My Thoughts on the Current Events Around the World
Dear LinkedIn network:
My followers know that the content I focus on are mainly subjects of Science, Epistemology, Philosophy, Literature and Art. While these are dear to my heart and mind, today I want to share an important topic about the current events happening around the world.
This man's name is Khalid Nabhan he is a Palestinian living in Gaza. Last week, his house was bombed and he lost his two grandchildren and his livelihood and his home. But the most important of all seems to be his granddaughter, Reem, as his eyes light up talking about her . He calls her 'Soul of my Soul' and explains how they lived together, how he fed her bananas, watermelons and tangerine. They had the same birthday on December 23rd. He breaks up saying he cannot do his birthday without her any more. This is a human being just like you and me, he wants to live in safety with her family, in their homes and earn a livelihood. What else a man wants? He doesn't call for destruction of anybody. He is not defiant or desperate, either. But you can see the pain in his eyes. He smiles at times showing his beautiful teeth, walking around the rubbles of his once livable home. To me, this is 'beautiful patience'. I am not Palestinian, but a human who understands pain. Some would be inclined to say 'But Hamas ...', 'it is a complicated issue'. This is not complicated, it is rather simple.
As a scientist, my first priority is to find the truth of how things work in our bodies to help create new medicines and help patients. This requires me to have an open mind and get sources of information from every possible route and evaluate them critically. You cannot hold on to your favorite hypothesis if the data do not support it, in that case you have to find other ways explaining the the findings. This is how hypothesis-driven research works. In addition, a scientist needs to be prepared to be 'wrong', many times, to reach to the truth. I try to apply this to my everyday life as well as when figuring out the events around the world. For example, I am reading various books on this subject including 'The Hundred Years' War on Palestine' by Rashid Khalidi; 'On Palestine' by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Peppe; 'Gaza' by Norman Finkelstein (first is a Palestinian and last three are Jewish authors) . I think it is important to be exposed to diverse views and sources of information. It can be misleading to be satisfied with a single source of information especially if it comes from the side with the power and bombs. They would want to justify what they do, so if you are not careful you can be misled.
The ideas and solutions to these problems can be multiple, and yours might be different than mine. This does not need to cause friction. I realized this when I was debating with my dad. He is the most important person in life and arguably the one who most deserves my love and devotion. I found myself disagreeing with him about things strongly. If we are/were not careful the arguments can/could go out of hand, easily because as human beings we want to defend our position, what we believe and think.
Especially, if there is even an appearance of a criticism to our identity, religion, nationality or our family we naturally tend to defend ourselves. This is called 'ego defense' in psychology and I believe can be applied here. It is really challenging to change our position on such issues. However, we cannot improve as a person or as a group, if we cannot evaluate the reality critically and change our position if we are mistaken. If one can do that, he/she can rectify the mistakes, correct the course and improve. One can lie to himself, to others, but reality kicks in eventually. Even if we choose to close our eyes we cannot prevent others seeing the truth.
Having said all these, I do not aim to offend anyone. My aim is to express my thoughts and feelings in a respectful way. As a proud American Citizen and an immigrant to this country, I choose to exercise my freedom of speech and contribute to the society in this way.