One Sinister Enemy of Learning: Fear

Cost/managerial accounting is a major business course which all students of management go through. It is taught by one of most established and expert teacher/scholar in Pakistan. It has reputation of being unaccessible to simple-minded people who lack intellectual rigor. I was afraid of it, thanks to word-of-mouth of seniors. But that's just an external excuse. It was my internal mistake (a cause) that made me nervous about it, as i had to think hard about this course. I enjoyed being in class and solving cases and problem as instructor was there, who was also very accessible to us and went to great length to answer our questions, no matter how stupid. Nonetheless, when it came to self-study, i often had problems breathing well. especially when i attempted to understand its intricate theory and frameworks and tried to apply it complex cases (which is very typical of case method). Data used to be huge and thinking/intellect had to deployed in platoons to tackle any topic in that course. That's why it was fearsome

However, final papers turned to be good due to organized dedicated, directed and group work: this gives us an insight into how to succeed in exams on last day - with a disciplined friend, we systematically chased each chapter and won over it being very consistent over a span of 12-14 hours.

To say the least, this is one of most valuable courses (especially its book) i've have took in business. For instance, one recent grad of my school of management working, although as non-accounting operations management told me how useful this book on managerial accounting had been on the production floor - each day he had to refer to it, literally.

It all came back the memory of it as flash back when i was browsing through SSRN.com and found a paper on Activity-Based Cost accounting, which is a hot field in managerial accounting these days. We studied it as well. . I quote the excerpt of the abstract to illustrate my point about uselessness of fear when it comes to learning:

[Excerpt] It is essential to understand that ABC is a method that tries to frame data in a managerial decision making context. Models, figures and theories only have value to the extent that they help us to understand and explain what happens in the company. ABC is an allocation method cum story: it is an arbitrary way to allocate costs - as arbitrary as any other allocation method - but it helps in communicating how the (production) process works and, therefore, tries to upgrade the value of accounting in the decision making process. If, e.g., a good driver is found and if there is statistical evidence that supports the choice of and/or work-floor feeling on such a driver, using this cost driver in the calculations of product (line) profitability makes the accounting much more vivid and important to decision making.

Mr. Van Schenkel, founder and owner of small company producing colour printed T-shirts, has some ideas on why multi-coloured T-shirts are more expensive in production than T-shirts with fewer colours printed on them. Process mapping and accounting data are available to set up an ABC system that will allow to test the validity of Mr. Van Schenkel's ideas and to come to better accounting calculations of product profitability.

You can see how the author is applying theory and making it practical. This is a simple demonstration of higher level of learning: experimentation, application = usefulness. Had been more fearless of the burden of reputation of the course and its demanding nature, i'd have turned out to be a better citizen. And i happy i have learned this insight.

See the example and you'll get just how useful the concepts of managerial accounting is for entrepreneurship, SME's and all kinds of organization. It should be all research (read: play) with all seriousness - I'm not denying pain at all, which is part and parcel of (higher) learning. nothing can help a too fearful and shy a learner in the path of getting useful knowledge. To say the least, one has to be fearless in outlook when s/he approaches knowledge. And habit of tinkering with stuff be encouraged. It's an engineer's attitude, that's why we trust them.

What are your comments?

Chemistry Quiz, Kafka's Diaries & the Need for Islamic Worldview

Even in this blooming mosam (weather) my Chemistry quiz has gone sour... Part of the blame goes to my brain cells usurped while understanding mysterious, highly subjective, 'psychotic' and at times shameless diaries of someone known as Kafka, full of despair, dissolution, hopelessness, blame games, arrogance, but also full of deep reflection, inner investigation and mystery.

After learning the lessons from the 'chemical' battle, I was not satiated, and hence opened up a dictionary on Post-Colonial studies terms.

We should not accept any world-view, whether it is plain medicine or any other physical sciences, let alone humanities, without investigating its world-view. Things are tied with the method of 'discourse' and world-views. This book on colonial studies taught me a revealation which we seldom invoke. The Western medicine is incompitable with Chinese medicine, it said, because in discourse of Western medicine the 'positivistic' view of the body rules. We can also add that modern science is cut off from notions of sacred and Divine (see Seyyed hossein Nasr's Need for a Sacred Science). Hence, it can't accept any part of Chinese medicine until the latter fully is streamlined with the former*.

The book also taught me the (often inseparable) relation between knowledge and power. Those who have brutal power today define which world-view operates in the world, and which view be rejected. Only the offical world-view is the 'truth'; rest are garbage. A person coming from alien system, needless to say, today don't really bother to check and weigh the assertive claims of Western world-views, the dominant power in today's world-view, or whether its claim to 'objective truth' is justified. Such is the dilemma of many, many Muslims today who study science, economics, language, literautre, and other sciences in West and do a very poor diagnosis and propose really irrelevant, and often wrong medicines to their native lands, producing catastrophic results. This at least has been the case in economic policies implemented in Pakistan borrowed from West (read, The War Against the Poor for evidence).
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* This is what Nasr has been saying for decades that modern science has its own world-view which is anti-thetical to Islamic world-view. Hence, we cannot accpet its assertive claims and absorb its world-view into our system, else we lose potentiality of our system.

Call of a genuine social scientist homo islamicus

" I cannot live like a social scientist who compartmentalizes his mind and refuses to study life directly. I cannot mis-treat supra-rational, or super-natural experiences i encounter in my life, and by ignoring them dispose them in favor of this compartmentalization of knowledge. i refuse to follow the current fashions of mind which commit such intellectual sins. i rebel against it." (Highly prosaic, phrases not accurate... me "nalaiq")

- my beloved professor...

'Social sotck of knowledge'

("Knowledge," by Richard Henson)

“…theoretical knowledge is only a small and by no means the most important part of what passed for knowledge in a society… the primary knowledge about the institutional order is knowledge… is the sum total of ‘what everybody knows’ about a social world, an assemblage of maxims, morals, proverbial nuggets of wisdom, values and beliefs, myths, and so forth”

- The Social Construction of Reality, (p.65)
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann.

Definition of 'Adab'

"Adab (a creative literary word/work) is that which connects the 'seen' to the Unseen/Real (Haqq), (or, in simple terms, to Allah Ta'ala, who is One, the Real, the Absolute)."

- Ahmed Javaid, Principal Iqbal Scholar, Iqbal Academy. From his lecture on "Religion and Culture."

Therefore, any literary word that fails to connect us to the Truth fails to be a literary word at all, he added. Since when I heard these words, I have developed an awe for the kind of work an 'adeeb' (one who does 'adab') perfoms, and it has become a desire to be a man of that rank. But it seems impossible to be so without actualizing the message of this art in one's own self at first, because the term 'adab' has another meaning as well, and on the whole, there is no such word in modern English that can match this word which is at once used for a literary piece of work and ettiqutes, manners, etc. Nonetheless, both meanings start and end with the Truth, both are destined for it. Therefore, how can one be ignored in the favor of the other?

May Allah give me the power to preceive the truth as it is, and help me to utilize it so that I become His useful servant. (Ameen)

The Overthrowing

Quran declares:

And when the infant girl, buried alive, is asked;
For what crime she was slain

Surah At-Takwir, Ayah # 8-9

I have been mesmerized by the recitation of this particular Surah, whose two verses have been just quoted, by this little boy (see the following video), and by its meaning - with little imagination you're forced to tremble before your Lord who alone is worthy to be worshiped.


Read translation and tafsir (explanation) here.

Shari'ah & Tariqah: Two Indispensible Aspects of Islam

S. H. Nasr explains this "geometric" explanation of the relationship between two most important dimensions of Islam, i.e. shari'ah (law) and tariq'ah (path or way) in his Ideals and Realities of Islam:

"Some of the traditional Sufi master, especially those of the Shadhiliyah order, have used the geometric symbol of a circle to depict the relation between these [i.e. shari'ah and tariqah] fundamental dimensions of Islam. From any point in space there can be generated a circle and an indefinite number of radii which connect every point of the circumference of the circle of the Centre. The circumference is the Shari'ah whose totality comprises the whole of the Muslim community. Every Muslim by virtue of accepting the Divine Law is as a point standing on this circle. The radii symbolize the Turuq (plural of Tariqah). Each radius is a path from the circumference to the Centre. As the Sufis say there are as many paths to God as there are children of Adam. The Tariqah, which exists in many different forms corresponding to different spiritual temperaments and needs of men, is the radius which connects each point to the Centre. It is only by virtue of standing on the circumference, that is, accepting the Shari'ah, that man can discover before him a radius that leads to the centre. Only in following the Shari'ah does the possibility of having the door of the spiritual life open become realized."

Now some words on the reality of Centre, or Haqiqah, and for some the need of walking on Tariqah despite being 'saved' by being on the periphery:

"Finally at the Centre there is the Haqiqah or truth which is the source of both the Tariqah and the Shari'ah. Just as geometrically the point generates both the radii and the circumference, so does metaphysically the Haqiqah create both the Tariqah and the Sahri'ah, that Haqiqah or Centre which is 'everywhere and nowhere'. The Law and the Way have both been brought into being independently by God who is the Truth. And both reflect the Centre in different ways. To participate in the Sahri'ah is to live in the reflection of the Centre or Unity, for the circumference is the reflection of the centre. It is thus the necessary and sufficient cause for living a whole life and being 'saved'. But there are always those whose inner constitution is such that they cannot only live in the reflection of the centre but must seek to reach It. Their Islam is to walk upon the Path towards the Centre. For them the Tariqah is providentially the means whereby they can attain that final End or Goal, that Haqiqah which is the Origin of all things..."

Much, much more can be quoted and reiterated about the subject matter, as this is only just a little preparation and 'clearing' required to delve deep into this subject which is to practised above all anything than to just talk about, for it is in the execution of this knowledge that our truest benefit lies.

* Artwork by yours truly

Sat-Chit-Ānanda

"The Hindu expression Sat-Chit-Ānanda is one of the Names of God." But there can be as many translations (or forms) of this expression as are multiplicities of one unity in this world, visible. Different translations may not be called as non-linear as we can better assign this quality to the 'levels or hierarchy of reality' for giving one expression so many forms. Following are some of them I read in the footnotes of the book Knowledge and Sacred:

*Sat-Chit-Ānanda usually translated as “Being-Consciousness-Bliss.”

* Most “essential” and metaphysical translation - “Object-Subject-Union.”

* At the highest level this ternary (three-fold) may also be expressed as “Known-Knower-Knowledge” or “Beloved-Lover-Love.”

* Operative or spiritual meaning related to invocatory prayer, such as the Prayer of Jesus (Christianity), japa (Hinduism), and dhikr (Islam). Here it takes the form of “Invoked-Invoker-Invocation” (in Islamic terms madhkūr-dhākir-dhikr).

"Allah, Allah! That's Allah!"

Here is Elizabeth Gilbert (her personal website) talking on the creative process, in a world conference brought by TED.

If you're having a problem with the view, click here.

thought of the day - little learning, more power

Nukta (A dot). Source

"Acquire knowledge. It enables its possessor to distinguish right from wrong; it lights the way to heaven; it is our friend in the desert, our society in solitude, our companion when friendless; it guides us to happiness; it sustains us in misery; it is an ornament among friends, and armor against enemies."

These are the words of "the illiterate camel driver". I know of no better practical philosophy of learning than this prompting to action aphorism by the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad. This is exactly 'turning a little learning into a powerful thing'.

thought of the day

'Taoist Yin-Yang'

Sometimes, we behave in the way black colour does: Being silent. Deep. Invincible. Dark. Cold. Lost. Dreadful. Quiet. But these are partial aspects of life. Try to complete them, or in other words, be a knower of parts and wholse. Taoist Yin-Yang is very profound in this regard. It symbolises wholness and unity of multiplicity. I like to think of it as something "intellectual" which guides me, and creates balance and harmony in my life.

Function of Intellect

'Shankar says, "The only function of aqal (intellect) is to interpret sacred scriptures."' He told me.

Parts & Wholes

He will bring another world into existence
A hundred words like this world of parts and wholes
Spring up, like roses, from the seed of his imagination.
He makes every raw nature ripe,
He puts the idols out of the sanctuary.

-Secrets of Self, M. Iqbal, The Poet.

Hypothesis:

A part is not equal to its whole, of which it is a part. And that scientifically and evidently, it is proven to be so, with or without going into the interior of substances which, as 'parts', form up a 'whole'.

Method/Evidences/Examples:

Construction of a whole and its deconstruction
 
Let's take a building and the 'thing(s)' that building is composed of, i.e., 'brick(s)'. We take those bricks and make a building out of them. What we are doing is making a whole out of those parts.

Suppose that now we deconstruct the building and lay its individual units (i.e., bricks) on the ground. My question to you is: Are those bricks individually equal to that building as a whole? Evidently not!

And metaphysically, the same concept has been used to explain the individuality of Self by poet-philosopher Iqbal. He uses the analogy of water drop and sea. He says that our Self is like a drop of water which is a part of a sea of other drops. Although the 'drop' apparently annihilates its individuality by uniting with other drops and thereby forming a sea, it never, however, loses its individuality by merely uniting with infinity or a large finite sea!

Thus a final chemical 'composition' (as a whole), made up of some substances, is of different nature than the individual elements (or substances) which it is composed of. In chemistry you may have come to study reactions and reversible reactions. In a simple chemical reaction, more than two substances (or even one provided some other medium or condition is fulfilled) react and give a product utterly different in chemical nature from the initial substances. On the other hand, in a reversible chemical reaction the formed product goes into a reversal with the aid of some conditions or reactors, and gives us back its original components (or parts). All chemical properties which we know of the parts and whole are always hugely different from each other. Both, the parts and wholes, exhibit different behaviors, are of non-similar nature and so on and so forth.

Conclusion:

The unity of parts may be a necessary thing, but it is never prone to dissolve the individuality of the self, or part, into nothingness.

(Do you agree with my thoughts? If and if not, then why?)

Immediate Knowledge & Sense Experiences

Umer: What about knowledge of heart?

Master Khuram: Immediate knowledge of new, complicated concepts, poetic verses, or even new musical tunes is possible in all these ways (visualisation, speculation, etc) as well as through riazat, deep meditation, imagination or even in dreams. But in no way mind reaches to any reality which is totally independent of previous sense experiences. Mind realizes new concepts but any new concept has to be just a new arrangement of already known things. Suppose you conceive a new concept of "artificial consciousness ". May be it is a whole new concept but after all it is just a new arrangement of already known entities, i.e., 'artificial' and 'consciousness'.

(Do you agree with him? A question for you is: If we fail to understand an 'idea' or a 'thing' when we have no past 'knowledge' of it, or if 'in no way can we reach to any reality which is totally independent of previous sense-experiences,' then what do we already know of?)

Mid-day Break Reflections: Contemplation & Action

Time: Afternoon break between classes at university.

Action, the art of doing, is the sole capital for contemplations such that both are functions of each other. That is to say: contemplation without action is death; and action without contemplation is self-defeating. It is like paddle-wheel combination. When wheel moves, paddle moves and when paddle rotates the wheel rotates. None of them can act in isolation without affecting the other. The logical lesson for man in this analogy is ceaseless action coupled with eternal contemplation for refinement of the former and expansion of later.

Personalities & Intellectuals

1. No personality is identical to another, not necessarily in terms of rank or social order. History doesn't seem to be producing leaders that match in characteristics, style and personality traits. It is so mainly because of different life-stories every person has. We do not find a leadership model that can encompass all sorts of life-stories. There may be similarities in thought patterns or common values shared by a large number of such leaders. Yet there is no prototype, in this sense, one can follow and imitate and by the bliss of imitating whom, he can easily become like 'him'. At least not a purely earthly man can be such a prototype.

2. But on the other hand, the matter with intellectuals and scholars, broadly classified under the same Arabic term 'alim, is evidently different. We find no 'alim in the past ever greater than the one in the future. To me it is the nature that passes the baton of supremacy to every new alim according to it's will for the sake of goodness of general humanity. This again proves that we cannot have absolute education. If it were opposite to what is now, it would have been a situation which no man of impulses and curiosities could willingly accept. 

But 'What a piece of work is man!' (Shakespeare, Hamlet)