Pakistan's Power Crisis, Part 1: The Shoddy Electric

Features of daily life that are both reliable and ubiquitous disappear into the background, and require a conscious effort to detect or attend to. We often say that a container is 'empty', even though we know it contains air. People that live near waterfalls barely acknowledge their thunderous churn. It is easy to forget how recent an invention indoor plumbing is.

However, the more accustomed we are to a thing's presence, the more acutely we feel the dissonance or outright distress created by its absence. If a rushing cascade were silenced, the locals would stop and stare. When modern toilets are unavailable, we feel hard done by. When illness, injury or disaster makes breathing difficult, panic ensues.

How, then, would you feel if your electricity were turned off for an hour or more at a time, multiple times a day?

In developed countries, electricity is very reliable, and any interruptions in its supply are considered much more than mere nuisances. Occasional, brief power outages due to storm damage or severe natural disasters are tolerated, but lapses in electrical supply for any other reason are simply unacceptable. Electricity is arguably the most important and widely-used resource upon which modern civilization has been built, and any gap in its supply results in a proportionate slackening in civilization's progress.

Since 2008, Pakistan has been suffering from the most severe electricity shortage in the world. On average, businesses in Pakistan experience the most frequent power outages (an average of 75 times per month; more than Bangladesh, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen), and suffer the greatest sales losses (33% of total sales; more than Yemen, Nepal, Ghana, and Nigeria).

My previous long-term stay in Pakistan between 2011 and 2013 coincided with the peak of the country's electricity crisis. Widespread corruption led to the depletion of departmental funds, and vital infrastructure assets were dismantled and sold off. National power generation companies could no longer afford to service or fuel many of their coal and natural gas plants.

I remember how the frequency of rolling blackouts steadily ramped up to unbearable levels. In 2011, there would usually be a 30-minute or 1-hour outage every 4 hours or so. By the time I returned to Toronto in July 2013, we only had power in our relatively upscale neighborhood every other hour. There was even a span of a few weeks that summer when we experienced excruciating, day-long outages.

As factories, shops, offices, and households alike attempted to meet their quotas and maintain their standard of living by using gasoline, diesel, and natural gas generators, the energy crisis spread to these other forms of fuel. The nation's considerable natural gas infrastructure had little to transmit, with kitchens in most cities literally running on fumes. Vehicles running on gasoline, diesel, and compressed natural gas all spent hours (and occasionally days!) in serpentine formation around fuel pumps.

Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) devices, attached to one or more 12-volt car or truck batteries, became commonplace. While UPS units undoubtedly offered their owners some measure of relief from long stretches without power, they only made the electricity shortage worse. Customers were now placing an even higher load on the electricity grid: all the power-consuming appliances they were using before, plus these UPS units that were less efficient and required frequent recharging. Everyone cramming their electricity-dependent chores into brief windows of opportunity usually results in dips in voltage, AKA 'brown-outs'. In this way, electricity becomes the vehicle of demise for the very devices it was supposed to bring to life.

Even though the sheer number of hours that Pakistanis spend without power each day is staggering in itself, such statistics fail to convey the magnitude of the impact this widespread power-starvation has had on their daily lives. During the worst years of the crisis, power outages were basically unscheduled. Even now, outage schedules aren't completely predictable. The resulting uncertainty fosters a hurried, desperate attitude in people. Hurry up and switch on the washing machine! Make sure the water tank is full! Microwave those leftovers while we have the chance! I have to iron my clothes! This results in a spectacular display of daily domestic gymnastics, interspersed with frustrating periods of enforced idleness.

Everything that needs to be done must be done at once, and in fewer hours of the day. Many forms of entertainment also become tricky affairs. It's a rare treat to watch an entire feature-length movie in one sitting. TV shows and sporting events usually fare no better. In a country that's crazy for cricket, watching a match is painful. The sport's various formats range from three hours to five eight-hour days. You might not find it surprising that younger sports fans have begun to gravitate towards soccer, with its 90-minute games. Similarly, PC gamers such as myself have had to make compromises. Either stick to old titles that can run on laptops, or switch to gaming on mobile devices.

It isn't clear how people are expected to pursue an education when they can't keep the lights on. Rechargeable electric lamps are very common now, but they can only do so much. Eye strain can be a major issue while studying. Furthermore, work that relies on any sort of computer-related task suffers tremendously. Online research, programming, graphic design and animation, or even replying to email becomes that much more difficult. Laptops, tablets, and smartphones are much more popular than desktop computers. However, most serious, typing-intensive tasks can only be performed comfortably on desktops or laptops. Laptop users are often found praying for the power to turn back on before their computers die.

During Pakistan's long, hot summers, power outages are devastating. Ceiling fans are the norm in buildings, but most UPS setups only manage to power them partially, causing them to groan loudly as their blades spin lazily. During the more humid monsoon months, air conditioning is the only way to feel truly comfortable. However, an air conditioner can't run on a UPS, and trying to cool a room with an A/C that only runs every other hour is tragicomically futile. It's also unaffordable for many people, who can do little more than pray for rain.

People also incur several insidious costs by having to switch tasks so frequently. Imagine that you have decided to prepare a meal, and just as you are about to use the blender, food processor, or spice grinder, there's a power outage. Do you finish the job manually with a mortar and pestle? Do you defer that task and prepare other ingredients? Do you abandon that dish entirely and start on something completely different?

Similarly, imagine sitting down to write an essay, or begin a software project. Partway through your efforts, there is a power outage. Even if you happened to save your work before your computer shut off, the interruption will have taken its toll. Tasks requiring complex planning and forethought cannot be performed efficiently in half-hour or even hour-long segments. Workers are forced to begin each session by asking themselves where they left off, and there are often several other preliminary steps that must be taken before work can resume in earnest. For these reasons, a ten-minute interruption can often result in the loss of an entire hour.

In addition to decreasing the amount of tangible results that workers can produce, power outages also reduce the quality of these results. When people are forced to work in short bursts instead of longer periods of continuous effort, they are discouraged from undertaking complex, high-quality projects. Novels become short stories, and graphic novels become three-panel comics. Emails are replaced with tweets. Three-course meals give way to fast food. Every admirably elegant product or activity is abandoned for an inferior alternative that requires less preparation. Daily power outages lower people's standards and expectations.

It is also important to note that the electricity crisis in Pakistan is different in kind than the situation in many other countries. Unlike many African nations where less than half the population has access to electricity, at least 93% of Pakistanis are connected to the grid. Their daily lives have developed accordingly, and most people, both urban and rural, rely on electricity nearly as much as citizens of developed countries do. Our pre-electric ways of living and working have died off, and are mostly mysterious to younger generations. To be given and then denied something as transformative as electricity is arguably worse than having never had it at all.

Thankfully, the situation is improving, albeit gradually, since late 2013. I've been in Pakistan for four months now, and power outages have receded to 2011 levels. While this might not seem like much to cheer about, the intolerable situation the country faced three years ago makes current conditions seem satisfactory. With further infrastructure improvements slated to be rolled out regularly over the next several months and years, people are hopeful.

Recent advances in technology related to renewable energy are particularly promising, and have the potential to raise the availability, reliability, and affordability of Pakistan's electricity infrastructure to new heights. Since this article is already somewhat longer than I intended, I will continue this discussion in a separate piece. The next part will explore potential solutions that could accelerate the recovery of Pakistan's energy infrastructure. I will attempt to identify options that are sustainable and environmentally friendly, and that are also financially and logistically feasible. Even though my suggestions might not be perfect in every way, I believe that it is far better to explore positive courses of action than to simply complain about the way things are.

Thank you for reading, and check back soon!

Can the pursuit of wisdom become a fool’s errand?

The surge in academic interest regarding wisdom since the end of the 20^th century has the potential to accelerate the moral and intellectual development of individuals and societies alike. In the same way that having a map of unfamiliar terrain simplifies navigation and speeds travelers toward their goals, a clearer understanding of wisdom and its acquisition can help people hasten their approach toward the better person they are striving to become.

It is important to note, however, that the path to wisdom is steep. The same kind of self-reflection that makes the cultivation of wisdom an extraordinarily powerful transformative tool also makes it agonizingly intimate. To become wiser requires a person to become acutely aware of his or her deepest flaws and shortcomings, and then to break away from the mental shackles of habits and biases that have grown more powerful and automatic through frequent, unconscious repetition. Both aspects of this maturation toward excellence – one grounded in refining attentional faculties and dispelling illusion, the other in practicing and strengthening mental activities like planning, rational deliberation, and emotional regulation – can be more painful and tiring than strenuous physical exercise.

Here’s one way to understand why this might be the case. Described roughly, physical exercise strengthens muscles by first producing micro-tears in them, and then reconstituting them into more powerful, more tightly woven configurations. Similarly, developing a more powerful mental apparatus requires the trainee to identify weaknesses in functionality by testing the limits of his or her mental faculties.

If the goal of a particular exercise is to correct relatively minor or fine-grained discrepancies in cognitive or emotional ability, it is accompanied by relatively minor discomfort. Maybe the person just needed to revise some rather specific false beliefs, or had to unlearn bad habits that were somewhat narrow in scope. These kinds of improvements can be thought of as relatively simple optimizations of one degree or another, since they leave the existing structures of one’s mental faculties mostly intact.

However, if the person finds out that some of his or her fundamental presuppositions about the way the world works (or ways to work in the world) are incorrect, then major pillars of those cognitive and behavioral structures will need to be torn down. It also means that other beliefs, desires and learned patterns of activity that used those erroneous pillars for support are also reduced to rubble, and have to be rebuilt, to continue with the metaphor, from the ground up. This kind of reconfiguration can be thought of as the mental equivalent of elite, military-grade physical training, so you can imagine the sort of mental anguish that it induces. However, since many people identify “who they are” with their minds more so than their bodies, this sort of mental transformation can dismantle them in ways that no amount of physical gerrymandering could ever achieve.

This also means that people who attempt such feats with neither an understanding of these risks nor a mentor to guide them through the ordeal can fall apart before re-emerging from this developmental crucible. If the quest for wisdom is cut short, a person can be left with a shattered psyche, no longer able to believe in the illusions of the past, and not yet capable of assimilating the truths and achieving the enhanced mental equilibrium that the future had offered tantalizing glimpses of.

Such a lack of understanding is one of many ways that can lead seekers of wisdom astray. Some find themselves in more or less the same state of being that they embarked from, despite years of effort. Others lose themselves entirely, and cease to be functional individuals. Does this mean that questing for wisdom is a paradoxical act of folly?

I think it can be, but doesn’t have to be. As I mentioned above, there’s a good chance that a naïve or ill-prepared psyche might either achieve relatively modest developmental gains, or even suffer heavily for its efforts. Similarly, even the most prepared caterpillar faces obliteration, should its chrysalis be cracked open prematurely. Just like the self-liquefaction that necessarily precedes the emergence of a butterfly, the period of mental chaos that a person must endure before realizing the qualitative shift associated with sagacity is an unsustainable state fraught with vulnerability. Some fools are just half-baked sages.

Another concept that deserves clarification is what we might mean by “pursuing wisdom”. After all, ancient traditions differ in their approaches to wisdom, and modern research is nowhere near a standard, formulaic consensus on how wisdom might be nurtured. From Socratic reasoning and precise logic to Buddhist contemplation and attentional enhancement, humanity has developed many practices and technologies that in turn facilitate the development of humanity.

While it is probable that humanity and technology will continue to spiral upwards in mutual, symbiotic transcendence, it is unclear whether individual methods and traditions will converge or multiply. It isn’t unreasonable to believe that there are as many roads to wisdom as there are travelers who have reached that lofty destination. Most of the wisest people that you know personally have probably never cracked open a book that explicitly discusses the cultivation of wisdom, but have instead accrued a profound understanding of the world, the human condition, and appropriate modes of action through a multiplicity of life events and seemingly mundane, everyday habits.

It sometimes appears that many of these “everyday” wise people begin their journey toward wisdom by achieving relatively domain-specific (declarative) expertise and (procedural) mastery. While honing skills and accumulating vast swaths of knowledge by no means guarantees that a person becomes wise (and there is no shortage of talented yet foolish experts), a select few among these domain-specific experts and masters take one step further than the rest, and unconsciously generate abstract generalizations from their primary discipline that can be applied to a much broader range of human experience and action. Sometimes these wise people do offer domain-neutral advice whose general applicability is rather self-evident, but they often state profound truths about the world couched in language of the vocations and hobbies they understand in intimate detail. In a sense, they see the world through their expertise, and model advice upon their mastery. The athlete’s world becomes an arena, while the fisherman’s life takes the form of a river. It’s not surprising that for Shakespeare, “all the world’s a stage”, while for Ella Fitzgerald, "life is like a song”.

So if the seeds of wisdom are everywhere, is there any utility in the deliberate pursuit of wisdom? Sure there is. One thing that experimental psychology has revealed is that we’re not as good as we think we are when it comes to using metaphors in one domain as guiding principles in a completely different one, even when the similarities are uncanny. Needham and Begg (1991) showed that priming people with stories that serve as very tight analogies does not help them solve problems that require the kind of insight that wise people excel at. Perhaps lessons learned from a deliberate study of wisdom itself might produce more general, obvious, and readily applicable principles that succeed in improving people’s performance in situations where implicit analogies have failed. Perhaps the study of the more abstract class of “all paths to wisdom” might make a specific person’s preferred route easier to plot and traverse.

This brings me to one last potential hazard that seekers of wisdom would do well to avoid. Studying wisdom as an academic pursuit is not the same thing as cultivating wisdom. Where a large part of cultivating wisdom is a bottom-up process, involving the gradual accrual and synthesis of micro-skills into more general meta-skills, studying wisdom is very much a top-down endeavor. While useful, this kind of top-down study is difficult to implement practically, and it is therefore probably impossible to use it as a substitute for the more organic acquisition and integration of excellence that is found in wise athletes, fishermen, playwrights, singers, and all other everyday sages. It is certainly possible to be a wise academic in the same way, but that requires a similar accumulation of expertise and mastery in the science and art of scholarship, and is not the same thing as hoping to take a shortcut by reading a few books that discuss wisdom, which a novice seeker of wisdom might be foolish enough to attempt.

Wisdom is as much an attitude as it is a state of being. A fool that has resolved to pursue wisdom has, in a sense, already acted wisely by doing so. Reading about wisdom can enhance its acquisition, but since every domain of expertise and mastery harbors the seeds of wisdom, facts in a book can never replace paying attention to the world and practicing excellence in action. So as long as you remain attentive and active, your ever-improving abilities will help you crawl, then walk, and then sprint towards becoming the sage that sleeps within us all.

Bibliography

Needham, D. R., & Begg, I. M. (1991). Problem-oriented training promotes spontaneous analogical transfer: Memory-oriented training promotes memory for training. Memory & Cognition 19, 543–557.

A roller-coaster year: Employment, depression, cycling, technology, and an unlikely source of inspiration

Time for another long-overdue post on this barren blog. A lot has happened since my last entry. Shortly after my post on the first chapter of the Qur'an (and 6 months after upgrading my I.T. credentials), I finally got a call from a potential employer. It was an American company that needed a local tech in Toronto for an existing client of theirs that had recently expanded its operations north of the border. I only got a call because the phone number listed on my résumé was the local Toronto number for my sister’s company. Otherwise, since I was still in Lahore at the time, I probably wouldn't have heard from anyone. Realizing this, I immediately jumped at the offer, and within two weeks, I was back in Toronto (accompanied by my younger sister, who was just as eager to leave Pakistan and return to saner, safer Canada), ready to resume my I.T. career.

Working downtown on Adelaide Street was fun, and the start-up that I was supporting seemed to be pretty cool. However, within two months, that company experienced some sort of internal shake-up, and all of a sudden switched from expansion to cost-cutting mode. Since they had begun to lay off their own employees, I knew that an external resource like myself wouldn't be kept on for much longer. I didn't have to wait very long before I was told that my services were no longer required. My employer kept me on for another couple of months doing remote support for people in California, Georgia and Texas, but that wasn't the kind of work I was expecting to do, and it didn't really work out. I was living with relatives at the time, which is a situation that doesn't exactly lend itself to a working from home. I was also the company’s only Canadian employee, and they really didn't do a great job of providing me with the guidance and support that (I’m assuming) their American employees enjoyed. They finally called me on New Year’s Eve and officially laid me off. By this time, my sister and I had moved out of our relative’s house (something that took far too long, thanks to my abysmal, depression-impacted credit score), and had just begun to accumulate furniture, unpack, and settle in for the winter. Far from a stable environment.

The biggest annoyance associated with my job was purely administrative; reporting the hours I worked each day. When your job is split into many separate tickets for many different clients, and when your employer asks you to keep track of the time you spend on each ticket, things can get mighty tricky. This is especially the case when you are required to handle multiple tickets concurrently. If I spent two hours working on three tasks at the same time, how do I report this? To make matters worse, the ticketing system that my employer used, Autotask, is the biggest piece of shit waste of time I have ever seen. It made timekeeping such a frustrating experience that I probably spent more time screwing around with calendar and time widgets than actually doing my job. Its archaic user interface made my life particularly miserable, and definitely compounded my job anxiety. Whatever you do, please stay away from any company that uses Autotask in any facet of their business.

Because of my employer’s administrative fumbles, I wasn't given any benefits like medical coverage (when I asked them about this when they called me to let me go, they said I did have health benefits for the next week, but taking advantage of this didn't seem to make much sense at that point). Their unfamiliarity with Canadian employment practices and their easy-going attitude towards setting me up as a permanent employee meant that I didn't accumulate enough paid hours to qualify for Employment Insurance. This was enough to nudge me into a depressive state, and make me feel rather disillusioned with employment in general.

I had no interest in looking for another company to work for and be mistreated by. In the following months, I eventually mustered up the courage to forge ahead on my own. I printed off some business cards of my own, and tried to convince people to pay me a fairly modest fee to solve their info-tech issues. So far, I only have two clients. Aside from some preliminary improvements to their I.T. infrastructure, their needs haven’t been huge, and so right now, I’m making even less money than I used to make working part-time at Staples for minimum wage back in 2010.

This sort of situation is bound to have a negative impact on mental health, especially over such a prolonged period. My only significant source of relief during this period was my bike. My youngest sister bought me a used bike for my birthday in March, and since then, I have ridden over 4,000 kilometers through the streets of Toronto. I've dropped over 30 pounds along the way, and most of the back and neck pain that plagued my sedentary existence in Lahore has also melted away. I’m in great physical shape, and I’m pretty sure that my legs make up more than half of my body weight right now.

My other source of joy has been the wonderful free-to-play video game, Tribes: Ascend. I've been a Tribes player since 1997, and this most recent incarnation of the franchise, while certainly not flawless, allowed me to hone some long-dormant skills, and acted as a much-needed source of dopamine. It’s a travesty how Hi-Rez Studios, the company behind the game, has largely abandoned it (not unlike Irrational, Vivendi/Sierra and Dynamix did in the past). No other first-person shooter on the market comes close to providing an experience that showcases players’ sheer skill in quite the same way as Tribes. Makes me wanna holler! Since the official North America East servers began kicking people off after the end of every single round, player populations have dropped drastically, and everyone is calling this the end of the franchise. I really hope this isn't so, and would actually gladly participate in some kind of effort to revive the game. An OpenTribes platform would make the global game-o-sphere a much nicer place.

Back to cycling. I was spending about 20 hours per week on my bike, and recorded most of this activity with Strava, the nifty smartphone app that lets you track your running and cycling activity, and participate in challenges to compete with others around the globe. At the height of my cycling efforts this year, I participated in their ‘Monthly Training Series’ (MTS) for August, and wound up logging 1,386 kilometers. Often, I didn't have any money in my pocket during these rides, and on more than a few occasions, I had to walk my bike back home after experiencing mechanical failure of one sort or another. Sometimes these walks were the entire 20 kilometer distance from downtown Toronto to the west-end apartment where I live. Without enough to buy replacement parts as I needed them, or even enough for bus fare, I treated these walks as an opportunity to condition myself both physically and mentally. I’d tell myself that these walks were strengthening muscle groups that aren't used much while cycling, were allowing me to slow down and enjoy the scenery, and if nothing else, were helping me, as they say, ‘build character’. Above all else, these apparent annoyances taught me that while a motorist might be dead in the water in a similar situation, a cyclist always has the option to push his or her vehicle all the way home. Indeed, if you live on an upper floor of your building, you can brag about carrying your vehicle up and down flights of stairs every day.

Being marginally self-employed in the fashion I currently am is a mixed bag. While I don’t have a ton of money (I have exactly one 5 cent piece on my dresser, and its embossed beaver and queen take turns chuckling and sneering at me), I have also learned to enjoy things in life that don’t require currency. I also have more time than most people. Having more time in itself is great, but in my situation, there are a few downsides, too. It gives a depressed person more time to ruminate and feel horrible, whenever that mood decides to take hold. It also makes it very clear that even my most sincere friends don’t share the same temporal luxuries that I do, and that without the company of people one can relate to, even an eternity can feel worthless.

Many of my university friends have dispersed since they graduated, and now live all over the world, doing all the wonderful things that come naturally to their wonderful selves. However, even the ones in Toronto haven’t had a ton of time to chat. And I mean face-to-face. While textual communication is a great thing, it can’t compare with the richness and nuance of a live conversation. Aside from a few planned activities and get-togethers (which are great fun, but don’t set the tone for deep, meaningful conversations), I haven’t exactly had much opportunity to just hang out. My friends are too busy to pay me much mind.

I currently find myself without any real destinations to travel to. Without any money, I can’t even stop at a coffee shop or burger joint. I go for a ride, keep going until I feel tired, and then I just ride back home. The dopamine and physical fatigue keep me from utter despair, but also divert my attention from most things that might improve my overall situation.

Part of the reason that I find myself on my bike so often is that I don’t have a lot of space or privacy at home. Since our youngest sister moved in with my other sister and myself (along with her dog, snake, and three cats), I haven’t been able to focus on anything worthwhile for sustained periods. Just like Sam Roberts, it seems like inhuman beings take up all of my time. I also have this odd sensation of not being sufficiently alone to engage in solitary activities, and feel obligated (to some degree) to coordinate my waking hours with my sisters. Being mindful and respectful of their space, their work schedules, and their belongings can be taxing, especially with so little space to go around.

Furthermore, I feel uncomfortable working on private projects in the same room as other people I know. I think this is because of some unconscious notion of mine that friends and family deserve more of my attention than inert objects, no matter how valuable. Intellectually, I know that this can’t always be true, but something in me might be recalling the many, many times when other people have given a higher priority to their books, notebooks, phones or computer screens than to something I was trying to tell them about, and how horrible these instances made me feel (because (a) the other person failed to show the same enthusiasm about what I was talking about, (b) I appeared less important to them than something that seemed rather trivial to me at the time, and (c) I wound up feeling like I had wasted their time and my own). Even in adjacent rooms, I can sometimes feel (probably imaginary) tendrils of attention creeping towards me, keeping tabs on me. The result is a kind of voluntary paralysis that resembles sneaking back into your room at night when your parents are asleep. Every sound feels amplified because you’re imagining someone else listening, too.

Living on my own, however, simply isn't an option. Even if I had enough money, I wouldn't be able to take care of myself in my current depressed state. I also think that Pakistani men are raised (or raise themselves, perhaps) to rely on the women in their lives in a way that seems – Unfair? Sub-optimal? Brittle? – for both parties, and that despite my rather non-traditional upbringing, this particular social norm has left me underprepared for life on my own. Without the support of my family, and in particular the two sisters I live with, I’d be much worse off today, and that’s if I managed to survive this long at all.

The joy of cycling was interrupted towards the end of August when my bike began to give up on me. I had to swap tires after they began coming apart at the seams. My shifter and brake cables began to snap. The bolt that secured the front shifter cable to my ancient front derailleur also snapped, so I had to replace the entire derailleur. My chain had stretched way beyond what any reasonable cyclist would allow, and that in turn caused irreparable damage to my rear cassette. At various times during the August challenge, I was riding my 21-speed mountain bike as a 7-speed, 3-speed, or single-speed bike. I missed the first week of September entirely because my bike’s chain (which I had to replace) kept coming apart mid-ride. The fools at Bikes on Wheels on Augusta sold me a chain that was at least 3 links too short. I've finally managed to add a few links from my old chain (not the best solution) and my chain is holding firm for the time being, but that week without my bike had a serious impact on my mental well-being.

During July, I had picked up third I.T. client, and had begun working on a simple web development project for him. Communication with him was sparse and unclear, he lived too far away, and I wasn't in the most stable mental or financial situation either. The business relationship went sour, and I never got paid for the last bit of work I did for him. This was towards the end of August, so it coincided with other problems I was facing, like having to pay for bike parts that I could barely afford. This pushed me deeper into Depressionville. This has happened to me in the past; when faced with a seemingly minor setback, especially one attributed to my own inaction, I typically become more or less unresponsive. Even if it’s not true, I feel as though I've let others down, that I have nothing of value to offer to my peers and colleagues. I wind up feeling worthless.

That’s how I felt a couple of Fridays ago on the 5^th, and I spent that evening sharing my misery with my sisters, which I rarely do, just so they knew how I felt. After sleeping off the fatigue associated with this kind of uncharacteristic opening-up, I felt well enough to spend the 30 dollars I happened to earn the day before from a one-off job for a neighbor on a new bike chain, and get my life moving again. However, when I stepped up to my computer to figure out when the bike shop opened, I discovered that one of the animals had chewed up the cord of my fancy gaming mouse. To me, that meant no more Tribes.

I was livid, and I hadn't even had breakfast yet. After letting out a moan of frustration and feeling not a lick better, I found myself punching my bedroom wall, over and over and over again. I stopped when the pain overtook my rage, and a few minutes later, realized that I had managed to do some serious damage to myself. My sister took me to the hospital, and the next couple of nights’ sleep involved some tricky business with my hands propped up on pillows at awkward angles. Additionally, during my fit of rage, I also managed to make my sister feel crappy (on her birthday, no less) by telling her how her animals had destroyed my gear. If I had had something to eat at this point in the day, or if I hadn't had a heart-to-heart with my sisters the night before, I doubt I would have said anything to anyone. I’m the sort of person that refrains from starting conversations that don’t seem to have much point, and even immediately after the fact, this certainly seemed to be one of those cases.

As I mentioned above, I eventually managed to fix my bike chain, and I’m making do with a crappy spare mouse that I have, but I’m still quite far from okay with my situation. I mentioned this in a Facebook status update, and some friends showed support and pointed me to some potentially helpful resources that my depression-addled mind has yet to gain any serious traction with. Even so, some progress is being made, no matter how frustratingly slow.

There was one thing, however, that inspired me to keep trying, and that reminded me of dreams I have harbored for a number of years. Surprisingly, it was Apple’s announcement of the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch. While on the surface these products seem laughably insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and perhaps they are, it’s the level of craftsmanship that they represent that inspired me. The drive to produce something that extends people’s ability to make real progress in the world, instead of creating artificial demand for computer babysitters and device driver diddlers, the way Microsoft’s half-baked product ecosystem has functioned for decades. In my opinion, lot of I.T. jobs simply shouldn't exist, and if every computer were designed as well as a Mac, they probably wouldn't. All of those intelligent computer techs would be using their brilliance to solve problems that weren't so laughably artificial. Nobody should have to troubleshoot SharePoint lists and views for a living, or waste their time wondering why particular fonts screw up some document layouts but not others.

The U2 album that was released at the Apple event added fuel to my fire of hope. It’s an uplifting collection of songs. Being a long-time fan of the band, I downloaded it as soon as I heard that it was a free release, and listened to it non-stop for the next 3 days. If I can keep my words flowing past this single entry, I’ll probably end up writing an entire post on the many different ways that I find these songs to be personally meaningful.

I was inspired, yes, but to do what? Surely I wasn't thinking of starting a company that produces smartphones or computers. Instead, Apple’s product launch reminded me that I was in the ‘wisdom business’, and that wisdom is a self-driven phenomenon that centers around both individual and collective human development. The betterment of humans and the human race is at wisdom’s core.

While it is no secret that Apple is a corporation, and is therefore obligated to turn a profit (which it does exceedingly well), it doesn't appear to be an evil corporation (even without the ‘open’ stance towards development of which Google is an exemplar). The Apple event on the 9^th explicitly positioned the company and its products as drivers of positive change, and whether or not you believe the image that this particular company attempted to project, a more general, underlying idea managed to make an impression on me: good design – design whose simplicity and efficiency allows people to accomplish more and waste less (and maybe even make their efforts enjoyable) – is invaluable. Thoughtful product or process design that identifies and facilitates a small number of good ways to perform a task might appear at first to restrict users' freedom, but if the product or process is truly well-designed, it will in fact save people from having to experiment with all the ineffective, time-wasting ways of approaching that same task. Apple certainly doesn't have a monopoly on good design, but good design does appear to be its greatest strength.

What does this mean for me and my desire to cultivate and encourage the cultivation of wisdom? In short, I have decided to forge ahead, despite being penniless and unwell, and take as many small steps as I can towards promoting wisdom in a concrete, lasting way. Specifically, I intend to do whatever I can to maximize the output and collaborative efforts of academic institutions. While this will one day, I hope, involve me making recommendations on how universities and colleges can improve the efficiency of their administrative staff, those sorts of activities are usually reserved for seasoned educationists. I imagine there aren't many entry-level positions of that sort. However, there are other ways of making significant progress that don’t require me to already be in the thick of academic policy-making.

Initially, I intend to design and produce software that helps post-secondary students make better, more informed decisions regarding their academic career, help them avoid the need to retake courses or spend more time pursuing a diploma or degree than is either necessary or desirable, and in general, make fewer mistakes. I want to make it easy for students to know what they need to do today, this week, this semester, and even further along their academic journey. I want to remove unnecessary surprises that force students to take what we euphemistically call the ‘victory lap’; an extra semester (or two, or five), in order to take courses that they didn't realize they had to take. The cumulative result across all students in one institution (and hopefully, across many institutions over many years) would undoubtedly be staggering. I expect to see lower drop-out rates, and possibly even lower incidence of mental health issues among students. Think about the number of person-years that these sorts of tools can save. Furthermore, this isn't just any group of people being assisted in some mundane activity. People that attend college or university number among the brightest and most motivated, no matter which city or country they belong to. Helping them become the best people they can be sounds like a particularly worthy goal to me.

In a time when evil ideologies and infectious diseases have both become global epidemics that can render entire battalions impotent and helpless, it is brainpower and not firepower that will get the job done in the end. Ideas survive long after the flesh has failed, and they are also more integral to who we are, both as individuals and as a species. Even though I am weak today, I consider this a tiny step towards becoming something more, by helping others do the same. In the coming months, I’ll be collecting and reviewing a bunch of notes that I've scribbled in half a dozen notebooks over half a dozen years, and I hope to be able to present a more cohesive, less inchoate representation of the vision I have of the future of academic administration. Hopefully my life circumstances will improve in tandem, riding this wave of ambition and inspiration. If I accomplish even a tenth of what I hope to, it will be in the service of humanity, and I can’t think of any project more worthy of my time.

The Qur'an: An Exploratory Introduction

For several years now, I’ve been considering the mere possibility of thinking about religious matters, and yet have avoided any sort of direct study of the subject. For reasons described just below, I now feel, however, that I might be able to provide some useful insight on Islam, and that I should make an effort to express my thoughts on some aspects of the faith.

I have a number of reasons for circumventing matters of faith and belief. First, I have felt that most discussions involving religion tend to be especially susceptible to emotionally charged debate. While this in itself isn’t necessarily bad, I find it uncomfortable. These sorts of debates often evoke anger when opinions differ on sensitive topics, and it isn’t difficult for such arguments to end in hurt feelings, fresh enmities, or several other kinds of equally unpleasant outcomes. I felt that this in itself was a strong enough practical reason to keep my distance from the subject.

Second, while I have been taught about Islam in my primary and middle school days, this hardly qualifies me as an expert on the subject. Since I tend to listen with caution to claims made by people that don’t appear to be particularly familiar with the matter they’re discussing, I should hold myself to the same standard. It’s generally a good rule to participate in discussions only to the degree that one is truly qualified.

Third, I feel that when it comes to Islam, the many opponents (either overt or unwitting) of this faith make it even more difficult to speak about. One runs the risk of being vilified by one group or another. Additionally, there are also people that, despite being proponents of Islam, nevertheless react unpleasantly when their beliefs are questioned, or even dispassionately investigated by curious minds. At times, the boundary lines separating acceptable inquisitiveness from faux pas can be somewhat fuzzy. For this reason, I have erred on the side of caution, lest I be misinterpreted and incur the wrath of others.

My fourth reason for treading lightly around discussions on religion feels very similar to my reluctance to say too much about wisdom. Like wisdom, religion is a topic of immense importance, for various practical, spiritual, psychological and ethical sorts of reasons. Beginning a discussion on religious matters deserves great care, and is an occasion for a degree of respect and humility. I have kept asking myself, “who am I to express my opinion on topics of such profundity?”, and have maintained that it’s simply not my place to talk about religion.

My fifth reason to leave religion aside is the difference between my own understanding of how Islam, and how it coexists with the modern world (including but not limited to “Science”, in several of that word’s connotations). Veering too far from any of the accepted “flavors” of the faith poses its own set of risks, and has kept me from sharing my thoughts.

So why throw myself into these waters, and why do it now? The catalyst is an article by Jerome Taylor that I found in a friend’s Facebook feed. It was about how anti-religious sentiment from a few prominent atheists appeared to be breaching the bounds of rational discussion. What struck me as particularly unacceptable was Richard Dawkins’ ignorance of the Qur’an’s contents; a claim he himself made. I suspect that if he were more familiar with the words within, his perspective would be clearer, and maybe somewhat different in other ways, too.

Although Taylor’s article spurred me into action, responding to it isn’t the primary reason for typing out my thoughts and posting them here. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I have been considering something like this for quite some time. Perhaps my motives have more to do with exploring my own beliefs, which I have until now left rather inchoate. In doing so, I also hope to better understand my own identity. Any new insights I can glean about myself will go a long way towards filling the gap left by my typically uncommitted, neither-Canadian-nor-Pakistani stance.

The particular aspect of Islam that I’d like to investigate is the Qur’an, with some focus on its references to wisdom in particular. I believe that the consensus on its authenticity and authority across a 1.5 billion strong faith is without parallel, unlike more specific details of Muslim life that might differ from group to group and place to place. This makes it a great way to introduce the core of this way of life. I hope to make my way through each chapter of the Qur’an, and have collected multiple English translations to mitigate the effect of any particular translator’s choice of words.

During this exploration, I’ll be satisfying different aspects of my curiosity by taking multiple perspectives. With respect to a particular verse, I might imagine the opinions, beliefs, or reactions of proponents or opponents of Islam, neutral individuals, or other groups of people that might be relevant to the discussion.

In the examples above, I considered perspectives distributed and varied across people. I could also switch perspectives across time, and assume a perspective that I myself might have had in the past. This might mean “longitudinal” differences between my current opinion on something, and the corresponding opinion held by my ten-year-old self. It also refers to more immediate changes in my perspective; my preferences and thoughts when I have just woken up are not the same as the ones I harbour after lunch. A third type of perspectival shift combines the other two, and considers how people of today might interpret something in a different way than people would have a millennium ago.

I hope to avoid content that could be outright disrespectful to Islam, just as I do not approve of disrespect to any other belief system. However, because of the multi-perspective approach that I plan on adopting, many of the points-of-view that I’ll be writing about will differ from my own. Depending on the section of the Qur’an that I happen to be investigating at the time, I might choose to omit my own opinion, or might even discover that I haven’t yet taken a stance on the matter at all.

One particularly important perspective that I plan to focus on is that of an ignorant person. I mean this in its literal sense, and not as an accusation of poor character, shabby upbringing, or anything like that. In other words, when I say “ignorant person”, I mean a person that simply doesn’t know about something. I don’t mean that the person in incapable of knowing, or that they aren’t intelligent enough to know it. I also do not mean ignorant opposition; the person I mean here has no opinion on the matter, as any ignorant-yet-rational person should. Furthermore, the ignorant person is neither opposed nor inclined to learning about the topic… they simply don’t know.

According to these conditions, Richard Dawkins appears to be largely ignorant of the Qur’an. Once again, ignorance isn’t a moral failing or sign of irrationality in itself. A person who is ignorant of the Qur’an just doesn’t know about it, and without further information, it might not be possible to determine whether he or she ought to have known more about it. That, of course, is an entirely separate question. For example, while a person that has never even heard of the Qur’an certainly can’t be blamed for his or her ignorance, someone that vocally opposes it has an intellectual obligation to be aware of that which he or she has chosen to speak against.

Even so, my purpose here is not to assign blame, but to explore a text that over a billion people hold sacred. I intend to keep my attention mostly on the text itself, though as many religious scholars from around the world (both ancient and contemporary) have noted, at least some context is required to understand the Qur’an. I will bring up some points of this kind as they are needed. However, I do not plan on discussing experts’ commentaries (which often accompany the text) to any great length. I might consult them when a particular verse piques my curiosity, but will otherwise focus my attention on the actual text.

One interesting method of conducting this inquiry might be to tell the story of some hypothetical ignorant-yet-unbiased person that discovers a printed copy of the Qur’an (translated into his or her own language), and begins to read it. The story might mention this person’s thoughts as he or she peruses the text. While I probably won’t write an actual story of this sort, it’s an interesting scenario to consider, and I suspect that I’ll bring it up many times as my work progresses.

I’m nearly ready to begin looking at the text itself. In this first post, I’ll begin at the beginning, and take a look at the seven-verse chapter that the Qur’an begins with. Before I get started, though, there are a few general points about the Qur’an that I’d like to bring up for your basic understanding.

“Al-Qur’an” translates to “The Recital”. I bring this up to emphasize that it is primarily a process (recitation), rather than a product (a book). Its essence should be understood as a set of meaningful sounds, instead of as a set of meaningful symbols on paper. Its written form is derived from its spoken form, and not the other way around.

There’s another very important reason to stress the sonic (as opposed to graphic) nature of the Qur’an. While it is not merely poetry, the Qur’an is a sonic work of such astonishing power that it is considered a miracle, or more strongly, the miracle given to Muhammad. While I can’t appreciate most of the nuances of the original Arabic recitation, even my untrained ear can tell that the patterns of sound that comprise the Qur’an possess characteristics that cannot easily be attributed to an unlettered trader from 7^th-century Arabia.

While I can recite the Qur’an in Arabic, I have to rely on English (and to a lesser extent, Urdu) translations to understand it. One reason why this is important to mention is to indicate to you my imperfect knowledge of its meaning. A translation can only impart approximate meaning. That’s why it was so important for me to collect multiple translations. I’ll use the 1930 English translation by Marmaduke Pickthall as a starting point, and will compare it with other translations (Abdel Haleem, Rodwell, Unal, Wahiuddin, and Yusuf Ali) as needed.

The Qur’an contains 6,666 verses or aayaat (singular: aayat) arranged in 114 chapters or surah of greatly varying length; the shortest contains 3 verses, while the longest contains 286. One important thing to note about the chapters is that their traditional order is not chronological. I’m not an expert on why the chapters are arranged the way they are, but it should be noted that while the sequence of verses within a chapter is very important, it might not be as useful for me to dwell too much on the sequence of the chapters themselves. That said, I’ll still be making my way through the Qur’an’s chapters in the traditional order.

It is time to begin. The Qur’an instructs readers to preface their recital by asking God for refuge from Satan. Protection from Satan’s influence is intended to prevent the reader from making mistakes, or misconstruing that which is read. In keeping with this instruction:

I seek refuge in God from Satan, the eternally rejected.

Chapter 1: The Opening

1.     In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.

2.     Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds,

3.     The Beneficent, the Merciful.

4.     Owner of the Day of Judgment,

5.     Thee (alone) we worship; Thee alone we ask for help.

6.     Show us the straight path,

7.     The path of those whom Thou hast favoured; Not (the path) of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray.

The first chapter is called, appropriately enough, “The Opening”, and is one of the most familiar chapters to Muslims. It is recited multiple times during daily prayers, and on other occasions, too.

I wonder what a total neophyte would think if they picked up a copy of “The Recital” and began reading from the first page. “The Opening” might call to mind the literal act of opening a book, or of opening an account or file. The reader might take the title as a literal description – The Opening of The Recital. The reader might imagine an entrance or some other physical manifestation of an opening. For me, the first chapter’s name accentuates the sense of discovery and curiosity that I already associate with beginning an unread book. Someone that isn’t very familiar with the Qur’an but knows of its significance might also interpret this chapter as a means of opening oneself to the rest of the text, and perhaps to Islam, too.

Just as the Qur’an’s first chapter is arguably its most familiar, so is its first verse. Usually identified by its first word, the “Bismillah” or (or “Basmalah”, depending on where you’re from) appears at the beginning of every chapter of the Qur’an, save for one. Since it is always counted as the chapter’s first verse, I suppose it shouldn’t be thought of as a mere announcement of or preface to the chapter proper, and should instead be treated as a an actual part of the chapter. So now we have an opening verse to the opening chapter. I find this recursive detail intriguing.

What does this opening verse say? That could depend on the person that reads it. The absolute neophyte, lacking any prior knowledge, might be limited to piecing together its meaning by paying attention to its grammar. There’s a proper noun, “Allah”, with whom are associated two attributes: “Beneficent” and “Merciful”. However, they seem to be more than just attributes, by the way they’ve been written: Allah isn’t simply beneficent and merciful; Allah is the Beneficent and the Merciful. So Allah is either the only merciful benefactor, or is the ideal of beneficence and mercy.

The first verse also declares, “In the name of Allah…”. So this suggests that the first verse might be something like a dedication, tribute or offering. However, acting in someone’s name or speaking on someone’s behalf come to mind, too.

To make sure I haven’t read too much into the connotations of the English words that Pickthall settled on, I’ve reviewed the others that I have. They all use “In the name of…”, but the proper noun and its two attributes seem to have a couple of noteworthy variations.

Firstly, of the six translations I’m using, four change “Allah” to “God”. There are many effects of substituting “Allah” for “God”, as the nuances of one are swapped for the nuances of the other. For the totally uninitiated reader, it might actually be considered a “spoiler” of sorts, as it immediately identifies Allah as a deity (assuming that the reader is familiar with the concept “god”). The reader’s perspective would immediately shift, depending on his or her beliefs and opinions on deities in general and the deity indicated by the name “God” in particular.

If the reader has access to both the original Arabic text and its translation, these past attitudes towards God will then be transferred, strongly or subtly, to the reader’s brand-new concept of Allah, unless the reader makes a conscious effort to suppress them. If the reader only has the English translation, then The Recital will be read as a book of God from the very beginning, and the reader will have no reservations about applying his or her existing beliefs and opinions about God to the deity that this verse and this recital mentions.

I don’t know whether it’s better to replace the name and “force” the reader to equate Allah with the God they have already heard of, or allow the reader to come to a fresh understanding of Allah’s identity. The former option provides a sense of continuity and familiarity, but also induces the reader to apply implicit assumptions and external biases to their reading. The latter option leaves it up to the reader to associate the concepts Allah and God, should they make that inference, leaving the reader less susceptible to forming premature opinions.

One detail in particular seems to apply uniquely to the name “Allah”. The Arabic prefix “al” translates to “the”. Therefore, unlike “the God” and “a god”, there exists no corresponding common noun paired to “Allah”. The implicit “the” in Allah’s name makes it inherently unique. This aspect of the name’s significance is entirely absent in translations that favor the use of “God”.

One last note about the proper noun “Allah” before I move on. I have deliberately chosen to avoid using any third-person pronouns to refer to Allah. While “He” and “His” are commonly used, Arabic is one of those languages (like Urdu, German, Russian, and many others) that treat all nouns as either male or female, even if they are artifacts, concepts, or other things that are ostensibly genderless. I have trouble thinking about Allah as either male or female, and am therefore reluctant to use either. However, I also have difficulty using the neuter gender “it”, which feels both demeaning and bereft of life. Simply using the proper noun “Allah” seems like my best option.

Secondly, the two attributes are translated variously as “[the] [Most] Beneficent / Merciful / Compassionate / Gracious”. The first attribute (Beneficent/Compassionate/Gracious) appears to be tougher to translate than the second (Merciful). While it appears to be some composite of beneficence, compassion and grace, it would also have to be sufficiently distinct from mercy to warrant the inclusion of a second attribute. To me, “Merciful” conveys forgiveness, as well as a tendency to refrain from exacting punishment. So Allah is the absolver of transgressions. However, this is Allah’s second Qur’anic attribute. His first contrasts with “Merciful”, and appears to not involve someone doing something wrong, and then being forgiven or spared from hardship. Instead, Allah’s first attribute identifies Allah as the supreme benefactor, the ideal of compassion and grace.

For what particular reason would these particular attributes be mentioned in the first, most-repeated verse in the Qur’an? I have a feeling that this has something to do with the role of this verse as a dedication. It is a request for Allah’s benefit, compassion, grace and mercy. This might be understood as asking for Allah’s favor in exchange for this pious act of recitation; or to be forgiven, in case the reciter makes a mistake.

However, it could just as easily be a reminder of the prominence of these two of Allah’s attributes. Among the 99 distinct aspects or facets of divinity that Muslims associate with Allah, being divinely Beneficent and divinely Merciful are two that are meant to be repeated several times each day.

While most (or perhaps all) of Allah’s 99 names will appear and be discussed in due time as I progress through the Qur’an, I would like to bring up a thought that they collectively inspire in me. These facets of divinity might also be ideals for people to aspire to, albeit within their mortal, finite limitations. While only Allah can be the Beneficent and the Merciful, I might strive to act with lowercase-beneficence and lowercase-mercy, should such opportunities arise. However, instead of claiming these actions to be their own, Muslims would treat acting with compassion or grace to be acting as a representative of Allah. Cultivating habits of beneficence and mercy, according to this perspective, are ways to become “closer to God”.

The second verse praises Allah, whom it identifies as the Lord of the Worlds. Worlds, as in plural? This is extremely intriguing. So many interpretations come to mind. Literally outlandish ideas include other planets, civilizations of sentient extraterrestrials, or parallel universes and spatial dimensions. I feel that these meanings are emphasized in Wahiuddin’s translation, which uses “Universe” instead of “Worlds”.

I also receive other impressions from this verse: The developed and developing First and Third Worlds. The samsara and nirvana of Buddhist cosmology. Christian concepts of Heaven and Hell. The concepts of life and afterlife that are common to many belief systems. Even though I can’t provide a definite answer about which worlds this verse mentions, these possibilities are definitely thought-provoking.

I also find that “praise” is used in many interesting ways here. Some translations portray the verse itself as an act of praising Allah. Others state that “Praise” (a proper noun, it seems) “belongs to” Allah. One says that all praise is for Allah. Another says that all praise is due to Allah. The word itself is the same, but it is being reported in very different ways.

I don’t think that any of these interpretations are particularly wrong. The verse is an act of praise, certainly. However, the “al” in the “alhamd” that opens this verse indicates something greater and more specific, too. This elevation of “praise” to “the Praise” is very similar to the way “beneficent”, “merciful” were transformed into their respective Platonic ideals. Furthermore, just as Muslims would treat acting in emulation of divine ideals to be acting as an instrument of Allah, praising other praiseworthy things are (or ought to be) treated as praising Allah by proxy. After all (according to this line of reasoning), anything worth praising draws its goodness from Allah, so Allah is the only true object of praise. This explains some translators’ preference for “All praise…”, and also helps me understand how “belongs to”, “is for”, and “due to” can result from translating the same verse.

The third verse continues in Allah’s praise, and reiterates the first two divine attributes: the Beneficent, the Merciful. There isn’t much more that I can say about this verse, since I’ve already discussed one so similar, i.e. the Bismillah. The only apparent difference here is that these attributes are being praised, instead of being mentioned in a dedication.

The praise continues in the fourth verse, and this time, Allah is identified as the Owner of the Day of Judgment. Some readers will already be familiar with the concept of divine judgment or a singular Day of Judgment. However, the verse on its own doesn’t tell us much about that day, except that Allah owns it.

To own a day isn’t a familiar concept, but it feels similar to presiding over an event, or having a day dedicated to someone or something. Then again, it could also be thought to be similar to someone “winning the day”, which connotes victory. Once again, I feel that all of these interpretations are appropriate and relevant. While some translators have used “Master”, “Lord”, or “King” in place of “Owner”, and “Reckoning” instead of “Judgement”, these differences feel relatively minor to me.

In the fifth verse, the reciter interestingly refers to himself or herself and the rest of the Muslim world as “we”, and (addressing Allah directly) declares Allah to be their only object and recipient of worship, and the only one they turn to for help. This verse might be treated as an oath that the reciter takes, pledging to only worship Allah, and only call to Allah for aid.

Two translators do not use “alone” or “only”, and appear to ignore or omit the sense of exclusivity that the other four translations convey. I’m inclined to side with the majority here; to declare Allah as one’s sole target of worship is central to this verse.

To believe in a single deity (instead of, two, indefinitely many, or none) is a foundational concept in Islam; not having any gods at all would result in chaos, and having more than one would lead to ambiguity and unending conflict. Exactly one god, on the other hand, speaks of order, purpose, and authority. Even people that believe in a different number of deities might understand the simplicity and appeal of Allah’s oneness.

In the sixth verse, the reciter asks for Allah’s guidance, just like the end of the previous verse says. The first-person plural (“us”) is used once again, which indicates that the reciter is requesting guidance for an entire group. It’s probable that the group being referred to here is the same one that the previous verse mentions (people that only worship Allah), this doesn’t seem to be specified explicitly. So the “us” in this verse might also refer to everyone.

Specifically, the reciter asks Allah to show them (or as some translators put it, guide them on) the straight path. All three of these words seem important here. The “the” suggests that there is only one straight path. While some readers might think that this indicates some strict set of prescribed rules that must be followed at all times, the verse doesn’t make any such demands. At most, it suggests that some ideal set of actions of way of life exists, and that people would do well to seek it. That the reciter asks Allah for help might imply that discovering the straight path requires divine assistance, or that it can only be approximated by mere mortals. So instead of a draconian requirement, the straight path becomes a highly desirable goal.

That the path being sought is straight is equally interesting, I find. Straightness connotes both efficiency and balance. It might also indicate an unswervingly resolute stance, free of deviation. So the reciter might be asking to be shown a course of action that (given a particular continuum of behaviour) avoids polar extremes, that exemplifies efficiency, minimizes waste, or is free of “slack”, and that can (or ought to) be maintained indefinitely.

The use of “path” in this verse should also be given consideration. While the Arabic word “siraat” shares its root with “street”, it isn’t used to refer to a physical path. Instead, its meaning is closer to how “way” is sometimes used – way of life; the way of the warrior; the way it’s done. Indeed, the Yusuf Ali translation uses “way” instead of “path”. I find this to be interestingly similar to the spatial metaphors that we use while discussing problem solving – search space; path constraints; progress. Rather than indicating an affinity for roads without bends, this verse might be asking Allah for an optimal solution to a problem.

When I think about “path” in this way, a question comes to mind: for which problem does “the straight path” offer a solution? The use of “the” lends the phrase an all-encompassing feeling, and so I’m inclined to guess that it might mean something like “way of life”. If so, this is the first verse that appears to be relevant to wisdom and leading a good life.

The final verse of the first chapter of the Qur’an provides a few more details about the straight path. The straight path is the path of those that Allah has favoured, and is neither the path of those that have angered Allah, nor of those that have gone astray.

What I find interesting here is that these three characteristics, on their own, do not provide a litmus test for whether a particular path is the straight path. The reader must rely on some other criteria that pick out recipients of Allah’s grace or anger. Once these people have been identified, he or she can then attempt to emulate the first group and steer clear of behaviour engaged in by the second.

As another way of thinking about this verse, maybe these three groups are not mentioned to assist in the identification of the straight path, but to illustrate the consequences of following or not following it. Follow the straight path and you will be bestowed with Allah’s grace; deviate from it, and you will incur Allah’s wrath. Once again, neither of these two interpretations strikes me as particularly incorrect.

Of the three groups mentioned in this verse, I find understanding the significance of “those who go astray” to be the most challenging. Since this group is mentioned in contrast to the recipients of Allah’s favour and wrath, it would appear that this third group receives neither. Maybe these people are mentioned to make the reciter’s request to Allah more explicit. “Please help me act in ways that You like,” the reciter requests, “and not in ways that You dislike. Also keep me from deviating from the way You want me to act (whether or not those deviations would actually make You angry with me).” If this interpretation is correct, the second group (recipients of Allah’s anger) is a subset of the third group (those who go astray), and the verse declares both cases to be undesirable.

I’ve reached the end of the first chapter of the Qur’an, and I feel that this investigative exercise has been worthwhile. By imagining the point of view of a tabula rasa reader and adding my own (admittedly non-exhaustive) impressions, I have tried to present this collection of verses in ways that are separate and distinct from the unpleasant image of Islam received by so many readers and viewers around the world. If I can keep this up, I’d like to continue this intellectual adventure and discover for myself whether the unsettling claims that Islam’s opponents make about the Qur’an are rational or incoherent, ill-founded or justified. More importantly, I’m eager to learn about what the Qur’an has to say about wisdom and matters of practical ethics.

It’s been a month since I began this post, and during that time, more than one young Muslim has been involved in terrible acts that have been widely publicized. Had a non-extremist, non-fundamentalist reading of the Qur’an been available to these people, their understanding of their own faith might have led them to behave differently. While many other factors affect people that commit such heinous crimes, any effort that might gradually shift the intellectual climate of the contemporary Muslim world away from unwarranted aggression is, in my opinion, of critical importance. Even though the primary goal of this introduction is discovery rather than rehabilitation, I hope that it serves as an example of how we can shift away from waging “war on terror”, and instead begin to counter terror with reason.

Personal Worth and Pursuing Wisdom

Before the impromptu tribute to The Doors in my last post, I had gone through the cathartic exercise of describing aspects of my life that I didn't find particularly agreeable. I intend for this post to be more positive and constructive, with a focus on solutions to those problems. Along the way, there will be opportunities aplenty for discussing big-picture concepts like wisdom and good lives.

I have a tendency to focus on knowing and learning, and am not as comfortable with bargaining and earning. I don't believe that a trade-off exists between these two activities – after all, many people learn to earn. Instead, I suspect that my discomfort stems from a difficulty to put a price tag on my skills. Neither do I want to undervalue myself and be taken advantage of, nor do I wish to exploit others by demanding more than what is fair. If there were a way for me to make a clear, objective self-evaluation, I would feel more at ease while negotiating a salary, setting a consultation fee, or engaging in similar business transactions that involve fuzzy, intangible services.

Even when there are established market rates for some of these services, the quality of work that different service providers offer can vary tremendously. There might be exceptions, where every service provider's output is worth the same. However, even a seemingly trivial task (like screwing caps onto tubes of toothpaste) can be performed with varying degrees of precision and diligence. Perhaps truly discrete, pass-or-fail activities don't exist at all, and if they do, there's a good chance that they're not worth enough to pay a human to perform.

While these sorts of conundrums probably don't faze the average businessperson or employee, I happen to be a student of philosophy. Questions of scruples have thoroughly trounced what little business sense I might have with astonishing regularity, or have at least crippled them by setting what André Kukla calls "mental traps". I don't have his book handy (it's sitting in a cardboard box in Toronto), I think he calls this particular trap "recursion". In essence, instead of continuing with the problem at hand ("How can I earn money from my expertise?"), I discover another problem nested inside it ("What constitutes a fair price?"), like a Russian matryoshka doll. I then find myself tackling the nested (though not necessarily "smaller") problem, at the expense of the first. What's worse is that the nested problem is usually far less practical, often offering no immediate return on the considerable intellectual investment that its solution requires. This problem becomes my own personal Zeno's paradox, preventing me from ever returning to the original matter, either because it's just too hard to reach an acceptably accurate answer, or because it begets nested problems of its own; onions within onions.

I bring up these bizarre mental gymnastics for reasons other than – okay... in addition to – comic self-deprecation. Firstly, my reluctance to assign specific value to myself or my actions provides a key insight into what motivates me to understand wisdom.

I'm not an economist, and I don't have a firm stance on whether capitalism is a boon or a menace to civilization. However, I do believe that despite the popular claim that there are some things you can't put a price tag on, the invention of currency has drastically reduced the number of things for which this is true. It appears that currency allows people to trade in their subjective evaluation of things in the world for an objective value, literally allowing them to compare apples to oranges. While this value is neither absolute nor accurate, it is irresistibly convenient, and this convenience has made monetary systems ubiquitous, if not entirely universal.

What of the things in life that don't readily lend themselves to monetization? Sometimes, a provisional, approximate value is assigned to them, as and when the need arises. These assigned values can have a major impact on a person's entire lifestyle ("Do I care for my child myself, or get a higher-paying, more demanding job and hire a babysitter?"), or might help resolve some urgent yet relatively unimportant matter ("How much extra am I willing to pay for the custom paint job?").

Other times, however, things that lack a tidy dollar amount seem to lose value, or at least perceived value. In the same way that easy to reach, highly visible items tend to be discussed, purchased or eaten more frequently then out-of-the-way, obscure ones, items that are more difficult to appraise are often more susceptible to floccinaucinihilipilification. There are, of course, several caveats and qualifications that apply – that different people (and even the same people at different points in time) make different value judgments is just one example.

Even so, not being able to assign a monetary value to engaging conversation versus smarmy salesmanship, or genuine camaraderie versus an opportunistic alliance might make at least some people think that the former pleasantries are merely sentimental and illusory, especially when compared to their latter, profit-yielding counterparts. Once again, not all people think this way, but I have a strong suspicion that attributing monetary value to an option will make it more salient than alternatives for which no such value has been set. When asked directly, people might very well claim to prefer an unpriced option, but I have little doubt that the priced option will be more successful in capturing people's unprovoked attention.

Let's turn back to wisdom. What, if anything, can be said of a person's worth, qua person? We regularly assign people normative labels like "good" and "bad" (or "evil", depending on the context), "successful" or "unsuccessful" and so on. However, as I mentioned above, subjective value judgments are fraught with problems, while a person's net worth is inescapably unambiguous. People have a much easier time agreeing upon whether someone is wealthy or poor than whether that he or she is "good at" being a person. Instead of wading into murky territory and debating whether a penniless saint is worth more than a misanthropic trillionaire, people are more likely to avoid the question entirely. Those of you familiar with the history of psychology might recognize this move as something akin to behaviorism; avoid the unquantifiable, and hope that it will one day be explained away as a naive "folk" concept. While most people avoid voicing such beliefs explicitly, some people might genuinely think that a person that hasn't succeeded financially has nothing of value to offer the world.

That's one of the big reasons that I'm interested in wisdom. If there were some indisputable set of criteria that could be used to determine a person's relative "worth", that would be astounding.

Before I say any more, though, I need to be absolutely clear that I do not wish to oppose the concept of inalienable human rights. It is important to find a way to avoid literally and unconditionally treating every person equally (for example, treating heroes or philanthropists the same way that we treat murderers or thieves), or advocating unequal treatment based on irrelevant criteria (race, gender, age, net worth, etc.).

Part of the solution to this particular issue might require a few shifts in thinking. To avoid "worthy" and "worthless" from becoming some horrible Orwellian method of "scientifically" segregating societies into haves and have-nots, like some kind of cognitive Gattaca, a person's worth must be inherently changeable, and not an inescapable, life-long constant. Furthermore, people's attitude towards this normative evaluation must be free of blame, both towards environmental factors as well as towards each other. Instead, it should be understood that becoming better at being a person is probably the one objective that a person has most complete control over. As discussed by Stoicism and other schools of thought, people might not always be able to change their surroundings or circumstances, they are always free to modify their own attitudes towards these external conditions.

In the relatively brief time that I've been alive, I have had the opportunity to interact with, I daresay, a fairly diverse sample of humanity, including people of varying social status, level of education, monetary worth, behavioral dispositions, ethnic backgrounds, physical and mental capacities, and so on. While this by no means makes me an expert on the human psyche, it has certainly led me to believe that far too many people are incorrectly appraised (either by others or by themselves) to be better or worse people than they actually are, and that these discrepancies almost always stem from the selection (by a society or an individual) of some irrelevant set of criteria for comparison.

While it is encouraging to note that inappropriate measures of personal worth, such as a person's heritage, gender, or wealth continue to lose credibility in many parts of the world, this trend will make it increasingly important to discover, synthesize, or otherwise agree upon more appropriate normative standards. It isn't immediately clear whether some infallible form of such standards could exist at all, but at least pursuing this line of inquiry appears to have merit.

That was the first reason for bringing up my internal debate about personal worth. The second reason, a more thorough discussion of which I'll have to leave for another day, relates to my more immediate problems and their attempted solutions.

See? I told you I'd be able to fit in some big-picture stuff.