Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science. Show all posts

Monday, July 10, 2023

Our Lives Today

Science and technology are making great strides, offering better services, faster food, better income, bigger houses, more advanced medicine and, one could conclude, a much better life. But opinions vary on whether this is the reality or not. Here are some thoughts of renowned Croatian economist, Velimir Srića, professor emeritus at the University of Zagreb, with a PhD in IT management and an MBA from Columbia University, who has also taught as visiting professor at UCLA, Swiss School of Management in Geneva, Renmin in Beijing, universities in Shanghai, Cincinnati, Budapest, Graz and many others. It would take too much space to list all his achievements, so I leave that to Google.  Here is how Dr. Srića views our lives today (and by the way, "srića" means "happiness" in one of the Croatian dialects).

Prof. Velimir Srića in an interview for Glas Slavonije:



"We live in creative times. Medicine has advanced so much that almost no man is completely healthy. The state is so powerful that no one is free. We are ruled by democracy, with man incapable people electing a few corrupted. 

Today, the best football player, actor or singer makes a thousand times more than the best teacher, educator or healer. Material wealth is accompanied by spiritual emptiness.

We are constructing ever taller buildings, while the threshold of tolerance is sinking ever lower. Cities are expanding and world views narrowing. We buy more things and enjoy them less.

The square footage of dwellings is growing, for people who increasingly live alone. Families are wealthier but couples divorce more often. The number of beautiful houses and broken homes is growing at a similar pace.

Technological advances are saving time, but we are still increasingly short of it. We have learned how to rush and forgotten how to wait with patience. The number of experts is growing as is the number of unsolved problems. We are more educated but not wiser. We know more, but understand less.

The abundance of comic shows is growing in pace with the number of people suffering from depression. We are angry all the time and tired all the time. The brain we use while reading a book is replaced by vegetating in front of a screen. We live longer, but emptier lives. We are surrounded by fast food and slow digestion.

One third of humanity is dying from starvation and one third from morbid obesity. We have hundreds of Facebook friends but no real friends. The number of high-placed people and small-minded people is growing. We quarrel often, love rarely and hate easily.

Good taste has been replaced by junk. Mass culture has created mass hysteria and mass murderers. We are visiting remote planets and asteroids, and do not know our closest neighbors. The center of our lives is a shopping place.

We proudly eat "healthy food," but allow the media to poison our spirit. There is more and more information and less and less real communication. We know the price of everything and the value of nothing. We are taught to earn a living, but not how to live.

Once we used things and loved people, today we love things and use people. Do we live better than before? Make your own conclusion."


Friday, July 25, 2014

Al-Andalus, Islamic World in Medieval Spain


After crossing from North Africa in the early seven-hundreds, Muslims ruled in southern Spain for almost eight centuries, interacting with the populations they found there.  The golden age of al-Andalus has offered some lessons for a modern pluralist society. But do we learn from history?

Many medieval Spanish songs combine Jewish, Christian European and Arabic music traditions.  A convergence of three distinct cultures marked almost every aspect of life in Islamic Spain: from economy, technology, science and medicine to philosophy, literature, art and architecture.
Al-Andalus, Land of "Convivencia"
Al-Andalus, or Andalusia, originated in 711, when an army of Arabs and Berbers crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to depose Visigothic ruler Roderic.   Jews supported and welcomed Muslims in Spain because initially they prospered better under Islamic rule than Christian.   Osman bin Bakar, a scholar and author from Malaysia, says in contrast to the rest of Europe, at the time Andalusia was enlightened and tolerant.

“Andalusia was perhaps the only place in Europe then where followers of the three Abrahamic faiths - Muslims, Christian and Jews - lived together in relative peace to produce a common culture and civilization over such a long period of time,” says Bakar.

The fertile mixing of cultures on the Iberian peninsula was partly the result of a moderate kind of Islam practiced by the first ruling dynasty of the Umayyads. Their reign ended in the early years of the eleventh century. As the poetry from their time indicates, the Umayyads reveled in the pleasures of the body as well as the mind.  They also appreciated other cultures, for example, Greek philosophy and science, which they helped spread to the rest of Europe.

By the tenth century, Andalusia reached what was called a golden age in terms of cultural and political development, prosperity and power.  Its capital city of Cordoba had some 200-thousand houses, 600 mosques, 900 public baths, 50 hospitals, and lighted and paved streets. Libraries and research institutions spread rapidly in Muslim Spain, while the rest of Europe remained largely illiterate.
Cordoba, Spain
With Discord Comes Decline
But some analysts warn against idealizing Andalusian “convivencia,” Spanish term for religious and cultural tolerance of the era.  With time, liberators turned into conquerors.  Conversion to Islam was encouraged and sometimes compelled, and the Arabic language was dominant in all aspects of life.  Some philosophers were banned, their books burned.  Uprisings were answered with mass executions.  Jane Gerber, professor of history at the City University of New York, says by the 12th century, religious tolerance was on the wane.
“When we speak about the science of the 12th and 13th centuries, we are already talking about a period in which Jews no longer lived in the realm of Islam in Spain.  They had in fact been forced to flee or convert,”says Berger.

Significant changes began during the 11th century.  British historian Richard Fletcher says al-Andalus, once centrally ruled, became divided into smaller states, centered around cities such as Seville, Granada, Malaga and Cordoba:  “These little statelets of 11th century al-Andalus were individually small and vulnerable.  They could only survive among their predatory neighbors by adroit diplomacy and warfare.”

Fletcher says Christian rulers to the north of al-Andalus were willing to supply arms for cash, spurring political and business interaction on all levels and enabling individual rise to power: “The most famous Spaniard of all time, Rodrigo Diaz, known as El Cid, “the boss,” was a Castilian nobleman who became an exceptionally skillful and lucky mercenary soldier who sold his skills to a variety of pay masters, Christian and Muslim, and ended his career as the independent ruler of his own little principality of Valencia on the eastern Mediterranean coast of Spain.”

Divisions like these weakened Islamic rulers of Andalusia, paving the way for Christian forces to gain control of the peninsula in the 13th century.  Granada, last of the Muslim outposts, finally surrendered to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain in 1492.  Crusader nobles and clerics from the north, who helped local Christian rulers defeat their Muslim rivals, also put an end to multiculturalism.  Within three months of Granada’s fall, unconverted Jews were expelled and Islamic practices banned.  Fletcher notes that legend would soon turn El Cid into a Christian hero, a loyal Castilian patriot, who was supposed to have spent his life fighting to expel Muslims from Spain.
Lasting Legacy
The legacy of the golden age of al-Andalus is widespread and lasting: from advances in agriculture, science, medicine, astronomy, cartography and navigation to the beauty of architecture, music, poetry, silk weaving, ceramics and marble carving. Some Andalusian products are still today hallmarks of quality: Toledo steel, Cordoban leather, Granada silk and Seville oranges.

Malaysian scholar Osman bin Bakar says this golden age offers some important lessons: “Fraternization! For scientific progress, you have to have fraternization. And the other one is universalism. I think the [Andalusian] emphasis on the universal aspects of Islam should be imitated by Muslims today, rather than going to sectarian thinking. I think universalism is the way to scientific progress. And certainly internationalization and globalization of science.”

Analysts say the Islamic world flourished through contact and cooperation with other cultures.   Its creativity declined with the onset of ethnic and religious conflict.