I have now transfered my blog to blogspot:

http://awaisaftab.blogspot.com/

From now on, i'll writing there. You are all welcome to visit and comment. Thank you.
TIG has been a great place, and the people i have met, and the love i have received has been enormous. I'll never forget it.

A person's confidence is often more convincing than the rationale of his arguments.

* "He wept when he gave my father the news, that I am a leper. The Saracens say that this disease is God's vengeance against the vanity of our kingdom. As wretched as I am, these Arabs believe that the chastisement that awaits me in hell is far more severe and lasting. If that's true, I call it unfair."

King Baldwin IV

* "If we do not burn these bodies, we will all be dead of disease in three days. God will understand, my lord. And if he doesn't, then he is not God and we need not worry."

Balian

Kingdom of Heaven

Sometimes, before you can embark on the path of friendship, you have to stroll through the garden of romance.

Joyce describes the infatuation of a young boy:

"Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether i would ever speak to her or not or, if i spoke to her, how i could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires."

James Joyce, Araby

There are some people who by virtue of their superb psychological sense can judge what a person expects/wants to hear, and they say exactly that. And by doing so, they manage to earn the trust of that person. The ability to say right things at the right time is a huge advantage. And these people make the best liars, because their lies conform to your psychology and unless you possess a psychological insight equal to theirs, it becomes very difficult to distinguish truth from falsehood. People are so frail against such people, it's unimaginable... their ability to exploit the human tendency of trust is horrifying... the very idea of encountering such people terrifies me!

"Free will is essentially an oxymoron — we would not consider it 'will' if it were completely random and we would not consider it 'free' if it were entirely determined," Brembs said. In other words, nobody would ascribe responsibility to one's actions if they were entirely the result of random coincidence. On the other hand, if one's actions were completely determined by outside factors such that no alternative existed, no one would hold that person responsible for them."

[From the article 'Study hints that fruit flies have free will' by Charles Q. Choi]

So what is free will? Can an action be partially determined?

SCULLY: Mulder, that is still a fantasy.

MULDER: Scully, after all you've seen... after all you've told me you've seen. The tunnel with medical files, the, the beings moving past you, the... the implant in your neck, why do you refuse to believe?

SCULLY: Believing's the easy part, Mulder. I just need more than you, I need proof.

MULDER: You think that believing is easy?

(They stare at each other. She sighs. The fax machine beeps.)

X Files, Nisei

It's the day of Judgement... the court of God... He sits on his throne, people arrive one by one, and their fates are being decided... should he be sent to an eternal blazing fire in which he will roast forever for the finite amount of sins he has committed in the finite existence of a finite world... or should he be sent to an oasis of medieval pleasure, in which he can spend his life in the boredom of utter eternity?
And Lo! The Philosopher is brought forth before Him by the angels. This is a complicated case... the decision is difficult... the scales of balance fluctuate between his virtues and heresies. He deliberates and finally decides, "Take him to paradise!" The angels move but he stays at his spot... firm, confident... he looks up and says, "I don't want your paradise. If you want to reward me, give me annihilation. Bless me nothingness. Purge me of this existence. I only desire Death."

I don't know what happens after this.

Oh, the hypocrisy of the so-called religious moderates so pisses me off! These people believe that people should be flogged in public for fornication, that the hands of the theives should be cut off, that the testimony of women is half that of man, that apostates should be killed... and then these people have the nerve to call their religion a religion of peace! They live, they eat, they drink, they enjoy in a world of 21st century technology, but they believe in a superstition that is centuries old! They believe and propagate a medieval dogma and then they insist on being recognized as modern, progressive people! God, i am so pissed off!

This is something quite dark and disturbing, and i am not sure whether it is really worth sharing, but anyway, here it is, from the pen of Russia's great novelist Dostoyevsky:

"In every man, of course, a demon lies hidden- the demon of rage, the demon of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the demon of lawlessness let off the chain, the demon of diseases that follow on vice, gout, kidney disease, and so on.

"This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by those cultivated parents. They beat her, thrashed her, kicked her for no reason till her body was one bruise. Then, they went to greater refinements of cruelty- shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy, and because she didn't ask to be taken up at night (as though a child of five sleeping its angelic, sound sleep could be trained to wake and ask), they smeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement, and it was her mother, her mother did this. And that mother could sleep, hearing the poor child's groans! Can you understand why a little creature, who can't even understand what's done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her? Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to dear, kind God'! I say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil take them all! But these little ones! I am making you suffer, Alyosha, you are not yourself. I'll leave off if you like."

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

It has been my experience that most people when asked this question, "Are you happy?" tend to answer it in positive... and the huge prevalence of 'happiness' tends to make me quite skeptical of its validity. :)

Personally, i have classified the happy attitude into two types:

Negative Happiness: This consists of a relative psychological indifference to the problems of your life, such that they cease to bother you. You fail in an exam... you just shrug your shoulders and say, "So what? Its not the end of the world." This is negative happiness.

Positive Happiness: This consists of the feeling of pleasure derived from a variety of actions; success, romance, physical pleasures such as having a good tasty meal, aesthetic pleasures such as listening to music or appreciating art, having some sort of an adventure or a thrilling moment.

Of course, in real life, these two types exist in conjunction, though the percentage of their contribution is different in lives of different people.

I would define happy life as one in which happiness dominates over sadness [no life is absolutely happy, ever]. However, i believe, that to lead such a life, the attitude of negative happiness is of greater importance... although it doesn't increase your pleasure, it acts to decrease your feelings of grief, and hence, contribute to an over-all positive balance of happiness over sadness.

Crucify a madman and you risk turning his insanity into a crusade.

"I'm not a fan of classification. It's very difficult to come up with a classification scheme that's useful when what you're most interested in is things that don't fit in, things that you didn't expect."

Ward Cunningham

"Remembrance is a form of meeting."
Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam

Oh, how i wish it was so! How i wish! But sadly, memory can never be a substitute for the actual meeting.