Status Quo

Why am I even thinking about this? Everything is going to be all right when I get back home, isn't it? The science here, the career, it is all... a dream which will never turn out to be satisfying. Like every normal human being I want more. I want as much as I can get. This is understandable. But why dig myself a hole and fall into it knowingly. As it is this obvious. Ah, temptation. That's what it is. The constant whispering of science. Being eager to take part in an environment where thoughts are respected, shared, discussed, extended, published.
I am going to a country where no one even knows what science is, or how research is done. I am going to a country so beautiful that no one needs to work really hard. And I am going to try to break them apart. Take whatever they have in their hands they trust and feel safe with. I am going to remove the shade from their eyes and let them see what they have to do in order to earn the respect of the whole world.
I used to feel very enthusiastic about this. Before trying it out, of course. Trying to walk across a lake of tar. I need help. I need to see that I am not alone. I need to see that my country needs me. I need to see that my efforts won't be in vain. It is weird having all these people around me that I know for sure feel the same way as I do. No one dares to confront the tyranny of status quo.

Surrender yourself!

All the good and all the evil come from God. Only God owns the rightful willpower. In creation, God spared to mankind the will to choose. Choose to surrender* to God's will truly and completely. Any other choice is in vain.
*The meaning of the word surrender is teslim, and teslim means Islam.

The existence of God cannot be proven or disproved

Knowing something takes away the necessity to believe it. After all, you know that it exists; you have proven it. The most difficult thing is to sway your instincts with your belief. You cannot prove the existence of God; therefore, you have the absolute freedom to choose. Your only reference is your own conscience.

Optimistic Man

as a child he never plucked the wings off flies
he didn't tie tin cans to cats' tails
or lock beetles in matchboxes
or stomp anthills
he grew up
and all those things were done to him
I was at his bedside when he died
he said read me a poem
about the sun and the sea
about nuclear reactors and satellites
about the greatness of humanity

Nazim Hikmet

It is you...

There is nothing wrong with humans. They just don't know. Their minds are not free. For that everybody behaves accordingly. Understand them, stand them, educate them, set them free. It is you that you hate. That you are able to hate. It is yourself, your actual self, you see in them. And you don't like. Love yourself to begin with. Love begins in you.

The Creation

İnsanın vehmi, insanın içi, koridora benzer. Gelenler, önce koridora girerler, ondan sonra eve gelirler. Bütün dünya, bir evdir sanki. Bu eve giren, bu dehlize dalan, elbette evde görünecektir. Meselâ içinde oturduğumuz şu evin şekli, önce mühendisin gönlünde belirdi, ondan sonra bu ev meydana geldi. Bütün dünya bir evdir dedik ya; vehim, tasarlayış, düşünce, bu evin koridorudur. Koridorda beliren, gözüne görünen şey gerçek olarak bil ki evde de görünecektir. Dünyada beliren, görünen hayır-şer, herşey, önce koridorda belirmiştir; ondan sonra burada, dünyada. Ulu Tanrı, dünyada görülmemiş, şaşılacak çeşit-ceşit renk renk şeyler, bağlar, bahçeler, çayırlar... bilgiler çeşit-çeşit kitaplar meydana getirmeyi istedi mi, o isteği, o ihtiyacı önce gönüllere koyar, ondan sonra da onları, bu istekten, bu ihtiyaçtan meydana getirir. Böylece bu dünyada ne görüyorsan bil ki o dünyada var. Meselâ bir nemde ne görüyorsan bil ki denizde de var. Çünkü bu nem, o denizden. Böylece Ulu Tanrı, bu göğü, bu yeri, Arş'ı, Kürsî'yi, başka şaşılacak şeyleri yaratmak dileyince, bunların isteğini, önce gelip-geçenlerin gönüllerine verdi; kâinat, bu yüzden meydana geldi.

Mevlana Celaleddin-i Rumi (Fihi Ma-Fih)

********************************************************************

One's fantasy, his inner self is like a hallway. Anyone to come in should first walk through the hallway before entering into the house. The whole world is like a house. Anything to enter into this house this hallway should appear in the house eventually. For instance, the shape of the house we are in right at this moment first appeared in the willing of an architect and then this house appeared. Since we said that the whole world is like a house, fantasy, planning, thought is the hallway of this house. Anything you could see through this hallway will surely appear in the house as well. Anything that appeared in this world, anything good or bad, first appeared in a hallway and then here on Earth. God almighty should wish to create things not seen in the world before, fascinating various colourful things, vineyards, gardens, pastures... knowledge and books of different subjects should he wish to create, he will first lay the wish the necessity to the hearts and then create them by means of this necessity. Therefore, you should know that anything you see in this world exists in the afterlife. For instance, what you see in a drop of water exists in the see as well. Because this droplet is from the see. Therefore, when the God almighty wished to create this sky, this earth, the ninth heaven, the throne and lots of other fascinating things, he laid the wish to create those to the hearts of those passing by. The universe, therefore, appeared in this way.

Mevlana Celaleddin-i Rumi (Fihi Ma-Fih)

(Apologies for the humble translation)

Constant Flux to Extinction

Part 2

In the beginning, all a living cell can do was imprinted in the memory it possessed. Therefore, the ones that do not carry the right information got extinct.

However, at some point, one of these cells carried enough information to build a circuit that can respond to more than one environmental condition. Therefore, when the environment changed, these cells adapted with less information to carry. Stability has thus evolved from fixed memory to computational circuitry.

The information carried were then in the form of "if this happens, do this", which prevented the combination from getting extinct. Plenty of these circuitry has evolved, but only the most efficient and flexible ones managed to survive.

Later on, stability needed to evolve under the most variable environmental conditions. There were simply too many possibilities to deal with a limited size of memory. Some interactions were needed to respond to certain types of signals but not to others. So, all the memory needed to store were the units of interacting molecules, and a way of "learning" to combine them according to extracellular disturbances. Primitive types of "molecular intelligence" have thus evolved.

Intelligence evolved in many forms later on. Organisms learned to change the environment and adapt to the changes in the environment, which in turn increased their probability of survival. A new era has begun.

Part 3

The information carried were still in the form of "if"s and "then"s. They were just coupled with feedback that thought them "which" and "when".

As the complexity of the learning process increased, forms of feedback changed from simple signals to causalities where spatial and temporal interactions among many variables could be learned. Organisms started to "understand" their environment.

Understanding is a complex process comprising of many questions like "what", "when", "where", "how". The amount of information to be learned therefore increased dramatically. However, there is a single question that largely circumvent the necessity for learning all these details, and that is "why".

If an organism is capable of asking the reason for a certain thing to happen, it can learn to manipulate the reason for the favour of its own survival. Everything is for its own survival, to defy the constant flux to extinction.

It is therefore inevitable in the course of evolution to come up with an organism to question the reason for the existence of its own self. For once, it can choose the purpose of its own life, whether to survive no matter what or live in harmony.

Constant Flux to Extinction

Everything is meant to be extinct. By that I mean, stability is not a virtue of entropy. It is the matter claiming the freedom to exist in every possible ways it can, and stability defies this right.

As there is a constant flux to extinction, there is a positive feedback for existence by the degree of stability a certain structural feature has. That is where everything has started.

Part 1

In the beginning, all kinds of molecules existed. They tend to come and go. Only the most stable ones tend to prevail. Then they started to interact with each other, because basically there were lots of them around.

As with the stability of self, there began the stability of interactions that decided which ones to be preserved. It was the evolution of stability from one form to another. Forming anything "living" was not even a concern. Yet, at some point, stability discovered the most amazing thing: to copy itself.

The evolution of reproducibility has led to the concept of memory. Different types of memories existed. Most of them probably consisted of sequences of different types of molecules coming together. The most stable sequences prevailed.

When different types of memories found ways of interacting with each other, even to turn into each other, the existence of less stable ones were boosted. At some point, one of these less stable ones managed to change the chemical composition around it. The first catalyst has evolved. The information and the interactions that lead to this catalyst should have been conserved when the right combination appeared to reduce the environmental stress for existence.

Ways of forming new memories, reproduction techniques and types of catalysis all evolved in time, which at the end fitted into our definition of life.

Keep going...

Sometimes it is just hard to handle. It seems so natural to rise against all the things I have to do before... Before I start living. Before I start breathing again; filling my chest with the fresh breeze of cool moist her. With every stroke I swim, I am getting closer to saving a life; a life together. And I am getting more tired with every stroke I swim. I need to breathe more as I go along. And I have a long way to go.

I know everything is for a reason. I can see a bright future all developing with every little step we take. God is preparing. Every time we trip we see another part of it uncovering. "You cannot stop now. Get up! Keep going!"

What if everything is an illusion? We keep living a dream always missing the moment. Killing ourselves every day for a better life in the future. What if the dream does not come true? What if this is the last day of our lives; this is the last breath we take? How do we explain to God what we did with our lives? How do we explain how we treated the ones we love?

We were driving to the airport, together in a car, in our car, a part of the future coming earlier than we expected. When we were driving into the darkness, it was so warm an assuring, it was so good to dream of the future coming right there right then that we will not have to be parted again. So good that I wished it all ended right there right then. I thought dying together would be better than living apart.

Now I understand the sorrow of ney. It is in the tune ney is crying for love that we are all apart from. Ney is crying because no matter what we do we have to keep going. And the day shall come that we are all together again.

Oğlum,

Bu hayatta bir eşini bir de işini aşk ile seçeceksin oğlum. İkisine de daldın mı dünyanı unutacaksın. O kadar ki, sanki çırılçıplak karşısında, tanrı ile konuşur gibi kendini unutacaksın.

Savrulan saçlarının arasından göreceksin denizi. Kokusunu denizde, denizi koynunda bulacaksın. Öylesine tatlı bir huzur verecek sözleri, gözlerinde kaybolacaksın. Onu sırçadanmış gibi koruyacak, derin bir saygı ile seveceksin.

Çorba ile ekmeğe kıt kanaat geçinip alnındaki teri gurula sileceksin. Bir işe başladın mı bitirmeden durmayacaksın. Gözlerinde pırıltılar, buz gibi suyu kana kana içerken ona baktığında, yaptığınla gurur duyacaksın.

İnsanlar seni anlamayacak, unut onu diyecekler, yapamazsın diyecekler, aldırmayacaksın. Aldırmayacaksın oğlum. Tırnaklarını geçireceksin hayata, aşk ile sarılacaksın. Karşılığını da ancak kendi kalbinde arayacaksın.

(baba yadigarıdır)

Sevgili günlük,

Hep bu iki kelime yüzünden hiç günlük tutmadım. "Otur her gün başından geçenleri yaz", "kendine mektup yazamış gibi"... Kalıplar, kurallar, ezberler. Şiirle de aram iyi değildi zaten, hep bu ezber yüzünden. Şiir neden ezberlenir ki? Şiir nedir de ezberlenir?

Bilmezdim şarkıların bu kadar güzel
Kelimelerinse kifayetsiz olduğunu
Bu derde düşmeden önce

Okursun ve bu sana yeter. Anlatılmak istenen her şey o bir iki mısradadir zaten. "Okuduğumuzu anladık mı?"ya ne gerek var?

Gençken zaten her şeyi daha yoğun yaşamaz mıyız? Aşklarımız daha büyük, acılarımız daha derinden, arkadaşlıklarımız hiç bitmeyecek gibi değil midir zaten?

Olmasın hiç o ta içten gülen gözlerde yaş
Yollarımız ayrılsa bile seninle arkadaş

Ve bu kadar zengin bir edebiyatımız, her kalbe dokunacak bir iki mısramız varken bu hınç, bu zorla bıktırma ne diye?

Introduction

I finally gave up and decided to set up a blog. Since I have heaps of time to check my e-mails every two minutes and browse through facebook every now and then, I though I might perhaps do something more useful and have discussions with myself! One step forward to insanity...