yavuz tanyeli is my oldest friend, almost from the times we could not hold our peepee. we grew up together. in my book, "growing up" reads as collecting experiments, so when and if the time and opportunity arrive, one can dive into any experience one wills. we played together, we fought together, we formed opinions together -not necessarily the same opinions, of course-, we chased girls together, we stole my father's car and went joyriding together... we even harassed homosexuals together, during the insecure years of our early teens, and almost as divine reprise for our bigotry, we got mauled by fascists together at the end of our teen ages.
when we were kids, we used to go into greengroceries and while i stalled the shopkeeper, yavuz, using the tip of his house keys, would carve the faces of political personalities on water melons. when we left, you'd see about a hundred green suleyman demirels (who was then just warming up as would-be prime minister) and ismet inönüs (atatürk's comrade-at-arms, the co-founder and second president of the republic who, during the heyday of nazism, declared himself the national chief and who at those times, was serving his final months in any public office as pm - he died as an "ordinary" member of parliament) with green smiles.
i finished the ankara college a couple years earlier than yavuz. i went on to the mekteb-i mülkiye (faculty of political sciences) to study international relations and politics, yavuz finally made it to the sanayi-i nefise mektebi (the istanbul academy of fine arts). i became a journalist (wow, this must be the confession hour) and yavuz started off as an illustrator at the bab-ı ali (the sublime porte, actually, the slope that led to the sublime porte on which during the terminal period of the empire, the sadrazam's office, or the prime ministry was located - naturally the power hooked turkish press/media flourished on that road).
in those years, you were lucky to get back home alive, provided you could reach your place of business in the morning. an average of six people were being murdered daily on what passed as a patriotic war between the nationalists (who aped the nazis) and the revolutionaries (who aped them, pretending they were aping che or lenin' s russians). after escaping three lynching attempts, i decided i'd better switch to the academe where at least i had the chance to know why if anybody would kill me. i was beginning to affect (extra) personality deficiencies because people wanted to kill me not because of who i was, not even because of what i had done but just because i happened to be working in an institution that displeased them - regardless of the inherent silliness of that instituiton!
yavuz launched on his career as a professional painter and sculptor, initially spilling on canvas the plight and struggle of the working man, moving slightly toward abstract concepts and designs (which, incidentally, i hate) but eventually finding himself a course, one meandering through forms and colors which he learnt to combine in a unique manner. yavuz's maternal uncle, the late orhan peker, was a famous painter, too, and he was not only an influence but also a teacher to him. i am definitely not an expert, but yavuz's artistic maturation was the mathematical function of a process during which his political(*) weltanschauung crystallized and through the consolidation of ideas, his color sense that peker taught him to perfect developed into a typical methodology of defining form. yavuz developed a unique style to himself that, if there had been enough talent around to understand what he was doing and saying, could have developed into a school which, for once, would have originated in turkey or the orient.
now i can say what i intended to say from the beginning: yavuz tanyeli is the only modern painter in turkey who is of universal value and deserves to be called an artist.
p.s.: yavuz has a web site where he displays his work but his pictures require viewing to appreciate at all. still, a glance is a glance: www.yavuztanyeli.com
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(*) not in the general usage of the word but in its original sense derivimng from the word "polis", i.e., pertaining to the modern, social animal.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Friday, February 16, 2007
tame tot of tint
this is a post i started and abandoned weeks ago during artistanbul 2006, istanbul's yearly art "fair" organized by the metropolitan municipality, art gallery owners association and the dream design factory.
oh, how i hate this twisting and wringing of letters into fartsy fantasy nonexistent abracadabra words! playing installation with langauge, making words, the cornerstones of meaning into scrap junkets of that crap-artsy postmodernist handicraft-ism! just like crashing a semi truck head on with a ferrari and obtaining a vehicle that can supposedly haul things at 1000 mph if only it can move to go anywhere!
while language in the form of words devolves or degenerates into communication by sights, motions and raw sounds, similar to what it was 80 million years ago, such diarrheac verbal creativity is becoming more and more faddish. and what to call this fad? it is not hybridization, it is not even bastardization. it certainly is an abomination and can be called awkwardization, though hardly insulting enough to emphasize the inherent abhorrence.
hear that now: art fair? the word "fair" evokes a crowded marketplace with lots of fun going about - the bearded lady, sword swallowers, fire eaters, pickpockets, midgets and happy harlots where craftsmen display their handy skills and spawn. it calls to mind times when art existed not, or rather when it was not differentiated from the crafts. that is a greek tradition where the shoemaker and the sculptor were both dealing with techne, i.e., art - that is, when the shoemaker worked to produce all answers neatly packed and gift wrapped in his product wrought with the mastery that marked his life. art that did not end with a question mark!
for that, in the end, is what art does: ask questions.
touring artistanbul, i was dispirited and bored from observing works that acquiesced so obviously. no questions hung on the walls, to pull you awake, throw all your lights on, incitre you to probe your mind, squirm with the desire to know and the frustration of not knowing whether what you surmised is the right question to the answer you've already discarded! all the gentle and genteel colored canvas on the walls inspired was shushed reverie, deferent and thankful to exist; silent to the complacency of that existence. yet, that is the last thing art should convey - supplicant existence; that is the last thing colors should paint, hypnosis into gratitude.
tots of tame tint, celebrating what is with no revolt, no rebellion, no surge of uprising and no question to start the avalanche. almost as mangled as newfangled word-ishes like artistanbul...
wonder what it would be called is somebody passed the wind while walking those corridors of colored compliance.
oh, how i hate this twisting and wringing of letters into fartsy fantasy nonexistent abracadabra words! playing installation with langauge, making words, the cornerstones of meaning into scrap junkets of that crap-artsy postmodernist handicraft-ism! just like crashing a semi truck head on with a ferrari and obtaining a vehicle that can supposedly haul things at 1000 mph if only it can move to go anywhere!
while language in the form of words devolves or degenerates into communication by sights, motions and raw sounds, similar to what it was 80 million years ago, such diarrheac verbal creativity is becoming more and more faddish. and what to call this fad? it is not hybridization, it is not even bastardization. it certainly is an abomination and can be called awkwardization, though hardly insulting enough to emphasize the inherent abhorrence.
hear that now: art fair? the word "fair" evokes a crowded marketplace with lots of fun going about - the bearded lady, sword swallowers, fire eaters, pickpockets, midgets and happy harlots where craftsmen display their handy skills and spawn. it calls to mind times when art existed not, or rather when it was not differentiated from the crafts. that is a greek tradition where the shoemaker and the sculptor were both dealing with techne, i.e., art - that is, when the shoemaker worked to produce all answers neatly packed and gift wrapped in his product wrought with the mastery that marked his life. art that did not end with a question mark!
for that, in the end, is what art does: ask questions.
touring artistanbul, i was dispirited and bored from observing works that acquiesced so obviously. no questions hung on the walls, to pull you awake, throw all your lights on, incitre you to probe your mind, squirm with the desire to know and the frustration of not knowing whether what you surmised is the right question to the answer you've already discarded! all the gentle and genteel colored canvas on the walls inspired was shushed reverie, deferent and thankful to exist; silent to the complacency of that existence. yet, that is the last thing art should convey - supplicant existence; that is the last thing colors should paint, hypnosis into gratitude.
tots of tame tint, celebrating what is with no revolt, no rebellion, no surge of uprising and no question to start the avalanche. almost as mangled as newfangled word-ishes like artistanbul...
wonder what it would be called is somebody passed the wind while walking those corridors of colored compliance.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
people sketches
while in bodrum, i had to do a lot of manual and menial work in order to ready sarpa for the sea again. a few t-shirts and a totally machine oil spotted jean are now totally discarded, assigned for dirty stuff alone.
manual labor is like therapy at times. it is good to see what you are doing and coming up with, if you are wrong, to correct your mistakes and literally see how you can solve problems. i did all that in a particular mechanical workshop belonging to a particular mechanical genius called niyazi usta (maestro niyazi). bantering and joking with him i realized what an important person he is. how, doing what he must only, he can influence the lives of those around him. then i decided to devote at least some of the posts here to those people who are unknown landmarks in time. i will start with niyazi usta, but have to ask you for patience, these days are a bit hectic at school what with the registrations, haggling with the students over courses and grades, the international organizations and what not.
niyazi usta's workshop is in the organize sanayi sitesi of course. in addition to its total and perennial chaotic organization, the site is located right on top of what is believed to be the hippodromos of ancient halicarnassos. the site was built in 1986 during the heyday of özalism when anything that made money was legitimate even at the expense of law or culture or history and especially fine taste. at the time, the valid laws said you could not develop any area that is possibly an archaelogical site. to determine whether the organize sanayi sitesi was going to be erected on top of historical remains, a team of danish archaelogists were commissioned. the danes concluded after months of initial surveying that some deep research was necessary to assess what was under the earth - they were not certain it was the hippodrome, but something was there. they had to dig for three years before they could tell what it was.
that verdict practically pulled the noose tight on the site's neck. now, a site is usually built by a cooperative, usually pioneered bu local notables and again usually, it serves to provide some sort of unusual benefits for the members of the cooperative, still usually at taxpayers' expense. during özal's reign any obstacle before business was simply intolerable, especially when such local and constituent-pleasing deals were concerned. a solution had to be found!!!
so what was the solution?
simple, of course... a band of turkish archaelogists were summoned. they decreed after three days of shoveling earth that the area was clear, not a historical site and very suitable for the organize site. see how organized an organize sanayi sitesi is built in turkey?
what did the danes say? "oh it's alright," said the chief digger. "if we had begun excavating the ruins would probably end up half exposed due to lack of funds. exposure ruins archaelogical artefacts. this way, they remain buried to be taken out some day with proper planning and funds".
manual labor is like therapy at times. it is good to see what you are doing and coming up with, if you are wrong, to correct your mistakes and literally see how you can solve problems. i did all that in a particular mechanical workshop belonging to a particular mechanical genius called niyazi usta (maestro niyazi). bantering and joking with him i realized what an important person he is. how, doing what he must only, he can influence the lives of those around him. then i decided to devote at least some of the posts here to those people who are unknown landmarks in time. i will start with niyazi usta, but have to ask you for patience, these days are a bit hectic at school what with the registrations, haggling with the students over courses and grades, the international organizations and what not.
niyazi usta's workshop is in the organize sanayi sitesi of course. in addition to its total and perennial chaotic organization, the site is located right on top of what is believed to be the hippodromos of ancient halicarnassos. the site was built in 1986 during the heyday of özalism when anything that made money was legitimate even at the expense of law or culture or history and especially fine taste. at the time, the valid laws said you could not develop any area that is possibly an archaelogical site. to determine whether the organize sanayi sitesi was going to be erected on top of historical remains, a team of danish archaelogists were commissioned. the danes concluded after months of initial surveying that some deep research was necessary to assess what was under the earth - they were not certain it was the hippodrome, but something was there. they had to dig for three years before they could tell what it was.
that verdict practically pulled the noose tight on the site's neck. now, a site is usually built by a cooperative, usually pioneered bu local notables and again usually, it serves to provide some sort of unusual benefits for the members of the cooperative, still usually at taxpayers' expense. during özal's reign any obstacle before business was simply intolerable, especially when such local and constituent-pleasing deals were concerned. a solution had to be found!!!
so what was the solution?
simple, of course... a band of turkish archaelogists were summoned. they decreed after three days of shoveling earth that the area was clear, not a historical site and very suitable for the organize site. see how organized an organize sanayi sitesi is built in turkey?
what did the danes say? "oh it's alright," said the chief digger. "if we had begun excavating the ruins would probably end up half exposed due to lack of funds. exposure ruins archaelogical artefacts. this way, they remain buried to be taken out some day with proper planning and funds".
Monday, February 12, 2007
imsam-empiricum
alas, i have been unfaithful for such a long while, oh my swarm of readers, depriving you of the chance to wallow in my wisdom! should i be flogged for that? normally yes, but i have some good news to ransom my way out of that!
i hereby have the pleasure of notifying you that a new scientific - academic entity is officially born, whose focus is the eastern mediterranean, which historically extends to the mesopotamia area. actually, the new institution is a revival of the former institute of middle east studies (imsam) that also was known as “al mamun”. the new one is called imsam - empiricum.
the opening of empiricum, i think, also describes the purpose of the institute, as well as its founders, professor john karkazis of the aegean university of hellas (my preferred name for greece), professor yosi vanunu of the hebrew university of israel and yours truly from the istanbul bilgi university of turkey, who has the honor of being elected president of imsam - empiricum: eastern mediterranean panepistemic institute for research, innovation, cooperation, understanding and mediation.
as the name suggests, we hope that knowledge and science, all sciences (panepisteme) technical and social can be not only an instrument but also a goal in itself to bring about the desired values listed in the name, which in themselves are nothing but a basic path paved toward a life of well being and prosperity for the denizens of the region.
for capital, we have little more than our science, and to an extent, maybe the support of the academic establishments we belong to. and despite the lazy spell i am cruising through since the new year, imsam - empiricum is preparing to launch itself with a conference in bodrum (where else?) hopefully this fall or next spring. details will follow, not only here but in all appropriate media to announce conferences and calls for papers. the topic, i believe, can be a (re)definition of what problems are (rather than what are problems) in the eastern med - mesopotamia region.
but that is for all of us to decide, not me alone.
i hereby have the pleasure of notifying you that a new scientific - academic entity is officially born, whose focus is the eastern mediterranean, which historically extends to the mesopotamia area. actually, the new institution is a revival of the former institute of middle east studies (imsam) that also was known as “al mamun”. the new one is called imsam - empiricum.
the opening of empiricum, i think, also describes the purpose of the institute, as well as its founders, professor john karkazis of the aegean university of hellas (my preferred name for greece), professor yosi vanunu of the hebrew university of israel and yours truly from the istanbul bilgi university of turkey, who has the honor of being elected president of imsam - empiricum: eastern mediterranean panepistemic institute for research, innovation, cooperation, understanding and mediation.
as the name suggests, we hope that knowledge and science, all sciences (panepisteme) technical and social can be not only an instrument but also a goal in itself to bring about the desired values listed in the name, which in themselves are nothing but a basic path paved toward a life of well being and prosperity for the denizens of the region.
for capital, we have little more than our science, and to an extent, maybe the support of the academic establishments we belong to. and despite the lazy spell i am cruising through since the new year, imsam - empiricum is preparing to launch itself with a conference in bodrum (where else?) hopefully this fall or next spring. details will follow, not only here but in all appropriate media to announce conferences and calls for papers. the topic, i believe, can be a (re)definition of what problems are (rather than what are problems) in the eastern med - mesopotamia region.
but that is for all of us to decide, not me alone.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
æsthesia is infrastructure
why?
because æsthesia (*), as the infrastructure of life is the measure of advanced evolution in individuals and marks the level of the collective capacity to cogitate, of cognition in social beings.
unfortunately, the rules of evolution apply. it is not the survival of the best, it is the survival of the fittest. the best rarely thrive in infrastructural conditions that favor the fit.
(yes, there will be more coming on this)
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(*) gr. sense perception
because æsthesia (*), as the infrastructure of life is the measure of advanced evolution in individuals and marks the level of the collective capacity to cogitate, of cognition in social beings.
unfortunately, the rules of evolution apply. it is not the survival of the best, it is the survival of the fittest. the best rarely thrive in infrastructural conditions that favor the fit.
(yes, there will be more coming on this)
------
(*) gr. sense perception
to pooh pooh indoors
i have made it a habit to sit with my back to any city or town i happen to be visiting in turkey. well, of course exceptions occur. back street coffee shops in ayvalık for instance still bring whiffs of ottoman life when together with lesbos and izmir, the town used to be the hub of inndustrial trade in the aegean. in istanbul, i like to watch the historic constantinopolis or kostantiniyya, the palace and the mosques, never failing to admire the majesty of hagia sophia. in ankara, only at night, when the concrete eyesore ghost town is smothered by lights, do i look out the window. here, in bodrum i turn southward always, toward the sea and the hills, also taking the famous castle into the margins of my sight.
the rest is ugly behind the most evil imagination. indeed, as i commented recently, anything touched by human hands looks incredibly hideous. there is no architecture to speak of , an array of distinct and identifying styles of building, that marks the space interpretation of a culture, because there exists no culture to speak of. instead, the towns are replete with the ravings of various so called architects that horrendously mismatch each other, resulting in an æsthetic disaster that is the visual equivalent of cacophony and also exhausting to the senses.
turkey is the victim of terrible bad taste. and there is no foreign power, no capitalist-imperialist conspiracy or non-secular islamist threat to blame this one on. it is plain, unmitigated, epidemic lack of taste. turks love the ugly!
why else would anyone complement 100 year old specimens of popular masonry with rectangular blocks of cinderblock, whitewash them and turn a historical stone house into something a cow would turn its nose at if it were used as her shed?
we turned bodrum into pooh pooh only because bodrumers wanted to pooh pooh under their roofs! the only way they could conceive, with the aid of raving architects, of moving outhouses indoors was to completely tear down centuries-old architecture and chop the trees.
istanbul's demise is not worth a comment. there will always be hordes of barbarians, some of whom these days carry shiny diplomas from prestigious american universities. that is why a 3000 year old city is beginning to look like a desert village in the u.s.
why?
the rest is ugly behind the most evil imagination. indeed, as i commented recently, anything touched by human hands looks incredibly hideous. there is no architecture to speak of , an array of distinct and identifying styles of building, that marks the space interpretation of a culture, because there exists no culture to speak of. instead, the towns are replete with the ravings of various so called architects that horrendously mismatch each other, resulting in an æsthetic disaster that is the visual equivalent of cacophony and also exhausting to the senses.
turkey is the victim of terrible bad taste. and there is no foreign power, no capitalist-imperialist conspiracy or non-secular islamist threat to blame this one on. it is plain, unmitigated, epidemic lack of taste. turks love the ugly!
why else would anyone complement 100 year old specimens of popular masonry with rectangular blocks of cinderblock, whitewash them and turn a historical stone house into something a cow would turn its nose at if it were used as her shed?
we turned bodrum into pooh pooh only because bodrumers wanted to pooh pooh under their roofs! the only way they could conceive, with the aid of raving architects, of moving outhouses indoors was to completely tear down centuries-old architecture and chop the trees.
istanbul's demise is not worth a comment. there will always be hordes of barbarians, some of whom these days carry shiny diplomas from prestigious american universities. that is why a 3000 year old city is beginning to look like a desert village in the u.s.
why?
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
organize sanayi
today, a paper reported 1000 eucalyptus trees were cut down in iskenderun to make room for an "organize sanayi bölgesi or an organized industrial zone".
now that term, in itself is a key to its own impossibility. it assumes that outside such a zone, "industry" is, by definition, unorganized!
as a matter of fact, when turkey is in question, it is!
i told you before that 65 percent of the population (45 out of 70 million) live in an area that covers about only seven percent of turkey. this triangle is the most developed, urbanized, industrialized etc. region in the country. since, in normal terms, industry implies production for the market and is therefore a rational enterprise, one expects this to be also a highly organized region. all right then, let us run a cursory analysis:
* the auto industry is centered in and around bursa, together with metal industries, textyles, food and so on. bursa used to be one of turkey's primary, intensive, high yield agriculture zones. now the fertile fields are spattered by thousands of "factories" the best of which supply the big auto manufacturers. there is no railroad access to bursa. therefore, instead of shipping thousand or more cars in a single party by train whether for export or home consummption, the hundreds of cars produced are loaded on trucks by dozens at most, and begin cluttering the already congested highways even before they start to roll.
air in bursa is barely breathable. there has been no study conducted yet but it is safe to assume that pollution from the industry has contaminated the agrarian yield as well. most rivers that cross the area are, anyway.
* adapazarı is catching up with bursa. this is also a fertile agricultural zone that is already half laid to industrial waste. i realize the comparative advantage but have difficulty in understanding why it is so hard to plan a combination of the two. adapazarı was a late comer into the boom, well after the need for urban and regional planning had become obvious. but the main motive for its development was abundance of cheap space to build factories - some of which got their land from the government for free. so much for planning, planned development, organization etc. - at least the train station is nearby.
* the izmit - çorlu (thrace) line is the rhineland of turkish industrialization. although the former developed together with its own sensibility to its physical and social environment, the only reason the turkish counterpart prospered is proximity to istanbul. in the beginning, all capital concentrated in istanbul and was invested as geographically close by as possible. there was a human capital accumulation, too. technical infrastructure was the best in turkey, though nevertheless pathetic: suffice to say that in the 60's, thousands of migrants met their death on the ankara-istanbul road, opening the way for the grand anatolian exodus.
there is no need to extrapolate on the current plight of the izmit-çorlu trail. istanbul's perennial traffic mess is symptomatic enough for the lethality of the disease called disorganization.
* last, izmir... still the third largest city in the country, though badly dwindling. it lost its primacy as an alternative industrial center during özal's crusade against local capital in favor of big money in the 80's and 90's. in spite of that, izmir is a dumping ground for thousands of small scale, labor intense, possibly nonproductive, inefficient, polluting industries and a land development craze that surround the town, devour its greenery, conquer its hilltops and cut its breath off. a total lost cause. an iresuscitatable corpse of a city.
thus, even a cursory glance reveals why an ignominy like "organized industrial zone" may be a viable cocept in turkish.
by the way, for the unititated, let me remind that an organized industrial zone is, in fact, a designated area where blocks of rows of not-really-so-large shops or workshops dealing with mechanical and metallic manufacture and repairs; especially, auto repairs, so that the word "sanayi" (industry) has come to mean a conglomeration of car repair shops.
unless all readers have had the good fortune to take their vehicles to a mechanic in a sanayi, allow me to describe them as the muddiest, worst paved, hottest or coldest (depending on season), dirtiest place in whatever town they may be gracing. the traffic in a sanayi is inevitably abominable, with not just cars but also their gutted carcasses strewn along main arteries, trucks unloading heavy metals and machinery on the roads pockmarked by grave size potholes etc.
indeed, an organized industrial zone in turkey is anything, maybe even industrial, too, but alas, never organized.
now that term, in itself is a key to its own impossibility. it assumes that outside such a zone, "industry" is, by definition, unorganized!
as a matter of fact, when turkey is in question, it is!
i told you before that 65 percent of the population (45 out of 70 million) live in an area that covers about only seven percent of turkey. this triangle is the most developed, urbanized, industrialized etc. region in the country. since, in normal terms, industry implies production for the market and is therefore a rational enterprise, one expects this to be also a highly organized region. all right then, let us run a cursory analysis:
* the auto industry is centered in and around bursa, together with metal industries, textyles, food and so on. bursa used to be one of turkey's primary, intensive, high yield agriculture zones. now the fertile fields are spattered by thousands of "factories" the best of which supply the big auto manufacturers. there is no railroad access to bursa. therefore, instead of shipping thousand or more cars in a single party by train whether for export or home consummption, the hundreds of cars produced are loaded on trucks by dozens at most, and begin cluttering the already congested highways even before they start to roll.
air in bursa is barely breathable. there has been no study conducted yet but it is safe to assume that pollution from the industry has contaminated the agrarian yield as well. most rivers that cross the area are, anyway.
* adapazarı is catching up with bursa. this is also a fertile agricultural zone that is already half laid to industrial waste. i realize the comparative advantage but have difficulty in understanding why it is so hard to plan a combination of the two. adapazarı was a late comer into the boom, well after the need for urban and regional planning had become obvious. but the main motive for its development was abundance of cheap space to build factories - some of which got their land from the government for free. so much for planning, planned development, organization etc. - at least the train station is nearby.
* the izmit - çorlu (thrace) line is the rhineland of turkish industrialization. although the former developed together with its own sensibility to its physical and social environment, the only reason the turkish counterpart prospered is proximity to istanbul. in the beginning, all capital concentrated in istanbul and was invested as geographically close by as possible. there was a human capital accumulation, too. technical infrastructure was the best in turkey, though nevertheless pathetic: suffice to say that in the 60's, thousands of migrants met their death on the ankara-istanbul road, opening the way for the grand anatolian exodus.
there is no need to extrapolate on the current plight of the izmit-çorlu trail. istanbul's perennial traffic mess is symptomatic enough for the lethality of the disease called disorganization.
* last, izmir... still the third largest city in the country, though badly dwindling. it lost its primacy as an alternative industrial center during özal's crusade against local capital in favor of big money in the 80's and 90's. in spite of that, izmir is a dumping ground for thousands of small scale, labor intense, possibly nonproductive, inefficient, polluting industries and a land development craze that surround the town, devour its greenery, conquer its hilltops and cut its breath off. a total lost cause. an iresuscitatable corpse of a city.
thus, even a cursory glance reveals why an ignominy like "organized industrial zone" may be a viable cocept in turkish.
by the way, for the unititated, let me remind that an organized industrial zone is, in fact, a designated area where blocks of rows of not-really-so-large shops or workshops dealing with mechanical and metallic manufacture and repairs; especially, auto repairs, so that the word "sanayi" (industry) has come to mean a conglomeration of car repair shops.
unless all readers have had the good fortune to take their vehicles to a mechanic in a sanayi, allow me to describe them as the muddiest, worst paved, hottest or coldest (depending on season), dirtiest place in whatever town they may be gracing. the traffic in a sanayi is inevitably abominable, with not just cars but also their gutted carcasses strewn along main arteries, trucks unloading heavy metals and machinery on the roads pockmarked by grave size potholes etc.
indeed, an organized industrial zone in turkey is anything, maybe even industrial, too, but alas, never organized.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
forgive me, oh what few readers i have, for i have sinned against you. i promised posts i have not even drafted yet. i have no excuse. just did not feel like it. or rather, i felt like other things.
however, i shall still write about how i think the crowds at hrant dink's funeral were actually petitioning powers-that-are-not by their bodily presence, as they had done once more 10 years ago. i shall also write on islam's æsthetics -or truly, the lack of it- and how that reflects on social relations as "respectfulness" rather than respect for personality. i hope to write on why turkey has become one of the ugliest places on earth wherever human hands have touched. and a post of how we are already losing enis berberoğlu of hürriyet to ankara-ization.
just bear with me please, till i return to the world. after all, we're just a handful chatting amongst ourselves - almost.
however, i shall still write about how i think the crowds at hrant dink's funeral were actually petitioning powers-that-are-not by their bodily presence, as they had done once more 10 years ago. i shall also write on islam's æsthetics -or truly, the lack of it- and how that reflects on social relations as "respectfulness" rather than respect for personality. i hope to write on why turkey has become one of the ugliest places on earth wherever human hands have touched. and a post of how we are already losing enis berberoğlu of hürriyet to ankara-ization.
just bear with me please, till i return to the world. after all, we're just a handful chatting amongst ourselves - almost.
brain is worth less than testicles!
i feel like steve mcquinn in the great escape, being hauled back, bound and chained, to the camp after another attempt at freedom. instead of the magic softball he tosses around, though, i only got my proverbial pen. yes, i'm old enough to have seen the movie and admired the man; just don't forget the motorbike scenes he was in!
anyway, being back blogging is not so much of an arrest either, there is yet the ordeals of istanbul to come... i look out the window at the lights of greece and a town, a winter weary town that has bled the cream of its populace which hits highest at about 40-50 thousand plus the tourists, is brighter than kadıköy, population minimum 8 million, watched from my window in karaköy- gateway to the greatest human bordello in europe!
i've been here just over a week, doing real work in mechanics' shops, carpenters' yards and marine docks. the futilityof the mind and/or doing mental work in turkey has become as obvious as the red behind of a rhesus monkey in a cage... i have always marveled at how, in this country, even in a meyhane (turkish taverna or liqueur house, to translate), brain costs less than ram's testicles as a mezée (appetizer, hors d'ouvre)! i have read the papers here much like a visiting foreigner would and man, do i feel like the whole place is like a meyhane! the only article that made sense was urging orhan pamuk to flee the country a.s.a.p.
i concur. not because he'll be safer elsewhere but because, even while he lives, he'll be worthier as a brain than a horny, hairy, horse humping "hero" ready to shoot him; an aberration who loves his country by destroying its valences who should have remained stuck to his father's testicles.
anyway, being back blogging is not so much of an arrest either, there is yet the ordeals of istanbul to come... i look out the window at the lights of greece and a town, a winter weary town that has bled the cream of its populace which hits highest at about 40-50 thousand plus the tourists, is brighter than kadıköy, population minimum 8 million, watched from my window in karaköy- gateway to the greatest human bordello in europe!
i've been here just over a week, doing real work in mechanics' shops, carpenters' yards and marine docks. the futilityof the mind and/or doing mental work in turkey has become as obvious as the red behind of a rhesus monkey in a cage... i have always marveled at how, in this country, even in a meyhane (turkish taverna or liqueur house, to translate), brain costs less than ram's testicles as a mezée (appetizer, hors d'ouvre)! i have read the papers here much like a visiting foreigner would and man, do i feel like the whole place is like a meyhane! the only article that made sense was urging orhan pamuk to flee the country a.s.a.p.
i concur. not because he'll be safer elsewhere but because, even while he lives, he'll be worthier as a brain than a horny, hairy, horse humping "hero" ready to shoot him; an aberration who loves his country by destroying its valences who should have remained stuck to his father's testicles.
aberration... oh, i'm coming back
i am almost back. end of next week, we'll be ready for the next term.
maybe it is a way of getting old, maybe it is the start of a new search to find more meaning in life (mine of course, not life with a capital "l" which i don't use here anyway!) but i now realize the significance of all small, unimportant, trivial things. not that i used to ignore the things, but i had gotten used to taking their significance for granted. don't give your beloved the customary good nite kiss for no reason once, and you'll realize what i am talking about. nothing really changes, except the way you feel, which, at the end of the day, is everything that matters.
again, maybe it is getting old, maybe it is just a spell in the trenches lying at ambush but i feel that the fewer and the simpler one's interests are, the fuller time seems to have passed. night time fatigue makes sense, even sleep comes easier. chocolate tastes richer, wine smells more fruity, cigarette smoke is more stinging - all because the senses become alert to normallly neglected scattered details.
the irony is, as a social scientists those trivia should really constitute the essence of my work and hence my interest, because any science worth its name is less about normalcy than aberrations; even normalcy has to be defined in reference to aberrations.
i am almost finished with my dinghy, sarpa, though i probably won't have time this once to sail her. the house in bodrum is in shambles and i did not have the energy or the funds to deal with it either. so, it was not really a trip for fun, but it was a fun trip after all, mainly because i convinced myself of the odd idea that education cannot be a system-matter but only and at best an initiation into a structure. from now on i shall try to imitate what a light at sea does, mark not a way but a point, by which any way can be found -even on to the shoals.
an aberration, after all, is not always a mis-signal but often a mis-read-signal. so, i am coming back...
maybe it is a way of getting old, maybe it is the start of a new search to find more meaning in life (mine of course, not life with a capital "l" which i don't use here anyway!) but i now realize the significance of all small, unimportant, trivial things. not that i used to ignore the things, but i had gotten used to taking their significance for granted. don't give your beloved the customary good nite kiss for no reason once, and you'll realize what i am talking about. nothing really changes, except the way you feel, which, at the end of the day, is everything that matters.
again, maybe it is getting old, maybe it is just a spell in the trenches lying at ambush but i feel that the fewer and the simpler one's interests are, the fuller time seems to have passed. night time fatigue makes sense, even sleep comes easier. chocolate tastes richer, wine smells more fruity, cigarette smoke is more stinging - all because the senses become alert to normallly neglected scattered details.
the irony is, as a social scientists those trivia should really constitute the essence of my work and hence my interest, because any science worth its name is less about normalcy than aberrations; even normalcy has to be defined in reference to aberrations.
i am almost finished with my dinghy, sarpa, though i probably won't have time this once to sail her. the house in bodrum is in shambles and i did not have the energy or the funds to deal with it either. so, it was not really a trip for fun, but it was a fun trip after all, mainly because i convinced myself of the odd idea that education cannot be a system-matter but only and at best an initiation into a structure. from now on i shall try to imitate what a light at sea does, mark not a way but a point, by which any way can be found -even on to the shoals.
an aberration, after all, is not always a mis-signal but often a mis-read-signal. so, i am coming back...
Friday, January 26, 2007
reflected in greek lights, ismail cem!
looking at the lights of greece, i get mixed feelings. today, ismail cem ipekçi was laid to rest, too. we seem to be losing the good ones, already few, rather fast. he was one of the very very rare politicians that i considered human. i was even surprised at his obsession with politics. actually, he was not so good at it i think. that is why he was respected though, i bet, not understood even by his peers, let alone the common constituents. he certainly was never the "people's men" deniz baykal declared him to be, although he took his mandatory political time with the great unwashed and looked like he truly liked it!
watching the lights of greece, cem becomes a far more meaningful colleague i am glad to have worked with. i spent a good part of my life trying to promote some sort of rapport between turks and greeks in any capacity that was available to me. yes, i am a peace freak or a freaky pacifist etc. but that is not the reason. the everlasting love of my life isthe aegean sea and what she nourishes on her shores. therefore, forever, greece has felt like home to me, even at times i could not travel there.
then came years of arguing, haggling, commiserating and reaching aggreements with greek officials of various titles, mainly the limanarcheio, the harbormasters... i captained peace voyages, sport events, cruises and stolen escapades into the other side of the aegean and loved every minute of it - even with passengers aboard my ships!
i learnt first hand during the difficult times, what it means to be an "enemy" to persons whom you bear no grudge against. i felt the frustration of being branded under a blanket category by people i wished to get close but who would not desist from viewing as sommething i was not except in their prejudices. what most ired and tired me was how, on both sides, individuals, or people massed by a narrow vision of the world, who were supposed to be individuals, played the party tune written by their governing apparati. i still enjoyed my repeated visits to greece - especially because each time, i would meet a considerable number of persons who particularly made an effort to be friendly or more importantly, just were friendly because they really were.
the "rapport" that would make friendship over the aegean a possibility could only come if more greeks and turks could get to know each other. unfortunately, such an occasion occurred only after thousands died under the rubble that was caused not by any so-called enemy but by the greed of developers, building contractors, nature violators and consumers themselves when the quakes of 1999 fell.
ismail cem was a special person because out of the rubble of the earthquakes, together with his counterpart o kyrios papandreu, who defied his father's contrary legacy of antagonism between the two nations, he was able to construct a modest abode for rapprochement that is slowly growing into a mansion. without cem, the lights of greece might not be shining so alluringly, invitingly and familiarly for many turks as they do now.
watching the lights of greece, cem becomes a far more meaningful colleague i am glad to have worked with. i spent a good part of my life trying to promote some sort of rapport between turks and greeks in any capacity that was available to me. yes, i am a peace freak or a freaky pacifist etc. but that is not the reason. the everlasting love of my life isthe aegean sea and what she nourishes on her shores. therefore, forever, greece has felt like home to me, even at times i could not travel there.
then came years of arguing, haggling, commiserating and reaching aggreements with greek officials of various titles, mainly the limanarcheio, the harbormasters... i captained peace voyages, sport events, cruises and stolen escapades into the other side of the aegean and loved every minute of it - even with passengers aboard my ships!
i learnt first hand during the difficult times, what it means to be an "enemy" to persons whom you bear no grudge against. i felt the frustration of being branded under a blanket category by people i wished to get close but who would not desist from viewing as sommething i was not except in their prejudices. what most ired and tired me was how, on both sides, individuals, or people massed by a narrow vision of the world, who were supposed to be individuals, played the party tune written by their governing apparati. i still enjoyed my repeated visits to greece - especially because each time, i would meet a considerable number of persons who particularly made an effort to be friendly or more importantly, just were friendly because they really were.
the "rapport" that would make friendship over the aegean a possibility could only come if more greeks and turks could get to know each other. unfortunately, such an occasion occurred only after thousands died under the rubble that was caused not by any so-called enemy but by the greed of developers, building contractors, nature violators and consumers themselves when the quakes of 1999 fell.
ismail cem was a special person because out of the rubble of the earthquakes, together with his counterpart o kyrios papandreu, who defied his father's contrary legacy of antagonism between the two nations, he was able to construct a modest abode for rapprochement that is slowly growing into a mansion. without cem, the lights of greece might not be shining so alluringly, invitingly and familiarly for many turks as they do now.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
can you lay shame to rest?
the "other" or "alterity", to use the more academic term, is a pet explanation in latteer day social sciences, together with such concepts as "identity", which explain nothing at all but make you sound like you are saying something deep.
the "other", supposedly, is a projection of what we dislike in ourselves (*) but it is actually a project. it is not something that comes into being of itself, the "other" is deliberately -though not necessarily consciously- construed. the "other" is always functional, and therefore ever present. at times, your mom who suckles you is an "other" if you don't want to suck. so is your wife when she doesn't let you watch the ball game, your best friend when his soccer team beats yours; even your pet dog when it wants a walk in the rain... what we call "other" is that part of our own life we can put aside when we do not wish to brook anything or anyone who differs from ourselves. the other, at best, is a temporary assignation of that status to a subject in our lives. the richer the life, the more temporary the assignation; because difference and diversity is what makes the world go round. without that we designate as the other, we are all practically like the zillions of ken and barbie dolls that come out of the plastic factory and are distinguishable only by what they (are made to) wear.
the zen of it is that, an intelligent being can float and cruise among all those different aspects of existence that potentially are tthe "other", picking at will what suits him, what complements him, what pleases him; in short, whatever is desirable. thus integrating, accomodating his self with all that used to be other, the soul grows, enlarges and encompasses as much of the universe as possible while experiencing its own being.
even then, there is some other - or else, evil would evaporate from human culture altogether. yet, that is an other which life has taught us may become functional some moment of the cruise, therefore not really so alien, so "alter" but merely a spare part of our life-world.
the homo sapiens has grossly failed in its 80-million-year-history to prove itself an intelligent being. earliest findings show it to be a creature whose idea of zen-wise integration is post cannibalistic digestion. every moment of the history of the species is a record of one or other form of self destruction . history tells us there really is no "other", except, we can "other-ize" anybody, even our prophets.
in a sense, hrant dink was being prophet like, fearlessly pounding into our pathetically dwindling vocabulary that "different" is not necessarily "other". because the poorer the vocabulary, the blunter the mind, the more primitive the thought process, we killed him, too, because we refused, chose not to understand. and no, we were not magnanimous enough to protect that we could not understand. we feared him for ignorance is also cowardice.
then we walked behind his coffin, letting out spiritual gases out of our conscience... we walked behind what put us to shame by dying because living and writing, he could not reach us.
the shameless shunned even the walk. there was a thankful absence of politicians . what few there were, were there apparently more for the protocol than the funeral. during his service hrant once more did a service to his countrymen, showed them how much better things can be without the state as we know it. even the security forces belonged to the people during the procession, not to the state.
so we laid hrant to rest. silent but still spreading meaning to life. we were ashamed of his death but we can't lay shame to rest...
so much the better! we must now nourish that shame, lest we forget.
-------------
(*) also what we covet, envy and cannot attain; which can be considered a form of evil in itself.
the "other", supposedly, is a projection of what we dislike in ourselves (*) but it is actually a project. it is not something that comes into being of itself, the "other" is deliberately -though not necessarily consciously- construed. the "other" is always functional, and therefore ever present. at times, your mom who suckles you is an "other" if you don't want to suck. so is your wife when she doesn't let you watch the ball game, your best friend when his soccer team beats yours; even your pet dog when it wants a walk in the rain... what we call "other" is that part of our own life we can put aside when we do not wish to brook anything or anyone who differs from ourselves. the other, at best, is a temporary assignation of that status to a subject in our lives. the richer the life, the more temporary the assignation; because difference and diversity is what makes the world go round. without that we designate as the other, we are all practically like the zillions of ken and barbie dolls that come out of the plastic factory and are distinguishable only by what they (are made to) wear.
the zen of it is that, an intelligent being can float and cruise among all those different aspects of existence that potentially are tthe "other", picking at will what suits him, what complements him, what pleases him; in short, whatever is desirable. thus integrating, accomodating his self with all that used to be other, the soul grows, enlarges and encompasses as much of the universe as possible while experiencing its own being.
even then, there is some other - or else, evil would evaporate from human culture altogether. yet, that is an other which life has taught us may become functional some moment of the cruise, therefore not really so alien, so "alter" but merely a spare part of our life-world.
the homo sapiens has grossly failed in its 80-million-year-history to prove itself an intelligent being. earliest findings show it to be a creature whose idea of zen-wise integration is post cannibalistic digestion. every moment of the history of the species is a record of one or other form of self destruction . history tells us there really is no "other", except, we can "other-ize" anybody, even our prophets.
in a sense, hrant dink was being prophet like, fearlessly pounding into our pathetically dwindling vocabulary that "different" is not necessarily "other". because the poorer the vocabulary, the blunter the mind, the more primitive the thought process, we killed him, too, because we refused, chose not to understand. and no, we were not magnanimous enough to protect that we could not understand. we feared him for ignorance is also cowardice.
then we walked behind his coffin, letting out spiritual gases out of our conscience... we walked behind what put us to shame by dying because living and writing, he could not reach us.
the shameless shunned even the walk. there was a thankful absence of politicians . what few there were, were there apparently more for the protocol than the funeral. during his service hrant once more did a service to his countrymen, showed them how much better things can be without the state as we know it. even the security forces belonged to the people during the procession, not to the state.
so we laid hrant to rest. silent but still spreading meaning to life. we were ashamed of his death but we can't lay shame to rest...
so much the better! we must now nourish that shame, lest we forget.
-------------
(*) also what we covet, envy and cannot attain; which can be considered a form of evil in itself.
social æesthetics & islam... coming soon
a post will be coming later today on what i think the crowds at poor hrant's funeral meant. it is not grief, anger, hypocrisy etc., but a silent cry for help!
another on how we can't lay shame to rest...
right now, though, the pathetic inferiority complex of the media, purporting to be the voice of the public, gains precedence. in extracting a juicy drop of pride from the huge gathering behind someone's dead body, someone we have ostracized, persecuted, failed to protect and finally murdered; only to mourn en masse; can you not see a downright despicable attitude to garner respect from shame? is this not akin to social vulturing? how pathetic can pathetic get! sorry hrant, we did not know we loved you so till we destroyed you!
i think this kind of bankruptcy in relational æsthetics is a consequence of the absence of visual arts in islam, which then contaminates all æesthsia in life... but that's also a teaser for another post.
now, i have to go check what the carpenters are doing to sarpa. sarpa is my other love affair, together with pipican, my bike. she is a 20ft motor-boat. she is currently undergoing winter maintenance in the bodrum marina.
yes, i am on an escapade to bodrum, too.
another on how we can't lay shame to rest...
right now, though, the pathetic inferiority complex of the media, purporting to be the voice of the public, gains precedence. in extracting a juicy drop of pride from the huge gathering behind someone's dead body, someone we have ostracized, persecuted, failed to protect and finally murdered; only to mourn en masse; can you not see a downright despicable attitude to garner respect from shame? is this not akin to social vulturing? how pathetic can pathetic get! sorry hrant, we did not know we loved you so till we destroyed you!
i think this kind of bankruptcy in relational æsthetics is a consequence of the absence of visual arts in islam, which then contaminates all æesthsia in life... but that's also a teaser for another post.
now, i have to go check what the carpenters are doing to sarpa. sarpa is my other love affair, together with pipican, my bike. she is a 20ft motor-boat. she is currently undergoing winter maintenance in the bodrum marina.
yes, i am on an escapade to bodrum, too.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
sorry hrant, they've also shut you up!
don't be overwhelmed by the cow manure they're unloading on you - the polity quorum of the untouched untouchables, government members; politicians; bureaucrats; the so called security apparatus, police etc.; the media the wannabe élites whose idea of "change" is a shift at the helm in their favor... they'll al promise revenge, retribution, justice, fraternity of the people, human rights and all the usual dose of hypocritical abracadabra.
but sorry, hrant dink. not only have they killed you, they've also choked your voice.
do you reallly think that a government incapable of curbing an imminent attack on an obvious target like hrant can really find his assassins? do you really believe - supposing they can in the first place - the teenager nitwit, whom the papes called "traitor" suspected of the murder is the culprit?
only 60 thousand armenians left among 70 million - 70 million who cannot bear to hear their dwindling voice. and those brazen fartbags who stoop lower than their levels of existence in their attempt to switch the blame on armenians abroad for the murder...
how many more hrants do you think will dare rise and raise the flag? the voice of difference is now silenced for good. as it was in all previous decimations of good minds and souls.
sorry hrant, you should have left long ago. left just as raquel suggested, with your children by your side... to marseillles, anaheim, boston... anywhere where a voice is not a lethal risk.
but sorry, hrant dink. not only have they killed you, they've also choked your voice.
do you reallly think that a government incapable of curbing an imminent attack on an obvious target like hrant can really find his assassins? do you really believe - supposing they can in the first place - the teenager nitwit, whom the papes called "traitor" suspected of the murder is the culprit?
only 60 thousand armenians left among 70 million - 70 million who cannot bear to hear their dwindling voice. and those brazen fartbags who stoop lower than their levels of existence in their attempt to switch the blame on armenians abroad for the murder...
how many more hrants do you think will dare rise and raise the flag? the voice of difference is now silenced for good. as it was in all previous decimations of good minds and souls.
sorry hrant, you should have left long ago. left just as raquel suggested, with your children by your side... to marseillles, anaheim, boston... anywhere where a voice is not a lethal risk.
Friday, January 19, 2007
forbidden and "definitely" forbidden
in the previous post about the mut'azil, i contended that the so called problems in turkey / istanbul are not of a technical nature but essentially cultural.
riding to bilgi today, i passed through kasımpaşa (*), a zone i try to avoid because of traffic congestion since a fenderbender in galatasaray had blocked the whole main east - west passage on my regular course. on the way i saw a signpost, with the stamp of the beyoğlu municipal authority that read:
"it is definitely forbidden to dump garbage here" (my emphasis).
you think that is a grammatical transgression and the local government added the qualifier "definitely" as a decoration or a slip of the brush? of course not, it is the signifier as well as admission of and submission to a way of mind, a way of interpreting the world, a cognitive style!
when you are in the a-mathematical and anti-mathematical orient, your life is governed by restrictions. indeed, everything is restricted. you can't step on the grass, you can't wear silk stockings to school, you can't cross the street, you can't picnic in the forest, you can't enter, you can't get out, you can't park, you can't have a boy/girlfriend and what not. shortly, anything not prescribed by custom is proscribed by it.
however, life is a flux and it cannot brook restriction the more it flourishes into urban and urbane diversity. so, slowly, some restrictions simply melt away in the higher velocity of modern tempo. you meet a girl / boyfriend. it is forbidden but you meet in secret. you smoke cigarettes and maybe even a little grass, sneak out to ball games, steal your father's car and park it back in the garage before he comes home, cheat your wife/husband etc. the nonfunctional proscriptions remain in place but do not remain in effect.
again, as modern life expands laterally, allowing "other" styles of existence - such as the peasantry or the newly urb-settled blue collar classes -, many prohibitions from a former universe become obsolete, though not annulled. however, since there is a large difference between urban dwelling and urbanization, which is both a forerunner and component of civilization, the newcomers seldom possess a capacity to enlarge and diversify their mental scope. they rarely ignore restrictions whose elimination can emancipate their thinking habits and life-enjoyment.
instead they relax the rules that must be observed in order to sustain the organization in a complex, varied, networking environment with little concern except exigency in their routine. a taxi driver may kill his daughter if he sees her flirting but won't mind rushing in front of a streetcar at red light, risking his own life and those of his fares.
so, the sedimentation of a selective and regressive anomie begins and grows. bans that reach over from an archaic form of existence stick to modern life like a stifling preservative, while prohibitions that are in place to order and reproduce civilization lose their meaning.
during the whole process, the original ban on everything-but-custom is still formally there, although with varying, often diminished and sometimes depleted influence. in other words, almost everything is still forbidden. a middle aged adult of 40 hides his cigarette from his 70 year old father because tradition forbids but smells like a chimney when embracing him. the same man has no compuction flipping the finished butt into the sea, which is also forbidden (**). thus emerge tacit hierarchies of observable/better to observe/negligible restrictions. some prohibitons are thus definitely forbidden while others are not that definitely forbidden.
in this case, you can dump your garbage on the mayor's table. it is forbidden but nowhere it says definitely, yes?
-----------
(*) kasımpaşa, on the north shore of haliç, the golden horn, is where the arsenal of the imperial navy was housed. as in most old cities, the arsenal area absorbed new immigration into the city and was rather proletarian in character. in some way, those areas initiated and schooled the newcomers into urbanity.
(**) one cigarette filter sucks the oxygen in a bucket full of seawater before only the tar is neutralized and dissolves.
riding to bilgi today, i passed through kasımpaşa (*), a zone i try to avoid because of traffic congestion since a fenderbender in galatasaray had blocked the whole main east - west passage on my regular course. on the way i saw a signpost, with the stamp of the beyoğlu municipal authority that read:
"it is definitely forbidden to dump garbage here" (my emphasis).
you think that is a grammatical transgression and the local government added the qualifier "definitely" as a decoration or a slip of the brush? of course not, it is the signifier as well as admission of and submission to a way of mind, a way of interpreting the world, a cognitive style!
when you are in the a-mathematical and anti-mathematical orient, your life is governed by restrictions. indeed, everything is restricted. you can't step on the grass, you can't wear silk stockings to school, you can't cross the street, you can't picnic in the forest, you can't enter, you can't get out, you can't park, you can't have a boy/girlfriend and what not. shortly, anything not prescribed by custom is proscribed by it.
however, life is a flux and it cannot brook restriction the more it flourishes into urban and urbane diversity. so, slowly, some restrictions simply melt away in the higher velocity of modern tempo. you meet a girl / boyfriend. it is forbidden but you meet in secret. you smoke cigarettes and maybe even a little grass, sneak out to ball games, steal your father's car and park it back in the garage before he comes home, cheat your wife/husband etc. the nonfunctional proscriptions remain in place but do not remain in effect.
again, as modern life expands laterally, allowing "other" styles of existence - such as the peasantry or the newly urb-settled blue collar classes -, many prohibitions from a former universe become obsolete, though not annulled. however, since there is a large difference between urban dwelling and urbanization, which is both a forerunner and component of civilization, the newcomers seldom possess a capacity to enlarge and diversify their mental scope. they rarely ignore restrictions whose elimination can emancipate their thinking habits and life-enjoyment.
instead they relax the rules that must be observed in order to sustain the organization in a complex, varied, networking environment with little concern except exigency in their routine. a taxi driver may kill his daughter if he sees her flirting but won't mind rushing in front of a streetcar at red light, risking his own life and those of his fares.
so, the sedimentation of a selective and regressive anomie begins and grows. bans that reach over from an archaic form of existence stick to modern life like a stifling preservative, while prohibitions that are in place to order and reproduce civilization lose their meaning.
during the whole process, the original ban on everything-but-custom is still formally there, although with varying, often diminished and sometimes depleted influence. in other words, almost everything is still forbidden. a middle aged adult of 40 hides his cigarette from his 70 year old father because tradition forbids but smells like a chimney when embracing him. the same man has no compuction flipping the finished butt into the sea, which is also forbidden (**). thus emerge tacit hierarchies of observable/better to observe/negligible restrictions. some prohibitons are thus definitely forbidden while others are not that definitely forbidden.
in this case, you can dump your garbage on the mayor's table. it is forbidden but nowhere it says definitely, yes?
-----------
(*) kasımpaşa, on the north shore of haliç, the golden horn, is where the arsenal of the imperial navy was housed. as in most old cities, the arsenal area absorbed new immigration into the city and was rather proletarian in character. in some way, those areas initiated and schooled the newcomers into urbanity.
(**) one cigarette filter sucks the oxygen in a bucket full of seawater before only the tar is neutralized and dissolves.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
the mut'azil, the isolated minds
the hot issue of the week was istanbul's population concentration and traffic. as always, numerous pundits, know-alls and "authorities" said everything already told a million times; speaking chiefly of first hand experience, limited observation, meager statistics and off the cuff.
there was, again, as always, no theory proposed to refer data to, which means what were called facts were open to interpretation in hundred ways without making sense.
the only data that had any meaning was that the number of motor vehicles per square km or per km of road in istanbul is only about one third of cities in a civilized world. in other words, a car in turkey/istanbul occupies at least three times the space as a (probably larger) automobile elsewhere, in, say, dallas/texas, which can be considered to be on the same level of intellectual development as it has been the seat of dubya' s power for years.
this fact speaks of one truth only: turks (as are other members of other underdeveloped societies) are unable to develop or abide by the norms of a culture that can optimize space and space usage.
i have been saying for decades now that there exists no traffic problem in istanbul/turkey. the mess on the city roads that has recently reached epic proportions of absurdity is a drivers' problem, a human problem. therefore, it is not technical but a matter of logic, mindsets, rationality, i.e., a cultural problem.
modernity is basically not an addiction to new technological products but a way of mind (i.e., culture) that rationalizes thought processes through reference to mathematical constructs. ratio-nality is a specialized practice of logic that by nature looks at the relationships between things and concepts. it processes the relativity of experiences whereas, for a non-modern mind-set, mathematics simply denotes a counting and numerating system, usually to order things in hierarchies.
numerating is an absolute process, it feels scant need for relativity, comparison, coordination and organization. for instance, it cannot relate the possible outcomes of the simple act of beating a red light in relation to the temporal schemes of all the elements sharing the same traffic-space. an infraction to gain a moment adds up to a colossal loss of time collectively. this is not selfishness, this is a plain lack of comprehension that disables an efficient organization of social time into a medium that allows for the most lucrative, fulfilling experience of life - a failure to comprehend the totality of an alien culture.
turkey's traffic problem is misuse of space, basically a derivative of geometric ignorance, but it is also caused by a direr psychological urge - heuristically, the only time and place any turk can decide for himself without interference from another body is while at the wheel of a car. therefore, breaking the rules, seeking prominence by sneaking in front of another driver who has priority are all praxes of that autonomy that is but a birthright to a civilized individual.
add to that the policing system administered by persons raised in the same culture and the effective emasculation of the police through political influence: everybody in istanbul who is not somebody is is somebody's something, with enough clout to threaten a newly appointed officer with ostracism. plus, the ridicule of norms in a show of personal importance; now you have a clotted traffic.
istanbul's spatial mess is just a glass of water in a bucket: a population of 45 million (65 percent) is living in an area that amounts to 5 percent of turkey. that area produces the significant bulk, possibly two thisrds of the entire value added. almost every penny of investments concentrates in that area, making it the most illogically congested this side of china.
istanbul's traffic is nothing, compared to problems such asymmetrical distribution of resources are about to spring in our faces. just as the traffic problem that does not exist in istanbul, they will be insoluble largely because they, too, will not be technical but human, cultural problems or problems of rationality.
why? back in the bright days of islam, imam gazali and his disciples said a limited doze of mathematics is enough to uderstand, order and run the world, more of it leads to more knowledge, more science and hence paves the way to blasphemy. the mut'azil, the countering camp of philosophy who basically followed averroes's mathematical rationalism were practically forced to intellectual exile. that is why the rationalists of the islamic / oriental world were called the mut'azil, the "isolated".
a last word, then, for the exiled rationalists of this universe, from ovidius, who wrote it en route to the black sea, where he was banished for life by caesar augustus:
Often the sea broke over the ship: still I spun
my verse, such as it is, with shaking hand.
Now the rigging shrieks, taut in a north wind,
and the curving breaker rises like a hillside.
The helmsman himself raises his hands aloft,
begging help, in prayer, forgetting his skills.
Wherever I look, nothing but the shadow of a death
I fear with anxious mind, and pray for in my fear.
If I reach harbor, the harbor itself will scare me:
the land has more terrors than the hostile sea.
apology,
from tristia book I
(tristia: sadness)
there was, again, as always, no theory proposed to refer data to, which means what were called facts were open to interpretation in hundred ways without making sense.
the only data that had any meaning was that the number of motor vehicles per square km or per km of road in istanbul is only about one third of cities in a civilized world. in other words, a car in turkey/istanbul occupies at least three times the space as a (probably larger) automobile elsewhere, in, say, dallas/texas, which can be considered to be on the same level of intellectual development as it has been the seat of dubya' s power for years.
this fact speaks of one truth only: turks (as are other members of other underdeveloped societies) are unable to develop or abide by the norms of a culture that can optimize space and space usage.
i have been saying for decades now that there exists no traffic problem in istanbul/turkey. the mess on the city roads that has recently reached epic proportions of absurdity is a drivers' problem, a human problem. therefore, it is not technical but a matter of logic, mindsets, rationality, i.e., a cultural problem.
modernity is basically not an addiction to new technological products but a way of mind (i.e., culture) that rationalizes thought processes through reference to mathematical constructs. ratio-nality is a specialized practice of logic that by nature looks at the relationships between things and concepts. it processes the relativity of experiences whereas, for a non-modern mind-set, mathematics simply denotes a counting and numerating system, usually to order things in hierarchies.
numerating is an absolute process, it feels scant need for relativity, comparison, coordination and organization. for instance, it cannot relate the possible outcomes of the simple act of beating a red light in relation to the temporal schemes of all the elements sharing the same traffic-space. an infraction to gain a moment adds up to a colossal loss of time collectively. this is not selfishness, this is a plain lack of comprehension that disables an efficient organization of social time into a medium that allows for the most lucrative, fulfilling experience of life - a failure to comprehend the totality of an alien culture.
turkey's traffic problem is misuse of space, basically a derivative of geometric ignorance, but it is also caused by a direr psychological urge - heuristically, the only time and place any turk can decide for himself without interference from another body is while at the wheel of a car. therefore, breaking the rules, seeking prominence by sneaking in front of another driver who has priority are all praxes of that autonomy that is but a birthright to a civilized individual.
add to that the policing system administered by persons raised in the same culture and the effective emasculation of the police through political influence: everybody in istanbul who is not somebody is is somebody's something, with enough clout to threaten a newly appointed officer with ostracism. plus, the ridicule of norms in a show of personal importance; now you have a clotted traffic.
istanbul's spatial mess is just a glass of water in a bucket: a population of 45 million (65 percent) is living in an area that amounts to 5 percent of turkey. that area produces the significant bulk, possibly two thisrds of the entire value added. almost every penny of investments concentrates in that area, making it the most illogically congested this side of china.
istanbul's traffic is nothing, compared to problems such asymmetrical distribution of resources are about to spring in our faces. just as the traffic problem that does not exist in istanbul, they will be insoluble largely because they, too, will not be technical but human, cultural problems or problems of rationality.
why? back in the bright days of islam, imam gazali and his disciples said a limited doze of mathematics is enough to uderstand, order and run the world, more of it leads to more knowledge, more science and hence paves the way to blasphemy. the mut'azil, the countering camp of philosophy who basically followed averroes's mathematical rationalism were practically forced to intellectual exile. that is why the rationalists of the islamic / oriental world were called the mut'azil, the "isolated".
a last word, then, for the exiled rationalists of this universe, from ovidius, who wrote it en route to the black sea, where he was banished for life by caesar augustus:
Often the sea broke over the ship: still I spun
my verse, such as it is, with shaking hand.
Now the rigging shrieks, taut in a north wind,
and the curving breaker rises like a hillside.
The helmsman himself raises his hands aloft,
begging help, in prayer, forgetting his skills.
Wherever I look, nothing but the shadow of a death
I fear with anxious mind, and pray for in my fear.
If I reach harbor, the harbor itself will scare me:
the land has more terrors than the hostile sea.
apology,
from tristia book I
(tristia: sadness)
i repudiate tayyib bey
i am totally decided not to take receb tayyib erdoğan seriously any more, in any matter. no person in a responsible position would declare a gang of bandits in northern iraq more important than turkey's eu relations, just stop short of threatening america with war, and think of banishing his own citizens from free travel in their own country, or passing a fiat that subjects their property rights to the approval of officialdom within such a short span to be called almost simultaneous and hope to be taken seriously.
now i know that his ascension to the presidency is a necessary evil. it is the surest, safest, shortest, face saving method of getting him out of the way, so affairs may be run without interference. since the job in çankaya is politically irresponsible, tayyib bey may shoot his mouth off as he pleases. since the job also lacks any real authority, he can do no harm to speak of even if he speaks more fantastic nonsense.
since i totally decided not to take receb tayyib erdoğan seriously, in principle, i will refuse to comment about him either. however, since what i intend to write in the next post albeit tangentially, somehow touches tayyib bey's recent genius proposal to solve istanbul's traffic by limiting the licences granted to vehicles, i had to make this statement of repudiaton publicly.
now i know that his ascension to the presidency is a necessary evil. it is the surest, safest, shortest, face saving method of getting him out of the way, so affairs may be run without interference. since the job in çankaya is politically irresponsible, tayyib bey may shoot his mouth off as he pleases. since the job also lacks any real authority, he can do no harm to speak of even if he speaks more fantastic nonsense.
since i totally decided not to take receb tayyib erdoğan seriously, in principle, i will refuse to comment about him either. however, since what i intend to write in the next post albeit tangentially, somehow touches tayyib bey's recent genius proposal to solve istanbul's traffic by limiting the licences granted to vehicles, i had to make this statement of repudiaton publicly.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
"love comes to you and then after
dream on,
on to the heart of the sunrise.
sharp distance!
how can the sun with its arms all around me?
sharp distance!
how can the wind with so many around me?
i feel lost in the city"
so sang yes back in 1972, in the heart of the sunrise, last cut of the fragile album, one of their best, definitely. i was a city boy with spoilt child access to "nature", and though i liked the song very much, had not put much philosophical stock in its complaints. however, in those years, i used to live in ankara and the capital of turkey respired such low quality air that snow would turn black, not just grey but black, in one night and if we missed playing snowball the first few hours, forget it till next time. so, the suffused breathing space often did make me empathize with yes anyway.
i spent the longest stretch of my life in bodrum, or on the mediterranean sea, to be more exact.
i guess i can claim that i know what it is to feel the wind play around your body, how to listen to the water, watch the dance of the changing lights like looking at your favorite daughter sleep and all that romantic stuff. i'm still like a duck in water in any big city anywhere but the thought and the sense in the lines "how can the sun with its arms all around me, how can the wind with so many around me" never leave me alone in istanbul. i never liked this overgrown, filthy, oriental village of false sun and false lights and please don't come up and say "but it is beautiful". beauty is hardly ever a reason for love or liking, maybe infatuation.
besides istanbul, now, is only as appealingly beautiful as a 95 year old elizabeth taylor.
in these days of lovely sunshine, a prolonged and prolonged, much welcome midwinter spring, all i wish is to jump on the saddle and ride aimlessly around, toward any place that sounds or feels attractive. to roll on the throttle, watch the scenery float by, totally alert, totally in tune with the moment. but alas!
dream on on to the heart of the sunrise
sharp distance!
how can the sun with its arms all around me
sharp distance! how can the wind with so many around me
i feel lost in the city
and how does that mood leave me feeling:
midwinter spring is its own season
sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
(t.s. eliot, little gidding, I)
dream on,
on to the heart of the sunrise.
sharp distance!
how can the sun with its arms all around me?
sharp distance!
how can the wind with so many around me?
i feel lost in the city"
so sang yes back in 1972, in the heart of the sunrise, last cut of the fragile album, one of their best, definitely. i was a city boy with spoilt child access to "nature", and though i liked the song very much, had not put much philosophical stock in its complaints. however, in those years, i used to live in ankara and the capital of turkey respired such low quality air that snow would turn black, not just grey but black, in one night and if we missed playing snowball the first few hours, forget it till next time. so, the suffused breathing space often did make me empathize with yes anyway.
i spent the longest stretch of my life in bodrum, or on the mediterranean sea, to be more exact.
i guess i can claim that i know what it is to feel the wind play around your body, how to listen to the water, watch the dance of the changing lights like looking at your favorite daughter sleep and all that romantic stuff. i'm still like a duck in water in any big city anywhere but the thought and the sense in the lines "how can the sun with its arms all around me, how can the wind with so many around me" never leave me alone in istanbul. i never liked this overgrown, filthy, oriental village of false sun and false lights and please don't come up and say "but it is beautiful". beauty is hardly ever a reason for love or liking, maybe infatuation.
besides istanbul, now, is only as appealingly beautiful as a 95 year old elizabeth taylor.
in these days of lovely sunshine, a prolonged and prolonged, much welcome midwinter spring, all i wish is to jump on the saddle and ride aimlessly around, toward any place that sounds or feels attractive. to roll on the throttle, watch the scenery float by, totally alert, totally in tune with the moment. but alas!
dream on on to the heart of the sunrise
sharp distance!
how can the sun with its arms all around me
sharp distance! how can the wind with so many around me
i feel lost in the city
and how does that mood leave me feeling:
midwinter spring is its own season
sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
(t.s. eliot, little gidding, I)
Monday, January 15, 2007
armageddon
we know that the earthquake shall strike istanbul and whatever our sins, like in the promised coming of christ, the apocalypse will cleanse us of all our tresspasses. so never mind the danger and keep on tresspassing.
but till the lightning of doom strikes us, what other evils and ills of our own making may claim our souls in a more slowly encroaching armageddon? how responsibly have we approached and formatted our collective life that in fateful submission we await the end with such abandon that sodom would envy? so, the earthquake is imminent, but is it the only killer lurking? let us have a look at the basics elements of life then:
air: air is a lethal matter in istanbul, as it is in almost every single settlement throughout turkey. it is replete with sulfur dioxide, suspended micro particles, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and various volatile chemicals. high pressure often brings about respiratory and coronary illnesses. the traffic mess exacerbates noxious emissions. the winds simply shift the polluted air around city blocks instead of away from it because unplanned urbanization is badly unmatched to topography and the city's airways are clogged by high-price high-rises. a permanent cloud of yellow smog which denotes alarming sulphurous concentrations hangs above us like a halo of evil. add to that the army of smoking turks, which only in istanbul, is no fewer than 10 million, consuming no less than one pack of cigarettes per day.
what about the lungs of istanbul? the woods and the forests? prime real estate out for grabs. consumed by concrete!
water: joking? what water? even before the mildest winter in years is over, "authorities" have already begun mumbling their concern about water shortages. shortages? the least of our problem. the environment is so badly damaged, so soaked with chemicals, poisons, even nuke material according to some that untreated water can melt one's bones! sea water... hmmm... free sewage and effluent dump. release all kinds of liquid waste into 50 meters and forget about it. it's called deep sea discharge and it has plagued the marine environment all around the anatolian and thracean peninsulae where turks reside. of course, dumped (instead of treated and purified) water is also wasted water, so hello again, dry days!
fire: sign of purity? the ultimate cleanser? sure. 3 million or so heavier motor vehicles in urban istanbul, most of them active during the daytime, emitting fumes uncontrollably by way of their combustion chambers many of which either can't burn the fuel any more or is not supplied with the right quality of fuel to burn. petroleum products in turkey are still below par by global standards. they don't even burn properly... the simplest measure is to compel at least buses, trucks and the like to funnel their exhausts upward, through pipes that reach high into the air. instead, we breathe in the gases and particles they emit.
add more than four million buildings to warm up. half of them lack natural gas connection and burn anything, including wood, scrapped wood, sawdust, cowdung and burnt engine oil. sometimes they soak the sawdust or dung in burnt oil. wood is a major pollutant, oil is worse and gas is best. but gas, too, is a pollutant nevertheless! especially if two million buildings and more factories are using it.
then industry... the industry uses the highest priced energy in the world, fossil fuels and electric power. it also uses it in the least efficient manner. the industry, including manufacturers that are state owned, dump their effluence, untreated of course, into nature. most rivers in turkey that are situated near industries, even small town machine parks and repair shops are so polluted that they cannot sustain life.
turkey's industry is almost exclusively (about 70 percent according to economists) stuck into a triangular strip that extends from adapazarı in asia to çorlu in thrace, then down at most to balıkesir via bursa in the south. the whole triangle represents an area of 200 by 25o kilometers at best. turkey, which is close to a million square kliks, houses, feeds, toilet trains, tries to clean after, mismanages, malurbanizes about 45 million people, more than 60 percent of its population, in only 50 thousand kms square.
earth: read the last sentence above again. then tear down fertile farms, fields, valleys, woods, forests to build houses that are at best eyesores, factories that produce incompetitive goods, shanty towns to shelter peasant populations flocking to find work in those industries but mostly cannot, make roads for more cars.
release pollutants into rivers and seas so they seep into the soil. de-plant slopes and watch erosion wash the country into the ocean. emigrate from rural areas into towns.
on top of a barely or poorly competitive industry, lose your edge in agriculture. start importing food.
earthquake: if you screw up god's earth like that, you'd better be expecting it to shake you up and awake or down and dead!
but till the lightning of doom strikes us, what other evils and ills of our own making may claim our souls in a more slowly encroaching armageddon? how responsibly have we approached and formatted our collective life that in fateful submission we await the end with such abandon that sodom would envy? so, the earthquake is imminent, but is it the only killer lurking? let us have a look at the basics elements of life then:
air: air is a lethal matter in istanbul, as it is in almost every single settlement throughout turkey. it is replete with sulfur dioxide, suspended micro particles, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and various volatile chemicals. high pressure often brings about respiratory and coronary illnesses. the traffic mess exacerbates noxious emissions. the winds simply shift the polluted air around city blocks instead of away from it because unplanned urbanization is badly unmatched to topography and the city's airways are clogged by high-price high-rises. a permanent cloud of yellow smog which denotes alarming sulphurous concentrations hangs above us like a halo of evil. add to that the army of smoking turks, which only in istanbul, is no fewer than 10 million, consuming no less than one pack of cigarettes per day.
what about the lungs of istanbul? the woods and the forests? prime real estate out for grabs. consumed by concrete!
water: joking? what water? even before the mildest winter in years is over, "authorities" have already begun mumbling their concern about water shortages. shortages? the least of our problem. the environment is so badly damaged, so soaked with chemicals, poisons, even nuke material according to some that untreated water can melt one's bones! sea water... hmmm... free sewage and effluent dump. release all kinds of liquid waste into 50 meters and forget about it. it's called deep sea discharge and it has plagued the marine environment all around the anatolian and thracean peninsulae where turks reside. of course, dumped (instead of treated and purified) water is also wasted water, so hello again, dry days!
fire: sign of purity? the ultimate cleanser? sure. 3 million or so heavier motor vehicles in urban istanbul, most of them active during the daytime, emitting fumes uncontrollably by way of their combustion chambers many of which either can't burn the fuel any more or is not supplied with the right quality of fuel to burn. petroleum products in turkey are still below par by global standards. they don't even burn properly... the simplest measure is to compel at least buses, trucks and the like to funnel their exhausts upward, through pipes that reach high into the air. instead, we breathe in the gases and particles they emit.
add more than four million buildings to warm up. half of them lack natural gas connection and burn anything, including wood, scrapped wood, sawdust, cowdung and burnt engine oil. sometimes they soak the sawdust or dung in burnt oil. wood is a major pollutant, oil is worse and gas is best. but gas, too, is a pollutant nevertheless! especially if two million buildings and more factories are using it.
then industry... the industry uses the highest priced energy in the world, fossil fuels and electric power. it also uses it in the least efficient manner. the industry, including manufacturers that are state owned, dump their effluence, untreated of course, into nature. most rivers in turkey that are situated near industries, even small town machine parks and repair shops are so polluted that they cannot sustain life.
turkey's industry is almost exclusively (about 70 percent according to economists) stuck into a triangular strip that extends from adapazarı in asia to çorlu in thrace, then down at most to balıkesir via bursa in the south. the whole triangle represents an area of 200 by 25o kilometers at best. turkey, which is close to a million square kliks, houses, feeds, toilet trains, tries to clean after, mismanages, malurbanizes about 45 million people, more than 60 percent of its population, in only 50 thousand kms square.
earth: read the last sentence above again. then tear down fertile farms, fields, valleys, woods, forests to build houses that are at best eyesores, factories that produce incompetitive goods, shanty towns to shelter peasant populations flocking to find work in those industries but mostly cannot, make roads for more cars.
release pollutants into rivers and seas so they seep into the soil. de-plant slopes and watch erosion wash the country into the ocean. emigrate from rural areas into towns.
on top of a barely or poorly competitive industry, lose your edge in agriculture. start importing food.
earthquake: if you screw up god's earth like that, you'd better be expecting it to shake you up and awake or down and dead!
apocalypse addiction
an earthquake is imminent in istanbul!
any moment, the forces of evil will unleash their nefarious might through the heart of the soil. the earth shall fold upon itself and death and mayhem and strife will befall the sinners of kostantiniyye, as the three seas rage heaven-high over the city's dwarf skyscrapers, to wash away the human detritus and the human made debris, already decimated to ashes and dust!
no matter that some optimistic geologists claim the mother earth shall not let loose its wrath but merely give a severe warning to the sinners, that the crust of the world shall shake but not a break and open to devour god's favorite children! like any bad tv show, it is the apocalyptic vision that collects the rating. doomsday, everyone knows, shall happen, so it is ordained.
the only mystery is how imminent is the imminent!
so, row after row of titled earth academics hit the media, reading their scientific coffee cups and all but brawling with each other about the magnitude, timing and the malevolence or the benevolence of the inevitable catastrophe.
ok, it is very tempting but i shall refrain from psychoanalyzing the obvious guilt ridden, self devaluative and absolution seeking psychology behind that kind of apocalypse addiction. just suffice to say that as everything else that is ostensibly taken seriously in turkey, the earthquake is actually only marginally serious. no, i am not going to reitirate an umpteenth time how istanbuleotes insistently neglect taking any precautions against the quake whose mere idea frightens them to death. i am reminded of st. francis de lasalle's homily "fear is a greater evil than the evil itself that causes it". what lasalle overlooked is that fear, as every other psychic phenomenon, is functional and the function that necessitates the fear is frequently more important to sustain than to abolish its cause.
turks, especially istanbuleotes will always fear an earthquake, until it occurs but won't do anything about it either, because the pending danger justifies their philosophy - the philosophy that since all in life is ephemeral, for the mortal, everyhting is there for the taking in this short, decidious stay on earth, with no regard for the style, method, norm and ethos of taking.
any moment, the forces of evil will unleash their nefarious might through the heart of the soil. the earth shall fold upon itself and death and mayhem and strife will befall the sinners of kostantiniyye, as the three seas rage heaven-high over the city's dwarf skyscrapers, to wash away the human detritus and the human made debris, already decimated to ashes and dust!
no matter that some optimistic geologists claim the mother earth shall not let loose its wrath but merely give a severe warning to the sinners, that the crust of the world shall shake but not a break and open to devour god's favorite children! like any bad tv show, it is the apocalyptic vision that collects the rating. doomsday, everyone knows, shall happen, so it is ordained.
the only mystery is how imminent is the imminent!
so, row after row of titled earth academics hit the media, reading their scientific coffee cups and all but brawling with each other about the magnitude, timing and the malevolence or the benevolence of the inevitable catastrophe.
ok, it is very tempting but i shall refrain from psychoanalyzing the obvious guilt ridden, self devaluative and absolution seeking psychology behind that kind of apocalypse addiction. just suffice to say that as everything else that is ostensibly taken seriously in turkey, the earthquake is actually only marginally serious. no, i am not going to reitirate an umpteenth time how istanbuleotes insistently neglect taking any precautions against the quake whose mere idea frightens them to death. i am reminded of st. francis de lasalle's homily "fear is a greater evil than the evil itself that causes it". what lasalle overlooked is that fear, as every other psychic phenomenon, is functional and the function that necessitates the fear is frequently more important to sustain than to abolish its cause.
turks, especially istanbuleotes will always fear an earthquake, until it occurs but won't do anything about it either, because the pending danger justifies their philosophy - the philosophy that since all in life is ephemeral, for the mortal, everyhting is there for the taking in this short, decidious stay on earth, with no regard for the style, method, norm and ethos of taking.
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