The Mathematics of Life: 1 + 1 ≥ 2 - ∞

There’s no need to worry! This entry is not going to be a maths lesson but a meditation on the value of life and how we tend to talk about human beings in terms of numbers and quantities. We are getting this kind of news every time we follow the latest bulletin. Whether it’s about the many people are still being killed in Afghanistan, Libya or Syria; whether it’s the projected numbers of refugees seeking shelter in Europe; or the numbers of people who are not keeping up with the austerity measures following the economic crisis - people are represented as if they were quantities and, increasingly as an economic burden and liability.

Undeniably numbers are a useful tool to help us understand the situation. But, numbers are only just that - a way of quantifying reality. The danger is when we think of human beings more as if they numbers and ignore the reality that these “numbers” can tell usabout the whole story. Indeed, when we talk about people as if they were numbers we run the real risk of dehumanizing them. Forgetting that behind each number there is a human story, a person with hopes and dreams, an individual with his/her own fears and nightmares. A person, who like us, seeks to be happy and free from suffering. 

I don’t want to sound too idealistic here. Yet, I cannot help to shiver when I hear people being referred to as “problems” or, most recently, as  “economic burdens”. We claim that the value of human life is more important than money and commodities. Yet, oftentimes the way politicians, journalists and how the public talks about these “problem people” suggests that when our lifestyles are threatened, we unleash all the hate and prejudice that is in our mind and heart.

Economic interests usually play an important role in this process by which people are dehumanized. Perhaps the best example of this is the rise of the Third Reich in Germany of the late 1930s. A large number of the German population, facing a failing economy and a defeat in the WWI were persuaded in believing that this problem was caused by the contamination of the German race. In a matter of months, Hitler’s Germany would annihilate millions of Jews, gypsies, Communists, gay people, disabled people and all those they deemed to be inferior. Those who survived deportation to the death camps would be assigned a number, not a name. Sadly, this is happening again in the heart of Europe with far right extremism increasing in popularity.

I asked myself what makes people become so numb to the suffering of others? Why do people treat other people as if they were objects or trash? The answer is not simple. But I can forward some ideas. It may be that we seek to be safe, perceiving the “other” as a threat. We may fear that we lose our personal, cultural and social identity. We may even think that we will change. But, as we declare our respect for others of our own kind, we become limited in what we deem our “kind”. We may also have a legitimate fear that our quality of life will be compromised if we accept those we perceive as foreigners or as outsiders. In the process, with all the valid justification, we betray our human values and deceive ourselves into believing that we are better and far superior to these "others". Thus, we undermine our claim to humanity by accepting to violate the  dignity and unique worth of others who may appear to be different than we think we are.]

In maths, one plus one always equal two. But one human being and another human being can give rise to two or more human beings up to virtually an infinite number of people. The most obvious example is how  a man and a woman can help to give life to one and many other children. But, on top of that, we can also contribute to the spread of ideas and concepts that can either build a better world or else to destroy it. Numbers of people only tell us about the quantity, they do not express the unique qualities that all of us possess. Numbers, like money and language, are only a representation of reality but they are not reality itself.

Disconnected in a Networked World

Today, most of us living in  are connected in a way or another to the world wide web. In fact, the very existence of this blog depends on the developments that took place in history, most obvious being the development of networked information systems, the computer itself and the  software needed to operate this new technology. 

However, there are less obvious factors that are not immediately relevant. For instance, adequate supply of food, water and energy; the fact that we are safe, even the fact that we can access the technology and had the opportunity to learn how to use it. Whether we like it or not, this legacy is also built on a history of the exploitation of natural resources, the practice of slavery, and bloody battles and wars between nations - to name just a  few. There’s, of course, plenty of positive events that characterize our history, such as our solidarity for other nations which experience natural disasters, persecution, war and oppression. Our human inheritance reflects who we are as a species. There is plenty of good in everyone of us, but there’s that potential for destruction that is concerning. Particularly because it can destroy all we have built in a blink of an eye. In addition, although we may take this technology, many people living around the world are still excluded from internet access due to lack of resources or educational opportunities (to name just a few). 

But what does this have to do with social networks? Apart from the dangers of our growing reliance, if not dependence, on social networks, there is also the risk that we forget that there are other people who either choose to keep their distance from the technology that enable social networks, there are others who simply have no choice in the matter. While this is a significant issue in its own right, in this meditation, I wish to focus my attention on the potential of social networks in communication and the possible pitfalls of this technology. 

Social networks have been hailed as a radical shift in how people connect with one another. Personally, over the course of internet use since the late 90s, I submitted a lot of profiles and registered to so many sites that I forget. But, the question really is whether this paradigm shift in communication is making us better at relating to one another. In addition, are we being authentic or sincere in the way we present ourselves to the online world?

Here, I acknowledge that the internet has opened up possibilities that I would never have imagined. I can communicate with people around the world by using various means, such as blogs, podcasts, social networks, etc. Indeed, this technology enables to reach out to more people beyond the barriers of time and space or the disabling environment that still restricts my movement in society as a wheelchair user. However, while I type about the positive aspects in all this, I can’t help wonder whether by choosing this medium for communication, like many others are doing, I’m losing something in the process.

And this something is really being in the presence of another human being. While we can communicate by writing, podcasting our message, recording a youtube video or posting a status update, I feel that this cannot replace the human element. In fact, I fear that this technology can make us forget that, on the other end, there are people coming from different backgrounds and who have their own insight into life.

I fear that instead of connecting to a wider world, we form our own exclusive communities which promote exclusion rather than encourage inclusion and social dialogue. Indeed, another serious danger remains that we lose our sense of who we are and surround ourselves with things that validate us and make us feel good about who we are. Finally, the danger is that we end up misrepresenting ourselves for fear of being unpopular or not fitting in with the rest of people. At the same time, in an attempt to draw attention to ourselves, we may also choose to be controversial, if not seek notoriety.

However, what it boils down is the fact that I’m left a feeling with a certain disconnection with those who are my online friends and contacts. This is not because I doubt their intentions are insincere, but they remain, at best, incomplete and, at worse, even isolating. Of course, there is value to social networks as they provide people, like myself, who still encounter problems with accessing society with the opportunity to relate to others regardless of time and distance.

However, as II end this rather lengthy meditation, I cannot help comment that I believe that social networks and the internet as a whole is not a replacement for our need to connect to other people. It may help, yes, but there will still be an essential component that we can only find in human relations where we are in the presence of another. Believe me, we may be accepting or even loving of other people in the online world but find out that we meet that sane person face-to-face, we become not so accepting and tolerance. Indeed, the old saying that “action speak louder than words” is quite appropriate in this context. For in an attempt to fulfill the need to belong on the world wide web, we might really end up entangled in its thread and even lose the sense of reality and of who we are.

Discovering Happiness in Suffering

It may sound paradoxical to speak of happiness and suffering as if they're related to each other - if not a cause and effect. However, as I meditated on the nature of suffering, I realised that one cannot exist without the other.

Indeed, I've got a long term relationship with pain and suffering. But the fact that I'm a disabled person causes people to wrongly assume that my existence is dominated by suffering. This isn't the case at all. Yes, I do suffer at times on a physical level and I try to alleviate this pain. However, there's nothing extraordinary with my experience of pain and suffering and it comes and goes.

Suffering is inevitable. It's part of the human condition. Of course, I'm not saying that we shouldn't avoid or diminish suffering if it's possible. But we can't eliminate it completely. Suffering is in no way a good thing but it teaches us to be humble. Indeed, it teaches us to be compassionate. It teaches us to be human.

Imagine if you could perform everything you put your mind to with no effort at all. Would you be happier? It may sound ideal. But then, there would be no challenge or goal to achieve. If everything was perfect, how can you know what imperfection is - how can you appreciate happiness if you never experienced suffering, loss or pain?

Yet, while it's good that we try to reduce avoidable suffering, a degree of suffering remains part of our human experience. Eliminating suffering would imply that neither art, science and religion as well as all aspects of our humanity are worthless since they are founded on suffering and a struggle to adapt ourselves to it.

Here I'm particularly concerned by what has Been termed the 'culture of death' characterised by a movement to legislate for a 'right' to die. However, this culture is really based on a denial of a basic human reality that in this life, we must suffer. It's a negation of the fact that we can reduce the suffering of others if only we didn't put things before persons.

This modern trend to sanction and legalise laws such as assisted suicide, and euthanasia have been hailed as liberating and giving people a choice on how to die and when. However, what is happening is that we're giving up our right to life.

There were a few times when I thought I wanted to die. That my life was going nowhere. But like suffering, change is also part of life. And the situation did change. But, if we-expect that we can live in a world with no suffering, then we wouldn't have learned anything for failing would make us suffer, we wouldn't attempt to talk for fear of sounding stupid, we wouldn't invest our time and energy to live a better life and we wouldn't bother to make sacrifices for the benefit of our loved ones.

In a nutshell, not only suffering instrumental in finding happiness but essential to appreciate happiness itself.

Homecoming

I spent the last days since I posted my last entry reflecting on how I can convey the significance of this moment in my life. Indeed, it's difficult for me to put into words what I'm going through. I have chained in a way so personal and yet within the reach of every human being if given a chance.

As I was commuting from work back home after another day at the office, I was again reflecting on how to articulate this new outlook on life. I wanted to be authentic and even perfect in my account. During the journey, I perceived that that I had to ask myself why I wanted this post to be impeccable.

In the meantime, I was witnessing through the window: buildings, pavements, shop names, various models of cars and more roads ahead. I had travelled this route so many times that I didn't really notice it. Speeding on, my van driver was hurrying to take me back home.

I realised that, like the van, I had been rushing through life without living the present. I sought home where I thought there was peace and happiness without remembering that I was already home. We strive to lay claim to our individuality that we forget that whoever we are we share a common humanity that defines us.

The homecoming I speak of, thus, is the return to a state of peace and happiness. A moment in life when you find that something makes sense to you. When you need to stop searching and start living. I am aware that the path you may find to achieve homecoming may vary.

Yet, after familiarising myself with its central principles, I felt I've returned home when I got too engage with Tibetan Buddhism. I must be clear that doesn't imply that I have converted to Buddhism as a religion, but rather that I want to embrace and cultivate a Buddhist way of thinking. To gain, as the Dalai Lama put it, a 'new awaren'.

I hope you follow me In my journey exploring the Buddhist way of life.

Mental Fission

I confess that before I started writing this blog, I was unsure of what I wanted to achieve or communicate to the outside world. One thing was sure - I sought mental clarity and security.

I had been changed and I hoped to get to terns with this state using the only means I knew or was comfortable with: language. You may prefer the visual arts, drama or music to attain this aim of going beyond yourself to endow an idea, feeling or emotion with physical property.

In this sense, we act like gods by giving an idea a life of its own. Unfortunately, as with the story of Adam and Eve, our creations by taking a life of their own are and will be subject to the effects of space and time. And even in their material form, the objects unto which we project ourselves are just a representation of an inner state.

I want to make all that clear before I even attempt to talk about where I will take you next. I love language a lot but I also know that words can confuse or distort at the same time they appear to resolve and clear our thoughts.

Finally, I must point out that I approach the next post with a degree of trepidation as there are certain doubts about my realisation that linger on. So, I want to be in the right state of mind to proceed further.

In Search of An Oasis

We have almost reached the end of this voyage of introspection. I started off, a few posts ago, with providing you with an account of the influences that prompted me to write this blog. True, this is a sort of ending. I hope to have covered the themes I wanted to cover. I reflected on the realities of death, change and difference - which define me to this day. But, in so many ways, this trip into introspection is not really the final word. Indeed, it's just the beginning.

I have long searched for the answer to the ultimate question: What is the meaning of life? I have sought the answers from religion, science and philosophy. I confess that I was raised a Roman Catholic but since I was young, that didn't stop me ask difficult questions and explore what other religions and traditions had to teach me. This wasn't that easy when you consider that, at the time, different religions were the subject of jokes and ridiculed.

I admit that I may have sometimes been an accomplice in such acts of mockery. But then I did wonder... There was always an implicit condition set forth in Christianity. That you had to believe without question and that, at the end of the day, you had to be "like us". And I also knew that some believers closed their heart and mind to other people having a tradition or faith that was different than their own. I thought about how a religion professing unconditional love could become one which clings to dogma and rigid conditionality.

I also noticed a hypocrisy that I couldn't understand. People who proclaimed their love for a God they never saw with blind devotion and, then, treating those around them badly - judging and condemning them. I sometimes felt an outsider as I participated in mass every Sunday. People thought I was many things - a less fortunate boy, an inspirational Christ-like figure bearing the 'cross' of my impairment. Some may have believed I was somehow a product of sin, or else I needed a miracle.

What about being thought of as a boy having a particular character and way of engaging with the world?

Don't get me wrong. I searched for the answers in science and philosophy too and the answers to who I was weren't so uplifting either. For medical science, I was 'abnormal', 'defective' and even 'sub-human'. For psychology, I may be seen as 'compensating' for my impairment or, as implied, my 'inferiority'. As for philosophy, the only valid reality was one created by men who could walk, see and hear and who, it appeared, were all intellectually advanced.

I confess that I often adopted one or two of these images produced by religion,, science and philosophy. In some respects, I also find refuge in thinking of myself as somehow superior to other disabled people, if ever defining myself in those terms. But I knew that these constructs of being rarely spoke of my reality. I felt robbed of my right to be human. To be thought of as having being that was good as it was. I wanted to find a peace and a sense of who I was that wasn't based on a pre-conception, a pre-judgment or an imposed order.

I cannot deny that I respect the teachings I learned from the major world religions. I still love to read about science and progress across the various fields, especially psychology, sociology and technology. I do love to immerse myself into philosophical inquiry and debate. I dare say that I am also interested in politics and activism as well. But, until now, I still found a problem with how the world around me. It was created in the image of a God that was alien to me. He wasn't the God I found as I read the Bible, or when I read about Judaism and Islam. It wasn't the same as the rational God of philosophy or the prime mover of science when it still believed.

It appeared that some people only said they believed in God or else denied God. But, in either case, there was the absence of God. Perhaps they have lost themselves in this world. Lured by the world's material pleasures without realizing that this world was not forever. And a few months ago, I would have agreed that I needed this or that. That success, fame, money and all this were fundamental to my happiness and peace. But I feel changed.

A poem perhaps can best describe this...

As I travel through this desert,

In search of peace and happiness.

I find no meaning and only dirt.

Death and destruction, no less.

Until beyond, I see a pool of water.

Some palm trees and life again.

Is it a mirage? Or a cruel dream?

I get closer and behold my reflection.

I dare put my hands in the cool liquid.

Will I scorch my insides? I wait. I feel alive.

This is real. This is true. It is as it is!

Is my search over? Have I found my oasis?

Finding Order in Chaos - Part 2

Continued from Part 1

I cannot deny that my first reactions to the changes that happened in my life weren’t the source of pain and anger. Indeed, there were times when I wished that I could return to the person I was before, or that a miracle would happen and my legs straightened like all boys my age. As for the latter, I was alright with the way I walked before I became aware that for some people, the way I walked forced them to think I was somehow less of a human being than they are. In other words, the change that occurred was purely on a mental level and my body hadn’t changed. The self-image I had was shattered and, I feel, that was really the source of pain.

My second experience forced me to learn that my life wasn’t permanent. I saw myself changing from a relatively active teenager to a weaker version of my former self. Not only did I take time to recover but this event changed my outlook on life. Not only was my life finite and impermanent but I didn't recognize who I was anymore. Getting to terms with disease and the prospect of death can put things into perspective.

But as I returned to a normal life (as I knew it),, I slowly, tried putting the past behind and start all over. I thought for a time that I could find order in my life. That I could avoid unpleasant changes and live happily ever after. Life would soon catch up with me. And around 2003, I started having vision problems. I was told it was the side effect of the medication I had to take to keep my other condition stable. Over the years, my vision grew worse until I could only see lights and shadows. It was, I admit, a hard time and I had to change so many things in my life from the way I read to the way I use a computer. Once again, I wasn't the person I was before.

Those reading this might be forgiven for believing that as a visually impaired wheelchair user, my life is of lesser quality than it was before. True, I cannot do some of the things I could do before but I learned a lot about who I am. Or rather, learned that I can never truly know who I was because reality is constantly changing. Not that we shouldn't strive to find order and meaning in our life or fall into relativity. What I am saying is that we shouldn't attach ourselves to a rigid image of who we are because, at the end of the day, we are always changing.

Now, how does difference fit in here? Well, if I think about it, difference is also what reality is about. There's no single thing in the universe that is exactly like another. Since everything is unique, it follows that things may only appear to be the same but, in truth, may be only similar. Even if you took a photo and made two copies of the same photo, the photos themselves are similar but also different. True, they capture an image of the same object but neither is the material which the photo is composed of or their location in space the same. Paradoxically, difference only appears because we can compare things to each other - we have a frame of reference and understand reality through our mind, after perceiving it through our senses. I will return to this idea later on in this blog.

For the time being, I hope that I explained the relation between the ideas of order and chaos and those of change and difference. While we often view change and difference as either undesirable or with a degree of fear, the fact that order emerges out of a process of the mind which provides us with a framework to understand and engage with reality. Yet, I am learning, that attaching ourselves to a set model of what order should or shouldn't be only risks of making our mind and heart closed to new possibilities.

I once thought that my mobility impairment was the source of shame and disappointment. On the other hand, I learned to appreciate different people and tended not to judge other people on appearances. The fact I was close to death made me realize that I had to make the best of this life and preserve each moment I m given. Acquiring a visual impairment has made me aware that there is a different way of living beyond the visual-based reality I had before. I learned to be more appreciative of music and the human voice. Of course, there were times when I forgot all this, but the fact is I have changed and today I am a different person. I wonder, who will I be tomorrow?

Finding Order in Chaos - Part 1

Today, I want to talk more about two aspects of everyday life that I am now understanding better as I reflect on my experience. These are change on the one hand, and difference on the other. Now you may wonder why I entitled this post “Finding Order in Chaos”. After all, we tend to perceive order and chaos as being opposites. But, if you think about it, the concept of “order” is dependent on what we conceive as being unstable or, in some way, not meeting our expectations of how things should be. However, isn’t our idea of “order” based on a pre-conceived idea of a reality that simply doesn’t exist in the real world. Indeed, if you are at all familiar with quantum mechanics, you’ve probably heard that matter smaller than the atom can exist at two places at once. In other words, it can be said that from the chaotic nature of subatomic particles, a complex order emerges. Examples of this order include complex chemical and living organisms. While these complex systems appear orderly, their foundations remain chaotic.

By now, you may be asking:

• How is this related to change?

• What about difference?

I don’t pretend to have the answers. I only have an idea that I is based on experience and reflection. To continue with the themes of this post, my idea may change with time and, in fact, I may be arguing in a different way as I grow older. But back to our argument.

Let me tackle the first question. How is change related to what I said in relation to order and chaos? Well, change reminds many people of chaos. Believe me, I can talk about how changes in your life can wreak havoc in your daily affairs. I can think of three major changes in my life that affected - or should I say “affect” - me to this day.

The first was probably when I realized that my physical impairment meant various things to different people. Not only did I was forced to rethink how I looked at myself but I also attempted to hide my difference. The second time was when I was admitted to hospital about 12 years ago with serious bleeding. If I hadn’t received treatment on that fateful summer’s day, I would not be writing this today. Ok, I just wouldn’t. The third experience was when I developed cataracts in both eyes making me legally blind for at least four years. Even if I have been operated on both eyes, I lost one eye and I still have low vision in my right eye.

Continues...