The Warmth of Beauty
When something is beautiful, we feel an innate connection to it. It feels familiar, friendly and safe. Whether it is a landscape, a piece of art, a building or even…
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Posts by Tariq
The Illusory Desire of Leadership
When reading stories about the great leaders of old, we marvel at their cunning, their decisiveness in the face of turmoil and their glorious manifestations of justice and righteousness. It…
Evil is Denied Glory
To defeat something, you must first understand it. Those who seek to overcome an enemy without understanding them struggle in vain. Evil has the allure of excitement. Plunder leads to…
Fiction’s Siren Song
Fiction can reinvigorate us. It can introduce us to themes and topics that we were otherwise unaware of. We can become immersed in the story being told to the extent…
First Principles Thinking
Whenever you approach a topic of study or a field of understanding, engage with it only upon the method of reasoning by first principles. If your resulting opinions are correct,…
Thoughts in Solitude
since speech is not required, objects are no longer bound within the limits of their literal names, you can freely experience objects as they are in reality without any intermediary. I found this to be quite insightful and made me think about the connection we all experience with the world and how often we can feel things more intimately without any words being said. Think about relationships with loved ones or even pets, words are quite often entirely unnecessary, so why should this not extend to ‘things’ too?
The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival
Overall, ‘The Fate of Empires’ is a sobering read, aside from the small points of dispute mentioned, it is hard to fault Glubb’s rationale. We can see many of the aspects he speaks of in our world today, but the overall idea of each civilisation having a lifestyle (as Ibn Khaldun also mentioned centuries ago) is one worth internalising. We can be biased in thinking that things will never change, and for a lot of people’s lifetimes they haven’t. But just like nature has its seasons, so do men and the nations they build. It would be prudent for us to always be aware that the only thing constant in life is change, and ‘The Fate of Empires’ is a fantastic way to introduce oneself to the idea.
The Art of Worldly Wisdom
Considering that this book was written in the 17th century, I noted how all the ideas within are timeless. I recognised so many popular contemporary ideas in this writing and I am sure even older writings and teaching exist predating this. How true it is that everything has truly been said, experienced and taught before!
Breathing In the Horizon
Get out into the plains! Let the openness of the vast blue skies tear open your chest and free your soul from the confines of its immaterial prison! Let your heart be pulled to the skies, willingly or unwillingly!
Play as Discovery, Discovery as Learning
True learning, discovery and understanding often come from playing around with things. Only by messing around with such things and trying to get something working do we come across new ways of seeing and understanding.