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Some thoughts on the Veil
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The Veil: Submitted by Tahir Mahmood
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Category Archives: Sociology
Most people think of the veil solely in terms of Islam, but it is much older. It originated from ancient Indo-European cultures, such as the Hittites, Greeks, Romans and Persians. It was also practiced by the Assyrians. Veiling had class as well as gender implications; thus, the ancient Assyrian law required it of upper class women while punishing commoners for it. The strong association of veiling with class rank, as well as an urban/peasant split, persisted historically up until the last century. Then more privileged women began rejecting the veil, as did Egyptian feminist Huda Sharawi, while poor women increasingly adopted it as a ticket to upward mobility. (A similar dynamic occurred with footbinding in modern China.)What Is Opposite Of Loneliness? And Difference Between Loneliness and Being Alone!
‘The Opposite Of Loneliness” By Michael Knowles
The morning we graduated college, Marina Keegan declared her yearning for “the opposite of loneliness” in the commencement issue of the Yale Daily News. “We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness,” she observed. “But if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life.” In the wake of her sudden death in a car accident days later, the piece spread to millions across the country and has prompted Simon and Schuster to publish a collection of her essays and stories earlier this month titled, fittingly, The Opposite of Loneliness.
Marina gives us some guidance by describing not what the opposite of loneliness is, but rather what it is not. “It’s not quite love and it’s not quite community,” she explains. “It’s just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it’s 4 a.m. and no one goes to bed.” The opposite of loneliness, she says, is not so fickle as a feeling, nor is it so static as a grouping, an arbitrary assembling of individuals. The opposite of loneliness is active, teleological even: committed to goals, longing in action.
For Pericles, the source of happiness is freedom. By Marina’s measure, conversely, the font of misery is loneliness, and with typically uncommon honesty she admits, “This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse—I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.” The scope of Marina’s worries in this line is quite limited, defensive rather than offensive, and unconcerned about future gain. Her fear is focused on the preservation of those institutions, traditions and goals in which she feels herself embedded. And what is loneliness, then? At its core, is it not simply a perversion of freedom? Is loneliness any more than an emancipation so extreme and complete as to transcend all pretense of society—individualism unhinged? If so, this definition goes a long way in explaining the bewilderment of modern sociologists as to the source of the growing loneliness among Marina’s classmates and comrades, steeped in a culture that axiomatically exalts the individual and the atomic –
Those familiar with Marina’s political inclinations and activities will find it fitting that the great liberal Athenian leader answers her question in a word. The opposite of loneliness is citizenship, freedom nobly perfected, advanced by courage and sustained by love. It is community progressing, engaged not by the weak pursuit of feckless comfort, in all its poisonous subjectivism, but by a virtuous longing for truth and honor. In the words of Pericles, it is free citizens “who, fearless of consequences, confer their benefits not from calculations of expediency, but in the confidence of liberality.”
Marina draws a distinction, as does Pericles, between loneliness and being alone. She describes arriving to look for her friends, mistakenly, at an iconic, empty administrative building. She recalls, “I looked up. At this giant room I was in. At this place where thousands of people had sat before me. And alone, at night, in the middle of a New Haven storm, I felt so remarkably, unbelievably safe.” In Yale’s empty, neo-gothic castles, she feels the presence of her forbears, whose company she shares by the mere fact of her citizenship within a storied tradition – For full article click below.
http://thepointmag.com/2014/examined-life/freedom-from-loneliness
Posted By F. Sheikh
What is Civilization?
- Did civilization progressed from savagery to barbarism to civilization?
- Is civilization a process by which nature is ‘recrafted by the civilising impulse?
- Does civilization have universal values or it is limited by geographic boundaries?
A book review by Kenan Malik on ” Civilizations” written by historian, Felipe Fernández-Armesto.
‘It can now be asserted upon convincing evidence that savagery preceded barbarism in all the tribes of mankind, as barbarism is known to have preceded civilization.’ So wrote Victorian anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan in his 1877 classic Ancient Societies. According to Morgan, savagery, barbarism and civilization ‘are connected with each other in a natural as well as a necessary sequence of progress.’
The idea of history as progressing in a series of natural stages from savagery to civilization is a very Victorian notion, testament to the values of a bygone era. Ours is an age deeply skeptical both of the idea of historical progress and of the capacity of humans to be civilized. No one articulates better such skepticism than the historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto. The notion of ‘civilization’, he points out, is often a self-serving one, defining as ‘civilized’ the culture to which one belongs. This was particularly the case with nineteenth century European ideas of civilization, rooted in racial theory, which saw Europe at the summit of historical development, and the rest of the world as savage or barbarian. For Fernández-Armesto the idea of a progressive history is ‘repugnant’. History, he suggests, ‘lurches between random crises, with no direction or pattern, no predictable end’. It is ‘a genuinely chaotic system’.
But if Fernández-Armesto dismisses the Victorian concept of civilization, he doesn’t reject the idea altogether. Rather than describing civilization in terms of human progress, however, he describes it as a relationship between human beings and their natural environment. Civilization is the process by which nature is ‘recrafted by the civilising impulse, to meet human demands.’ In this sense every society is civilized, because every society is faced with a constant battle with nature. Certain societies, Fernández-Armesto believes, are more civilized than others, but only because they ‘more strenuously challenge nature’. This does not mean, as the Victorians thought, that such societies are in any way ‘better’. Indeed, according to Fernández-Armesto, civilization is often ‘irrational’ because in measurable ways such as ‘the durability of the way of life or the levels of nutrition or standards of health’, more civilized societies are often worse than less civilized ones.
Armed with this definition, Fernández-Armesto takes us on global tour.
Read full review
http://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2014/08/26/from-the-archives-on-civilizations/
Posted by F. Sheikh
I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me.
An article by Sunil Dutta in Washington Post, a must read by every family member. ( F. Sheikh)
“Even though it might sound harsh and impolitic, here is the bottom line: if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards me. Most field stops are complete in minutes. How difficult is it to cooperate for that long?”
Working the street, I can’t even count how many times I withstood curses, screaming tantrums, aggressive and menacing encroachments on my safety zone, and outright challenges to my authority. In the vast majority of such encounters, I was able to peacefully resolve the situation without using force. Cops deploy their training and their intuition creatively, and I wielded every trick in my arsenal, including verbal judo, humor, warnings and ostentatious displays of the lethal (and nonlethal) hardware resting in my duty belt. One time, for instance, my partner and I faced a belligerent man who had doused his car with gallons of gas and was about to create a firebomb at a busy mall filled with holiday shoppers. The potential for serious harm to the bystanders would have justified deadly force. Instead, I distracted him with a hook about his family and loved ones, and he disengaged without hurting anyone. Every day cops show similar restraint and resolve incidents that could easily end up in serious injuries or worse.
Sometimes, though, no amount of persuasion or warnings work on a belligerent person; that’s when cops have to use force, and the results can be tragic. We are still learning what transpired between Officer Darren Wilson and Brown, but in most cases it’s less ambiguous — and officers are rarely at fault. When they use force, they are defending their, or the public’s, safety.
I know it is scary for people to be stopped by cops. I also understand the anger and frustration if people believe they have been stopped unjustly or without a reason. I am aware that corrupt and bully cops exist. When it comes to police misconduct, I side with the ACLU: Having worked as an internal affairs investigator, I know that some officers engage in unprofessional and arrogant behavior; sometimes they behave like criminals themselves. I also believe every cop should use a body camera to record interactions with the community at all times. Every police car should have a video recorder. (This will prevent a situation like Mike Brown’s shooting, about which conflicting and self-serving statements allow people to believe what they want.) And you don’t have to submit to an illegal stop or search. You can refuse consent to search your car or home if there’s no warrant (though a pat-down is still allowed if there is cause for suspicion). Always ask the officer whether you are under detention or are free to leave. Unless the officer has a legal basis to stop and search you, he or she must let you go. Finally, cops are legally prohibited from using excessive force: The moment a suspect submits and stops resisting, the officers must cease use of force.
To read full article click on the link below