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starswornoaths · 3 years

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This Blessed Day - Ch. 7

@blackestnight's commission continues! (also oh my god, I forgot editing in mobile removes the "read more" break on the last chapter, that's been fixed, I'm so sorry about that)

Lucia is left with her thoughts, and the roiling anxiety in the pit of her stomach. A conversation with Aymeric does little to alleviate her woes.

Word count: 2,995

~*~

It was well enough into autumn that the weather had taken a turn for the colder, and that fire in her chest had yet to abate.

The Black Wolf has yet to rear a weak pup. May you not be the first.

Lucia’s stomach knotted itself up all over again, as was its wont, of late. Just before dinner, it inspired her to excuse herself through the servant’s entry in the kitchens to get some fresh air in the quiet, crisp evening. The little fenced in yard was quiet, but peaceful, and it gave her space to disentangle her emotions. Or at least, attempt to.

If nothing else, the dark was a familiar sort of calm; it reminded her of better jobs, in simpler days, when her life was only gray and gaslight, and a bit of work from within the shadows. Needing to feel as though she could still hide, just for a few moments, she hunched low, crouched and observed her hands as they wrung and fidgeted.

The Black Wolf has yet to rear a weak pup. May you not be the first.

Before she had been captured, even, just the recollection of that thinly veiled threat was enough to make her heart lurch. At the time, the comment had been easily brushed off; she had never failed a job before, and she had worked her way into being a spy on the same merits that she had fostered in herself, under Lord Gaius’ tutelage.

Logically, she knew, even at the time, that she was being pressured because of her sister climbing higher in the ranks than she did. She was a reflection of Livia’s stock, and the quality thereof. They were meant to inspire one another, to reach greater heights together.

The difference, one that no one seemed to care to notice, was that it was Livia, who wanted to aim higher. To drag herself up, and reclaim the safety of being in their adopted father’s inner circle, in particular. To make her feel protected, in that way that the Empire itself never could.

Whatever resentment that Lucia might have harbored toward Livia, for effectively throwing her to the side for the chance to claw her way back to the man that had helped raise them, she could never begrudge Livia the why, of it all.

Lucia had found her own sliver of protection—or, rather, she had thought that she had. The more time she spent away from home, and the longer that she ruminated on that Tribunus Militum’s snide comment, the more she realized that, at some point, she must have done something to piss someone off, in high command.

Possibly even Gaius himself, for all she knew. Or Livia.

This assignment, one she had thought had been given to her for her excellence in her field, had been, she swiftly realized, a direct attempt on her life. Even if it hadn’t been perceived that way by her immediate commanding officer, he got his orders from somewhere out of her reach, and there was evidently only room for one Junius, in the upper echelon of the military, insofar as those who mattered cared.

If it had even been that personal; the turnaround on spies was notoriously high, often rotated out to R&D’s security details, or somewhere higher in clearance, for the exceptional ones whose skill outweighed the risk of keeping them alive and knowing too much. Or, those who had lived through the attempt to “retire” them.

You’ll get a job thrown in your lap that will likely kill you, eventually. Ouroboros had said, several times, throughout his lessons in espionage and subterfuge, in between as many blows as he could, during their combat training. And it’s either because someone’s impressed with you, or because someone hates you. Regardless, it is a test. Succeed, or else. And remember: it’s when, not if, you get one. Because you will.

The tendons in her hands ached in the faint chill of the evening. She flexed and clenched her fingers, and, when she realized it would not calm the buzzing in her nerves, plucked a wayward stick, likely fallen from the branches hanging overhead, and took to lightly etching and poking at a spare, empty patch in the garden. It was hardly a hobby she was attached to, but it was something for her hands to do, while she mulled over her thoughts.

She had thought herself good enough to get cycled up, promoted into something cushy and quiet, where she could keep her head down, and have enough time to herself, to find a proper reason to live. Naive as it had been, she’d been banking on her penchant for avoiding the scuttlebutt, and the petty infighting, being enough to keep her from being rotated out, in favor of new staff.

“What is that you’re sketching there?” Aymeric asked, startling her out of her thoughts.

She’d been so focused on the movement of the stick in her hand, Lucia hadn’t even realized the shape she was sketching, rough as it was, until his question prompted her to take in what she had faintly dug into the earth. The ring she’d drawn was a bit lopsided and misshapen, but the pointed arrow marking where the ring overlapped to make itself complete, she recognized what she’d been drawing.

When she looked up at him, standing over by the doorway some paces off, he was haloed by the light coming in from the kitchens. In his hand, he held up a muffin he’d doubtless absconded with from the kitchens. Margelyne would smack his hand with a wooden spoon, once she found out...provided she hadn’t already.

After measuring what she deemed good enough for an answer, she replied, “An Ouroboros,” and resumed her idle poking and strokes with the stick.

The etching became more focused as she defined the outline of the snake, looped around itself, as she continued, “Admittedly, hadn’t really decided to sketch it. Just sort of…happened.”

Aymeric made a noise in the back of his throat as though he understood—maybe he’d also been prone to idle scribbling. Or journaling. He looked like someone who kept a journal.

Breaking the muffin in his hand in half, he squatted by where she knelt and offered her the bigger piece. She took the proffered half with a startled word of thanks.

“A dragon eating its own tail. Any particular symbolism for you?” He asked, before he popped a bit of muffin in his mouth.

“The beginning and ending of all things,” Lucia recited the mythology, by heart, because the tale had always, always prefaced the lesson. After chewing on a bite of muffin, and his words both, she noted, “Though...you said dragon. In Garlemald, it’s a serpent. It’s not on any government symbols, but I always see— used to see— this symbol, in some way or another, on every medicus clinic in my district.”

“Fascinating,” Aymeric hummed, and he seemed to take a genuine interest. He settled back on his haunches, and, after swallowing another bite of muffin for himself, asked, “What does it mean to you, that it inspires you to draw it when left to your thoughts?”

“…For me? It’s…familiar, I suppose.” Lucia said, shrugging the shoulder not tracing the lines deeper in the dirt. “Like I said, I saw it everywhere.”

She studied her own crude drawing for a moment, in contemplative silence, as they both finished off the last few bites of their foodstuff. Her handiwork was a far cry from the clean, neat lines that were often laser etched into glass, or burned onto wood signs, in the poorer districts, not unlike where she had grown up. Despite how many years it had been since she had last ventured out to the fringes of the capital, she could remember clearly how often she would see the almost artful depictions of the serpent adorning the doors—that’s how you know you’re in the right place for Papa’s medicine, sweetheart, she remembered how her mother would wheeze, pressing meager coins into palms too little to hold them.

“You are homesick.” Aymeric’s sympathetic tone drew her out of her rumination, and she looked up to see him offering her a wincing smile.

She was tempted to ask if he knew what it felt like at all; she couldn’t picture him travelling terribly far from Ishgard, for how notoriously strict the city was, even with its citizenry. In many ways, especially with its citizenry. Swallowing the question down with the lump that had formed in her throat, she opted to look back down at her crude drawing.

“In a sense, I suppose. Though admittedly, my home is not my own, even in Garlemald.”

Expecting questions wanting elaboration, it surprised her instead when Aymeric nodded. “Career military, then? Naught outside of it?” At her nod, he shrugged. “So it is for me— insofar as is not expected of me by m— the Borels.”

That confession was a spark that set off a chain reaction in her chest: first, she felt surprised. Surprised, because she hadn’t expected him to be so solitary in a house that, by her every estimation, considered him part and parcel of its lifeblood. That shock was only momentary. It was engulfed by the ensuing anger that ran hot in her ribcage. He spoke with entirely too much confidence that they could relate, for one brought into such privilege. What did he know of not having a home? What did he know of it, having the choice that he did?

“…You said it was a dragon, in Halonic iconography.” Lucia spoke up in a distant tone to change the subject. “Why?”

“You know at least some details of the Dragonsong War, I imagine.” He began dryly, and she nodded; it wasn’t exactly a secret.

He held out his hand far enough to catch her eye, and when she realized what he was asking for, she handed him the stick she had drawn with. His hand was practiced, if awkward, as he began to draw lines branching out from the serpent—ah, a wing, she realized when it had begun to resemble a long bat.

“As it is taught, our history is inextricably intertwined with that of the dragons; time was, we lived in peace, once. When King Thordan was betrayed by a dragon, however, it sparked a conflict that rages on to this day. The Ouroboros is a warning and reminder both, in Ishgard: a cycle of life and death. Of the Dragonsong War itself, were one more philosophically inclined.”

The teeth marked and bared upon the wyrm’s own tail, Aymeric handed the stick back to her. She was grateful that he seemed to understand her need for something to pull her focus from her words, for them to come out at all. For that, she was grateful.

“Seems a grim mark, especially one to teach to children.”

“’Tis the way of it here.” Aymeric shrugged, still studying the etching. “It is the most crucial cog in any war machine.”

“Scaring children with bedtime stories?” She balked.

He seemed unaffected by her question, and paused to look up at her plainly. “Propaganda. You are familiar, I presume.”

For a moment, she didn’t necessarily know what to say to that. She finally settled on, “I would be a fool not to be.”

“Anyone would be, truly. Naught is too sacred to use as fuel to keep a war going— history, perhaps, least of all.”

Lucia had begun moving the stick without thought, adding details to the altered drawing. Scales, to lend it a more Dravanian appearance.

“So it has ties to your history. Fine. But that’s what it means to the church.” She noted. “You didn’t mention what it meant to you.”

“I suppose, that answer is one and the same—to a point.” Aymeric took another moment to ponder his next words. “Mayhap, in some ways, the symbol reminds me of…home, in a more general sense.”

She couldn’t help but note the care with which he chose his words there, that told her that he was not referring to the Borel household, but Ishgard itself. Perhaps it was healthy of him to speak as though he were in the presence of a spy. He was, after all. Technically speaking. For however successful she had been at it.

The stick lifted from the drawing, replanting itself near where she had made a forked tongue stick out of its mouth, overlapping on the tail. Jagged lines were drawn on either side. The dragon bore fangs, now.

“We toil in the same way as our ancestors did, spill blood as our ancestors did, and we go nowhere. This war has been at the longest stalemate in history, and we have changed nothing, in all that time, and we wonder why we are getting nowhere.” Aymeric snorted derisively under his breath, and the noise struck her as odd coming from him; he had rarely been anything but well mannered. “Madness.”

It was…startling, in how refreshing it was, to hear say that. More so when it was one she felt she could, at least, trust enough to not actively seek to harm her. Maybe it was because she was so starved for that, for conversation that she felt she could engage in, that she made that reason enough, for her to hesitantly open up, just a little, about her own experiences. Not enough to compromise her, for goodness’ sakes, but it never hurt to have someone on the inside just a little bit endeared to her.

Mind thus made up, Lucia tipped her proverbial hand, just a little, as she replied with, “I’m surprised you think so.”

“’Tis not an uncommon thought to have here.” He shrugged again. “But best of luck getting anyone to say it, unless they’re keen on seeing what is at the bottom of Witchdrop for themselves.”

A sympathetic wince pinched Lucia’s expression without conscious thought. “I sympathize.” she said slowly, carefully measuring what would and would not be too much information. “Garlemald, for all its advancements, is far from different, in that regard.”

Certainly not if you asked anyone in the upper echelon of Imperial social circles, but then, most of them hadn’t grown up starving, and orphaned, for the cardinal sin of breathing. Not like she did. None of them had ever been beaten for having the audacity to ask a question.

When he had first brought her here, Lucia had dismissed his notions that he could ever hope to lead Ishgard into a better future. Even now, she was all but certain that the city would devour him long before he saw any meaningful progress. Cities like Ishgard and Garlemald did that, to the revolutionaries that tried to stay and change something.

But in that moment, she understood the position that he had put himself in, being so acutely aware of every flaw in the machine of which he was but a cog. It had been, in truth, the same spot she had lived in, for as long as she could remember being clever enough to see it. It was…nice, to be able to speak on it, even a little, with someone who understood the same feeling, but did not have the same information as her. In that way, talking about it didn’t feel redundant.

“Dost mine ears deceive me, or is the lady reconsidering her stance on our savage land?” Aymeric asked in a flat voice, a hand over his heart, a look of blatantly false shock on his face.

“Reconsidering, aye. But not convinced.” she snorted, before she could think better of it.

Something about the unsurprised nod of his head in response agitated her. That fire that she had only barely managed to bank flickered dangerously as he straightened, and stuffed his hands into his pockets.

“Tends to be the way of it, in the beginning. You’re touched, but not moved. It’d be unfair to expect much more than that.” The smile he gave her quieted the roar of blood in her ears into a distant murmur: for all his words, it was clear that he genuinely believed them. “But you are open to listening. And that is reason enough to keep trying.”

Something close to pride made Lucia bristle at that comment. To imply that she was some malleable, easily manipulated loon incapable of forming her own opinions, were she to give it an uncharitable interpretation, would be to insult the very core of her being. Perhaps, had this conversation happened when she were still undercover, she’d have snarled under her breath about it later and thought no further on it.

But it was as Aymeric said: she was listening now. And that initial defensiveness softened.

He had made no secret of his intent to convince her that his was a worthy cause. Were she honest, that was refreshing, in its own way. Perhaps it was because he had been so upfront with her, from almost the start, she had been more willing to listen.

Or perhaps she needed something to fill the hollow in her chest, where the numbness had once taken residence. Something to smother the rising flames in her chest.

Anything to help keep it together, as she searched for escape.

As Lucia stood up and stuffed her hands in her pockets, she reminded herself that whatever she might learn, she would ultimately have to let go, upon her escape. At the thought of it, her hand curled around the beacon in her pocket. She looked down at what they had created, as she stroked her thumb along the smooth metal, pensive.

Better that she remember that their sentiments, and her interest in the inner workings of this world of savages, all needed to be as fleeting and temporary as the self-entwined dragon-snake, etched collaboratively into the dirt that she was now sweeping away with the flat of her boot, before they went back inside.

#ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #Lucia goe Junius #Aymeric de Borel #blackestnight #commissioned writing #I literally could not have avoided them getting into religious and philosophical debates if my life had depended on it #and this is the first of many #I was enabled and left unattended and Lucia wanted to wrestle me every step of the way into actually TALKING as a character #so hopefully her emotional and mental shifts as the story progresses make sense #we're like. a quarter of the way there! roughly! \o/#thank y'all for your patience I really hope this hasn't spammed notifs for people too badly

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cryptovalid · 3 years

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The weird politics of the Blip

The more the MCU fleshes out the events after Avengers: Endgame, but especially in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the less sense the geopolitics of the MCU makes to me. In this essay I will be sharing my perspectives on politics in the MCU. If you’re not interested in that sort of thing, don’t feel obligated to engage. Also, by the very nature of this essay it will involve spoilers for the MCU and discussions of topics like state violence and terrorism, so consider this a trigger warning.

It’s an understatement to say that the world would change radically if half the population would randomly disintegrate, and I understand that speculating on the consequences of those people coming back after five years is no simple task. There might even be story considerations I am unaware of.

But the idea that the world’s governments would immediately start forcibly removing people from the homes they lived in for five years, to accommodate people who were declared dead five years ago sounds really strange to me. Let’s explore this.

If you were the survivor of a disaster that cut the world’s population in half, what would this look like to you? You’ve presumably went through a lot of hardship and trauma in the years following. You’ve sold some of the things belonging to your deceased loved ones, or bought stuff from other people in a similar situation. You may have relocated, started a new family. Grieved.

And suddenly those people you literally saw turn to dust in front of you just appear again, like nothing happened? Literally in the same befuddled state in which they died.

And I have to stress: they died. there is no way to suggest that a person can be atomized and still be alive.

So why would you even trust that this was the same person? In a very real sense, it’s an identical copy of your deceased loved one. Similar to teleportation, this should cause us to wonder if they were truly resurrected, or merely cloned. What kinds of rights do they have, being legally deceased? Would we even know if these were impostors, if the situation changed them somehow?

I’m not saying there’s no answer to these questions, just that people should disagree on this. People would have high-minded philosophical, scientific and religious debates. Conspiracy theories and fistfights. This is by far the most world-changing event ever recorded. It should have massive ethical, political and spiritual implications.

And what I think we should think about is that these people who returned have nothing. They have no memory or lived experience to prepare them for this different world, all of their material possessions belong to someone else now, and by definition, all political, economic and military power is held by those who stayed, who now have a material conflict of interest, because if they acknowledge that you are the same person and deserving of the things you had 5 years ago, they have to give it back. Even without the administrative nightmare this would represent, the returned have nothing. Even their work experience is practically meaningless, especially in high-paying jobs.

What would happen if Steve Jobs somehow magically returned, having no idea what Apple had been doing in the last couple of years, and demanded to be put back in charge of Apple? It’s not exactly an easy ‘yes’, is it? The world’s power balance would be forever shifted.

I’m not saying everybody would be unsympathetic to the plight of the people who unblipped. But I am saying there would be a massive movement or series of movements opposed to giving them back their stuff. And I’m saying that movement would not only be popular but also backed by every powerful business interest and government.

Because realistically, the unblipped would be the refugees. They are the ones who would have lost everything, fighting an uphill legal battle to even be recognized as alive and as the same person they were 5 years ago. They would be the ones in camps, waiting for supplies.

Ironically, they would be the ones most hurt by the status quo returning to normal, as there is no way to keep massive famines and shortages from happening in this situation without international coordination.

So why did the MCU decide on the opposite idea? There are two arguments I can think of: one narrative, and one political. On a narrative level, speculating on a changed world is complicated and risky. If Marvel wants to make stories relevant to us in our world, they have to more or less get back to a status quo we would recognize before it would complicate their properties going forward.

The second reason, I think, is that to truly explore a world like this is radical and potentially a liability for Disney, both in terms of their audience and their relationship with the US military.

Of course any real discussion on policy in this situation requires the heroes to at least pay lip service to a political opinion, which could cost them a lot of fans. We are talking about the legitimacy of borders, of private ownership. Any examination of the edge cases will cause people to have Strong Opinions of their own. In a crisis like this, can people squat in empty houses? Do these people have human rights and refugee status, and how should those be protected in the real world? Can any state justly displace people and if not, are these people allowed to disobey the government or even fight them?

Since the US military subsidizes Marvel’s use of military hardware, it has script approval. So that can also explain why they can’t make the US government the bad guy or present a truly different world where the US military is rightfully no longer in control.

Who can legitimately deprive people of things they need to survive in a crisis like this? What’s more important: the right to own a house and keep it empty if we so choose, or the right to live in a house?

If we get too deeply into it, Karly’s position (in theory) seems very compelling, like Erik Killmonger’s before her. And so, they have to make her (like him) a hypocrite who goes too far, so it doesn’t seem like the MCU is advocating violence against the state.

Karly’s ideology is muddled by the writers because the violence she performs has no chance of actually achieving her goals of global solidarity. It feels tacked on to make her less sympathetic. Realistically, someone like Karli would be holding political rallies, sit-ins. Writing op-eds, staging marches and organizing her community into self-sufficiency. Possibly getting into fights with the cops during evictions or protests. If you read Falcon and the Winter Soldier as a kind of allegory for American politics, then Walker represents Trump, Sam represents Obama, and Karly represents... whatever conservatives think socialism/BLM is?

So it feels like FatWS is trying to thread the needle: Nationalism is bad, but so is statelessness. A state should have integrity, and benevolence. And it can have those things, if represented by the right people. Then, the violence is just and measured. It’s barely even violence at all.

I’m kidding of course, the kinds of solutions the MCU offers are basically ‘Co-Intelpro, PMC’s and neighbourhood watches... but run by morally perfect people’. It’s the way a propagandist would represent clandestine domestic espoinage or police brutality: Sam and Bucky would never kill anybody defenseless, and they would never interfere with legitimate polical movements. Because the writers create a perfect world where it’s always clear what everybody’s intention is before the fighting starts, and non-lethal violence is a reliable default option, no more morally problematic than some rough-housing by rambunctious kids.

I know I can trust Sam and Bucky because the writers would never give them realistic implicit biases in a way that would endanger their moral character. They are perfect because they are not real.

The robots, aliens and wizards are not the only unrealistic thing about the MCU. we have to be aware of how artificial the politics are, even if we want to suspend our disbelief. Or else we end up trusting politicians when they embrace a fundamentally immoral status quo, and let thousands die to maintain it (I know, a WILD hypothetical that will surely never come true, but worth keeping an eye out for.)

The politics that a blip would realistically set in motion are so different from our own, that it would call into question the legitimacy of private ownership and the state. In order to avoid upsetting its fans and its financiers, the MCU has to return to a status quo where those political realities can be taken for granted.

#pop culture analysis #Falcon and the Winter soldier #MCU critique #the Blip #Flag Smashers

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mymemoirs · 5 years

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Confessions: Unmuting Friends in Social Media

21st July 2019

It’s 12.26 AM.

I’m fully awake knowing that I should be sleeping right now because I would need to wake up early in the morning. But I can’t turn in for the night, I just need to get these thoughts out of my system, so I’m writing this. This is kind of a confession I had to make.

I just muted a friend’s story in Instagram today.

You must have thought, “Really? That’s what you wanted to say? Muting a story in social media is a trivial thing, girl.”

Well not for me. Since I’m quite up to date to what’s my friend doing in social media most of the time. Especially keeping up with close friends, sometimes I would just look at their updates whenever I have free time. This holiday made me had all those free time. So, I’m online most of the time.

And that friend was quite a close friend of mine. So it’s a hard decision to make and one that I had to overthink about. Well, I could just unmute her, but I’ve decided that once I mute someone, it will be for a long time. And it will also be for reasons that only stand for me. Not for anyone else. So you might think it’s absurd but I’m doing it for myself because I’m the one who’s going to see it and have thoughts or perception about it. Until now, there are two people whom I mute from my Instagram stories. My motivation to mute them stems from being heartbroken and disappointed.

I’m not even sure if the first friend I muted can be called as “friends” anymore but I don’t think I have the term for that “friend”. Well, yes, you can say we’re not really friends anymore and I was heartbroken. And no, it’s not like we cut off our friendship literally, it just happens. I realized that I were not his close friends to begin, and I was delusional thinking we were close. What made me heartbroken is when I asked him out to meet each other (since it has been a long time), he never actually replies my message. BUT he made stories (in Instagram) that he was out with other friends from high school.

I still remembered how it felt being trampled over and over again. I know that he seldom replies my message before, but seeing that update was the last straw for me. I remembered crying that night over a friend that might not even think of me as a friend. Someone who only used me. And then I decided to mute him. Until now, I never thought of unmuting him. I realized later on, I was happy not seeing his updates and have come to term that we might not be crossing each other’s path anymore after high school. So instead of confronting on “why you’re doing this to me?” and being childish about it, I would rather avoid looking at his updates and keep our interactions at the minimum. And that’s for the first person I used the “mute” button on.

The second one though, I’m actually feeling pretty guilty about it. Since we’re actually quite close but maybe we’re not really that close anymore. I have to say that is mostly my fault to begin with. Me and my friend basically have different religious and philosophical views. She has a very strict Muslim views and I on the other hand is a Buddhist who likes to doubt and ask things.

So in short, we always have talks regarding our religious views and then sometimes end up arguing or sometimes not arguing but it would leave both of us feeling awkward later on. Maybe the reason we’re feeling awkward stems from us trying to explain to someone who don’t understand our views and values. But I had to admit it, there are times I do enjoy our conversations but I think she might not. So when we have these kind of conversations recently, she would then reply me, “You keep on asking everything, huh?” or “Talking to you will take up a long time.” or “I don’t know what to reply your previous message.”

This boils down to “I don’t like talking about this stuff with you anymore, so can we stop?”. Well, that’s what I thought and in fact we’ve been avoiding that kind of topic whenever we converse. But guess what, I’m always the one who started it. The funny thing is, we only graze the religion topic. I mean we’re not really talking about religious views, just about something in general like mental revolution, which is more to the philosophical side of things.

I don’t understand why she posted those writings and I should have just asked before giving my own views. I don’t know if it will touch a sensitive issue to her and I think I kind of did, because she purposely avoided it. I said that it was alright, but deep down I’m not. I kept on thinking about it, mostly because I’m curious as how she would reply and also because I was disappointed. It kind of hurts in a sense and I think I’m stupid to give my views about something. But I can’t help it either when she kept posting religious views each time I open her updates. It’s kind of unbearable that’s what she always posted and to avoid myself from being triggered like what I did before, I prompted to mute her. Just to be on the safe side.

I realized that although it’s nice to exchange your views about something, you need to be open minded to their views and not everyone can do that. I don’t think I can always do that too, but since college, I’ve always been trying to learn people’s cultures and views. Especially when you are the minority, you just learn a lot from them. And I think I will keep on learning to have a proper dialogue in the future to avoid this kind discomfort for my friends.

This is actually what I need to get out of my system. I’m just feeling guilty and unfulfilled since it wasn’t replied. But at the same time I feel stupid because I kept on hearing that telling someone about your views is pointless and only stupid people would argue about their stance. So, I will also be learning to refrain myself from debating about my views.

Although telling someone or having a conversation about what you value might be pointless. I still think a good way to convey and remind yourself of that is by writing about it. Not everyone might read it but at least you have imprinted it on something that is much more durable than just a mere conversation. You might forget what you just talked about yesterday with your friend but you will always be reminded of what you wrote because you can read it back again and you will be reminded of it again. I think that’s the power of jotting everything down.

-Reina

#personal #views #philosophical

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blog1984705 · 4 years

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Lecture 4

As I stated in my last blog post I missed the fourth lecture of the course. I still wanted to make a blogpost about it, however I can only base it on the powerpoint of the lecture and the primary text I have read. I could not borrow notes from anyone, because I don’t know any of the peers from that course. This is an electoral course and I do not really spend time on other students during the lectures. Besides that the Coronavirus has impacted our daily life on a big scale it is hard to get into contact with these people. The fourth lecture is what I will be dedicating this blog to and I read a translation by Daniel C. Peterson based on Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s al-Mughnī fī abwāb al-tawḥīd waʾl-ʿadl (Cairo, 1950), section 4, pp. 99–112 and 113–114. The name is translated to The Book that makes others superfluous. First I will write something about the writer, the text and the Mu’tazila, after that I will write something about Kalam.

The writer of the text is named Abu’l-Hasan ʿAbd al-Jabbār, but was better known as al-Qāḍī which means the Judge. He was was born and raised in Iran. During his studies he came under the influence of the Mu’tazilites. The Mu’tazila is a religious movement that has been founded in Basra, Iraq in the 700s AD by Wasil ‘Ata. The Mu’tazila means those who separate themselves. This name is derived from Wasil Ata’s withdrawal from the study circle of Hasan Al Basri over a theological disagreement. Others followed Wasil and together they formed a new circle. The Mu’tazila adapted Greek philosophy and attempted to understand them in Islamic context. What also differs them from for example the Sunnits is that they do not believe the Qur’an and Sunnah were the only sources of truth. They gave reason an elevated role in understanding both the spiritual and material world.

They formed a vivacious scholastic community reaching from Iraq to Syria and Iran. They had debates with jurists, philosophers, grammarians and heretics. An important thesis that the Mu’tazila followed was Al-Nazzam his infinite divisibility of bodies thesis. This had to do with juz’ or jawhar, which we could translate as atoms. He described them as the participles that cannot be subdivided. He claimed that beside God, atoms and accidents are exclusive constituents of the universe. So that the universe is made up of atoms that can be distinguished from each other, which he called discrete, and atoms that exist related to divine causality, which he called contingent. Hereby he admits that there would be two primary categories of beings, things are either atoms or they are accidents.

Accidents inhere in a body once it is constituted and change in the world is accounted by causality. According to Al-Nazzam there are three positions on causality of accidents. They are either caused by God, proceeded from their substrate or they are causal efficacy of human agents.

Besides that they were wondering how we could attribute things to God without knowing him. The Mu’tazilis were sustaining a strict avoidance of anthropomorphism. However the Qur’an states that God is one, and there is nothing like him. The Qur’an states that He is always knowing, powerful and living. Allah has ninety nine names which are all attributed to Him. The Mu’tazilis refused to admit attributes to distinct ontological entities, because they were wondering how it was possible to attribute or predicate things of God.

Al-Qāḍī tried to answer these questions in the primary text. This was obviously difficult for him because God is a body, but not like any other bodies you can think of. Besides the attribution can’t be identical to the thing described, nor not so. In other words, God’s attributes, called sifat, belong to god, but without any inherence like accidents.

Al-Qāḍī explains in his text why we perceive all the perceptibles by the cause of life, just as we perceive it by the senses, even if we do not know it. If God were visible to us in any way, we would inevitably know him. Therefore, if that claim is invalid on account of what we find in ourselves, namely that we lack necessary knowledge of Him and in view of the fact that our deductive reasoning about Him is invalid, because He is neither knowable or unknowable. Besides that we can’t know what He would look like, what shape or colours he would have. Al-Qāḍī states that, for those who ask why he made it so that we are not able to see Him, if He created that in us, we would be free of the obligation that is not valid except with the acquisition of knowledge about us. Besides that he claims that we do not have a sixth sense by which we see God or other things that are impossible to see by the senses we have. Al-Qāḍī also refutes the claim that the reason we do not see God is the weakness of our vision.

An important term we spoke about in class was the term ‘Kalam.’ The Kalam was a rational tradition which, in opposition of the Mu’tazila, did not care for Greek Philosophy. Kalam is literally translated as “speech,” which refers to a rationalist form of Islamic theology. Kalam started as an intra-Muslim disputation and was autonomous of foreign influences. Kalam was all about theology, rational discourses and intelligent speech. Topics that were being addressed were the free will, the nature of Qur’an, the nature of God, divine attributes and the role of reason.

The Kalam had two functions, the first function was it being a defence system of the common orthodox creed, by refuting opposing opinions through the form of argument and to defeat the advocates of error through dialectic reasoning. Dialectic reasoning is the art of investigating or discussing the truth of opinions. It is the inquiry into metaphysical contradictions and their solutions.

The second function of Kalam was to dispel doubts and sophistries that cause confusion to the untrained minds of lay believers. This by bringing forth cogent proofs, expressed in clear language to remove that confusion and those doubts rationally.

The key doctrines of Kalam were that humans were responsible for their own actions. God does not predetermine all human choices and therefore humans have some form of free will. This causes human volition in sinful behavior. God gave us this free will to see if we are worthy of entering Jannah, which is the paradise. I think that our lives on this Earth would not matter without a free will, because this life is just a test for the life to come. If we can’t make our own decisions between good and bad things, there would be no test.

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