What exactly is boredom? It is a deeply unpleasant state of unmet arousal: we are aroused rather than despondent, but, for one or more reasons, our arousal cannot be met or directed. These reasons can be internal – often a lack of imagination, motivation or concentration – or external, such as an absence of environmental stimuli or opportunities. We want to do something engaging, but find ourselves unable to do so and, more than that, are frustrated by the rising awareness of this inability.
Awareness, or consciousness, is key, and might explain why animals, if they do get bored, generally have higher thresholds for boredom. In the words of the British writer Colin Wilson: ‘most animals dislike boredom, but man is tormented by it’. In both man and animal, boredom is induced or exacerbated by a lack of control or freedom, which is why it is so common in children and adolescents, who, in addition to being chaperoned, lack the mind furnishings – the resources, experience and discipline – to mitigate their boredom.
Let’s look more closely at the anatomy of boredom. Why is it so damned boring to be stuck in a departure lounge while our flight is increasingly delayed? We are in a state of high arousal, anticipating our imminent arrival in a novel and stimulating environment. True, there are plenty of shops, screens and magazines around, but we’re not really interested in them and, by dividing our attention, they serve only to exacerbate our boredom. To make matters worse, the situation is out of our control, unpredictable (the flight could be further delayed, or even cancelled) and inescapable. As we check and re-check the monitor, we become painfully aware of all these factors and more. And so here we are, caught in transit, in a high state of arousal that we can neither engage nor escape.
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A Preface of upcoming book “Progression Of Knowledge In Western Civilization” by Mr. Mirza Iqbal Ashraf
The word
civilization, which is a relatively recent application from eighteenth-century
when it came into currency, is generally invoked more with a rhetorical
flourish than argued within philosophical perspective. But history of knowledge
considers its true object is the study of human mind, to know what his mind has
believed, thought, and felt in diverse periods of progression of its
civilization. This also means, whereas it is important to understand today’s
world so that we can deal with our contemporary period’s civilizational
challenges, it will be incomplete if we do not assess that modernity is born
from the progress made by the knowledge of the past thinkers. But knowledge
does not arrive fully formed; it requires many minds, specifically those minds
which are free from the civilization’s religious, cultural, and geophysical
trappings.
In the Progression of
Knowledge in Western Civilization, I have expounded that even in modern
time, no knowledge is complete without
visiting the knowledge of the past, especially of the great Greek thinkers such
as, Thales, Homer, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Democritus the Atomist, Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and many more. In addition to the democratic
political system which is considered the best form of “government of the people
for the people by the people,” the knowledge of philosophy and sciences
appeared first of all in the fifth century before the Common Era in Greece,
which is today the hierarchy of Western Civilization. In this book, I have discussed when some other regions of the world might be familiar with
philosophy and science, in one way or another, why such a
treasure of knowledge emerged particularly in the region of Greece that became a foundation of voluminous work
of literature in almost every field of knowledge, and most interestingly, how
it amazingly flourished in the West to have made an impact in every corner of
the world that today the Western civilization is viewed as a great
civilization?
Though Islamic theology
had stemmed from a base different from the Greek traditions, the Greek
philosophy in what it could do and explain proved a temptation hard to resist
for the early Muslim theologians, philosophers, and scientific thinkers. Using
the language and culture of their religion, Muslims started exploring and
explaining ideas and arguments of Greek thought which were agreeable to Islamic
view. Since, doctrine of Neoplatonism fitted neatly into Islamic theology, it
made an overall impact on Muslim philosophy. Though Neoplatonism does not
seriously affirm the idea of a God creating out of nothing, it does emphasize
the existence of one Supreme Being out of which everything else emerges in such
a way as not to tamper with the absolute unity of the One God in Islam. When
modern philosophical thought in the West began with Rene Descartes, knowledge
of Classical Greek philosophy and science preserved and interpreted by the
Muslims had already penetrated deep into Europe. In the history of Western
philosophy, there is sufficient evidence that most of the texts written in
Arabic as well as in Hebrew during the golden era of Muslim rule, had been
translated into Latin and other languages and were made available to the
European thinkers.
I have arranged this book in four parts. Each
part postulates the hypothesis that it is “civilizing of knowledge” rather than
the traditionally abiding matrix of civilized practices of cities, nations, and
states, that Western civilization is seen as a universal civilization. Starting
from what is special about the Greeks or the region known as
Greece to have produced so powerful knowledge, that mankind even in twenty
first century is indebted to them in their great achievements in art,
literature, philosophy, general science, medicine, history, politics, ethics and
morality, and moving to the final part of the book describing that in the
Western civilization human legacy of past geniuses is being
overtaken today by the Silicon Valley’s “Robotic Geniuses.” At the same time, Progression of Knowledge in Western Civilization remains focused on
the projection of free thought, its achievement in modern secular political
theories and democratic systems, economic and social structures, scientific and
technological developments, and its heritages of diverse cultures, still
considers the importance of religious traditions. In every part of this work,
it is explained that a major role of Western civilization is to acquaint every
new generation of students, not only in learning more about the progress in
human knowledge, but also that it is because of its appeal of knowledge to
every one in every corner of the world that this civilization remains
universally alive.
Whereas some argue that the development of
Western Civilization—complete with organized mass welfare, extensive
environmental pollution, alienation, economic exploitation, and social freedom
and oppression—indicates a decline in moral values it inherited from its Greco
Roman fount, yet Western civilization, unlike some other lost civilizations, is
neither shrinking nor being destroyed. Indeed, it is losing its original getup
by being diluted and dispersed all over the globe because of its interaction
with diverse cultures and impacts of modern technology, but it is still active
and spreading by depositing its seeds of knowledge of philosophies, sciences
and new technologies. It is assisting mankind to develop a common global
culture. Its progression is being made possible by the erosion of distances
enabled by its researches and developments in modern technology, new roads,
bridges, ports, airplanes, massive container ships, fiber optic-cables and most
importantly cyber-net connectivity.1 It is all on account of human
knowledge that recently, David Attenborough has told the world leaders that
climate change could lead to the collapse of civilizations and much of the
natural world.2
I, believe my work, Progression of Knowledge in Western Civilization, is a useful
companion for all the seekers of knowledge. It will help the readers to learn
the advancement of knowledge and understand the present age by exploring the
role played by the past and present thinkers, philosophers, scientists, and
literary geniuses of the Western Civilization. I have attempted to weave
together the thoughts of most of the prominent thinkers who have appeared in
every age of human history of knowledge and have made their impact in shaping
not only the Western Civilization but also the regions beyond the Western world
over the centuries to be acknowledged as a Universal
Civilization of Knowledge.
The magnetism of modernity has remained human
being’s perennial passion. A born thinker, philosopher, scientist, and
discoverer, man has cognized to define his identity by striving incessantly to
shape it according to his contemporary period. Liberating himself from the
deterministic modes of his existence and viewing to be no more at the mercy of
biological and natural forces, he endeavors to be woven like a tapestry by his
own hands for himself. After the “First Explosion of Knowledge” which appeared
in Ancient Greece and the “Second Explosion of Knowledge” during the European
Renaissance, and experiencing the “Third Explosion of Knowledge” engendered by
the “Information Technology (IT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI),” we are
viewing the “Fourth Explosion of Knowledge,” which, with our stepping into the
“Digital Culture,” is going to establish new perspectives of philosophical and
intellectual outlook to human imagination. The Progression
of Knowledge in Western Civilization hypothesizes that, today, what is
much more important than human genius is the emerging power of Digital
Technology and Human Intelligence’s digital double the Artificial Intelligence.
Worth reading article by female African American professor at Yale.
My college class asks what it means to be white in America — but interrogating that question as a black woman in the real world is much harder to do.
I hesitated when I stood in line for a flight across the country, and a white man stepped in front of me. He was with another white man. “Excuse me,” I said. “I am in this line.” He stepped behind me but not before saying to his flight mate, “You never know who they’re letting into first class these days.”
Was his statement a defensive move meant to cover his rudeness and embarrassment, or were we sharing a joke? Perhaps he, too, had heard the recent anecdote in which a black woman recalled a white woman’s stepping in front of her at her gate. When the black woman told her she was in line, the white woman responded that it was the line for first class. Was the man’s comment a sly reference? But he wasn’t laughing, not even a little, not even a smile. Deadpan.
Later, when I discussed this moment with my therapist, she told me that she thought the man’s statement was in response to his flight mate, not me. I didn’t matter to him, she said; that’s why he could step in front of me in the first place. His embarrassment, if it was embarrassment, had everything to do with how he was seen by the person who did matter: his white male companion. I was allowing myself to have too much presence in his imagination, she said. Should this be a comfort? Was my total invisibility preferable to a targeted insult?
During the flight, each time he removed or replaced something in his case overhead, he looked over at me. Each time, I looked up from my book to meet his gaze and smiled — I like to think I’m not humorless. I tried to imagine what my presence was doing to him. On some level, I thought, I must have dirtied up his narrative of white privilege securing white spaces. In my class, I had taught “Whiteness as Property,” an article published in The Harvard Law Review in 1993, in which the author, Cheryl Harris, argues that “the set of assumptions, privileges and benefits that accompany the status of being white have become a valuable asset that whites sought to protect.” These are the assumptions of privilege and exclusion that have led many white Americans to call the police on black people trying to enter their own homes or vehicles. Racial profiling becomes another sanctioned method of segregating space. Harris goes on to explain how much white people rely on these benefits, so much so that their expectations inform the interpretations of our laws. “Stand your ground” laws, for example, mean whites can claim that fear made them kill an unarmed black person. Or voter-registration laws in certain states can function as de facto Jim Crow laws. “American law,” Harris writes, “has recognized a property interest in whiteness.”
On the plane, I wanted to enact a new narrative that included the whiteness of the man who had stepped in front of me. I felt his whiteness should be a component of what we both understood about him, even as his whiteness would not be the entirety of who he is. His unconscious understanding of whiteness meant the space I inhabited should have been only his. The old script would have left his whiteness unacknowledged in my consideration of his slight. But a rude man and a rude white man have different presumptions. Just as when a white person confronted by an actual black human being needs to negotiate stereotypes of blackness so that he can arrive at the person standing before him, I hoped to give the man the same courtesy but in the reverse. Seeing his whiteness meant I understood my presence as an unexpected demotion for him. It was too bad if he felt that way. Still, I wondered, what is this “stuckness” inside racial hierarchies that refuses the neutrality of the skies? I hoped to find a way to have this conversation.
The phrase “white privilege” was popularized in 1988 by Peggy McIntosh, a Wellesley College professor who wanted to define “invisible systems conferring dominance on my group.” McIntosh came to understand that she benefited from hierarchical assumptions and policies simply because she was white. I would have preferred if instead of “white privilege” she had used the term “white dominance,” because “privilege” suggested hierarchical dominance was desired by all. Nonetheless, the phrase has stuck. The title of her essay “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies” was a mouthful. McIntosh listed 46 ways white privilege is enacted. “Number 19: I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial”; “Number 20: I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race”; “Number 27: I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared”; “Number 36: If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.” I’m not clear why McIntosh stopped at 46 except as a way of saying, “You get the picture.” My students were able to add their own examples easily.
