Not to toot my own horn but I will leave you with a quote I came up with in one of the depressive and perilous days "Mortality is always around the corner, lurking, no walls of denial and pretense are high enough to keep away the little hints life is always dropping everywhere around us. We are always reminded of this morbid eventuality, some more often than others..."
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Depression Chronicles: A beginning to an end
Not to toot my own horn but I will leave you with a quote I came up with in one of the depressive and perilous days "Mortality is always around the corner, lurking, no walls of denial and pretense are high enough to keep away the little hints life is always dropping everywhere around us. We are always reminded of this morbid eventuality, some more often than others..."
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
On Being a Kenyan Illuminati Devil Worshipping Atheist
An article from a local daily (The Star) here in which we were
featured in has made me famous (or should I say infamous?) over the last couple
of weeks. The article was on atheism in Kenya and the reaction to it has been
rather interesting to me. Well, I knew it would cause some heat but even my
wildest imagination did not prepare me for the responses we got from our dear
Kenyan readers. It ranged from mild abuses from the Christians, to racism and
even outrageous calls for our deaths. We were promised death, hell and eternal
damnation among other threats which the pea brained commentators could think
of or manage to spell.
You are probably wondering what I am on about. Allow
me to bring you dear reader up to speed. I am a 24 year old Kenyan who thinks
that believing in God is like growing up and keeping one’s belief in Santa. A
less insulting way of describing me is non believer although I use atheist
whenever I want to create a bit of a stir (You have to admit that it does the
trick even though it’s only a negation of a position). A neutral definition of
atheism is the lack of belief in deities. The Star was doing an article on
atheism in Kenya and I happened to be featured in the interview. That has been
the source of fifteen minutes of fame and apparently instant hatred from random
believers as well.
Now that you are up to speed, let me get back to my
rant. The most surprising accusation we got was that of being devil worshipers After picking my jaw from the floor and surviving the fall when I
jumped out of the window, I tried to rationalize how someone outside a mental
institution could make such a claim. I am afraid that I might get to my grave
before getting satisfactory answer. Daily nation prior to this had covered a
story on atheism as well and I remember they hash tagged Illuminati when they
posted it on their twitter feed. I thought this was infantile and rather stupid
for a major local daily but I understood. However, I cannot get how I somehow
worship the devil even after clearly stating that I do not believe in anything
supernatural.
Anyways, everyone seems to be interested in why
there has been a surge in non believers in this lovely ‘Christian Nation’ of
ours. Is it the beginning of the end of the world? Are the religious
institutions failing? Could it be because of the accessibility of information?
How then would you explain all those morons commenting in the thread section of
our article? There is probably a multiplicity of factors and I am not an expert
in that sort of thing so I won’t comment on that.
I have always had my doubts about religion but campus is really where I became a full-fledged atheist. I have always been a bit of a rebel and my inquisitive nature makes me a terrible candidate for religion. Christianity requires a sheep like unquestioning mind; it demands one to be a yes man (or woman). I remember reading an article by Christopher Hitchens on Vanity Fair, from his works I got introduced to the rest of the horsemen and at some point I couldn't read those new atheist books fast enough. I was a convert for reason and science and I have never looked back.
I have always had my doubts about religion but campus is really where I became a full-fledged atheist. I have always been a bit of a rebel and my inquisitive nature makes me a terrible candidate for religion. Christianity requires a sheep like unquestioning mind; it demands one to be a yes man (or woman). I remember reading an article by Christopher Hitchens on Vanity Fair, from his works I got introduced to the rest of the horsemen and at some point I couldn't read those new atheist books fast enough. I was a convert for reason and science and I have never looked back.
Now that I think of it, Maina Kageni did contribute
to this public outcry for our blood. When the article came out he did mention
it in his morning show on Classic fm.
He said we were out to ‘poteza watu’ as I was told by a friend who had been
listening. Now apart from the people who are forced to listen to the show on
Matatus (where it has become like an anthem of sorts) everyone else who listens
to the show is probably either stupid or ignorant or both and is likely to be a
Christian. These are the same people I suspect were vilifying us about the
article. It probably never occurred to them that they could use the same
internet to check out what atheism is all about (or not about) before typing
all that garbage. These are the very same people who probably have never used
the internet for anything else apart from Facebook and whose idea of a good
time is listening to Maina and that other guy Mwalimu in the morning. I
digress.
I am also in another group FIKA (Freethinkers Initiative Kenya) which has attracted quite a bit of controversy and conspiracy
theories as it was mentioned in the article as well. This is interesting since
I partly started the group in 2011, I would know if we were part of a
conspiracy. But then again that’s the sort of argument I would make if FIKA
indeed was a conspiracy or some government project. To deny a conspiracy is to
affirm it so I won’t make it a point to convince anyone that we are not a
secret society (whatever that entails). We will instead shine in the publicity
it creates. What I will do is tell you what FIKA actually is because I am the
current vice chairman so I should know right? We are a freethought group
advancing critical thinking and rational approaches to issues; we are also a
secular group meaning that we are of the opinion that there should be a separation
between Church and State in public space. We advocate for freedom of religion
but also strongly advocate for freedom from religion. We are not going to bring
this about by burning churches but by having honest and intellectual
conversations with the public. We hope to persuade people through reason and
not using the crude ‘conversion tactics’ the church for instance used in the
past and still does to various degrees.
I hereby come to the conclusion of my rant, there’s
much to say on religion, non belief, secularism and our society but this works
as catharsis for now. Always remember that the pen will always be mightier than
the sword. To all those wishing us death, know that it’s easier if you just
engaged us in discussion to find out what our views are. And in the words of my favorite villain (arguable) V, “Behind this mask there is more than flesh.
Beneath this mask there’s an idea, and ideas are bullet proof.”
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
THE END OR A NEW BEGINNING:THE VIRTUAL WORLD
What is reality? I do not want to get into any
philosophical or existential discussion about the nature of reality. As you all
know a large percentage of the youth in this country and world are now addicts
to the virtual world and more specifically the social networks. At some point I
thought well this is going to be the end of our social lives as human beings. I
remember one day we were supposed to be hanging out in campus but at some point
everyone had their phone in their hands, Facebook, twitter you name it. I
remember thinking to myself if we are like this and we got our phones mostly
after high school, what is going to happen the future generation.
Kids now get internet browsing phones when as young
as nine years. Are these boys going to know how to talk to a girl outside Facebook?
Will they be able to take them out on a coffee date, will they even know the
common courtesies involved in dating and well…in everyday life? There’s a fear
that kids are learning more than they should be for their ages thanks to the
internet age. This fear is justified because with the internet comes with
unmonitored freedom, while it’s a good free source of knowledge, the internet
has no guardian to keep the pedos and the child molesters out, with the typing
of a link a kid can access all the pornography in this line. This verse from my
favorite rapper Lupe Fiasco captures this dilemma beautifully. “Now imagine a
group of little girls nine through twelve, on the internet watching videos
listenin’ to songs by themselves, it doesn’t really matter if they have
parental clearance, they understand the internet better than they parents.”
I have come
to change my view and not simply because I can now consider myself also hooked
to the virtual world. I tried to stay for a week without technology but I only
lasted two hours. Today I was watching an anime (Japanese cartoon for the anti
geeks) called Serial experiments Lain. It’s basically about how thin the line
between reality and the virtual world really is. The anime pushes this further
by suggesting that in fact there might be no difference between the real world
and the virtual one. The two worlds get blurred and interchangeable with devastating
consequences. Luckily we have not reached there but who knows with this ever
growing technology what tomorrow has in store for us. Today I and the rest of
the frequent visitors of social networks have more virtual friends than they do
in ‘real life’. But I’m I justified to even draw this distinction? What is
reality anyway? Is it not simply whatever our brains can conjure and convince
us that that is how the world is? When we are having a nightmare and we wake
up, palpitating and sweating profusely, for all intents and purposes was the
dream not real enough to us? When we get absorbed in a good book, when we cry
when we watch a sad scene in a movie, is this less real than everything else we
experience in our day to day lives?
I was previously arguing that with the social
networks comes the beginning of the end of social lives but my position is
actually the opposite now. With the coming of all this technology and social
networks then we are simply ushering in a new reality. The same way some people
have argued that the end of the Christian world and the second coming as simply
the mark of the coming of the new age of Pisces but that is a story for another
day. More than ninety percent of my friends now come from interactions in the
virtual world. Like the cartoon I was watching today it is becoming harder and
harder to draw the line between the real and the virtual world. And just like
in the cartoon my real world and the virtual world are starting to increasingly
merge. Lovers, friends, enemies have been forged in this virtual world, others
developing into real life friends others remaining in the interwebz. Some
people could argue that it’s healthier to have more real life friends but this
argument has not legs to stand on, real life friendships also go through the
same phases virtual ones do, they too are not everlasting or perfect. And what
are people? Aren’t they just the sum total of what they communicate to us and
what we interpret about them? Bodies are nothing more than machines that allow
for this interface, computers can now provide all that is required to interface
with each other. We do not require physical bodies to communicate with each
other, we can still make each other laugh, cry and even angry well from behind
our keyboards, while the anonymity has brought with it’s a certain stain of
callousness and the dark side of people, it has also allowed us to explore
different personalities, to create how we want to appear and what we wish to
communicate to the different faceless virtual interfaces we interact with on
these social networks.
So while some people argue that social networks are
the death of our social lives, we can tell them this is simply the birth of a
new reality, a new world , more flexible, more exciting and easier to construct
without all the burdens that arise in the real world. So a toast to the new
matrix in which we are all pioneers of, we are free to shape it however we want
it, the limit only lie with our imagination and creativity. With the every end
comes a new beginning after all.
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