My father on Sharia law & art; Social Media, the snake oil of our times

February 26, 2011

Still Sundays.

There is fair weather, great weather, and then weather I simply categorize as Wrath of the Universe.

New York City’s weather yesterday was some Wrath of the Universe.

The weather in New York City feels like a curse from the Universe right now. Did winter come late this year?

I know my mother is right and I am not supposed to take it personally. It is just winter. It doesn’t have a personal vendetta against me. It will pass like all the years before. But I do take it personally. In my vocabulary the word cold doesn’t suffice…only wrath of the universe makes sense. I know there are those who love winter for winter’s sake. It makes them feel alive when the freezing brazen wind not only howls at night but during the day scrapes skin, but only slightly, and burns lungs when you inhale. I don’t need pain to remind me that I am alive. I don’t mind cold but I do mind wicked.

Stock market plunges, weak yoga lunges, apple juice lunches, and yet life somehow goes on.

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When I woke up this morning, grateful for the sun (regardless of how cold it is outside), my very warm bedroom, my cup of tea that I didn’t have to rush through, a phone call from my mother and then my sister, I found my thoughts kept turning to these two people who work at the Dunkin Donuts in my neighborhood. Ever since my neighborhood bodega shut down due to increased rent I have been going to the Dunkin Donuts across from it. Any other option is out of the way and my commute is long as it is.

One of these two people is a man who is always—and I mean almost every day—working at Dunkin Donuts and is also always—and I mean always—happy. He offers jokes as if they are freebies with your coffee. He is not trying to cheer you up nor is he trying to win your affection or attention, this just happens to be him.

The best part of my day is walking into that Dunkin Donuts. I thought he was the manager and therefore worked as much as he did so as to compensate for when other employees called in sick. But that is not the case.

He is illegally overworked although he is a United States citizen. The manager told him his only option is either to quit or work the hours he is asked when others don’t show up and since others can afford to quit or get fired he is the only one who can cover. When he is telling me his story I am trying to recall statutes governing labor laws, lawyers I know, calls I can make, but he intercepts my thoughts by assuring me that he would rather work—he really needs money—than deal with an unfair and illegal employment practice law suit.

I tell him I understand; I don’t.

He is looking for other work but meanwhile he is going to deal with his “stuck” situation as if that is his only purpose and he is going to fulfill that purpose as gracefully as possible.

He is not on social media because he doesn’t have time, yet he has lots of interests and thoughts and not an ounce of self-pity.

I feel having Sundays without work is a privilege. I believe having access to various social media outlets and the time to “play” on there is a privilege.

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My father is upset at the Scholars of Snake Oil, the pundits of Sharia law.  Sharia law is Islamic canonical law based supposedly on the teachings of the Qu’ran.

My father reminds me:

Shaa’raa is an Arabic word which means “the road”. In ancient times the Arabian world consisted of tribes and each tribe had its own temple often located next to a water well. Amongst those tribes were Christian and Jewish tribes too. They had their own ideas about gods and places of worship. People who had vested interests in the water well were chieftains who were exploiting people’s needs through magical thinking and exercising power based on their fears. The general public who followed them was usually limited in their own thinking. People had to give total submission to these “priests” to obtain water. The road that led to the water well was called Shaa’ria. The prophet Muhammad abolished all of that in name of One Law.

Aberar means free people of the desert given “ber” is Arabic for desert like in the word  “berber”.

Bedouin Ain Shai is an Arabic word for anybody who has no affiliation with anything.

Qu’ran refers to Jesus as ruh al quds, a free spirited soul.

Now they have translated quds to mean holy when it actually meant free.

So the Qu’ran was put together to set a system of governance without any religious authority. 

The Qu’ran is a system of governance no different than the founding principles of United States. There is no definition of Sharia law in the Qu’ran itself.

Muhammad of Arabia envisioned finding a state led by “free spirited souls,” people who had no affiliation with rituals.

Later over the years words were forgotten and lost their original meaning. Eventually the word sharia has come to light when Islam was transformed from a constitution for governance to a religion and all those abolished things have come back to mean law.

Those who suffer from attracting attention and want control are leading the Muslim communities at large.

When he is done sharing his distress I am left thinking about the future of America given the present of Islam and how holy is one who is free.

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I asked my father if he thought most art is useless.  I asked not because I don’t know the answer that serves an understanding for myself but because I wanted another trusted opinion, no matter how different than mine, for this is part of a short dialogue between two main characters in a short story I have been working on (and about to finish very soon). I asked because I have concluded I don’t think I will ever “just write.” I will always have to work on the side to support myself. And I may even find my way back to law given where education is leading me right now.

One has to catch my father at precisely the right time with a question to strike a goldmine or it’s a witch-hunt for an answer. It was the right time.

“It is not that most art is useless. It is just that most people don’t understand that human beings were made to be productive, whatever that looks like or means can and does vary. A man pumping gas at a gas station is productive. When we are not productive, we become disturbed.”

I thought about the irony of a yoga practice and how just “being” is the goal (if a real yoga practice can ever constitute having a “goal”) but I achieve that state by “doing.”

He continued, “Most people can’t just “be” so they “do” and because “doing” without actual productivity feels empty they just talk about “doing”.  We were designed to be of service and provide value even if by just being. Most artists fail to see their purpose as something beyond the medium of what they are creating. They believe creating art is their purpose. So it is very soothing and therapeutic to create. But somewhere deep down there is a tug that says that is not enough.

An artist has a very limited purpose. Very. If he or she can’t show us an alternative way of looking at this world, an alternative way of offering beauty, it is all going to look the same. That is why most art looks the same. And that doesn’t mean it is not good or of any value in itself. And very few people can make money offering the same. Some people get lucky and make money regardless of talent or vision but most don’t. Some people get even luckier and get famous for providing the same. But a real artist must also do something else not because he can’t afford a life on his art alone but because beauty alone is not enough to make a difference in this world.

We need people to share what is beautiful about dark and what is important about light but most just create from a place of distress and longing. Sometimes this is unconscious. Most of the time it is. Thinking you are not really offering anything of value to the world at large can be quite distressing.”

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A real artist is a real human being and we all have real work to do. It isn’t just about paying bills.

I believe the man who works at Dunkin Donuts near my house is an artist of living.

I was inspired by him and re-read this passage by Viktor Frankl this Sunday morning

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. WE needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who where being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment.

“Life” does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life’s tasks are also very real and concrete.

…even in his suffering [each man] is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

Once the meaning of suffering had been revealed to us, we refused to minimize or alleviate the camp’s tortures by ignoring them or harboring false illusion and entertaining artificial optimism. Suffering had become a task on which we did not want to turn our backs. We had realized its hidden opportunities for achievement, the opportunities which caused the poet Rilke to write, “Wie vie list aufzuleiden!” Rilke spoke of “getting through suffering” as others would talk of “getting through work.”

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears towards a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life.

 

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Social Media has become the snake oil of our times.

The aforementioned is precisely why most spiritual blogs don’t work and we are all sick of 140 character feel-good jolly rancher platitudes. This is why despite our façade of connecting it is never enough. Because real is enough.

After an amazing yoga session with Marco Rojas on Thursday I was surprised to overhear a woman object, “This is not what I was expecting. It was so real and so deep.” It was then I realized that not everyone wants ‘real’ and yet they keep on putting a grand performance (online or otherwise) as if they do. Why fake real? Why not accept that casual sense of belonging is all you desire?

I explained this to my sister who replied her understanding of social media (and many people live off line similar to behaviors we find on social media) as follows:

“People who spend the bulk of their time in presentation and delivery, as in I am defined by external things, are going to naturally spend a lot of time on that. My immune system is not set up for ignoring. I don’t have the antibodies for fake.  The way we were brought up is different. We have idols but we don’t idolize.”

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 Saturday night I searched Tolstoy on my own website. I found an article where I had extracted some excerpts from a letter he wrote.

Yes, this website, this space, despite all who decide to drop in, is still, first and foremost, a digital shelf for organizing my writings and others’ writings I find valuable again and again.

Some Sundays indeed it feels as if I am just downloading information. But people forget that in order to retrieve and download one needs a functioning system.

Since I have been writing and sharing via this web space I have received all sorts of emails. People approach you like a friend and then they disappear when they realize this is not a performance. Integration is not a one day act. I can’t write what I write and yet do opposite of my thoughts the other six days of the week. People think you know about God. People think you don’t know about God. People think they are your friends by the mere fact they can relate to your thoughts. People come and go. Some return eventually.

I just view this space where I share my thoughts simply as an ongoing trial of words and fragments and people passing by sit in on it for however long and whatever their verdict, the trial is long from over…

The aforementioned being said, although it may not come across as such, I am always grateful for other people’s time to think with me.

I can’t do this alone. I don’t do this alone.

~a.q.s.

Related posts:

Still Sundays Essay by Vince L. Wilson A Still Sunday with Love Stillness is a peyote that shows what is real. Still Sundays