Persiflage & Paroxysm

Oh to be of one mind… wouldn’t it be marvelous if all humans on the planet were one efficient and rational mind, connected to all the individual minds around the globe, sensing and feeling and empathizing with every individual mind. It sounds miraculous and far-fetched and a bit sci-fi, because it absolutely is. But what if we could connect all our minds telepathically and transmit our thoughts directly to the other, breaking down the barriers of understanding like language, religion, culture, and social norms, and addressing only the core mind in the language it understands that of reasoned thought?   That to me would be our ultimate evolution as a species. The 2014 Luc Besson movie ‘Lucy’, suggests the possibility of super humans using more than 10% of their cerebral capacity, which is all we use at the moment apparently. In the movie we see a heroine taking a high dose of a certain drug and experiencing enhanced mental capacity that keeps growing throughout the movie. She begins...

By Hani Bathish   I balk whenever I hear my countrymen and women and others in our region describe the Shiite community in Lebanon (a full third of our population) as Iranians. It’s as if by saying so we give license to any future genocidal campaign against this community. After all if it is true they are Iranians, then they are either foreign occupiers or else traitors who are working with foreign occupiers. This blanket accusation, which is always implied, is rarely spoken of in clear terms except in closed discussion groups, or it was at least.   But this oft repeated accusation is nonetheless dangerous and threatens our civil peace and lays the ground work for a future civil war. And herein lie the roots of our modern Lebanese tragedy: We have a system that requires equal distribution of cabinet posts among all of Lebanon’s leading sects, smaller minorities get one cabinet post for the lot. In parliament, our constitution delineates the distribution of seats 50/50 between ...