Purpose of Life

I have been going very deep through these thoughts after hearing the following questions: what is our purpose? as human being? are we so worthless that we were born, grow up, marry with the one we want, have children, getting old, then die?? what is our purpose in life? why do we live in the first place if we just go through this cycle and then vanish from the face of earth?

The discussion was mainly about normal people, excluding those genies people and brilliant minds of scientists, poets, artists...etc The interesting question: do we need to be like Da Venci or Einstein in order to be considered valuable and accountable for being one those set mainlines for the purpose of life?

The question that I considered broad, in fact most interesting: what would we do to keep a legacy? there are many who don't know what their grandfathers and grand grandfathers look like, not even know what are their achievements. This is not fair to us and to them at the same time. What lessons can we learn from their experience and how would we know if we resemble our mother side or father side of the family? or is it not worth it? Would knowing the chain of my family help me in any way to determine who I am and what I am and that for sure would impact my own personality and the way I behave / react towards things? and that include the choices I make in my life? I am confident that knowing about forefathers would impact us, there are many who changed their course of life when they discovered an old fact or received information on their family.

Some years ago I met a young guy, very intelligent to the level that sometimes you almost believe that this guy is suffering from some sort of Schizophrenia. Through time I came to the conclusion that that guy like to play different personalities (each time with different social, religious, and even political point of views), because he is suffering from the essence of being part of a certain group. This has something to do with his childhood, with a neglected boy by the always-busy-at-work-papa and mama who focused on the sisters instead. I didn't see that guy for years, but I heard that he finally found the group where he could settle down in and make an extension to his purpose of life. Well, I wonder if he did find his own purpose of life, with such turbulence through his childhood and adulthood until this very moment.

During that discussion, there are who became frustrated because "if we don't know what is the purpose of each us in this life, what is the difference then between us, humans, with animals, who just eat, mate, drink and die.

I thought of what have been said, but everytime I think more, I always come to the same conclusion: each of us must be proud of him/herself, because each of us is unique, but is that enough to give each of us purpose to live in this life?


Image by dchui

Erdogan in Davos

Today at dawn, the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has received a hero's welcome on his return to Istanbul after he stormed out of a debate about Gaza at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Thousands of people turned out in the city to greet Mr Erdogan's plane.



The Arab people is indeed looking for a leader to unite them. They didn't see that in their respective leaders who never did anything - silent, like their European counterparts - until two weeks of shelling Gaza when they really started to act. In fact, even those who have been to the United Nations were just blown out and were ignored regarding any effort they want to take - check Israeli foreign minister's speeches on that. On most internet sites I read this morning and news agencies that contained comments, most of them were praising Erdogan for his action in Davos last night, even some called him already "the real leader of all Arabs". Having said that, one can check the reluctance by Amr Mousa, the secretary general of Arab League, who shook hands with Erdogan upon walking away, what would be the situation if Mr. Mousa followed suit? Regarding reaction from other countries, including where I live, there was a mix of complementing the Turkish Prime Minister for having the ball to keep on saying what he thinks from day 1 of the war on Gaza, while others were called him as an Islamic fundemanlist. Others were laughing it out with disgust by saying that with such behavior Turkey should never dream of joining the EU because he just walked away (some called the walk away as childish behavior). I don't see that childish with the fact that the man was not given a chance to talk, second given a time to Israeli prime minister a total time of 25 minutes talking about his "self-defense" is killing more than 400 children and woman, while others were given only 12 minutes, this unfairness would make any adult jump out of his chair because of rage.

One thing for certain, the Turkish prime minister did the right thing, because as I said; it is unfair to slaughter more than 3000 people in cold hands and say self-defense.

Clash of Summits

It is now the 22 day in the war on Gaza; more than 1100 Palestinians got killed and more than 4000 injured and became homeless. The Arabs who suppose to stand behind their brothers are so divided that they became so envious and distasteful from each other to the level that they are competing on who is the best in gathering everyone and have an emergency top meeting, so the credit would go to that host country if, just if, something comes out of these meetings and can help in finding a solution for this human-tragedy. However, Arab leaders became like someone who is having a problem he is part of it and instead of starting with himself and correct wrongness, he would just blame others and put it on bad luck - some would say "oh yeah, this is the fate that God has put for us"!!!! on these summits, Arab leaders will only give speeches, have a luxury reception and exchange pointless ideas without reach a solution, as usual. A new thing is taking place in recent summits, to safe face for some especially the fiascos by Ghaddafi during such summits, the leaders would go into closed sessions, so they can shout at each other freely (and can use their own local cursing).

One might ask how did the Arabs arrive into such shameful decision? there are many reasons but it started when Saddam invaded Kuwait and skillfully managed to cause the biggest crack in Arab-Arab relations. The other reason is the gap that keeps on growing between the leader and his people in the Arab world, by having every country's resources being spent on the protection and the ultimate survival of that leader and those around him. Iam not coming with new concept or view on the situation in the Arab world here, there are not a lot of things to be said, because every single Arab knows that, knows that the most important and the highest priority for most Arab leaders is how to stick his butt into the chair and dig his teeth deep into power - see Iraq now, don't get disillusioned with the fake democracy over there, like the resignation of a filthy-mouthed chairman of the parliament - they even lack the determination to come out with a replacement to that chairman or find the ways to provide the easiest and most basic services for its own people.

Back to the clash of summits: As mentioned before, no common Arab citizen would expect that any effective result from today's summit, because nothing came out of yesterday's session took place in Saudi Arabia, so there is none to be expected from the to be held in Kuwait, mainly it is economic summit, not political. Thus, the picture is clear, nothing will come out, no single top summit would result in having Egypt or Jordan, for example, cutting diplomatic relations with Israel - follow suit the move taken by Bolivia and Venezuela.


The magnitude of bombardment by Israeli army using all kind of new weapons on civilians (remember, civilians) is only some sort of show off rather than indulging into cleaning up areas from "terrorists", as they claim. Using white phosphor bombs and Cluster bombs on civilians areas is just a proof of the will of a country like Israel in challenging the whole international community by saying "I want to do what I want, whenever I want" - yesterday shelling of a building with news agencies is another example. What is happening in Gaza now is like banging hard with a hammer on someone's head who is already crying from the pain of migraine.







There are two outcome from this aggression: The first is how the majority of Arab leaders showed the level of isolation they live in, and their fear from their own people, which made them keep silent on any slaughter taking place in any of their co-nationalists. The second is that Israel is trying to prove to itself first (and to the world second) that after two years of failure politically and militarily in Lebanon, they could at least blow up the hell out of Palestinians as a revenge and this would serve as another example of bullying the whole region with the unlimited support of Bush and his administration. Speaking of Bush: I guess this is his "farewell kiss" to the region before leaving office.





P.S. The picture with this post are some of Carlos Latuff's works, a great Brazilian cartoonist whom I followed his latest work for some time ago. He did some work on Iraq and US policy too, that brought a lot admiration and compliments by many.

Fairness

Fairness is a good word to justify actions. However, does the below is considered to be fair? I don't believe that people in the below pictures are members of Hamas