I just got back from my subuh prayer when i scrolled down my timeline and saw @iyad_elbaghdadi‘s tweet on spirituality. The funny thing is he’s a kind of contemplating this after watched Life of Pi. It’s a kind of funny yet fascinating how this one particular film could move people to think and discuss about spirituality, as i did it too when few of my friends several weeks ago.
Without further ado, please read these tweets. These are just too good to be missed.
The following is going to be confused so I apologize in advance. I just need to vent, and you're my sounding board.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
Much of this is inspired by "Life of Pi", which I had read earlier and just watched again.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
To many people, the question of believing or not believing in God is a non-essential one…
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
Picture this – someone sitting on a park bench, you tell him "there are 300 billion stars in the Milky Way", he accepts it as fact.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
But you tell his same person "this side of the bench has wet paint" and he has to either touch it or smell it to verify.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
It may seem that he's accepting a cosmic fact at face value but when it comes to a seemingly trivial fact he wants to verify on his own.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
But the fact is that the number of stars in the galaxy is non-essential to him, it doesn't matter if it was 200 or 300 billion.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
However the wet paint on the park bench is far more relevant, it actually affects him, which is why he'll want to verify it.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
Something similar applies to the question of God nowadays. To many people it's just not important, it doesn't affect their lives.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
So you'd ask them about their position on God and they'll say they never had the time to consider it coz it doesn't seem important.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
Fact is that, in practice, the biggest enemy of spirituality is the rat race. These are the people most likely to say it's unimportant.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
To poor people the question of God is important because they are less in control and more at the mercy of bigger events…
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
Meanwhile people who are well-off enough to afford some free time will be able to reflect on such deep issues.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
It's the people who are in the rat race, who are chasing one thing and then the other, who would say "I never had the time, really".
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
Regardless, I'm having to ask myself over and over, what difference does religion make? What do we expect of it exclusively?
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
I had read "Life of Pi" and just watched the movie, and the punch line is "which story do you like better?"
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
Two stories of the human saga, neither of which can be absolutely proven; one dry and cruel and the other exciting and inspiring.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
"Life of Pi" seems to present us with a choice of "which story we like better", rather than "which story is true".
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
Embedded in that dichotomy is an assumption that neither story can be completely confirmed or debunked, of course.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
So the story presents the issue as one of preference between two stories rather than verifying which story is true.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
Now there's some truth to this, since there's a will to believe or disbelieve.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
I mean, for every intelligent atheist there's an even more intelligent theist; and vice versa.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
Anyway, in the book, Pi actually says that it's the agnostics, those who won't commit to either story, that he can't stand.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
What I'm saying now is that many people are in practice agnostics, even if they carry on their daily lives as Christians or Muslims or…
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
These people won't "commit to a story" not because they considered both, but because it doesn't matter to them.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
The rat race is the enemy of spirituality.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
Let me add that this whole definition of faith as "believing in spite of doubt" makes no sense to me at all, I never bought it.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
The Arabic "eman", commonly translated as "faith", actually means "belief that has settled deeply enough to reflect in action".
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
To me doubt is important not because it justifies faith (that idea disgusts me) – but because it spurs a search for truth.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
Apologies again if that was confused and disjointed. Bad day, bad week.
— Iyad El-Baghdadi (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 10, 2013
I always see the rat race as the impact of consumerism. That damn consumerism. The exact consumerism which is advertised everywhere.
Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.
Tyler Durden, Fight Club
Anyway, hat tip for @iyad_elbaghdadi with those tweets. Those were just awesome.
That’s what I meant when I said in my tweet sometime ago that games are dangerous. (Computer) games are a perfect simulation of this rat race.
I guess we have a different perspective toward (computer / video) game. i personally don’t view game that way. I tend not to generalize things. Just because, let’s say, 35% games show violences or the other bad things, doesn’t mean i’d like to say that (all) games are bad. Most music we heard these days are melancholic-depressing-trash kind of song. However it doesn’t make (all) music is trash, i believe.
IMO, game is an art, just the way music, poem, writing, movie, photography, etc are arts. There are epic awesome legendary arts, and there are aso always lousy arts.
while we’re talking about game, however I see the way career, consumerism, materialism, lifestyle and advertising manifested these days as the perfect reality of this rat race.