverb….

This Chinese proverb is really famous among educationists. Despite of usefulness it is not telling the whole story and sticking to it sometimes creates a mass that look for food even after learning how to fish. The reason is their fishing techniques have become common and overfishing left less fishes to feed all. What is needed to be added is … updating the fishing techniques or looking for new ways to fish…. Of course, you can’t fish a shark with worm bait… you were using to fish… small fishes during learning…how to fish….

Let me give some examples. In generation before us, there were great demand for typists and some of students spending a lot of time learning them. As we got out of college, the computers had replaced the typing machines and there were few clerical jobs for typists. Instead there were great demands for computer operators and a lot of students spending time to learn how to operate computers. As we got out of university, this skill was so common that there were few jobs available for computer operators. Still web publishing and designing were in great demand but this was also didn’t last long as social medias become so common and user friendly that now a school kid can have several sorts of websites that a professional company can have…….

The same is true about sciences. We put a lot of focus in learning techniques and literature that we never have learnt that …… the most important thing is finding questions. Creative questions are key in finding creative answers; otherwise you will turn your black hair into gray by increasing thickness of piles of papers while adding nothing…

From certainty of character to uncertainty of ideas:

People talk a lot about Socrates, his philosophy, his character and his life style. The noteworthy point is that there is no work of Socrates left because Socrates never produced them. All we know is the descriptions of Socrates through other philosophers, especially his students. The question is what makes Socrates stand out among philosophers?

The truth is that, it is not the philosophy of Socrates that make him distinct but the character of the Socrates that makes him distinct. In other way to put…… it is not the intellectual endeavor of Socrates that makes him distinct but his intellectual honesty that makes him distinct.

You can refute philosophical doctrines or philosophical ways of investigations but character is something never age or disproved. You can only judge a character in the context of events and Socrates grew into one of the giants of human history by making his character always available for the judgments.

Socrates is described to have lived with a strong control on his instincts. It is his way to not only present his character for test of the ideas to cross questioning but also to nature. Both of these ways may not seem attractive but they illustrate one thing and that is the certainty of character to uncertainty of ideas, doctrines and ideologies.

An eternal mythology that never rusts

I have a question to you….do you throw down your sorrows when you laugh?….or do you throw down your joys when you cry ?......... If joys are vast, open and beautiful like azure sky...then sorrows has great depths like earth below our feet….  Truth is we borrow our lives from eternal love of earth and sky….. Sky is a beautiful lady who is in eternal with masculine earth….. She expresses her joys by singing with winds and expresses her pains with shedding tears by raining….he expresses his joys with flowering vegetations and expresses his grieves with volcanoes…. Oceans and rivers are sweet and bitter exchanges of this couple…… We are the children of the heaven and earth…..

If sky let us to jump when we laughs…..earth hold us when we fall in grieves….. We get our strengths by falling and we get our ambitions by our rise to sky……. We can’t separate pain and joys… they are eternal….even when we die…we give back our body to father earth and our soul to mother sky……………………

Looking to falls as disgraceful or defeats….are betrayal to life...betrayal to eternal love… and symptom of sickness……..

This is a mythology…..that was and will be….it never rusts….because life doesn’t rust……..

Fossilized cultures

 

These two ways of  propagating fossilized messages to people got my attention. Printing a religious message on a dollar bill to show the importance of message was really clever..... Of course money is both the need and weakness.... and nobody can escape the need and his weaknesses......

Though religion is still the core of cultures around the world but a large part of it turned  into fossilized culture........

Similarly, socialism though still alive...have lost a large and essential part of it....

Still unless there are souls...there are religions.....

and

unless there are unjustice...there are revolutions.............

Anytime that the soul of a society gets fatal wounds....religion resurrects....

Anytime that the justice system in society gets fatal wounds...revolutions resurrects.....

and

then you don't need a million dollar bill to call for attention or a flyer to spread your message........

headlights and tail lights

Whenever I was hearing that, “life is two ways, highway”…..it doesn’t make much sense to me…as I was just  keeping record of what is coming…not what are going….tonight, the highway’s sight, illustrated this expression as never before to me….Cars that were going away showing their …red tail lights….. and cars that are coming were showing their ….yellow headlights…. Of course, cars have both yellow headlights and red tail lights…It is our direction that determines which cars have to show red tail lights and which ones, their yellow headlights…. More importantly… whatever our direction, we see both red tail lights and yellow headlights………………….First time, I said, “Yes, life is two ways, highway”…………..