Blog

  • yesterdaysareoftenindigo answered your question: Sexual Orientation

    But you dont genetically like/dislike Mushrooms and you dont choose to like/dislike them its neither a choice or genes its a developed taste.

    Sometimes it’s a developed taste because we seek variety, and other times it’s a craving that our bodies have because we need the specific nutritional value that such a food item provides. I recall specifically from childhood experiences how a poorly prepared asparagus dish made me hate the texture and thought of eating it ever since. Not because I had a natural disliking to it, but because of that bad experience. What’s worse is that I also grew to despise any other food types that have a similar texture, not because they taste bad, but because they subconsciously triggered that bad memory. So it may not be a conscious choice, but I know that if I apply my mind to it, I would be able to get over it, the same way I got over many other vices or dislikes that were not necessarily good for me to maintain.

  • Sexual Orientation

    Or should that be ‘sectual orientation’? Someone used this term when asking me about my religious persuasion, but I think it applies in this case as well. After researching this topic for some time, and having been exposed to many people that identify as ‘Gay’, my original views remain consistent. Homosexuality is a choice, and not determined by genes. This is supported by extensive research and very well presented in a concise argument on this blog. Furthermore, as I’ve always stated, if it is natural, the simple acid test to prove this would be procreation. But that’s a debate for another day.

    Given the tedious debates about this subject, I felt inclined to put my penny in the plate as well (no doubt to add to the tediousness of it all). Before I share more of my personal views, here’s a few quotes from the site referenced above:

    American Psychological Association

    “[M]any scientists share the view that sexual orientation is shaped for most people at an early age through complex interactions of biological, psychological and social factors.”

    The American Psychological Association’s pamphlet, “Answers to Your Questions About Sexual Orientation and Homosexuality.”

    “Gay Brain” Researcher Simon LeVay

    “At this point, the most widely held opinion [on causation of homosexuality] is that multiple factors play a role.”

    LeVay, Simon (1996). Queer Science, MIT Press.

    Dennis McFadden, University of Texas neuroscientist

    “Any human behavior is going to be the result of complex intermingling of genetics and environment. It would be astonishing if it were not true for homosexuality.”

    “Scientists Challenge Notion that Homosexuality’s a Matter of Choice,” The Charlotte Observer, August 9, 1998.

    Sociologist Steven Goldberg

    “I know of no one in the field who argues that homosexuality can be explained without reference to environmental factors.”

    Goldberg, Steven (1994). When Wish Replaces Thought: Why So Much of What You Believe is False. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books.

    The following is a comment from Dean Hamer, whose research in 1993 started the whole thing about the gay gene

    “Gay gene” researcher Dean Hamer was asked by Scientific American if homosexuality was rooted solely in biology. He replied:

    “Absolutely not. From twin studies, we already know that half or more of the variability in sexual orientation is not inherited. Our studies try to pinpoint the genetic factors…not negate the psychosocial factors.”

    “New Evidence of a ‘Gay Gene’,” by Anastasia Toufexis, Time, November 13, 1995, vol. 146, Issue 20, p. 95.

    This is only the tip of the iceberg. It’s obvious that social factors play a massive role in determining the sexual orientation of individuals. I often liken it with natural inclinations that people may have regarding acts or behaviours that are not associated with sexuality. The more acceptable an act becomes to society, the greater the prevalence of such an act.

    Therefore, the level of tolerance of an act is often the determining factor in its prevalence. Taking such analogies to the extreme is usually a good way to demonstrate a point, so here goes. At some point in our lives, every one of us has/had the urge to beat the crap out of someone, and maybe even want to kill them. This urge to act out violently exists in everyone. Whether a saint or a sinner, the urge is there. What prevents us from acting out is either one or all of the following factors. We either restrain ourselves because of the moral code that we subscribe to, our sense of fear for the punishment that may be received from a religious perspective, or the repercussions from a society that will not tolerate such behaviour.

    Should violent aggression become more acceptable, more people would act out on these urges to beat someone up, and society will become more accepting of the escalated level of violence. The same argument I’ve always maintained about mental ‘disorders’ versus chemical balance is what I maintain about homosexuality. i.e. the chemical imbalance that supposedly proves a person’s predisposed state to the condition is in fact a symptom of the thought processes and not the other way around.

    To avoid labouring the point and possibly delving into territory that I’m barely qualified to read let alone comment on, I would summarise it as follows. We all have urges to act out in ways that contradict societal norms, or even natural orders. Whether this is a result of a natural inclination to want to rebel against rigid structures that often stifle individuality or creativity, or whether it’s a result of other more complex factors, research to date proves that genetic predisposition is almost negligible in the vast majority of cases. We need to accept that people are not born gay, the same way that people are not born depressed. Environmental factors in our upbringing is what determines the dominance of these behavioural tendencies and not some mysterious gene that we have no power to act against.

    The power of the mind is often conveniently under estimated if acknowledging it rids us of our argument to justify our condition. I won’t suggest to know the answer to how society should deal with homosexuality. However, I think it’s disingenuous for people that choose to be gay to blame some hidden unproven force for their choice of sexual orientation, when in fact it really is a lifestyle decision that they’ve made. If every person succumbed to the fear and insecurity associated with interacting with the opposite sex, the human race would have been extinct many centuries ago.

  • There was never an absence of criticism, or name calling. I was always the butt end of taunts and mockery and isolated, not by choice. If it wasn’t my slim physique that was being ridiculed, it was my nose for being too big, or my hair for being styled strangely, or my teeth for being crooked. I maintained amicable relations with most in my family, but my elder brother despised me for as long as I can remember. So trying to find something to be positive about in life was never an easy task. If I asked for a second helping of food I would be verbally abused. If I spent time with the very few friends I had from school, I would be ostracised for not having time for the family, and therefore deliberately excluded from family activities when I got home.

    I recall times when I walked through the streets at night until very late, listening to the laughter and noises from the homes in the neighbourhood of families and friends doing what families and friends do. It was alien to me. The reason I was walking the streets at that time of the night when I was in my very early teens, if that old even, was because for reasons that I can’t recall, I did not accompany my family to a visit to some or other extended family. As a result I had to loiter outside until they returned because I was locked out of the house. One night I was literally kicked out of the house when I was barely 6 or 7 years old. He grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and sent me flying out the front door to go searching for a jacket that he had hidden away to teach me a lesson for forgetting to take it in the house when I was done playing. It worked. I never forgot that lesson.

    Excerpt from the book I never wrote

    Ramblings of a Madman

  • Scholarly Debates Gone Wrong

    Here’s a very interesting article that a sister shared with me today. It provides some much needed context on the four madhabs. However, the most interesting part for me was the extended debates at the end of the article in the comments section. A few really important points that I liked are quoted below:Imam Al Qurtubi mentions towards the end of his commentary on these verses in hisAl Jami’ Li Ah’kam Al Qur’an:

    These people claiming to be fixing the conditions are only assuming so, while in reality they’re sowing corruption. Furthermore, the people of meaning say: “whoever makes a claim has lied”, which is true.

    Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah had put it during the 2011 Deen Intensive Rihla in Turkey:

    The crisis of the Muslim community is a crisis of adab, i.e. a crisis of character and manners

    It’s narrated that a man came to Imam Malik and was trying to argue about a certain matter. Imam Malik quickly responded with:

    As for me, I’m in a state of certainty from my Lord about what I’m doing. As for you, you’re in doubt, so go find someone else in doubt like yourself to argue with

     

    Scholarly Debates Gone Wrong

  • Reflections

    When I look at what may lie ahead for me in life, it feels like my struggles have just begun. The uncertainty and hopefulness, if left unchecked leaves me feeling ambivalent about important goals and objectives and often results in me slipping into a morbid state wondering if the future holds more promise than my past, which gets me reflecting on my past. In doing so, I realise how my life has been nothing but a blink of an eye. It feels like I was in high school just yesterday, yet when I consider the events of the many exhausting lifetimes I’ve lived since then, I realise exactly how much time has passed.

    Just yesterday I was looking up to my uncles and other elders in the family and contemplating if I would be able to achieve as much as many of them have achieved in life. Quite literally in a blur I suddenly realised that I am now the uncle and my nephews and nieces will probably start viewing me in a similar light. The secrets of the future have always been such a distraction despite being proven time and again that I have no control over the outcomes of so many incidents in my life that I exhaustingly applied myself to.

    There were times when I believed that no matter what came to pass, I would persevere and I would be successful in overcoming the obstacles I was faced with, only to realise that despite my greatest efforts, my efforts would only ever cause my own will to yield to the objective at hand, but never the will of others. That has probably been the seed of my cynicism in life, because each time I reflect on my foolhardiness to lift myself up and try again, I’ve realised that I’m not cynical about life, just people because people are most unpredictable when they’re fearful. Even the most seemingly dishonest person only acts that way out of fear for the repercussions of honesty.

    Living sincerely takes away our excuses to bow out gracefully at times, because we’re forced to deal with the raw emotions of others that have been allowed to touch us where it hurts most. Each time we’re hurt we recoil and establish a barrier to protect ourselves from such hurt again in future because we’re survivalists by nature. If we live consciously, we remind ourselves of the context of that experience, optimistically believe that not everyone is the same, and persevere sincerely into yet another skirmish with fate.

    But most times we lose consciousness to reality and instead dwell in our space of fear, resulting in those barriers being cemented rather than contextualised, which causes serenity to evade us, and beauty to be stifled. It’s this idealism that has given me much to cry about, but even more to reflect on with smiles when I sit in that swing on my porch marvelling at the obliviousness of the next generation as they go about their lives believing that they’re invincible until their first great disruption. The circle of life. Everyone quotes clever thoughts and memes about it, but so few grasp it.

  • That Nudge

    Life creeps up on us when we think we’re being smart and sophisticated by making elaborate plans to achieve things we assume is important. Then suddenly, the most subtle nudge jolts us out of that self-indulgent stupor and we realise that everything we were planning for was actually trivial and pointless.

    I recently begrudgingly settled into the assumed reality that life the way I know it is the way it will be until the end. I assumed the foetal position ready to be a martyr. I was ready to sacrifice my needs and desires for the stability and security that those around me would benefit from. But from a place I least expected, I was jolted out of my staid reality and infused with fearful hope that the fat lady is not yet ready to sing.

    I had planned in detail how I was going to explain to my daughter that she needed to be strong by herself without a mother. The arrangements I would need to make for my care should I reach an infirm age. My explanation to my estranged daughter that I had to simply make a very difficult choice in utilising my limited resources to help her sister recover from the trauma of a dysfunctional environment rather than continuing the ten year struggle with her mother to maintain a significant role in her life.

    And then the nudge came in a most unassuming form. A nudge that has unsettled my idyllic loneliness and forced me to peer out of my shell at a world that I had long grown to despise for its hypocrisy, betrayal and double standards. Part of me is whimpering in silent protest at the changes that that nudge is prompting in me, but most of me is smiling like a newly toothed baby assuming that the whole world is ready to smile with me.

    By I’m a decaying pragmatist at heart, so such euphoria will be tampered with reality no matter my romantic inclinations. My stubborn cynicism will endure a while longer until the reality of this hope is realised, because I know all too well that such hope can be fleeting, and such promise can be empty. Yet the fool in me remains hopeful nonetheless, and no matter what the outcome, I will spit in the face of futility and laugh at the fact that I hoped again, despite the gravest oaths I’d taken never to succumb to such a frivolity ever again.

  • Man has never created anything. We’ve only manipulated what we have in order to arrive at new configurations of what already exists, regardless of how complex the manipulation may be, it will always be nothing more than that. A manipulation of what exists.

    Excerpt from a previous post on Destiny

    Serves as a good reminder for me whenever I feel pompous about my achievements in life.

  • And when the ignorant (mockingly) address them, they merely say: “Peace”.

    Qur’an (25:63)