No big elephant!

In a society that mentioning someone called "the leader" as an utter reference is the most natural thing to do and giving rational reasons is the last thing that one would consider and public would eager to hear, no wonder that candidates for upcoming presidential election look so identical when it comes to taboos and untouched matters. The irony in here is that people who call themselves moderate inside the authority, criticize directly or indirectly the supreme leader of Iran for not preventing his hardliner supporters from making him a holly person. The punchline in here is these very same people still refer to Ayatollah Khomeini as testimonial when they want to win their argues with hardliners. No one can actually ask why should the man be considered far away from making any mistakes in their eyes only because he started up a revolution 30 years ago and another one that got the power after him can be criticized. This is a double standard and apparently is a universal rule of this odd world.
The worst thing that could happen to a society is fear. Fear of to be challenged or to challenge. This is what makes people insecure and stupid. The worst thing that could happen to a society is getting away from learning something named reasoning.
The election is close in Iran and I'm going to vote not because I've found my true choice between those 4 presidential candidates but because I exactly know what is not absolutely my choice.

Photo

And that's how I laughed when I was little! ;)
Thanks to my mom that sent this to me.

The more opinions you have, the less you see.
-Wim Wenders

Writing

Two days from now will be 2 years since I started writing in this blog. I cannot really say that it passed so fast that I did not feel it. A lot happened during this time, we left Iran almost 3 years ago to Libya and after a while I started writing in here. It's not exactly as personal as I used to write in notebooks, with a different flavor and not even with the same language as it used be for years. I used to write in notebooks that I still carry wherever I go as if they are my babies. Every note of those notebooks is the story of who I was, my concerns and the old me. Writing has always been a very important part of my life. I survived through many things with the help of seeing myself in words. I did not do the best but I did what I really could do and that writing helped me big time to do so. Now that I look back I see I stopped collecting very personal notes long time ago. I have my special someone to listen to my scattered words. I need to have new notebooks, to see my-very-self in words and to share my little babies with my someone. He wouldn't mind adopting them, I know...

Nostalgia!

I've been almost forgetting what it feels like when you see one of those highly spiritual brothers "baradrane moteahed" and you start wondering am I this invisible to this man or is he this much alert/rude that cannot look at me while he's talking and cannot even talk to me while he's talking. Having to go to Iranian embassy could make you updated sometimes that yeah, you're still disgusted with some of these " baradarane mokhles"!

Smile :)

No conclusion- Yet

There has been a big debate over free will for centuries among philosophers and psychologists. Sigmund Freud as a mentalist put the subject in this way: Heredity, environment, instinctive and social factors influence understanding of one's self.
I don't like to think we don't have free will in its genuine term but whether I like it or not I cannot pass by without pondering over some existing realities that challenges free will in its true terms. Our brain chemistry, our history and sex hormones have a strong effect on who we become. Any of these factors could be slightly different and then our present self would turn to some one totally different. We are like products of several prior elements and then at this point we decide to think and believe in this way, act that way and feel as we feel and we think we are free in our choices and I assume it's healthier to have this sense of freedom though.
I came to an article incredibly interesting from Nature Neuroscience titled: "Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain". It was in fact the resource of my main talk in the presentation that I mentioned before. To put it short, in an experiment subjects were asked to press a button and 10 seconds before they become aware or conscious about their own decisions of which button to press, some certain regions in the brain showed activities indicating prediction and storage of the upcoming decision in those areas, this says there is this high-level network that begins to shape an upcoming decision long before the person enters awareness about that. This research is not obviously going to wrap up this old debate to any final conclusion but it's an open door for more questions in the field of hard core science rather than seeking for answers only through the philosophical theories.

Announcment

Pushover is what it is...

Royal attack: the end of an illusion

...Foreigners who are surprised by ministers who cycle to their offices, a prime minister eating a herring alone at the fish stall next to parliament - it is all gone... Read more

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Irrelevant update: A different look at racism conference in Geneva, different from what I've heard/read so far, it's in Farsi I'm afraid.