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

Chapter 23

A Wine for the Eyes

“Beauty is more intoxicating than wine; it intoxicates both the holder and the beholder.”

-Zimmerman

Our eyes are always hungry, and the delicacy they feed on is beauty. Our eyes also serve as a bridleway to our hearts; any entity, be it a person or any materialistic article, that charms our eyes becomes a tenant of our hearts. In contrast, anything that fails to attract our eyes eventually fails to seep into our hearts and soul. Many philosophical giants have spelled out the beauty in their own ways. Socrates called beauty a short-lived tyranny; Plato, a privilege of nature; Theophrastus, a silent cheat; Theocritus, a delightful prejudice; Carneades, a solitary kingdom; Aristotle, that it was better than all the letters of recommendation in the world; Homer, that it was a glorious gift of nature, and Ovid, that it was a fever bestowed by the gods. Beauty is a cosmic, marvelous, and unmerited gift given randomly and arbitrarily that accrues perks and privileges for its holder. Beauty and Wine are of a piece; both bring pleasure to its consumers, but the addiction of both can numb one’s senses to surroundings. As we have a fable for the beauty that meets only the eye, we often fail to harrow below the skin of unattractive people, and to exhume the treasure that rests therein.

We, masquerading as nobles often asseverate that looks do not matter and that beauty is something only skin deep, but our attitudes as a society suggest otherwise. It is most of the time females that bear the brunt of society’s beauty bias; they often do not find desirable suitors and their rejections are predominantly predicated on either their dark skin tone or unattractive appearance. Our affinity for white skin is evident of our anglophilia; it is the footprints left by our former masters-the English- that we are strolling on. We surely have gained deliverance from British colonialism as a nation, but our frame of mind is yet under the yoke of colonialism. As we have once remained the subject of the whites-the British crown- thereby we have given currency to the white and fair color as a superior one. In true light, a society’s obsession with fair skin is not a beauty bias, but a borderline racism.

 Our over-obsession with beauty has left us in the snares of insecurity and our insecurities have made us a cash cow of the cosmetic enterprises. We spend money in spades on consuming myriad of products with untenable hopes of gaining social approval. It is on account of our groundless insecurities and senseless standards that have turned us into a guinea pig of cosmetic science; people, who are not at peace with their bodies go through a panorama of surgeries and infuse their bodies with unhealthy chemicals like Botulinum toxin merely to become feast for the eyes of others.

Our lives are spent in embellishing our faces and bodies that are mere mortal vessels and are bound to decay once we die; we ought to work for the nobility of our souls, that even after demise, will live on and will stand before God. 

“If virtue accompanies beauty, it is the heart’s paradise; if vice be associated with it, it is the soul’s purgatory. It is the wise man’s bonfire, and the fool’s furnace.”

-Quarles

In the wake of our appetency for carnal beauty, we tend to others in accordance with their appearances. Candidates being bestowed with beauty and sex appeal may land an offer; attractive students are considered smarter; nice looking teachers get better reviews; appealing workers make more money, and good looking politicians get more votes. “There is evidence that attractive people are seen as more compelling”, says Matthew Kohut, “A person’s looks can have a blinding effect on our perception of them.”

God is an artist without any other parallel, and there is artistry dripping from every single one of His creations. He gifted some with gorgeous and flawless faces and bestowed some with voices more melodious than a mynah’s chant. He blessed some with a kind and beautiful heart and chose some for an immaculate and divine character. There are some flowers, such as Manfreda virginica, that are not as beautiful as roses and lilies, but their fragrance outshines that of lilies and roses. There are particular beauties for the gratification of our particular senses, but we choose to make only our eyes content. Most often an element of beauty is right in front of us but it goes unnoticed; we need to change our perspectives. Every element of the universe is bathed in different colors of beauty, but if they are not visible to us, then it is we who are colorblind.

Chapter 24

New World ‘Disorder’

“War crushes, with bloody heel, all justice, all happiness, all that is God-like in man.”

-Charles Sumner

History of mankind is a history of war. The world, as we know it, has always been smeared with conflicts; it has been hemorrhaging blood on account of the wars and conflicts incited over land, power, dominance, expansion, and many other stimulants. Our hapless world has been visited upon by many cruelties and has been brutally raped by the two raging world wars, the likes of which had never been witnessed before. There has always been a passage of arms at one or another corner of the world, and the manifestation of peace has been ephemeral. Political Realists impute the disheveled order of the world to the selfish and greedy nature of man, whereas proponents of Neo-realism (a theory of international relations that says power is the most important factor in international relations) put forth the claim that it is the surrounding environment of man that makes wars and conflicts unavoidable. Both the assertions appear palatable.

“For this can be said of men in general: that they are ungrateful, fickle, hypocrites and dissemblers, avoiders of dangers, greedy for gain; and while you benefit them, they are entirely yours, offering you their blood, their goods, their life, their children,...when need is far away, but when you actually become needy, they turn away.”

-Niccolo Machiavell, the Prince

After the First World War, the wake of liberalism paved way for an amiable environment and erection of institutions like the League of Nations. But this era of peace faded away when the horns of the Second World War began to blow. The establishment of the United Nations put a temporal end to the bloodlust fomented by the war, but in the fullness of time, it also materialized as impotent as its predecessor-the League of Nations. All this begs the question that why all the efforts towards peace and formation of a world, wherein states are enlaced together in the web of cooperation, do not reap any fruit? The answer is Self-centered interests. Every state dotted on the map of the world worships its own interests and takes every possible step, no matter how repugnant, to secure her objectives. When it comes to world politics, morality and ethics are merely a mirage.

To dominate the region and to become a sole hegemon is the wet dream of every state. To get possession of her ends, every state is engaged in overpowering others by augmenting her military might; it begets security dilemma and ignites an arms race. Peace and cooperation in such milieu of competitiveness, skepticism, and cynicism, are beyond the bounds of possibility. States do indeed forge alliances with each other today, but they are merely smokescreens that conceal their real motives of balancing and checkmating the emerging power of other states. This brings to mind a befitting dialogue from an American T.V show that the road to power is paved with hypocrisy and casualties.

States’ wolfish lust for power and greed for supremacy over the world has brought us to the cusp of a third world war. Massacres and carnages unfolding in the world today are symptomatic of a looming world war; the herald of peace: the United Nations basks in slumber as we reel towards the nuclear conflagration. To bring about peace, the world looks upon Uncle Sam, rather than the United Nations, for the United States as a sole hegemon wields the power to bring stabilization. If the rat race of the states for personal gains continued any longer, we will be shoved to our extinction.

“I do not know with what weapon world war III will be fought, but world war IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

-Albert Einstein

The air that we are breathing in is saturated with fear; this terror emanates from the beasts of catastrophe that every other state has in her possession: The nuclear weapons. Fear serves as a breeding ground for hatred and hatred mushrooms aggression. To make room for peace, it is imperative to dissipate the mists of uncertainty and distrust by ridding the world of the instruments of destruction.

There is no denial in the imbecility of those who do not glean lessons from the past. By altering the course of our actions we can steer history from repeating itself. We need to comb through the new world order that we have brought into being and rid it of all the selfish and self-centric elements, or else it will only invite disorder.

Chapter 25

The Clothes our Thoughts Wear

“As a vessel is known by the sound, whether it is cracked or not, so men are proved by their speeches, whether they are wise or foolish.”

-Demosthenes

Words are the clothes that our thoughts wear. Man has been provided with the faculty of speech, which accompanied by the institution of language serves as a vehicle to convey thoughts, emotions, and feelings. It is by speech that a man channels his thoughts to the outside world; it is the art of speech that secures for him the title of an intellectual, and the absence of this skill that has him labeled as a dim-wit. Our mouths can either be a barrack forging words sharp and deleterious enough to wound others, or it can be a patisserie baking savory words with sweetness enough to win over the hearts of its listeners; it is upon our own picking.

Speaking is an art, and similar to other arts, it demands incessant exercise and practice to gain mastery over it. There are few errors that one commits in his speech, that not only defile and stain the words but also leave his sickening image in the eyes of others. These are the cardinal sins of speech.

Gossiping and mudslinging aimed at others is a vile deed; it portrays the hideousness of our mind. Even listening to someone’s character assassination and slander is beyond the pale; the one who gossips about others before us will surely gossip about us in our absence. The second error that soils our words is dogmatism: confusion of facts with opinions. We, in our efforts to appear omniscient and highbrows, often pontificate our opinions as the last word; such holier-than-thou attitude may land us in the bad books of others.

“A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool speaks because he has to say something.”

-Plato

Misjudging and jumping to wrong conclusions about others may butcher the appeal of our words. It becomes an evidence of our gloom-ridden and negative frame of mind. Perpetual despondence and pessimism paints us as prophets of doom. 

Excessive complaining and grumbling about our sufferings may prove to be a coup de grace for our attraction in the hearts of others, for everyone has their own set of troubles and travails, thus they do not want to be laden by the burden of sorrows that does not even belong to them. It is a truth beyond