What Is Fake Within?
They do their best to say what they say, because they don’t want anyone go away unfulfilled. But if we have not been through pain in life, we cannot understand what pain is, we can only imagine its intensity. It’s easier to give it an absolute value and then multiply it with a valid superscript. But you can never read loss, you can only feel it. You can never measure pain, only go through it alone. And you cannot equate your life's sufferings to another man's, you can only 'relate' to them. Maybe I understand the meaning of rejection, where you only perceive it as a word in the dictionary, only because I can relate to it, and you can’t. If we have not been a victim of deception, how can we possibly understand the meaning of what is fake within? How can we expect a deaf man to believe in sound, how can we expect a mute to believe in voice, although it is there. Things like literature... some people get it, some people don’t. But those who try must remember that words can’t help anyone understand what is fake within, only life can.
~ Isbah Z commenting on What is fake within in this post .
Comments
i can 'relate' to your criticism. we cannot relate to something we have not experienced.
last year i composed a few verses in urdu (surprising everybody including myself). i forwarded them to select group of friends for feedback. the most stunning criticism i received was from a dear friend who, amongst other things, accused me of faking the sentiment. {you havent had broken hearts so dont try to mimick it}.
notwithstanding the inspiration of the poem, his comment really got me thinking.
i believe basic human emotions love, pain, loss, deception, joy, sorrow, suffering, etc. are so fundamental to our being that everyone of us have experienced them. how can one mature to adulthood without sampling from these emotions? it is impossible.
what varies between individuals is the intensity of the situation that imposes these emotions upon us. however, the intensity of the our circumstance has nothing to do with our ability to relate to another person's emotions. it has everything to do with our level of sensitivity. take, for example, siddhartha gautama (the buddha): that guy lived a life of unknown luxury. yet the first time he witnessed the suffering of an old man outside his palace it drove him to starvation, such was his compassion. i would say he 'related' to suffering more than another man who might have suffered identical circumstances but whose heart had, out of necessity, been desensitized to acknowledging suffering. (if you would like i could construct more average, yet equally compelling, examples).
i think your examples of the mute and deaf man prove the counterargument. 'beauty lies in the eye of the beholder'. beauty does not lie in the eye of a person with 20/20 vision. rather it is possessed by the mind's eye. [relating to my point on sensitivity in the previous paragraph].
therefore i believe all of us are in principle capable of relating to other's emotions because we have, all of us, suffered these same emotion. the question is how receptive our hearts are.
I really love it when some body extract some part of absolute knowledge base or some thing true by their own experiences (or interactions)because i always believe that 'all of it is already within our selves"
ALL of it, the part which has been discovered and revealed so far
and the part which is still hidden."Our Believe" is the only parser to that "whole"
So that lines i have read is
like that you have given birth to that theory from yourself
which is GREAT it assures you "alive" "working" "in process" "breathing"
and thats the "only thing" important & substantial ...
and as they say its like " how far the rabbit hole you wanna traverse"
@Khany: If I see somebody in a circumstance with whom I can relate to, I dont think my empathy is gonna make me put myself in the same situation. But my curiosuity might ! My sensitivity to be able to relate to the other persons pain is gonna make me do something that subdues her pain. Our ability to relate to somebodys pain is what makes us empathetic towards pain we might not have even experienced.
I think what Bhudda did was out of sheer curiousity and not empathy. But yes having the unthinking to experience somebodys suffering than to judge it right away, is commendable too ! (now that statment comes from an empathetic viewpoint :))
"...beauty does not lie in the eye of a person with 20/20 vision. rather it is possessed by the mind's eye..."
I believe these feelings of sadness,deception,loss are what mature vision of the mind's eye. This is why not everybody matures with age.
Apart from this, i believe this sensitivity sometimes fails to reach empathy. For example somebody who has migraine and goes through a constant headache everyday, might actually fail to remember how it felt experiencing the headache for the first time. This form of desensitization thereby can make him incapable of even lending an empathetic ear to somebody experiencing it for the first time.
With that said, I believe, no matter how hurtful, nothing can bring the saturation,grace and empathy that pain is capable of.
salam saira,
we disagree. still, there might be some common ground between us. you can skip directly to the final paragraph, i ramble in between.
to me, curiosity is a state of mind while sensitivity is a state of the heart. and the heart is the seat of all emotions. relating to another's emotions, empathizing, is not so much an intellectual pursuit as it is a turning of one's heart. therefore, relating with another person requires sensitivity and not merely curiosity.
i feel i wasn't able to state my point very clearly the first time. let me reattempt.
knowledge is a necessary but insufficient requirement for empathy. curiosity drives us to gain more knowledge. since we have all experienced a variety of emotions growing up therefore, i believe, we all have 'sufficient' knowledge required to empathize. (e.g. we may not have suffered pain of losing a parent but we might have felt some pain through loss of a pet). what becomes critical then is sensitivity.
your final example of the person suffering from migraine proves this same point. having intimate knowledge of migraine, through painful experience, does not guarantee that a person will be able to relate with another's pain. i think the example perfectly parallels the one i cited comparing the buddha's ability to suffer on account of an old man, while other people suffering the same fate become desensitized. it comes down to sensitivity.
when a mother suffers on behalf of her sick child it is not on account of her curiosity nor her knowledge of what the child is going through; it is through sensitivity borne out of love. a doctor, on the other hand, possibly knows better than the patient of what ails him yet his job requires a degree of objectivity.
finally, it would be a simple matter to prove my 'theory' wrong. if we can demonstrate that emotions are path dependent then my argument collapses. i might know something about pain because my cat died when i was ten. does it give me the ability to relate to a person whose parent just passed away? if pain is essentially pain, irrespective of its source, then i stand some chance of relating to the plight of this person. but if the pain is qualitatively different then i stand no chance at all. if the latter is true, however, it would mean we can never relate to another human being since no two are alike and the parent-child relationship is unique for every couple.
perhaps there is some middle ground. perhaps there is an essential quality of every emotion, that is constant, to which we can all relate and there is a variable quality, which depends on the particulars of one's situation, which we can never truly understand. i tend to lean towards the view that emotions are essentially constant. would i be justified in saying that you (saira and isbah) lean towards the other end of the spectrum?
coming to the topic, I agree with Saira on the point that it's hard to feel the "intensity" of another's pain until we go through a similar pain.(A mother-child relationship is very unique). I also agree to Khany on the point that empathy and responsiveness of hearts to other peoples emotions vary from person to person. Some people are warm and sensitive to other peoples emotions while others are on the cold side.
that was such a long proof (comment) :@
you get a B+ for not simplifying ! :P :)
khany in both your comments i agree with what you said about sensitivity and what i wrote about migraine was there to add to it i.e. to mention the other extreme.
To me sensitivity is what makes one empathetic. Therefore i agree with what you said : "knowledge is a necessary but insufficient requirement for empathy" and with "...pain is essentially pain, irrespective of its source..."
But what i don't agree with is the Buddha example. i agree with you on this "therefore, relating with another person requires sensitivity and not merely curiosity", but then this is the point i was trying to make! i don't think Buddha was able to relate with the old man.
The literature that i have read about Buddha still makes me think that Buddha set out in search of what he called "truth" leaving everything behind, out of curiosity !
Just imagine yourself in the same situation, Do you think your sensitivity would make you starve your own self too ? or try subduing the old mans pain ?
When Buddha set out for his journey in search of truth, he left behind his wife and a newly born son. I fail to understand how a sensitive heart could be desensitized to the emotions of love for his wife and son. This is what doesn't make me agree with the sensitivity factor you associated with Buddhas example. But as i said having the unthinking to experience somebody's suffering than to judge it right away is commendable too.
love,even the most insensitive sometimes end up falling in love. Mothers love falls in that category too. But then that again makes one think of the constant value for emotions that you talked about. I believe we are all born with some initial value for emotions. But i don't think it stays constant. Our sensitivity can make some of these emotional values grow or become less (even to negative values). And i think we have control over training our neurons to change this value.
once again i am bursting with a million things to say but inshallah i will limit myself. i don't want to hijack this thread.
i will just deal with the buddha example. in fact he was deeply pained. he suffered vicariously on account of what he had witnessed. however, he couldn't understand the reason why suffering was necessary. that is what he set out to seek an answer for. he did not starve himself as a means of punishment. he denied himself food to discipline his soul and to strengthen his mental faculties in order to achieve enlightenment.
its painful but i will say no more :) this is my understanding. and thank you for a stimulating discussion.
as i said i fail to undestand how his sensitivity made it easy for him to leave his newly born son and wife ... but then may be i need to read more about Buddha.:)
I apologise if that sounded offensive. :)
hmm.. i don't know if i can answer your question to your satisfaction but consider the following arguments. first, it was not simply witnessing an old man. legend has it that he saw a series of things he had never imagine before. when he set foot outside the palace he met on various occasions a diseased man, a corpse, and an ascetic. i would argue he felt their suffering was immeasurably greater than what his wife and son would experience. he was sufficiently disturbed that he set out to find out the source of all suffering. he wanted to alleviate suffering and it would eventually benefit his wife and son to if he succeeded in his goal. additionally, it was not as if in his absence his wife and child would not be cared for.
not that i agree with this approach but still one should not reduce the complexity of the situation to a simple choice. when people are in love for example they often have to take a stand against their family and other loved ones. similarly when somebody sets off to seek the truth certain sacrifices become necessary even if one wishes they were not required. in our own tradition, for example, imam ghazzali, who is celebrated as amongst the greatest scholars of islam, similarly abandoned his wife and children for 20 years in his search for enlightenment. he left them provisions.
again i emphasize these are my opinions and i have been wrong before :)
Interesting discussion guys...
This world is the strangest place to be in.
Lets just notice for instance, the passion of Abdul Sattar Edhi who has been working endlessly & tirelessly to help other people. Was it pain or suffering that led him to open up and NGO and start helping people to the extent that he actually made it his life long mission and committed to its prosperity 100%? Or was it the fact that his heart was genuinely receptive for eliminating adversity from this world.
Scratching my head, I wonder why we are incapable of such devotion. Are our hearts less human?
Perhaps because the intensity of understanding and connecting to another person’s suffering varies from person to person. Sometimes, life’s experiences groom us to be more sympathetic towards other mind’s pain, but life can only do that much. My point is that experience can enhance your sensitivity, it cannot cultivate it in you and make you someone yr not.
[Remember what Iqbal said... Hazaron saal nargis apni benoori pe roti hai
Bari mushkil se hota hai chaman mein deedawar paida!]
On the other hand, think about the prisoners who are tortured brutally in their cells. Did years of endless sufferings and torment cultivate sympathy within Zardari’s heart? Did he become receptive enough to understand a fellow citizen’s pain? What did he do to eradicate it? I think nothing. So, would 8 yrs of alienation convince Mr. Nawaz Sharif not to practice corruption anymore? Or make him a better man than he was before?
I believe that understanding adversity and having the passion to eradicate it is not something that can be cultivated in an individual by divine intervention. Its just like having the ability to understand art, or having the passion to compose music. It comes from within… because the laws of nature are different than the laws of the world. I’m sure we will all agree on that. :)
I am totally in agreement with what you wrote about Buddha ("to find out the source of all suffering") and Imam ghazali ( "years in his search for enlightenment"). Pain experienced by both of them cannot be denied.
Ive already agreed with you on that. But I feel Buddha, at that time when he saw those in suffering was not able to "relate" with their pain. He left his wife and son because he thought they would have all the comfort in the world. And yes that was a sacrifice too little to be made for the bigger cause he set out for. I dont deny any of that.But i just cant agree with that tiny winy (focus tiny winy :P) correlation abt Buddha being sensitive to the pain he never experienced in any form/level. (Do i sound like a turbulent stubborn kid who needs to spanked here??? :$ :$ :$) . I think, for me to agree with this tiny bit i need to find some example from Buddhas pre-journey life that had some level of suffering (like that of a pet dieing). Because i think in the kind of Life Buddha lead before he set out for the journey, the pain of leaving a beloved (his son) should have overweighed the pain for a suffering he had no experience of to any level.
Im trying to say something of the sort you did: "when people are in love for example they often have to take a stand against their family and other loved ones".
May be my insuffiecient knowledge thats making me over estimate Buddhas pre-journey life is failing me to undertstand your correlation.
What Sufis like Imam ghazali, Data Gunj Bakhsh Hajveri, Bulleh Shah did (still do) is again something whos value cant be denied. But then talking abt that would take us out of the sensitivity and empathy scope of this article. Sufism has four school of thoughts. And im in a little disagreement with the school which involves practices that force you to isolate yourself from this world for a long time, neglecting the kins who have rights on you. So may be You or I can have an article about sufism on our blog and discuss it there. :)
let me put to you a question. i feel certain you have had an opportunity to see parents raise their kids. at the very least you went through the experience of being raised by your parents. why do parents try their best to protect their children from witnessing certain harsh realities of life?
for example images of suffering, death, corruption, immorality and debauchery, etc. why do you think it is so? i do not have a definite answer. i am hoping you can help me explore the possibilities. one of the possibilities which comes to my mind is that a child's heart is sincere, fragile, and sensitive. the child experiences vicarious pain and suffering when he sees others in a similar situation. if this is true then the child is protected so that he does not become hard hearted from exposure to such realities.
kids who grow up in war zones and witness the death and suffering of loved ones often become desensitized to others' suffering because they have had to subdue this emotion in order to cope with their tragic lives.
this argument suggests that children are naturally able to relate to pain. they are able to vicariously suffer. they may not 'understand' the situation. but that may simply heighten the intensity of their pain and suffering. at least through understanding you can get some possibility of closure. and so i feel buddha was but like an innocent child.
*i do not much respect the stated ideal of 'sufism' myself. so we can skip over that detail if you permit.
in fact, has anybody ever seen a cold hearted baby? i don't know any (other than chuckie). sensitivity and the ability to empathize is a gift god gives to each individual. it is our natural state.
when we witness pain and suffering our hearts respond. at this stage we can choose to perform several actions in response to the condition of our heart. i am reminded of the famous hadith from imam nawawi's collection of forty, "When any one of you sees anything that is disapproved (of by Allah), let him change it with his hand. If he is not able to do so, then let him change it with his tongue. And if he is not able to do so, then let him change it with his heart, though that is the weakest (kind of) faith."
available here
and if we find it is too much of an effort even to dislike what we witness within our hearts, then we have made ourselves utterly unworthy of the gift that god has placed in our heart. as syra reminded us this is the law of nature. if we do not share then our own reserves deplete.
and god says in the quran:
(002:074)
Thenceforth were your hearts hardened: They became like a rock and even worse in hardness. For among rocks there are some from which rivers gush forth; others there are which when split asunder send forth water; and others which sink for fear of Allah. And Allah is not unmindful of what ye do.
when i wrote the above i meant to say something that you are saying.
I agree with Buddhas heart being sensitive like a child. But I feel Buddhas sensitivity for his family should have overweighed his sensitivity for people. And we cant even argue that it didnt overweigh, may be it did ! May be that is why Buddha called the birth of his newly born as a "fetter" a "shackle". And inspite of that he chose to set out to alleviate suffering because he felt a bigger responisbilty/ (sensitivity probably) towards the suffering people.
when you said "*i do not much respect the stated ideal of 'sufism' myself. so we can skip over that detail if you permit." it seems as if you agreed with the point im trying to make.
A husband who has a wife and son, if sets out for jehad (or for the search of enlightenment, like many known sufis) say in palestine/kashmir, leaving his child and son behind (with some riches ofcourse, after all some amount of luxury is what the wife and son would be in need of the most ) because he feels more sensitive to the ones fighting for their freedom. Are you gonna stop him or not ? I definitely am. Becasue a wife needs a husband, a son his father for many physical and emotional reasons.
Answering your question i have to put another question. Childs sensitivity towards the harsh realities and his love and attachment with his mother: which is gonna be outweighed?
When i put this question im not denying the sensitivity a child carries towards certain harsh realities.
Cold hearted baby hmmm. Some Children never like sharing their food with others, they never undestand why they cant play with an ill sibling although they've been sick themselves. I as a child enjoyed beating up kids my age (age of 4), even though i knew how hurful spanking cud be. My brother was however more sensitive than me. He would try stopping me saying "usko dard ho ga". But i would threaten to not play with him. But then he was the one who never liked sharing his food. was i a cold hearted child ? dont know but my borther was definitely a more sensitive one.
My friends year old son bites his 4 month old daughter. She cries. To stop him from doing that my friend tries biting him so that he undestands the pain. He feels the pain when bitten but hasnt stopped biting her sister so far.
"the child experiences vicarious pain and suffering when he sees others in a similar situation." why did i not experience vacarious pain in beating other kids and, my brother when he didnt share his food with me, and that one year old who bites his sister ???
Harsh realities. There area many harsh realities that children go through but they never understand them. e.g the pain/pleasure a child expereinces going through a sexual abuse. Do you think she/he understands the harsh reality. Do you think that theres a high probability of the abused kid not abusing other kids when he steps into puberty ???
The ayah you refered to; my migraine example was there to show the same extreme of the spectrum :).
Once again, Im not denying any of what you have said. But some other noises (in my head) try interfering with the correlations you made, thats it.
i propose we fold the discussion at this point and salvage whatever consensus has been achieved. my summary would be:
both knowledge and sensitivity are needed to relate with another person. ironically, the accumulation of similar experiences does not automatically allow us to relate to another's condition and the lack of such experiences does not necessarily deprive us of the ability to sympathize.
(i recognize that this is possibly what you have been trying to say all along. sorry that it took me so long to finally realize it). please add and subtract from the summary at will.
I think parents raise children that way because they dont want them to become cold hearted and desensitized/numb to certain emotions/pain.
theres nothing that i wanna subtract from the summary :)
P.S. sorry for a very late reply. I got busy with work and my baby cousin :)
Empathy comes naturally to children: Study
it will be interesting to see how they reconcile aggressive, anti-social and bullying behavior amongst some children with the natural tendency towards empathy that they claim to have found.
i found some support for the claim that we can truly empathize with another person (without first having to go through their experiences). this evidence comes from the field of "social neuroscience" and to quote daniel goleman "if we attend to the other person we automatically empathize with them ... there are these newly identified neurons, mirror neurons, that act like a neuro-wifi activating in our brain the same areas activated in theirs. we feel with automatically ..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3wyCxHtGd0
my initial response was, of course, not based on any scientific opinion; it was merely a projection of my own experiences.
you might find it interesting given your love for science :)
vs ramachandran: the neurons that shaped civilization
jill bolte taylor: how it feels to have a stroke