“What if this panel sends us somewhere we don’t think we should go? What if there is somewhere we need to go and they don’t let us?”
I've been blessed to know what a hug from a mother is. I've been blessed to give my mother a hug. I've been blessed to have had those so many times that I can remember what they're like. I try to be very grateful for that, because it's not a thing to be taken for granted. I don't know what it's like from our to a father, or can't remember it at least. I think it'd be nice if I could remember what a hug from my dad would be like, but I can't. I think it'd be nice if I could remember what a hug to my dad would be like, but I can't. I I don't think it felt like there was a love there for it to happen either way. But maybe there was, and I just never gave him a chance. I hope one of us, his children, at least did. I'm sorry that I didn't.
UPDATE: Just to clarify this is something I'm still researching and not a conclusive post or anything, so please don't use it as the basis for any arguments or opinions on the topics at hand.
Just a relatively quick one here (so could probably do with more refining and double-checking before publishing than usual), but something I’ve been wondering about since I was a kid: why do we refer to Allah as “He” in English, especially since one of the earliest things I was taught about Allah, as a child, is that “He” is singular and not like humans, including having no gender? Would it not be more accurate to use “They”?
The first and earliest explanation given to me was what I, with the blessing of learning and hindsight, believe to be an innocent yet misguided one - that “He” is masculine and indicates the might and grandeur of Allah (I’m paraphrasing here as I can’t remember word for word what was said about three decades ago, admittedly). In any case, it seemed odd to me that the Qur’an apparently uses the singular “He” for third-person referrals but the plural and ‘royal’ “We” for first-person referrals. Why isn’t/wasn’t “They” an option?
Fast-forward to recent years and to cut a long blog-post short: this is an apparent issue of translating Arabic into English as well as conflating grammatical gender with biological gender. Classical/”Qur’anic” Arabic doesn’t have gender-neutral pronouns, and so neutral terms default to “masculine” articles (like they do in Spanish, for example). That is to say that it’s not necessarily an ‘active’ or ‘conscious’ decision to use “He” in these cases and apply masculinity to them, whereas applying “She” often (but not always!) seems to be since it often seems to be done as a conscious reaction to the default.
This leads to questions and discussions about the default itself being masculine with the resultant “He”, and one of the conclusions of those is that, since English is a genderless language (i.e. we use the same articles for all nouns), gendered pronouns are regarded as an indication of biological gender and nothing to do with grammatical gender or artifacts of them from translation. This all may sound obvious to those used to ‘just’ English but it’s really important to consider when referring to translated texts that use grammatical gender (additionally, this may sound obvious to those used to translating between languages). This conflation - of grammatical gender with biological gender - can have massive implications and consequences in a social context, of course e.g. people may start incorrectly thinking of Allah as masculine in the biological human sense and then base incredibly incorrect opinions and arguments off of that, whether it’s “Allah is masculine therefore males are superior”, “How comes God in Islam is also masculine?”, or anything of the sort. And this conflation and consequences predominantly seem to come from issues in dealing with translations of the Qur’an and treating them - incorrectly - as comprehensive and complete reflections of the original language of the Qur’an. They very much aren’t and are subject to all the usual biases, errors, and misinterpretations found in translation, so we need to account for those before basing any strongly-held beliefs based on those translations alone (there’s always more learning to do, and that’s not a bad thing!).
Having said all of this, in today’s social climate where, especially in “the West”, switching to gender-neutral pronouns is a very sensitive, loaded, and seemingly trending topic, so any changes made around pronouns and articles used for Allah in English translations are likely to be perceived as reactionary to such social trends and consequently dismissed and rejected. Those changes need to be genuine, sincere, and ultimately clear, in there purpose and motivation so they can be regarded as such i.e. they need to be about presenting more authentic and accurate translations, rather than as a reaction to appease.
My point being, I think referring to Allah as “They” would be more accurate (and consistent with the royal “We”) to use rather than “He”, as it doesn’t suggest any biological gender associated with Allah to the audience, yet this also needs to be regarded and recognised as being independent from gender-identity and discussions surrounding that.
Hello there! Going to try a couple of new approaches going forward with my blogging:
- Markdown/Notebook style - no idea how feasible this'll be in Squarespace where my blog (and site in general) is currently hosted, but let's see.
- "Done is better than Perfect." - I get way too fixated on trying to complete things, blog posts included, to my idea of "perfect" for those things, which is rarely achievable, and then things don't get finished (and blog posts just live in 'draft hell'). So I'm trying to do things to some objective definition of 'done' and then do follow up posts if needs be.
One of the things with Markdown that I'm hoping to do here is use the collapsible sections, so here's some dummy text to see if it works or not:
Dummy [supposedly] collapsible text, click me to expand.
This is the detailed text, which isn't that detailed. EDIT: Aha, it seems to work, woo, but the little dropdown arrow that indicates a collapsible/expandable block doesn't seem to render (at least in my current environment).Anywho, that's me "done" with this post!
One half-life ago today was meant to be when I 'offed' myself (read: suicide). Not sure how I feel about being here still :/ Ups and downs. For whoever's reading this, I hope you're okay at least, and things improve for you and continue to do so.
I haven’t really written here in quite a while (though that’s not exactly new…), but also haven’t felt up for it in some ways for various reasons. As in, there’s still so much I want to ‘get out’ (be it through writing on here or even possibly trying out just recording myself as that seems quicker in some ways…), so that drive hasn’t gone, but it’s more that I feel both burnt out as well as overwhelmed at the prospect of trying to express myself in a way that I’d consider “comprehensive” and “complete” - it feels like it’ll never be possible to get it all done the first time around. Regarding the “burnt out” feeling - I’m pretty sure the main component of that came from quitting my PhD, and all that went/happened with it, as the PhD was/is a big deal to me…maybe I’ll write up more about what happened during the PhD as well as why it impacts/impacted me so much at some point, but not now. Anywho, I’ve set myself a target to post at least once a month, and with about an hour to go (at the time of writing) before the end of the calendar month, here we are :D
I’m deliberately trying to keep this one short and with possibly too little detail (as opposed to too much) as that’s something else I think/feel I need to improve on, but we’ll see. What I wanted to talk about, briefly, is that I’ve been wondering - for quite a few years, actually - about whether a ‘version update’ is due. What I mean by this is (and I may or may not have talked about this previously) that I think the notion of looking at the universe as a software simulation is a fairly apt analogy at the very least, and that includes ourselves as individuals. We may be like software programs that go through various breaks, patches, and updates.
And so I’d say I’ve been sitting on “Ridwan 2.x.x” since I was about fourteen years old, updating it here and there, and I’d say that version’s doing fairly well to be fair, in terms of getting me through various events and circumstances in Life, even now to be frank. However, 2.x.x was largely built on the notion of me being worth less than everybody else and ‘excessively expendable’ (which soon led to the notion that suicide is the best course of action for me and is something that has stayed with me ever since, pretty much), and this is something I tell myself is no longer the case, but is still very much a part of me that I feel, frankly speaking. As such, I’m umm-ing and ahh-ing over whether it’s time for “Ridwan 3.x.x”, as I can’t help but feel this’d be done more for the sake of releasing an update rather than there actually being some ‘major software update’ =/ Though, on the flip-side, it may be that I’m deliberately holding myself back from an update I’ve been denying myself for some time: personal boundaries - specifically having mine acknowledged and adhered to. I think I’ve let my boundaries be crossed a lot because I’ve regarded myself as less than is fair/reasonable, and consequently in many cases with many people I’ve either enabled them to take advantage of me, or I’ve not stood my ground/fought back within what is arguably right/just even if I do object. And the thing with implementing this ‘feature’ is that, whilst it doesn’t change that much of my ‘inner software content’, I imagine it significantly changes a lot of the ‘endpoints’ - how I interact with others and allow myself to be interacted with, which in turn may have huge impacts (or not, of course) on both my existing and future relationships, be they of a personal/social or professional nature.
In any case, whether this is a further update to “Ridwan 2.x.x” or the release of “Ridwan 3.x.x”, I think it’s time I implement a stricter sense of having my boundaries acknowledged/respected and adhered to.
Something I’ve been meaning to write about for a few days - but kept putting off because the subject matter feels particularly heavy for me to think about, let alone write about - is about my ‘triple-life’. Also, this is mostly a thought-stream, so may involve lots of waffling and jump around, but hopefully it’s consistent at least…
Now many people, including myself, seem to have many personas in terms of who they are with themselves, with family, with significant others, with friends, with colleagues, with strangers, etc., though I often hear these personas being categorised into a binary distinction of personal and professional lives, as if living a double-life, if you will. Whilst I can understand this, it personally always seemed like a hassle to me that I imagine I’d find exhausting to indulge in - pretending to be somebody other than myself at work or wherever seemed like not only extra effort (kind of implying who I’d be personally would either be at least ‘good enough’ for a professional setting or conversely not suitable and therefore not ‘have to’ consider a professional setting in the first place =/ I’d like to think I strive for the former…) but also a compromise on who I am.
The thing is, though, I kinda felt that way about having a double-life because I find being ‘me’ exhausting enough as it is already, in that who I am in front of others is typically a very filtered and relatively refined version of myself that’s constantly trying to consider what everybody’s thinking and how they’re feeling as well as how certain things being said or done may make them feel, and not just by myself but by others, too (which is why I find one-on-one interactions much easier in general because as soon as another person is present I have a hard time trying to juggle and anticipate it all just as we currently do with the three-body problem in physics). I’d like to point out (perhaps to convince myself, too…who knows?), this isn’t to say this is not me, or a a dishonest/false version of me, but rather I see it like the difference between “I’ll be honest.” and “I’ll be honest and frank.” (which I imagine still won’t sit well with some and am open to feedback on this of course). This is a bit of a tangent and one I intend to write about properly/elaborately in a separate post, but for now I will say that there are three quantities in mathematics of particular significance to me (though no disrespect meant to Euler’s Equation!) that I in turn try to ‘mirror’ in reality (given how the analogies I tend to try to understand Life/Existence/the Universe with are pretty much all centred around maths, physics, and computer simulations…): Zero, One, and Infinity. I generally think/feel as if I (as well as possibly most, if not all, others) typically have a version of themselves for Zero others i.e. who they are when by themselves, for One other i.e. who they are when with some individual they hold in a particularly significant regard, and for Infinite others, i.e. who they are when with everybody else in general. This isn’t to say it’s a strict ‘law’ or anything, especially between One and Infinity, plus I guess there is somewhat of a goal for Zero and One to be the same, but it’s a framework that’s there in my mind.
Aaaaaaannyway, that tangent aside, the thing I actually intended to get down in writing is my so-called triple-life, which, in short, is basically me trying to live in a way that keeps the three possible outcomes I see for my Life (and the respective paths to each of those outcomes)…possible. What I mean by that is that the three outcomes that I see, I also regard as mutually exclusive, and because I can’t figure out which one to commit to, I try to ensure all three outcomes are simultaneously possible at any given moment. This is, as you can expect (if I haven’t confused you with my scatty narrative, sorry!), very difficult to do and, again, incredibly exhausting. Yet I feel it is necessary =/ This is a very brief take on my triple-life:
Suicide - outcome seems most fitting and feels most right, as in the thing I’m ‘meant to do’, for various reasons, but I think is wrong - likelihood: varies depending on how I’m feeling;
Conceding that most of the problems in both my family and in society probably won't change and cycles will repeat, and that the rest of my days will most likely be spent just fighting those problems and battles where I can and looking after my family/others and teaching them to cope with things as best as I can - outcome feels like defeat and too much of a compromise, that the needs will always come above my wants, and will probably end up with me losing my battle against cynicism and becoming a husk - likelihood: seemingly very high as this seems the most realistic and seems to match my current trajectory; and
That things will actually work out and improve, and those problems in my family and society will be resolved, or at least improved/resolved enough that I can have that life I used to imagine when I was a child where I am a good husband and a great father - outcome is the one I actually want, but also seems naive and idealistic of me, yet maybe it is possible to change the world… - likelihood: seemingly very low.
(I was going to make a mini, rather clichéd, three-panel comic summarising these with a filled black panel, a mundane/bleak grayscale outlook on life for the second, and a happy outlook third panel filled with colour, but I’m terrible at drawing as it is that without my tablet there’s even less chance of it looking like how it does in my mind.)
Originally it was only #3. Then on my 15th birthday #1 came into play and was meant to take effect on my 16th birthday, though #3 would still twinkle from time to time. Evidently, this did not happen, and I initially thought #1 would take a little longer than expected (in my mind the hold-up was because I still hadn’t worked out a way to morally justify it, but it’s very possible I was in denial about it - who knows?) so still it was predominantly #1 with a few appearances by #3 here and there. I didn’t consciously realise but during my late teens and early twenties is when #2 started popping up more and more, and so, for pretty much the last decade of my life, I’ve been constantly trying to juggle these three outcomes. And like I said, they’re fairly mutually exclusive so it makes me hold back on a lot of things, particularly the idea of a relationship. As in, #3 is the outcome I’d actually like, but given the likelihoods of #1 and #2, and even the fact that I think about them as ‘viable’ outcomes, I don’t think it’s exactly moral/fair for me to have a relationship with somebody whilst keeping those possibilities in mind =/ Incidentally, this has put me in an odd situation for many years in that I feel whatever love, affection, compassion, kindness, etc. I have, I feel I should share or even ‘give away’ to others in general rather than ‘reserving’ for that ‘special someone’ (because if you have something good, you want to share it, or at least I hope that’s the case), which people can often somewhat understandably misinterpret (though still I wish they’d ask and try to understand rather than generalise and assume). Even though this is arguably not what the following scene was about, I often think of this rather climactic moment - kinda a spoiler if you haven’t seen it though! - from the film Gattaca when dwelling on this predicament - of not saving anything for the swim back, because there is no swim back.)
The apparently obvious solution to my dilemma of course would be to commit to one of the three outcomes, i.e. #3, and disregard the other two, though of course how that plays out is how the three outcomes came to be in the first place. So I don’t know. It’s hard. And emotions are hard. And people don’t often make sense. So I don’t know how to do this and I still wish I could just commit to #1 and be done with it, but Hope seems to glimmer on, even though I now consider Hope a double-edged sword =/ I think I’ll stop there. Thanks if you read this.