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Al-Maʿarri
- silveira 7y agoFascinating, I never heard of him. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
- kalev 7y agoI thought something was on my screen, until I scrolled. Never seen ʿ before.
- kzrdude 7y agoSeems to be some kind of glottal stop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayin
- RankingMember 7y agoI've never heard of this guy, but his views overlap with many of my own. It's heartening to see that he was able to make something of himself despite the unpopular perspectives he held. In particular, I feel that antinatalism is a hard thing to express to others without it coming across as a personal affront to all who decide to bring children into the world.
- lwansbrough 7y agoIt must be a really awful existence to view the world with such pessimism.
- omarchowdhury 7y agoHis pessimism caused by his inability to view the world.
- lwansbrough 7y agoPerhaps. Although I’m sure a blind person would say they’d like to be able to see, I bet they’d also tell you there’s much more beauty to the world than what can be seen.
- RankingMember 7y agoI think the world is beautiful. I love nature and everything in it. What I don't think is beautiful is the destruction of this world by overpopulation and selfishness. Edit: >Overpopulation is a meme. Many first-world countries today are literally seeking to import more immigrants because of under-population. Their being a need for more humans to meet human ends is not surprising, but it certainly doesn't make an argument for the necessity of more humans from any ecological perspective. > Besides, humans are natural too. It's not like we're built in factories and have smokestacks on our heads. We ARE part of that world which you think is beautiful, and to end human reproduction would be to partly destroy this world. This logic doesn't compute for me. Is your perspective that, by definition, anything humans do is natural? If so, I think we have a fundamental disagreement on the definition of "natural". I don't think that packing the Earth to the gills with humans at the expense of other species survival is in any way a positive development.
- xamuel 7y ago>the destruction of this world by overpopulation and selfishness Overpopulation is a meme. Many first-world countries today are literally seeking to import more immigrants because of under-population. Besides, humans are natural too. It's not like we're built in factories and have smokestacks on our heads. We ARE part of that world which you think is beautiful, and to end human reproduction would be to partly destroy this world.
- sudosteph 7y agoHeads up - it's considered poor form to edit your previous reply like this rather than responding directly to comment below. That said, are you claiming that life only has value if there exists some "ecological necessity" for it? Because I just don't see enough consistency in any definition of "ecological necessity" to make it a meaningful term. Ecology has shifted dramatically throughout earth's history - any species you could have called "ecological necessary" in the jurassic era doesn't seem so necessary in the long-run judging by the multitude of life that continued after extinction events.
- RankingMember 7y ago
- RankingMember 7y agoYour statement is a good illustration of the kind of inertia one faces when attempting to argue against the status quo. One person's pessimism is another person's realism. I personally see the amount of humans on this planet as absurd, and don't see humankind's seemingly-innate "might is right", "manifest destiny" way of doing things thus far as something we should continue to mindlessly perpetuate.
- willidiots 7y agoZapffe's The Last Messiah is a good read on this topic if you're not already familiar.
- RankingMember 7y agoThanks, I'll check it out
- Bakary 7y agoIt can only be a personal attack by its very nature, no matter how politely you approach the topic. If existence is a harm in itself, then it immediately follows that giving birth is unethical, unless you reject any notion of free will. If you do the latter, then antinatalism and pretty much any other school of philisophy becomes moot since there are no agents around that can make decisions or change their thoughts.
- RankingMember 7y agoI don't follow. If you buy a Camaro and I say "I don't like Camaros and don't think people should buy them", that's not a personal attack- it's an opinion. You have the agency to make your own decisions and I'm not impeding anyone from doing so (nor would I even if I had such power).
- Bakary 7y agoIn this case, it concerns sentient beings and personal responsibility towards those beings. Not to mention the inherent touchiness of the topic of reproduction. When you buy a Camaro, you aren't hurting anyone directly if we ignore pollution etc for the sake of the argument. To give a closer analogy, it's like saying that circumcision is a barbaric practice. It follows that you are implictly declaring that people who circumcize their kids have done something bad (doesn't mean you think they were solely responsible, or that the act was inexcusable/irrational on their part). If you deny this, then your initial statement was meaningless. Whether or not someone then takes offense is a different matter altogether.
- RankingMember 7y agoPeople are entitled to their feelings, but so am I to mine. Any implicit declaration of wrongdoing is in their own heads, because I don't see humans (myself included) as some kind of infallible entity that is always right or wrong. Circumcision, in my opinion, is a barbaric and silly practice, but why should that matter to you if you chose to get your kid circumcised? You're you, and I'm me. We can think about things differently. If you're amenable to being convinced not to have some of your kid's penis chopped off, great. Otherwise, great too, you do you. You're not going around in a van circumcising people against their will nor am I forcing reconstructive surgery. The world is full of people with opinions that disagree with those you may hold closest. On a basic level, I don't understand why you'd be offended by someone else's opinion as long as they're not forcing it upon you/being a dick about it.
- xamuel 7y agoJust speaking purely secularly without getting into religious issues: antinatalism seems like a position that leads to untenable ends if you just follow its logic. For example, if you're really strict about antinatalism, you should be in favor of intentional nuclear holocaust of all life on earth, because that would get rid of the problem of babies being born into life of suffering. Surely you don't hold such an extreme view, though? Neither would you advocate that everyone ought to promptly commit suicide personally. Would you advocate for forced global sterilization?
- RankingMember 7y agoAny argument can be taken to a ridiculous extreme if you choose to bring it there. The line, for me, is where you try to make decisions for others/tell them what to do. It doesn't matter what opinion I hold- even if I was in some all-powerful position I wouldn't think for a second I could or should govern peoples' lives by my own opinions. For some reason it seems to be a common trend in discussion to think that simply holding a belief means you intend to impose it on others.
- xamuel 7y agoYou're right, I see now I set up a bit of a strawman there, thanks for pointing that out. So what concrete action do you advocate as a result of your opinion? Increased access to birth control? Or are you saying it's just strictly an opinion? In which case, how is it different than just electing not to have kids yourself? I think some people (including myself) might have the knee-jerk reaction that the main difference between antinatalism vs. just vanilla opting-out-of-parenthood, is that the former offers you a way to feel smug/holier-than-thou. What would you say in response to that knee-jerk reaction?
- RankingMember 7y agoCertainly a good question. I would say I understand the knee-jerk reaction because there are many who trumpet their choice to not have children as though it's some kind of merit badge. "r/childfree" for instance on reddit is one such place where this sentiment is rampant, along with some weird kind of child hatred/being happy when children are unhappy. I think if we had a conversation you would see that I bring up my perspective (and I only do so if the context comes up) not to chide people or feel better than them, because I'm not. My intention is purely to make some small contribution to raising awareness of what our exponential population growth is doing and will continue to do to our planet. The end goal is for people to have one additional shred of a thought before they have a kid. Not to feel guilty, but just to give a micro-second of consideration to the planet and its other inhabitants' wellbeing before adding another human to it. That's it.
- phaemon 7y agoCertainly a difficult thing to convince your parents of. Not least if they agree.
- RankingMember 7y agoThe scale of humanity at this point is practically beyond comprehension in a day-to-day context, so I can't imagine anyone will ever be able to look at their kids (even if they regret them otherwise) and say "yep, this is where we crossed the line, too many!".
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- d1zzy 7y agoYou don't even need to declare yourself as antinatalism, simply answering the simple question question of "do you have kids" with "my wife and I decided against that" seems enough to get most people on the defensive. As if my own life choices not matching theirs is some sort of threat or inherent criticism to their choices.
- Bakary 7y agoThis guy became a bit of a folk hero in certain Internet circles, along with the elusive Benatar. For a fun take on him see https://existentialcomics.com/philosopher/Al-Ma%27arri https://existentialcomics.com/philosopher/Al-Ma%27arri
- scrappyjoe 7y agoTell me more? Benatar lectured me at uni. Great teacher.
- Bakary 7y agoHe's simply know for his views on antinatalism, and for being somewhat shrouded in mystery. For a while, you couldn't even find a picture of his face or even an audio clip. Search results only yielded Peter Singer's warm smile for some reason. He then became a meme shorthand for a very pessimistic thinker. Antinatalism itself has recently grow more popular, and even been represented in some popular media.
- scrappyjoe 7y agoHuh. Well, he was mostly known in my ethics class for never forgetting a students name or birthday. Passed him in the street 5 years after graduating and he said, “happy birthday for last week!”. I was speechless.
- aliswe 7y agoThis person was one of the most knowledgeable ever in arabic. He was blind, and one time he was invited to a wedding. Being blind, he stumbled and fell on a person in the ceremony. The person then proclaimed: Who is this dog?! Al-Ma'arri famously replied: The dog is the one who does not know 70 different words for "dog". And that, my friends, is the challenge or insult of al-ma'arri, as it's widely known in arabic, ma'arra al-ma'arri. As-Suyuti, the incredible polymath, wanted to disassociate from this insult, and collected all the names he knew of "dog", in rhyme, and called it "the disassociation from the insult of al-ma'arri", or in arabic, tabarri min ma'arra al-ma'arri. Here's a recitation of it on yt: https://youtu.be/wbS6es1lOxU https://youtu.be/wbS6es1lOxU I believe he only collected something like 65, though. An academic recently did a doctorate (I believe) and collected all the words he could find for "dog", having access to vastly more literature from both the aravian west and east. I believe he got 67.
- xamuel 7y agoI must be missing something, but isn't that a petty, arbitrary, and stupid "challenge"? Of course the person at the wedding should not have called the blind man a dog, but the response just lowers Al-Ma'arri to the same level. It would be one thing if he said, "The dog is the one who calls another man a dog" (which would have the added benefit of being a funny self-deprecating paradox). Instead, he gloats about trivia? I didn't realize they had fedoras in 10th century Arabia.
- wayoutthere 7y agoRemember these men were the 10th century equivalent of academics — this kind of story sounds just like something you’d hear of in modern academia too. Something about smart people with gigantic egos and poor social skills.
- mlevental 7y agowhat you're missing is that this an apocryphal story that dates back so far that it's now part of the vernacular of a culture. think about that - humor and wit and intellectual bravado were completely different 1000 years ago, let alone how different they might be today in arab culture vs western culture. furthermore note that "fedora wearers" today are lampooned because they speak/behave anachronistically. what you're doing is akin to making fun of someone wearing a fedora during the time when fedoras were actually worn!
- ubertaco 7y ago> Encapsulating his view on organized religion, he once stated: "The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains." Sounds like he'd fit in with your average Reddit r/atheism internet edgelord.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Symmetry 7y agoSure, but it's great that he could say that sort of thing publicly and not be executed. That wouldn't have been true in the Christian world at the time or a lot of the Muslim world today.
- tingol 7y agoHis philosophy relied on reason when reasoning about religion was nowhere to be found. You have to put it in context. Also, believing in religion is unreasonable even now. I don't mind people having faith in whatever they want though.
- rmbryan 7y ago"Do not suppose the statements of the prophets to be true; they are all fabrications. Men lived comfortably till they came and spoiled life. The sacred books are only such a set of idle tales as any age could have and indeed did actually produce." -this guy
- ignoramous 7y agoTo contrast with Al-Ma'arri, there was a rather mysterious group of Iraqi polymath "free-thinkers" (Ikhwan us-Safa) [0] that wrote an encyclopedia to steer Muslims on to what they thought was the Islamic way of philosophy and life [1]. The encyclopedia is rather very central to Ismaili sect of Shi'a Islam, and has refreshingly liberal and unorthodox views esposuing Neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, Mysticism, Hermeticism, and Eclecticism. I think, Avicenna (father of Modern Medicine) was a follower of the philosophy embed in these books. The quote I like the most (also highlighted in the Wikipedia article): > "...to shun no science, scorn any book, or to cling fanatically to no single creed. For [their] own creed encompasses all the others and comprehends all the sciences generally. This creed is the consideration of all existing things, both sensible and intelligible, from beginning to end, whether hidden or overt, manifest or obscure... in so far as they all derive from a single principle, a single cause, a single world, and a single Soul." For the curious, I highly recommend this concise treatment of the gist of what's a 52 (some claim 53) book encyclopedia on Math, Science, Philosophy, and Theology: https://www.al-islam.org/history-muslim-philosophy-volume-1-book-3/chapter-15-ikhwan-al-safa https://www.al-islam.org/history-muslim-philosophy-volume-1-... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_of_the_Brethren_of_Purity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_of_the_Brethren_o... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brethren_of_Purity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brethren_of_Purity
- johnny313 7y agoMore in-depth story on Al-Qaeda’s attempt to erase Al-Ma'arri's legacy: https://www.aljumhuriya.net/en/content/al-qaeda%E2%80%99s-war-against-medieval-syrian-poet https://www.aljumhuriya.net/en/content/al-qaeda%E2%80%99s-wa...