Sajakkini

Do you use a Mac or a PC? Frankly, I can’t be bothered, and I am so freakin’ tired of listening to people whining about either Mac or PC. It’s just a damned computer, so choose one and shut the F up. If one doesn’t work for you then choose the other. How hard could that be?

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of people shoving prejudices at me. What really gets my goat, though - and you ought to do this when you want to piss me off - is when people ask me for my opinion about something, and then spend the next hour or so trying to convince me that I’m wrong. I mean, what’s that all about? Why you crapping your insecurities on me for, homes?

Why is it so hard for us to grow up and learn to be secure about our choices, anyway? Why the constant need for validation? What am I, your mother?

RUHAYAT X is a thinker, Mahbub philosopher and publisher of Neohikayat Books. Visit Neohikayat Press for the pulse in Malaysian literature.

I wear Calvin Klein

Do I care about what underwear you’ve got on? No. You might find that incredibly hard to believe, I know, because your underwear is so important to you. I can understand that. It might even be the proof to you that you exist. But it’s true: it doesn’t interest me in the least what your preference is about anything. (If I am, I’d ask.)

Unluckily for me, people persist, and in so many areas that surely they must feel is important to them. The Mac vs PC debate is just a microcosm of the puzzling human taste for debate. (And, more specifically, the desire to be “right”.) Oh yeah, when I was young I used to like doing useless things like that, too, but as I was annoyedly (sic) telling a friend the other day, unless The Truth is reachable by human logic, then all argument is essentially futile for me now.

As a Muslim I don’t doubt that The Truth exists. I only question if we can ever reach it. You may correct me on this, but not even the prophets were cocksure about what they were supposed to do all the time, or what God meant when He said such and such. (If they were, they wouldn’t be looking to the heavens and praying for guidance every so often, would they?). If the divinely-inspired ones sometimes struggled, what more we mere mortals?

In the Muslim tradition, God stopped talking to humans a long time ago. So unless we can read God’s mind, what we can only achieve now, even with the aid of divine scriptures, is a version of the Truth. Or, rather, a whole bunch of Truths.

I’m vegetarian

Since interpretation is a matter of opinion, and opinion means something has equal chance of being wrong or right, you’d wonder why so many Muslims bother arguing so much. Just take it like a buffet and pick what you please, why don’t you. Or don’t you have faith in God and yourself? Do I need to know why you think fish is better than chicken? Nope. I’ll eat what I like, thanks.

If you don’t believe in religion then the concept becomes simpler still, since there can’t possibly be something called The Truth. If there was, then the question becomes: who put it there? Who determined it, and what for? The idea being that an arbitrary universe surely wouldn’t care if there was one truth or many truths. If it did then it must mean the Universe is aware, and if it is indeed aware, then how is that different from the belief in god?

(And when you believe in a God by extension you must then also believe in a Religion, because surely you have to understand what this god wants. Certainly, you can tell yourself you believe in a god but not in a religion, which makes you a spiritualist or an agnostic, but in reality what you are doing is merely creating your own religion. So you’re back to square one, really.)

This forces you to then debate the existence (or not) of God, which results in 0-0 for either side, since neither can prove nor disprove the idea, either empirically or otherwise. And just in debating the idea itself already proves that there are many Truths, all of which can be equally right or wrong (or neither, as some philosophers might say).

I am always right

All of which is to say, why bother arguing? It’s pointless.

It’s a seductive idea, I admit; it would be nice if we could all agree on one thing, eventually. But such is human nature that a truce, if one can be reached at all, would only hold for a little time before a new knowledge unravels it again. And if the history of so-called human progress is any indication, we likely will never arrive at that One Truth. So, again, why bother?

(I happen to think that progress, like philosophy, is a myth. Feel free to differ. History repeats itself endlessly, and while we post-modern humans may be chuffed with our achievements, the records show that in the annals of time, we are really nothing special.)

Anyway. A lot of argument we effect in our life is pointless. Much of it is just our Inner Child seeking validation. Or something we do perversely for entertainment.

What we should do is acknowledge that differences in opinion is a fact of life and learn to live with that understanding. That what you prefer might be right for you, but not for someone else. And that that is perfectly alright.

Yes, there are times when it does matter if we are “wrong” or “right” - for instance, what if someone were to stand up and state that Jews are the source of the world’s problems and therefore should be exterminated? Should we then simply state our position and then do nothing about it as the other side gains power and begins to carry out their belief?

But there is a time and place to make a stand. 99 percent of the time we can make do without forcing the other person to do what we want.

What we can, and should, do is present our opinions and leave it at that. If more religious fundamentalists understood that concept, we’d have a much more peaceful world. Ditto for the PC fanatics.