Legibilus

  Reading Jin’s previous post on suicide, I was reminded of a novel that had prompted me to think more about suicide and its meaning. Why do some people deliberately choose suicide? What does suicide bring to one committing it? Ghassan Kanafani’s seminal novel Men in the Sun shows a glimpse to the answers of such questions.  In the novel, three Palestinian refugees, Abu Qais, Assad and Marwan, attempt to escape extreme poverty in refugee camps by illegally entering Kuwait on Abul Khaizuran’s lorry. Abul Khaizuran is a lorry driver for a rich man in Kuwait and is willing to illegally transport the men in his truck to Kuwait at a reasonable price. So the men climb into the water tank on the lorry and try to cross the vast desert, burning under the Middle Eastern sun. They are desperate enough to do this as they and their families are on the verge of starvation and homelessness. This bleak reality motivates them to embark on the journey to secretly enter Kuwait to earn money....

  In his seminal work The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin illustrates his revolutionary theory of evolution about the “survival of the fittest.” Darwin argues that the species existing today evolved from a common ancestor and through a long series of natural competition, only the traits favorable for survival survived. Now this theory solidified almost as a fact to explain the history of evolution.  As I was revisiting this concept in a course, however, I learned that there is another side to Darwin’s theory. As the theory of competition and natural selection became more and more accepted, there appeared a group of social scientists creating a new concept under the name of Social Darwinism. In essence, Social Darwinist employed Darwin’s theory of evolution to provide an explanation to political, social and economic phenomena which were often unjust. I would like to introduce two of such examples and discuss the implications of this.  The most commonly cited incident of ...

Before societies came into existence, human beings were once living in the state of nature. Homo homini lupus-- A men is a wolf to another man -- was the way how our ancestors lived a brutal, solitary, and barbaric life without any promised social order. However, since the creation of civil society,  human beings created a new concept called 'crime' and began to label some conducts with such name. So, what kinds of behaviors are labelled as crime? Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines crime as "an illegal act for which someone can be punished by the government". Britannica states that crime is "the intentional commission of an act usually deemed socially harmful or dangerous and specifically defined, prohibited, and punishable under criminal law". Well, although we all know these official definitions carved and sorted by linguists are absolutely accurate, allow me to present a more 'colloquial' version: crime refers to any conduct that harms other natu...

     If you have to choose one animal that resembles you the most, what would you choose? To answer this question, I will not spend more than one second because I am a stereotypical night owl. I love the smell of the break of the day; I adore the moment when everyone is sleeping and I am the only one who is wide-awake; I enjoy the feeling of my brain busily working in the middle of the night; I just feel more efficient, vigorous, and flourishing when I stay up until late night. So, as you can see, I am for sure a night owl.      However, being a night owl is often extremely arduous for many reasons. First, the world views you as lazy-and-incompetent-to-wake-up-early type of person. As if the world was created solely by morning larks, night owls of our time are often treated as sluggish beings who do not know how to use their time efficiently. Second, even though you do not care of your reputation, the entire society and its systems are crafted for morning l...