My Skeptical Thoughts by Suleman Nasir (book club suggestions .txt) 📕

We do not stop relishing in the joys of life because we get old; we get old because we stop doing so. We are living on borrowed time and it is ending one minute at a time, thus regardless of age, every moment of the present should be savored with such jubilance, like there is no tomorrow. This chapter cannot be justly concluded without the eloquently articulated words of the bard of Avon that with mirth and laughter let the old wrinkles come.

Chapter 4

The Past is Not Your Enemy

“We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that once it was all that was humanly possible.”

-George Santayana

We are escapists by nature. We hold our past as the sole culprit for our unhappiness, our somber and sorrowful existence. Volumes of people are immured within their self-made prison of the past; whether it was a toxic relationship, a failure pertaining to career, or any other horrible tragedy that had enrolled in the past, it leaves a deep impress, and it becomes a hellacious quest for us to evade the snares of the past. When we fall prey to a perpetual low-spirited retrospection, we waste chief of our precious time contemplating about our grief-stricken past, and consequently let slip the opportunities offered by our present, to go down the drain. However, it would be ill-advised to utterly shy away from our past; a vigilant and conscious trip down the memory lane can be of immense service to us. We can chart out the course of our future by standing on the shoulders of our past. It is a bitter truth that whatever we had weathered in the past was wrought by our own hands, rather than being a vagary of fate; instead of moaning about our sufferings, we ought to highlight our faults that caused all the mishaps and rectify them. Prudence lies in unblushingly admitting and owning our erroneous past, in lieu of shunning it. Crying hoarse from the rooftops about our aches and tormenting lot would dispense nothing, but a temporary and hollow sympathy from our fellow beings. A wise modus operandi would be to pore over our past and extract valuable lessons from it; no mentor breathing on the face of the earth can instill lessons in us in the manner our past experiences do. We are undoubtedly in a grave error if we reckon cursing our past or people, who had hurt us, as an outlet of satisfaction and peace; it is not less than throwing seeds on a fallow land.

There is a similitude between life and a benignly strict mother, who withholds something from her child, not because she detests him, but she subjects him to a momentary displeasure to preserve him from a colossal insufferable harm, which may unfold later; life does the same to us. It is a sour truth that we cannot erase our unwanted memories and keep only palatable recollections, for science and technology has not excelled to that degree yet. So, the question floats that what would be the apt way to stave off our haunting past and set our earnest gaze on present and future only?

Incessantly being indulged in self-pity and self-loathing will open a can of worms, and this predicament of ours would evolve into an incurable malady. The effective panacea to ills of our past is not being too hard on our self. When a child commits a mistake, a sage father would employ a calm procedure to entrench in his child the consciousness of his fallacy; on the contrary, if the child is beaten and abused every time he goes amiss, it would scar him for life. No matter how old we grow, we harbor a child in ourselves, and if we subject this child to incessant loathing and abuse, it will negatively imprint him for eternity. Be your own kind parent; calmly talk sense into your own self. Admonish yourself that whatever manifested in the past, it doesn’t matter and it doesn’t exist anymore. This procedure of affectionate and friendly self-talk will slowly liberate us from the yoke of our traumatic past.

We will not have any time left at our disposal to reminisce about our past, if we wrap up ourselves in work. Staying busy and investing in our present is an effective remedy to channelize our focus away from past. It is beyond the bounds of possibility to tread in the future with leaving ajar the doors to our past, for we will keep revisiting it. Shut those wretched doors wholly and advance forward. So, if we find ourselves standing baffled on the crossroads, where one road leads to the whirlpool of bad memories from the days gone by, and the other one is brimming with the toils and struggles for a desirable tomorrow, sanity ordains us to opt the latter path. Thus, stretch your arms open, and embrace your past happily. Your past is not your enemy, but a stepping stone. Yes, the past teaches us hard lessons, but it is a gift to make us ready for the approaching days.

Metamorphosis of an unpleasant past to a delightful and magnificent future does not unfold promptly, but rather its foundation is laid down piece by piece by the actions we execute in our present; to have a fruitful future, prolific seeds ought to be sown in the present.

Chapter 5

The Lecherous Drug

“A widespread taste for pornography means that nature is alerting us to some threat of extinction.” -J.G.Ballard

The world of today has progressed at unprecedented levels. Our life and day to day routine are dictated by the technology of the cutting edge. But, it is a naked truth that the advancement of such sort also stirred up a hornet’s nest.

With the easy availability of smartphones at a paltry price, access to pornography has become effortless. With the click of a button or with few touches on the screens, a whole raft of pornographic sites will be at our disposal. Today, porn has evolved into an addiction of the most ruinous ilk, since it is easily available, unlike any other drug. Pornography hijacks the reward pathway in the brain and can become a compulsive behavior with addictive qualities. Gruesome graphics projected on pornographic sites have brought the young generation on the cusp of destruction. The dearth of sex education and over-exposure of sexual content is leaving an apocalyptical impinge on the underdeveloped minds of the youngsters. In apt words of Andrea Dworkin:

“Any violation of a woman’s body can become sex for men; this is the essential truth of pornography.”

These movies are cast and edited time and again to render them more luscious to the audience. Female protagonists go through a plethora of cosmetic surgeries to appear as eye candies and more voluptuous in pornographic movies, so to augment the view count on their videos. Not knowing these veiled truths, minds of youngsters sprout nefarious and lustful expectations and desires, which they tend to slake by unfair means, that are calamitous to their health, psychological state, and repute in the society. Orgasms when acquired through unnatural means subject one to unreasonable feelings of sadness, loneliness, and suicidal thoughts.

Pornography tells lies about women; it violates the sacred nature of women and portrays them as merely objects of quenching sexual desires. Ascendance of rapes, sexual harassment and incidents of eve teasing can be chalked up to endemic spread of pornography.

Pornography has also cast a dark and horrendous shadow on marriages and relationships. Individuals, specifically men, after absorbing these immoral, yet seductive graphics, expect their partners to recast these in reality. Fantasies of such nature, when left

unfulfilled pave way for sexual dissatisfaction. The fabric of marriage/relationship begins to unweave slowly and eventually, is torn to shreds. Statistics have evinced that about 71% of men and 38% of women are addicted to the scourge of pornography. These are only minor examples of how porn addiction is wreaking havoc in our societal milieu.

“Pornography is to sex what McDonalds is to food; a plasticized, generic version of the real thing.”

-Gail Dines

Sexual Intimacy, as a key to procreation, is an unavoidable reality; after all life is a product of this institution. In some cultures, over conservatism puts a lid on the prospect of sex education, which is of dire need. As teenager hit puberty, curiosities about the inner workings of their bodies begin to bloom in their formative minds, and often these curiosities set the wheel of unethical wonts and idiosyncrasies in motion. Curiosities are like a spring; if we keep suppressing them, they will rebound with much more force; with the aid of sex education, curiosities should be provided with a spillway. Sexual education should not be seen as taboo and should be inculcated to attune the minds of youngsters in line with real facts rather than fantasies.

It is critical that we start deeming pornography as a drug with deleterious aftermaths, just like other drugs. Just as we campaign against smoking, we should also educate people about the destructive impacts of pornography. There is no royal road to put an addiction to bed, as it demands unflagging perseverance and unwavering determination. The panacea to this scourge is to refrain from immoral and lustful media and to keep those people at arm’s length who stimulate you to indulge in these unchaste activities. This menace needs to be eradicated, lest it will unleash the destruction of an ineffable size.

Chapter 6

The Opium of the Masses

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

–Karl Marx

The institution of religion was brought down upon mankind enabling them to sail through life in a frictionless fashion. Raison d’être for the existence of religion is to instill morality, ethics, and virtue in its votaries, thereby dictating them towards a life bathed in purity. Today, the world witnesses a handful of confident religions that converge with each other in many ways, and diverge in others. But the underlying articles of faith of almost all the religions are akin to each other to some scale. No religion sanctions false speech, deceit, corruption, extortion, greed, bribery, and spilling the blood of fellow humans and animals, or any other vices of any stripe.

Religion, apart from shedding light on the rights and the wrongs, also serves as an oasis of hope and inspiration. Though atheists may not see it eye to eye, but every devotee of a religion is mindful that he is being lorded over by a deity (or many deities according to some polytheistic religions) who perches on His throne above heaven, observing him, poised to help and answer whenever called upon. This belief not only purges one’s chest of every fear and disappointment but also hinders him from indulging in any malefactions, for he knows that he is being watched over by his Lord. Every religion celebrates its prophets, messengers, and saints who serve as a conduit between God and His subjects. Individuals take inspiration from the immaculate and divine lives of such heaven-sent souls. The angelic lives of such prophets and saints act as a guiding beacon for their followers, and as a standard according to which they can sculpt their lives. Traversing on their footsteps can lead one to a life of purity and satisfaction. A religion accompanied with all its elements grants purpose and solace to its observer, from the menaces of life. By the virtue of this,