Archive for April 5th, 2012
A shed of my own: Not necessarily Marcus Berkmann’s
Do you think mid-life crisis is in the eye of the beholder? Whatever statistics of researchers in social sciences mildly try to make you swallow?
Do you believe by now that mid-life crisis is actually a series of crises after “maturity”, interspersed with memory lapses?
Like this kid of 9 who wrote: “Mr. Salteena was an elderly man of 42“.
People in their late 30’s prefer to be labeled “thirty something”, and as they reach their 50’s, they like to be called “fiftysomethings”…simply because they lived that glorious period…
Is middle age defined by physical limitations in endurance, such as:
1. Going “ooof” when sitting down on a sofa
2. Refraining from eating pizza after sundown,
3. Preferring to change to slippers immediately as you enter your home…
Is middle age defined by leisure of wider opportunities, as Jane Fonda expressed it: “People tend to be happier after 50: They are less stressed, less anxious, less hostile…Maybe because they realize that “I have been there, done it, and none of it killed me”. You tend no longer to make mountains out of mole hills…”
Late French author Albert Camus wrote: “Nobody realizes that many of us invest tremendous energy merely to be normal“( looking normal in the eye of the majority?)
Dr. von Heller wrote: ” Forty is a critical age. Between 35 and 40, everybody has to turn a corner in his life, or smash into a brick wall…”
In mid-life crisis we become increasingly paranoid of physical shortcoming, only to discover that the rear tire of our bicycle is flat, and nothing is wrong with our leg muscles…Has one of your kids commented: “You’re a grown up. What do you know about style?”
Jane Austin in Emma wrote: “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasure of the other…” Is she referring to the two groups divide: Youth and after middle age?
After all, at which age have you started checking the obituary pages of your local daily? Given that you have started reading anything at all before then…
Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “True terror is waking up and discovering that your high-school class is running the country (politically)…” Middle age people knew how stupid they used to look and think, and now they are behaving as the wisest of all…
J.M. Barrie wrote: “I have warned against letting the golden hours slip by. A few of them hours happened to be golden because I let them slip by…”
And Albert Einstein wrote: “I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity…”
Note: Marcus Berkmann is the author of Rain Man, and he latest is “A shed of his own” reflecting on mid-age crisis
Transitional governments or potential democratic systems in the Arab States?
Posted by: adonis49 on: April 5, 2012
Transitional governments or potential democratic systems?
It is the year 1876 (Lebanon): Yaacoub Sarrouf and Fares Nemr published a weekly “Al Moktataf” of 24-page focused on scientific and technological breakthrough! The Ottoman Empire was horrified, and the two journalists had to move to Egypt to resume the publishing of their weekly. Al Mouktataf (Selected topics) survived to 1952.
It is the year 1886 (Lebanon): A periodical concerned with women rights is born. The Arab Summit this year didn’t even mention women rights, not even the Palestinian rights for an independent State, not the horror taking place in Bahrain and Yemen and Libya…
This Arab Summit focused its attention on “how to arm the Syrian opposition forces”! As if democracy is established in the States that removed dictators. As if democracy is in the mind of the absolute monarchs and Emirs in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, and the gulf Emirates…
The irony is that no other publication replaced it or competed with since then. You are under the strong impression that reflective, experimental, and scientific mind was and still is irrelevant in this part of the world. Hundreds of bright scientists from the Near-East have immigrated to greener pastures and became illustrious figures such as Hassan Kamel Sabbah (General Electric and the competitor of Thomas Edison in number of registered patents), Chebli Shmaeyel, Girgi Zeidan…
And the “Arab Spring” uprising inflamed the imagination for potential democratic systems sweeping the Arab World States…
Do you recall Wajdi Ghoneim? The western media lauded Wajdi as the forerunner of the democracy spirit in Egypt. And what Wajdi said after the Christian Copt Pope Shnouda died three weeks ago? He farted: “Thanks to God for the death of this heretic. We are over joyed and God punished him…”
Do you believe that democracy can survive and bloom in an environment lacking scientific mind? Funny, in the Gulf Emirate an invention is the rage: A small cuff is connected to the refrigerator that repeats religious songs so that water is purified and the drinker is safe from evil eyes…
In Morocco, the “Association of research and sciences” is permitting women to using dildos when the husband is not present at home for long periods in order not to be tempted to committing sins…
In Tunisia, the extended family members of the new leader Rashed Ghanouchi are being appointed high public positions, as it used to be the case during the former dictatorial regime…
The European Union was very close adopting the charter that Christianity was the religion of the union. In the Arab States with vast Moslem sunnis sect, Islam is the religion of States. The current discussion is whether to includeIislam Chariaa laws as the main source of civil laws of the State…
Democracy is a long process of including all kinds of minorities, religious, race, color, genders…In “democratic USA, it took centuries for Blacks to enjoy partial civil rights, and women could vote in 1920… Without sustained environment of free expression and the spirit for reflecting on scientific research, how can anyone expect any quick breakthrough in the Arab States?
Note: Post partially inspired by an article of Samir Attallah in the daily Al Nahar, April 4, 2012
Adonis Diaries 