This is the best of the times, this is the worst of the times. Isn’t it? Indeed, it is. We have never lived in such times before. We have fun, we have war. We have entertainment. We have tragedies. Lives are long, problems are fewer, yet there is the fear of the unprecedented. We live in an era where advanced countries care about human rights. Yet, organised rings for rapes of minors, child abuse and infant eating are being exposed. Geopolitical pundits are warning us about the eruption of the Third World War. Indeed, American armadas have surrounded Persia from all sides. Air bases have been filled with stealth planes. Negotiations are happening to avert this. Rhetorics are belligerent. Aspirations for underhanded dealmaking are high.

Over the past couple of years, I have been writing about certain historical matters that I hope will help heal humanity’s collective conscience. I have tried to be objective. As a Muslim person, I have criticised the many conquests of the so-called Mulim forces of the medieval era. I have argued that the conquests of Spain and India by nomadic Mulim warlords were wrong. One of my previous articles in the journey to Jerusalem series was a chronological critique of the conquests of the Indian subcontinent. And I am committed to all that.

My today’s article has a slightly different spirit. In this, I would like to reflect on the various groups and clans of India that converted to Islam over more than a thousand years. To be more precise, I want to reflect on the groups or clans of India that came in conflict with those Muslim warlords and they later converted to Islam. This is a long list victors and loosers, and it is interesting because it also contains the former category of clans.

India is a caste-based society. Muslims confronted various caste groups in the subcontinent from 712 AD till the middle of the nineteenth century. Let’s begin with Raja Daahir. He was the first one to bear the siege by Arabs. I have written about him. He stood firm against the Arabs as any brave king would. And he tried to defend Sindh to the best of his abilities. It is a pity that he lost. However, his progeny or tribe still live in Sindh and they embraced Shia Islam.

If you read my article on the conquests of India by the Muslims, the second clash I mention there was between Sultan Mahmood of Ghazni and the Northern Indian king Jaya Pala. Jaya Pala was a Rajput from the famous Janjua clan that is still based in the salt range of Pakistan. Jaya Pala lost the battle of Peshawar and later committed suicide. Almost all Janjuas are Muslims, and many of them acquired notable sociopolitical positions in Pakistan.

Sultan Mahmood is famous for his seventeen attacks on India. During his last attack, he was pursued by a local Indian king, Raja Bhoj. Bhoj belonged to the Paanwar Rajput tribe and was famous for his ferocity, among other qualities. Many Paanwars converted to Islam, and they also migrated to Pakistan after 1947. They acquired notable positions in various services in Pakistan. A sub-tribe of Paanwars is Naarma. All of it is Muslim, and they live in Pakistan.

During his campaigns, he also invaded the region of Sindh. Jaats of Sindh drove him out of Sindh. Almost all Jaats in SIndh are Muslims.

Then comes the turn of the clash between Sultan Muhammad of Ghaur and Prithvi Raj Chohan. Although I have argued that the clash between Mehmood of Ghazni and Jaya Pala was a fair game on the part of the erstwhile, I would assert that Sultan Muhammad of Ghauri beat Prithvi Raj Chohan with deception. Chohans are also Rajputs of India. Many of them are settled in Pakistan. And among the many who are in Pakistan are devout Muslims. Later, Sultan Muhammad was ambushed and assassinated by another northern Indian clan called Khokhars. Khokhars also identify themselves as Rajputs. The ones from northern India have historically lived in the salt range of Pakistan and they are largley Muslim. Legend has it that Raja Porus, who clashed with Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC in the famous battle of Hydaspes, was also a Khokhar.

When Babar invaded India, he made a fiery speech in Sohawa (a town in Northern Punjab, Pakistan). He mustered the support of local Gujjars and took them along with their military to invade Delhi. Gujjar is a scheduled caste of India. Almost every Gujjar who lives in Pakistan (including Sohawa and its suburbs) is a Muslim. Legend has it that much of the victory of the throne of India can be attributed to the support lent to Babar by the Gujjars.

Akbar made political alliances with Indians through marriages. He married in a Rajput clan, and hence the later progeny of Mughals had Rajput genetic code in them.

Maharaja Ranjit Singh established the SIkh dynasty in Northern India. He and his army were known for their ferocity. Afghans used to fear Hari Singh Nalwa for a long time. Ranjit belonged to the Sainsi subtribe of the Bhatti Rajputs. He was from Gujranwala. Sainsi Bhattis can still live there. They are all Muslims.

It is interesting to note that almost all the local Indian clans who came into conflict with Muslims converted to Islam, irrespective of whether they won or lost against them. This fact is additionally noteworthy because there is a notion that Muslim nomads subjugated the local populations and forced them to convert. I am not denying this. However, my position is that even the victors converted to Islam.

Why did this happen? Conquering other peoples land is bad unless there is a noble purpose behind it. And I have already argued that conquest of India by nomadic Muslims was bad.. This is my very firm position and it is one of the important theses of my life. Not only that, I am also against the conquest of Spain, Sicily, Central Asia and other places. Actually there is a strong argument that when various Arab factions conspired against the household of Prophet Muhammad PBUH, and litterally assassinated son upon son of noble Imams, to divert peoples’ attention from their heinous deeds, they started a new project of conquest of the known world as a noble cause. I have argued about this in several of my previous articles. My question is that how was it possible that the defenders of India, who were hostile to Muslim warlords, converted to Islam irrespective of whether they lost or won against a certain campaigner.

Islam has a strong epistemology. The Holy Quran and the Hadith of Prophet Muhammad PBUH speak about the past Prophets and try to straighten human view of them. Especially, much of the Holy Quran revolves around setting the status of Jesus Christ PBUH straight. In the Middle East, he was either loved and revered to the extent of worship or loathed. And the haters had the excuse to do so because he was worshipped. Monotheists couldn’t agree with him, and hence they would strip him off of his divine title as the Christ. Chapters of the Holy Quran and Hadith of Prophet Muhammad PBUH set his status right in the conscience of the common man. The Holy Quran asserts that he was not the son of God, but a Holy Prophet. In doing this, God also eliminates any excuse to loathe him.

Apart from this, Islamic prophecies about the future of mankind are also strong. Moreover, the Islamic values are quite commendable. The ideas of human equality and justice in Islam are indeed universal. But above all, it was the arrival of Sufi Saints that changed human hearts in Islam. Rajputs of India are not an easy bunch to succumb to any threat or domineering entity. Actually, the Rajput caste in India crystallised with the advent of the Islamic invaders in India. They stood up to defend India against Muslim invasion. And many of them were quite successful in their assignments. However, Sufi saints moulded hearts. It is said that one of the sons of Prithviraj Chohan converted to Islam at the hands of Hazrat Khawaja Moin ud Din Chishti RA. He is considered the patron saint of India. Around half a million Rajputs converted to Islam on the hands of Hazrat Bahaudin Zakriya RA. And there is no chance that all of these millions of people will convert to any other religion, even if given any choice. So if a future clash between India and Pakistan happens (God forbid), it will be mostly between local Hindus and Muslims of Indian origin.

Swayamvar has been an old Indian tradition. In this, when a princess had to be married, princes would be invited to view the princess from far flung Indian territories. The princess instead would review the princes. She would select one and reject the rest. Rest of the disheartened princes would get against the state of the princess. This would lead to political conflicts between different states, leading to disloyalties, animosities and war. Most of the invaders of India were helped by local Indians. And many local Indians also converted to Islam due to the universal ideas of human egalitarianism and justice. 

While the sword may have changed the political boundaries and the ruling elite, it was the Sufi influence and social values of Islam coupled with the fragmented Indian society that actually converted the populace and sustained the faith over centuries. Military force often breeds resentment rather than genuine belief. The sword could demand taxes or submission, but it couldn’t necessarily mould hearts. In a highly stratified, caste-based society, the Islamic concepts of egalitarianism and divine justice offered a radical alternative. The superior values acted as a psychological and social pull factor, especially for those looking for a sense of human equality that was historically denied to them.

This is where the victors and losers both converting becomes most relevant. Sufi saints often lived outside the royal courts and reached out to the common people, including the warrior classes (Rajputs, Khokhars, etc.). Sufis often used local idioms, music, and poetry, making the transition to Islam feel less like a foreign imposition and more like a spiritual evolution.

The post A Tale of a Thousand Years first appeared on Psyops Prime.]]> https://psyopsprime.com/consciousness/a-tale-of-a-thousand-years/feed/ 0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 2693 https://psyopsprime.com/consciousness/journey-to-jerusalem-conquest-upon-conquest/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=journey-to-jerusalem-conquest-upon-conquest https://psyopsprime.com/consciousness/journey-to-jerusalem-conquest-upon-conquest/#respond Tue, 29 Apr 2025 16:14:34 +0000 https://psyopsprime.com/?p=2536 My last Journey to Jerusalem article was partly focused on reflecting on events surrounding the year 712 AD and the conquest of SIndh by the

My last Journey to Jerusalem article was partly focused on reflecting on events surrounding the year 712 AD and the conquest of SIndh by the Arabs. Before that, I also wrote about why the Dome of Rock is a misplaced monument and that it should not have been built. I have been thinking about this article for a long time, but I could not write it due to certain obligations. My theme is to write about the conquest of India by Muslim invaders over the past thirteen hundred years. This is a critical topic that I believe must be understood by Muslims, Indians, and the rest of the world too. The reason is that most of the things are misunderstood by most human communities, and that confusion can be misleading.

By the way, Arabs invaded India only once. As I wrote earlier, this happened in 712 AD. I also wrote that Walid bin Abdul Malik ordered this invasion to persecute the fleeing daughter of Imam Ali bin Abi Taalib (RA). This is extremely important to understand. Most Muslims consider Sindh as the door of Islam to India, as Islam arrived here through this invasion. However, the truth is that Walid belonged to a murderous clan that was against the family of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) himself. Rest of the story can be found in my previous article.

After this eighth century attack of Arabs on India from the Arabian sea till the end of the tenth century, there was a lull of Muslim attacks. By the beginning of the eleventh century, the famous battle of Peshawar happened between Indians and Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni. An interesting aspect about this person is that he is a very controversial person in Pakistan. Many consider him as a hero. However, among the highly educated echelons of Pakistan, he is considered as a plunderer. When I was a child I read about some literature about him in which he was taken in a very high esteem. In my point of view the truth of the established history is that his father was provoked by the Maharaja Jayapala of North India who had started becoming insecure of the growing power of Sabuktigin in Ghazni. By preemptively attacking him the Raja literally stirred the hornet’s nest so much so that the severity of the retaliatory invasions led him to commit suicide. On a personal level, I only consider this man to be a justifiable conqueror of India. After all, this was the protocol of medieval times; you provoke someone and then it really depends if you can sustain the retaliation or not. I think that this is a timeless law of nature. Sabuktigin was a slave who had elevated to the status of a ruler. He was of Turkic origin.

After this came the turn of the Ghauris, who are much despised in India to this day. Ghauris originated from somewhere in Persia. They were literally nomadic people who had converted to Islam at some stage. Initially, they advanced to Ghazni and sacked the Ghaznavi sultanate. They torched Kabul and the city literally burned for seven days and seven nights. Later on they marched to Delhi, conquered it and made it their capital. I personally find it very problematic to defend this invasion. Delhi sulatane was formed at this time. This was followed by the slave dynasty’s rule in northern India. Mostly these rulers were of either Persian or Turkic origins.

Later on came the era of two very famous expansionist imperialists. One of them was Genghis Khan. He remains a famous person to this day. I read an article on geopolitics a few years ago in which it was stated that one in every eighth person in Asia happens to be his descendant. His name needs no mention. And his barbarity needs no advertisement. His reputation has always remained two steps ahead of him to this day. He belonged to Mangolia.

The second was Tamerlane. He is also a very famous warrior. He was was Turkicized Mongol who also descended from an extremely ferocious general of Genghis Khan. Legend has it that he was a memorizer of the Holy Quran too. From an early age he had a personal ambition to conquer the world. He plundered Asia multiple times from the East to the West of Asia. In the East he clashed with the Delhi Sultanate and in the West with the Ottoman empire. He was driven by an ambition to conquer the world. After him the Delhi sultanate was restored in India. His cruelty, barbarity, and brutality were second only to Genghis Khan.

Then came the famous king Babur who set the stage for the Mughal empire in India. He was a descendant of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan from his father’s and mother’s sides, respectively. He was surely a Mongol, and hence the name Mughal. In the name of God he clashed with Ibrahim Lodhi, the last Sultan of the Delhi Sultanate. As a matter of fact, he mustered support from Gujjars, a scheduled caste of the Indian subcontinent, of Sohawa (a town now in Northern Punjab in Pakistan). He made a fiery religious speech to them before he attacked Delhi. It is needless to mention that Ibrahim was already a Muslim.

Babur’s son Humayun became the king after the demise of his father. He was later overthrown by Sher Shah Suri in the name of God. And eventually, Sher Shah was overthrown by Akbar in the name of God, too. Akbar lived to become one of the greatest emperors in human history. He ruled India for over fifty years. Among the many good things he did for India, he did so many bad things too, including introducing a new religion which was a mixture of Hinduism and Islam. It is highly forbidden in Islam to make innovations in the religion of God. However, Akbar was largely inspired by his desire to rule. After Akbar, his son Jehangir came to the throne. He was followed by his son Shahjehan, who is also the founder of the famous Taj Mahal.

Shahjehan’s son Aurangzeb incarcerated his father and had his elder brother Dara Shikoh assassinated. Daara was the heir apparent to the throne. Aurangzeb ruled India for another fifty years too. But by the end of his tenure, the Mughal empire was already in decline. There were a few more Mughal kings and then the British took over India and colonized it for around ninety years. This brought an end to the conquests of Muslims in India.

Reading this tale of plunder and murders, one should wonder that what was wrong with each of the murdered kings (who were also Muslim) that the murderer killed him or put him in the jail in the name of God. What were their differences that they could not decide through dialogue or diplomacy? And why should they have fought with each other due to personal differences, as a Muslim person is not supposed to live a life for personal goals and ambitions but as a duty to God. I am leaving the Hindu inhabitants of India aside for a moment. I am talking about the nature of conflicts between the Muslim warriors only.

This is a well-known story of the conquests of Muslim warriors in India. They were killing each other in the name of God. And they were doing these excursions in somebody else’s country. This is what the normal Muslims do not understand. This is what they must appreciate. And this is why I have written this article.

No matter what the beliefs of Indian people, and no matter how inhumane or inhygienic their rituals, the truth is that India is the country of the Indian people. Moreover, India is not mentioned anywhere in the Holy Quran, let alone its conquests. India was also a friendly country towards emigrants. Once upon a time, Jews and Christians had migrated to India. Later on, persecuted Muslims, especially from the progeny of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and his household, had moved to India. Normally, it was people fleeing from their hostile origins who would come to India. Imam Hussain was considering moving to India. Imam Hussain was married to a Persian princess whose sister was married to an a prince of an Indian state. Indians were happy to host Imam Hussain (RA).

Moreover, Islam was already becoming comfortable in India due to the advent of Sufi saints. As early as the eleventh century, famous Sufi saints had started settling in India. Sufis would come alone to India, without any armies or armaments. They would start living in India like common people. Their conduct and behavior was sufficient to motivate Indians to convert to Islam. Around half a million Rajputs are considered to have converted to Islam due to the peaceful company of Hazrat Baha ud Din Zakariya (RA). Khawaja Ghulam Mohi ud Din Chishti (RA) settled in Ajmer, that was the traditional house of Rajputs, the foremost warrior class of India.

The message of the sufis was always love of God and the love of humanity. There is a central concept in Islam that a person owes two types of rights. One is the rights of God. The other type is the rights of human beings. It is said that God can forgive the rights of Himself, but not of human beings. And the rights of human beings revolve around care and compassion, not subjugation and murder.

Conquests were not only not required, they were quite evil. They have had a very negative effect on the Indian psyche. It does not matter that India is a racist society, or that all Indian people are not equal, or that it was already an occupation of Indo-Aryan over Dalits. These are widespread notions that can be found in common chit chat to academic literature. But it does not matter. The real ingredient required to mold human hearts is love. With love humans can be molded to good. Subjugation was a bad idea.

The post Journey to Jerusalem: Conquest Upon Conquest first appeared on Psyops Prime.]]> https://psyopsprime.com/consciousness/journey-to-jerusalem-conquest-upon-conquest/feed/ 0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 2536 https://psyopsprime.com/consciousness/neural-correlates-of-belief/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=neural-correlates-of-belief https://psyopsprime.com/consciousness/neural-correlates-of-belief/#respond Tue, 12 Mar 2019 10:23:54 +0000 http://psyopsprime.com/?p=1957 We have been working on some of Sam Harris’s Ph.D. thesis. The idea is to see how religious beliefs affect consciousness. Here is our research

The post Neural Correlates of Belief first appeared on Psyops Prime.]]> We have been working on some of Sam Harris’s Ph.D. thesis. The idea is to see how religious beliefs affect consciousness. Here is our research article that recently got published in a nice conference. It is a work in progress. So if you find it interesting and want to work on it, please give me a shout. We could think about something interesting to work on.

Neural Correlates of Belief – IEEE Conference Publication

Much of the degeneration of the human condition is attributed to religion. As we move in the midst of the twenty first century, enjoying the cornucopia len

 

Photo by JuditK

The post Neural Correlates of Belief first appeared on Psyops Prime.]]> https://psyopsprime.com/consciousness/neural-correlates-of-belief/feed/ 0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ 1957

Actually, Pakistan does not make any sense without Islam. Seriously consider this fact that if a large Muslim majority did not exist in this part of the world that we now call Pakistan, Jinnah’s ancestors could not have conceived Pakistan even in dreams. The only sensible idea for Pakistan to exist is Islam. No Islam, no Pakistan. And I would be happy to join India as I would find better ways to thrive, excel and be happy in a united India as at the end of the day I belong to the Rajput community and I really do identify with the land and culture of the Indian subcontinent. My forefathers were kings on this land. After creation of Pakistan that prospect of myself or my descendants becoming kings and emperors on this piece of land that belonged to Indians has diminished to a great deal actually. Consider the Islamic ideas of equality and lack of racism, they snatch away something from me what could be called my eternal right to rule.

You talk about a thousands years of tradition and heritage of Pakhtuns in this region. But please consider what was here before that. Exactly a thousand years ago there ruled a king named Jayapala on the land you want to call Pakhtunkhawa and have it as yours. The dominion of Jayapala stretched till the borders of Ghazni and included Kabul. When Jayapala attacked Sebektegin, he actually invited a barrage of attacks by his son Mehmood. Mehmood, in his successive attacks and battles, took away from Jayapala all the region that you now call KPK. Mehmood was not a Pakhtoon. He was a Turkik Mamlook. So Pakhtuns never owned or ruled this place. As a matter of fact, although they have been living here, they have at times even been persecuted. Consider the genocide of Pakhtuns that was committed by Babar (who was also not a Pakhtun and was of Mongol descent by the way) in what why now call koh-e-Hindukush.

The same kind of argument goes about Balochi people as well. I have lived a lifetime listening, praising and admiring Balochi and Pashtoon tradition, valor, and values. There is a bit of a legend about these two identities. Akbar Bugti was once asked about his identity. And he said, I am a Pakistani for 60 years, a Muslim since 1400 years and a Balochi since, I don’t know, 2000 years (maybe, perhaps even more than that). Akbar Bugti (and all the rest of the Bugtis and Baloch people) tend to make a great deal out of their Baloch identity. But when should ask this great more-than-two-thousand-years-old proud Baloch, where did he live before 1400 years (i.e. before converting to Islam). It turns out that where ever he did, he either did not live in the land that we now call Balochistan or even if he did, he was not only not a proud ruler over there, he was actually a subject, and most possibly an abject one. The fact is that before the advent of Islam Balochistan was a dominion of Indian rulers and kings. This is a fact that when Balochistan was conquered for the first time by Muslims, it was during the era of Hazrat Umar (RA) and the ruler of Balochistan was Rai Chach (an auspiciously Indian name).

Given all of this one feels a great deal of an urge to ask our dear Pakhtuns and Balochis, who are so fond of tradition, this question that where did they practice these princely traditions before that. Some of their traditions are very princely indeed. I had a Baloch friend who had a really long shalwar. I think its circumference would be 25 meters at least, I am not exaggerating. When asked the reason why he wore such a huge shalwar, his answer was that the tradition compelled him to do so. So the question is that where did such traditions come from? And I am sure that the true answer cannot be that they originated in the land of KPK or Balochistan. And even if they did, it wasn’t the time the Indians were ruling the place. It was most possibly when Muslims were in command that such liberal traditions could evolve.

The reason for writing all of this is that the land of Pakistan makes sense (to me at least) with Islam. If we take Islam out of the question, there is no point in having Pakistan. Then merge everything with India. And the merger would also include those landmasses of KPK and Balochistan.

Yes, there is misfortune in our country. There is not enough equality. We are not even close to the equality preached by Islam. Our justice system is poor. But a solution to these problems is not divisions. The solution is to improve. Things are improving too. Now the speaker for NA is from KPK. There are oher notable top-notch politicians who hail from Balochistan. Divisions are not the solution. Because in a divided Pakistan, each of the piece of land will begin to belong to someone who is not currently living there. And their case is as legitimate as your traditions and heritage.

Well the thing is that there are surely problems. Why don’t you achieve more autonomy now through a constitutional process in this new setup. You guys have your own speaker. And you should pitch a bill of your demands. Why don’t you go constitutional? This is your government. Even the PM is Pashtun and takes great pride in being so.

What exactly did we achieve with the Muslim state? I really don’t know. But we lost a lot. I mean India lost a lot. India lost KPK (which is ruling since 320 BC, since the reign of Chandra Gupta Muriya) and Balochistan. What did we gain? Well, I guess independence. The independence to write this kind of stuff. I think it means a lot.

On a separate note, Taliban should never have demolished those Buddhist temples and religious emblems. Islam does not allow that. And they were emblematic indeed. Those emblems tell us that once upon a time there was Budhism in that part of the world. This is a very profound idea about who belongs where in the world.

One of the reasons I think like this is because of the great war. I am talking about the second world war. This was the greatest of the wars that happened on planet Earth. Almost every country in the world was drawn into it, willingly or unwillingly. And almost every country suffered. Even the victors suffered. It is said that the war caused bankruptcy to the British empire. Similarly, other colonial powers like France, Spain, and Italy also suffered huge financial losses. Germany surely lost the war, but the Russian economy bled badly too.

It is said that the only true victor of the war was the United States. This is quite right. The US joined the war quite late and stole the show when everyone else was really tired and exhausted with the war. But this is not the complete truth. The US was not the only victor. In my personal opinion, there were other victors too. And these were the countries that were colonized before the war. The Indian subcontinent was a victor, for instance. It gained independence from the British Raj in 1947. It is said that the British left India on its own as they could not afford its budget any longer. The bankruptcy caused by the great war had drained Britain so badly that she had to abandon her Indian ambitions altogether. Same is the case with the middle east. They colonizers retreated in the 40s. The Republic of Ireland, for another example, gained it complete freedom in 1949 from the British after almost a millennium-long hegemony. So that’s the kind of story the history has about the era of 40s. One thing we often fail to acknowledge is that although the US emerged as the sole victor from the great war, not all countries were losers. The colonized countries gained a lot. Primarily, if nothing else, they gained their freedoms. Their freedoms came as bounties for the colonizers’ financial losses and crippled economies.

Wars ceded to a great degree after that. Or at least we should believe that they have not happened at the scale that used to happen before that. There has not been a single war after the great war of the 40s that was equivalent in magnitude to previous wars that have happened in human history. Before the 40s, war was an enterprise. After that, even though wars involving superior technology happened, they did so much out of necessity. The cold war, even though a much wider and technologically intense event was not nearly as epic as the battle of Hydaspes. Instead of large-scale organized wars, technical apparatus proliferated in every sphere of human life including war and civilization. Villages, towns and cities evolved and thrived with huge buildings, hospitals, schools, banks, cars, transportation systems, political ideas and shopping centers with all sorts of goods, confectionaries, groceries, drinks and technical gadgets that mankind had never seen before. The ordinary man who could have had to struggle to buy a bunch of candles during the nineteenth century would be highly discomforted if the electricity of his house was shut down for five minutes only. Such are the expectations of today’s modern man about his life and from the society.

Humanity has progressed a lot ever since the decade of the 40s. It is the kind of progress humanity has never ever seen before. And most of this progress has been observed in countries who suffered in the war. Excluding the US, the sole victor, these countries include the Western European countries, the UK, the Scandinavian countries, Japan and China. The good thing about these countries is that most of these countries while making economic and technological progress, have also aspired to become welfare states, even if they have not been able to become so.

What remains are the countries that have not done so well. If you look at the world map closely, these are middle eastern, central Asia, and subcontinental nations. Consider UAE for instance. It has developed a lot of infrastructures but has poor labor laws. Consider India for another example. It boats to be the largest democracy in the world, but it has not been able to straighten up of caste oriented hierarchical society where one bunch of human beings are superior to another through a divine ordinance of some sort.

And now consider Pakistan. Ever since its independence, she has been suffering from tragic episodes of one kind or another. Despite all the resources she has, and despite all the progress she has made on various fronts, her people are suffering from poverty. The total population of Pakistan is of the order of 193 million as of this writing. Even in the midst of the 21st century, her people face a lot of problems. Basic amenities of life that have become hackneyed in the developed world are not accessible to most of the people of Pakistan. People have issues concerning basic housing facilities, healthcare problems, schooling of children, public transport, inflation and a sham democracy.

Above all, the major problem all of us have is that we love to blame a foreign nation for all of our problems. Most of those problems do not have anything to do with a foreign nation intervening in our domestic issues at all. It is true that foreign influence has indeed been a cause of retardation of our progress. However, to blame everything on a foreign nation is not only mistaken, it is very much a cause of our backwardness. For instance, consider the piles of filth that are accumulating on our roads and streets. It is definitely not a conspiracy of the US, India or Europe. It was supposed to be our responsibility to come up with an economically viable idea to clean the filth off the streets.

Similarly, attributing every religious, sectarian and ethnic quarrel to a foreign nation is not impressive. It was our job as a nation to elevate the standards and functioning of our institutions to a commendable level. Institutions that dispense justice, equality, and fairness to its people should have been put in place right from the onset. A culture of research and development should have been fostered right from the beginning. And even if we have failed to develop our country on progressive lines from the very start, its never too late. There is still a lot of margin and room for development. With prudent and scrupulous planning, we can raise the standard of living in our country to a level that matches that of the developed world. Currently, we are walking on lit streets like blind men. I wonder how long we would be able to walk like this.

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Thought Experiments

Thought experiments are basically devices of the imagination. They are employed for various purposes such an entertainment, education, conceptual analysis, exploration, hypothesizing, theory selection, theory implementation, etc. Some applications are more controversial than others. Few would object to thought experiments that serve to illustrate complex states of affairs, or those that are used in educational contexts.

Photo by bachmont

So as we drove, he spoke about how life could be difficult for a highly educated person. He meant it in psychological terms. As a person attains education, he (or she) tries to seek purpose in life and in the universe. And often times he finds his whole experience of living lacking in zest. This can be depressing.

As he said that, I added that the life of a layperson, or any person who is not as highly educated, would be better than that. This latter kind of person lives his life while being encircled by the idea of fulfilling mundane diurnal chores. I call them mundane since they might seem so to the highly educated, purpose seeking individual. But they might not really be so to our common folk if he enjoys doing chores. Consider the thrill of driving and woodcutting to someone who enjoys doing them.

My friend agreed with me in response and gave a reason for such a happy life. The reason he gave was that as the latter lives according to his gut feeling, he does not have to think too much. He simply obeys his gut feelings and lives accordingly.

He further added that our subconscious minds generate a myriad of ideas. It is more like an ocean. The conscious mind, instead, is like a pointer on that ocean that we use to choose ideas generated by our subconscious. The educated person learns to tame the conscious mind about how to utilize the input generated by the conscious mind. He goes through a process of refinement throughout his life to tame the conscious. The common folk

The common folk does not really care too much as to how to use the gut feeling. He just acts upon it. And this reduces the pain of refining the conscious mind.

As he said this, it reminded me of a mention of randomly generated ideas in our minds. It read it in one of the articles of Sam Harris. When I read it for the first time, it made me wonder about that and I was not convinced of the idea, I was rather impressed.

Much of our ideas are randomly generated in the mind. Our emotions, desires, actions, wit and sense of humor can be dependent on randomly generated ideas in our minds. Even the revelations that lead to Eureka moments in lives of celebrated scientists are generated randomly most of the times. The idea that I am going to write this post was generated in my mind randomly too. I thought about writing it around a year ago. Then I procrastinated. Eventually, it came to my mind around a fortnight ago. And finally, after postponing it again and again, I am writing this now.

This can be a good thing and a bad thing as well. It is my personal experience, that our jokes are funniest when they are randomly generated by our minds. So this is a good thing. But then our minds can generate so much stuff randomly that some of which can be diabolical not only to ourselves but also to people around us. Consider impulses of anger and rage for a couple of examples. They can be generated randomly. And if acted upon, they can produce catastrophic results.

So not all of the gut feeling is so good all the time. There are good and bad things about living by the gut. To me, this raises the necessity to tame the gut. The word tame appears simplistic to me. I wonder it would be a better idea to tame the subconscious to generate good stuff most of the times. Similarly, once the subconscious is generating nice things, it could be extremely beneficial to have a conscious mind that can choose between those ideas. A clear subconscious can make the job of the conscious much easier as the latter would not have to filter, and eventually litter, so much stuff that our minds generate.

Photo by Photography-S!