Special to The Daily Star
And so it finally happened. American sanctions against Syria are now official. Though everybody knows that America’s bark here was worse than its bite and that the sanctions have no real teeth, they do come both as a warning and as a potential prelude for a more serious assault on Syria’s regime and, perhaps, sovereignty. But, are the authorities in Damascus aware of this? More importantly, can they adapt? Continue reading “Misreading the Sanctions Message”
A Heretic’s Log: A series of philosophical essays written between September 20, 2002 and July 15, 2004.
Values are the result of individual and collective experiences. They are not products that can be exported or imported, or some contagious microbes that can be avoided or quarantined. Nor are they behavioral patterns per se so that they can be expected to spread by mimicry, or, to be more philosophical, mimesis. Indeed, the spread of values depends heavily on two things: education and experience, not imposition, contagion or mimesis. Continue reading “Democracy and Mimesis”
Words are never accurate enough or sufficient to convey anything of what they are meant to convey. In this they are indeed like chopped-up memories and remembrances – always divorced from their original context, always victims to the inadequacies and particularities of the one in which they are vouchsafed unto the world. Yet, words are all I have to tell you who I am. How can you ever really know me then?
Happiness and fulfillment are not things you work for, but things you stumble upon in your aimless wanderings through life. Even the illusion of having a purpose is not a guarantor of happiness. Our souls, it seems, are forever destined to be restless and will only find fulfillment in death. Will happiness be waiting for us there? Can anyone really tell?
