Okay, so this is admittedly a simplistic critique, but nonetheless, it’s pretty hilarious and true to a large extent. Enjoy!

Abdullahi An-Na’im and the Dalai Lama, two mystics, make an interesting appearance together that I enjoyed watching.

While a lot of what An-Na’im says may seem like the “la la land, let’s get together and sing kumbaya” sort of message, I do believe it has its important place in the grand scheme of things, but it’s not so simple or straight forward as he makes it seem.

Damn is he pissed, and rightly so. He’s basically ranting about how he had to leave Sudan and move to Libya so he can live a decent life and raise his kids. I’m sure many of us in the Sudanese Diaspora can resonate with his frustrations, especially the older generation.

The gutsy part is when he goes on a rant about how all political parties responsible for screwing up Sudan should be put on trial. Very ballsy of him to say such a thing so openly like that on Sudanese TV. I doubt he got in trouble, since there was tolerance of such views before the “monumental” elections took place. Now that the elections are over, tight scrutiny is back again however and there’s less freedom of speech.

But yeah, keep dreaming Uncle Frustrated. Inta bita7lam ya 3ammo.

Anyway, I just found the video super hilarious and watched it like ten times already. If you’re Sudanese, you probably will too.

No. I’m not dead. Yet. Although this blog sort of has been for the last six weeks. I’ve been busy traveling, and I finally experienced snow for the very first time in my life. Ever. Heck, I even lost my snowboarding virginity up in Northern California, at Olympic Valley, nearby Lake Tahoe.

Fun.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to build that snowman I’ve been wishing to build since childhood.

Next time.

Also, my brother recently got married. The wedding celebration in Khartoum has now been over for a while. Phew, please don’t ask me about the ridiculous summer heat.

Blogging to resume shortly. Meanwhile, check out this cool personality test The LA Times is offering. I’m a Live Wire, and I must say, unlike many of those dumb personality quizzes you find online, this one is actually pretty accurate. It’s sooo me.

Here are the result details.

You’re a Live Wire

You like to be stimulated emotionally and intellectually. It’s all about striking the right balance! You have quite traditional values and believe in working hard to achieve your goals. And, when the work day is over, it’s time to kick back, relax and enjoy your downtime, hanging with friends, relaxing with the kids or enjoying one of your favorite interests, whether that’s on the sports pitch, at the mall or in a theater… Committed and loyal, family is really important to you. You’re successful and empowered by the opportunity you have to live the life that you want. You value your health and financial security and enjoy being able to create a happy home.

You appreciate intelligent conversation and enjoy the opportunity to express yourself and share your views with your friends and family. You’re a bit of a bookworm at heart. You probably have a good pile of books by the bed and maybe even a few on-the-go at once! Success is a real enabler for you. You reap the benefits by enjoying some really magical vacations that broaden your horizons and leave you feeling refreshed and invigorated.

Take the test here, and tell me what you get.

Also, if you haven’t taken time to read this article before on the esoteric Vs exoteric aspects of religion, please do. If you enjoyed my posts on faith and reason, you’ll like this article.

… as prevalent as genuine mysticism is in all these traditions, many people in today’s world go their entire lives without ever hearing about these aspects of religious experience.

… They often do not even recognize the rich legacy of esoteric spirituality that exists in their own tradition, hiding right in plain sight—simply because we are too close to our own cultural preconceptions, too burnt out on the mythic dogma of our childhood, and too alone in the dark without anyone pointing us in the right direction.

In fact, once we have tasted the esoteric waters in another spiritual tradition, we usually intuit that this very same esoteric core is shared by all religions, that it is the cornerstone of spiritual experience for every mystic in history (though expressed very differently from culture to culture).

… The central problem of religion today is not the unavailability of esoteric teachings—they are just as accessible today as they have ever been, perhaps even more so—but that our exoteric religions have become damaged, painfully decoupled from history’s ceaseless march toward more novelty and more complexity. Our religions are fully capable of keeping pace with our progress, growing from magic forms of religion to mythic forms, rational forms, pluralistic forms, integral forms, and beyond. And the esoteric teachings and practices are alive in all these forms, though will certainly be interpreted very differently at each level

Me loves and agrees! I think what the article discusses can easily be applied to Islam as well. In fact, I have applied it, and it has helped me see Islam in a new unique light which in turn enabled me to reconcile many previously troubling things in my head.

Yay to integral theory and epistemology. And yay to Ken Wilber. Reading his work, especially his book The Marriage of Sense and Soul, has been super life-changing and very healing.

More later.

Talk soon!

- Drima

Kodus to Fareed Zain for this groundbreaking effort. It’s not going to have a big impact, but it is certainly an encouraging start that deserves praise. Thanks for your work Fareed!

Listen to the audio interview here.

Good discussion you should watch to get an idea on what’s happening. If there’s anything that I find really disturbing, it is the insistence of the two featured Northerners on applying Sharia law. They don’t even seem to have a clue about what democracy really means.

Democracy isn’t just “the rule of the majority.” It is the rule of the majority without infringing on the rights of the minority. One of  these rights is religious freedom.

Lovely.

Gosh, makes me so hopeful about this country’s future.

These guys ought to read Abdullahi An-Na’im’s book Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Sharia.

When I was busy keeping track of the last US presidential race, I was baffled by the apathetic attitude displayed by some of my American friends towards their country’s future. One of them is a US Marine I went to school with, who fought in Iraq. I’ll never forget what he told me.

Me: So, dude, who are you voting for? Obama or McCain?

Friend: Man, I ain’t voting for nobody. F*ck that shit!

Me: Erm, why?

Friend: Man, they’re all full of shit anyway!

Me: So you’re willing to risk your life and fight for your country, but you’re not bothered to vote? Enlighten me please!

Friend: Like I said, they’re all full of shit anyway. What difference will it make?

If I had a magic crystal ball back then, I would have replied, “for a start, health care!” I should have added “withdrawing from Iraq” and a bunch of other foreign policy things that impact the world.

But that was America, and now that it’s Sudan’s turn, I am beginning to relate to my friend’s attitude. It’s funny really, because I didn’t expect myself to wind up here, especially after blogging so much about Sudan from 2006 to 2008.

I won’t vote in the Sudanese elections.

I won’t vote because:

1. I missed the voter registration date and hardly regretted it since I’ve never really believed in the predicted “change-bringing” effects of the expected elections. Hence, I can’t vote anyway even if I change my mind and wanted to.

2. Positive alternatives to Al-Bashir with an actual chance of winning are nil.

3. Assuming I registered, given that Al-Bashir is going to win any way, I would rather abstain from voting than vote for him.

4. Regardless of the “confidence” in the election process expressed by the US envoy to Sudan, the elections aren’t going to be fair or transparent.

5. Even if I’m wrong and the election process achieves some decent level of transparency and fairness, it still takes lots of money for parties and candidates to win, something that Al-Bashir and his NCP have a lot of, while the opposition is relatively broke, with the exception of the SPLM which is too corrupt and divided to even run itself properly anyway.

6. Quite frankly, I just don’t care about the political process anymore at the moment. It’s hopeless. I’ve been so disconnected and apathetic towards what’s happening, I no longer feel its relevance. Given the current circumstances, Sudan is a country in waiting with too many question marks ahead.

Now, I don’t want to put down the hopes of Sudanese who have passionately rallied their fellow citizens to vote and get involved in the election process. I admire them for that, but electing a new Sudanese president is a losing battle, which is why I find it hilarious when well-meaning but naive Westerners like Simon Tisdall express such a rosy view.

Don’t get me wrong, the elections as a milestone for Sudan are a very great thing! However, the election process itself as a means of electing a new government is a joke. So why do the US envoy to Sudan and Jimmy Carter seem to express a rather optimistic, albeit cautious views about the event? Well, to answer that, one first needs to notice that the US administration took a position contrary to that of the opposition parties in Sudan.

While many in the opposition wanted the elections to be postponed, the US pressed that they should continue on time, regardless of boycotts and threats of more boycotts by the opposition. This is because America views the historic event within the bigger and more important context in which it is happening: the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which has milestones and a timeline designed to lead to the Southern Sudan referendum in January 2011.

Therefore, this shouldn’t surprise anyone.

April 10, 2010 (JUBA) – The US Special Envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, has welcomed the decision confirmed by the leadership of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) that it will participate in the elections in Northern Sudan states, saying it was important for the prioritized upcoming referendum in the South.

… Gration, who seemed to express satisfaction with the SPLM’s strategic political priorities, said his office was ready to assist in the contentious issues between the two peace-partners [NCP and SPLM] so that referendum on independence of Southern Sudan would be conducted as scheduled for January 2011.

Oh well, I wonder what it would have been like if John Garang was still around. Too bad he isn’t. And too bad Sudan doesn’t seem to have the strong necessary leadership in the opposition that’s capable of running a well-organized political party, let alone an entire fragile country that can disintegrate into another Somalia if it isn’t held together firmly.

Meanwhile, let the games begin! It’s time for those much-awaited and talked about elections! I will be keeping track of the news every now and then. And when 2011 has come and gone, let me know. I might get back to my former days of high engagement and interest.

Sudanese in the house, drop your comments and links to your blog posts below, if you have any please. A Global Voices round up is in the works.

I would love to hear your point of view.

Yalla, salam.

- Drima

That’s it. Enough of this shit. I’m not going to remain patient about it anymore. How much longer do I have to wait, lovely US State Department? Huh, HOW MUCH LONGER?!

For the first time ever, I am actually getting a taste of the nasty ordeals some friends have described to me in dealing with US Embassies or attempting to travel to America.

Given that I’ve only had the best experiences when traveling to the United States, and I’m used to receiving my visa within TWO WEEKS ONLY, I used to brush aside my friends’ complaints as isolated incidents.

Well, no more!

I applied on the 26th of January for my damn visa. 26th of JANUARY! Isn’t there like maximum waiting period of 60 days until you hear back or something? Apparently not.

Listen US State Department, I understand you have to do your security checks. Fine. I understand that sometimes the number of applications peaks and it takes time to sort things out. No problem. What I cannot and will not understand is how you keep people waiting indefinitely. That’s just complete and utter bullshit. At least give me a deadline damn it!

The meetings I had to go for. Delayed. The conference I was supposed to attend. Bye bye. Visiting my brother in Chicago. Whops, ain’t gonna happen. Traveling in California to meet friends who would have included some GlobalVoices folks. Sorry, forget it.

WORKING ON MY DAMN BOOK! Meh, too bad.

Seriously, WTF?

This needs to get resolved asap!

Like, resolved yesterday:

Since President Obama scolded the agencies for overlooking warning flags against Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian charged with trying to blow up an Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight on Christmas Day, the checks have been reinforced and the lists have grown. With that comes a higher likelihood of “administrative processing” for visa applicants whose names may resemble those of terrorist suspects but who are “guilty” of nothing more than having Muslim parents.

… Said Mahrane, a French national born in Algeria and brought up in France, applied for a journalist’s visa to accompany President Nicolas Sarkozy to Washington this week as a correspondent for the weekly newsmagazine Le Point. His colleagues from other publications — with traditional French names — got their visas in a couple of days. But Mahrane’s never came through.

… Mami said at first he reasoned that the delay would not be a problem because orientation classes at Berkeley were to begin March 22. But when the visa had still not arrived by Feb. 15, he sent a registered letter to the embassy inquiring about the delay. The next day, a woman called and said such delays were common and could last weeks or even months, he said.

Muhammad, Jesus, Marry and Joseph! Weeks or even months? Are you freaking kidding me?

Read the whole thing here.

Thank you Washington Post for writing about this! Let’s hope somebody is listening, and is going to do something about it.

UPDATE: So, today, exactly one day after publishing this post, I received a call from the US Embassy informing me that I need to come and collect my visa. Coincidence?

Naaa, somebody in the White House probably read my post, asked the CIA to investigate my real identity, and then called up the US State Department and scolded them for keeping the one and only Drima waiting this long.

Blog Power baby! Right.

Pffffffffffft, okay, finally! At last, phew! I have my damn US visa. Next time if I have to travel, I am going to be sure to apply like two or three months in advance!

The honorable Drima looks forward to blessing the United States with his arrival soon. There better be red carpets waiting at the airport.

Not too long ago, I published a post entitled Morality Does Not Come from Holy Books. It Comes from Us. The post drew lots of interesting comments, some of which I think adequately challenged, not my argument itself, but a big troublesome consequence it leads to that I failed to adequately address: moral relativism.

I am not a fan of post-modernism’s relativism. Morality can be and indeed is objective. Just because there are moral issues that are complex, does not mean there is no objective difference between right and wrong.

How do we achieve such objectivity if morality does not come from holy books? Well, for a start, religion’s esoteric aspects and mysticism have a lot to teach us about human psychological well-being. On top of that, we have the insights offered by perenial philosohpy. Both have a great deal to teach us.

But today though, we have Sam Harris discussing his approach to this issue in a brilliant TED Talk that probably made many politically-correct liberals in the audience cringe uncomfortably, thanks to their postmodernist leanings.

Be sure to watch it.

While Sam makes one hell of a compelling argument, I do disdain his portrayal of burka-wearing women and the Taliban’s nuttiness in a way that attempts to make them seem representative of Muslims. There was also no effort on his part to clarify that the practice of honor killings is mostly cultural, and has no basis in virtually all Islamic interpretations, even the most traditionalist.

Dear Sam, I know you hate religion, but applying some nuance and taking into account differences in interpretation and how the faithful practice their faiths, will make more in your audience more receptive to your ideas.

Other than that, awesome stimulating talk. Thumbs up.

Related:

• Defining Open-Mindedness: A Story About a 14 Year Old Kid and the Torture of the Grave
• 7 Categories of Faith, Explained
• The Ultimate Proof of How Patriarchal Muslim Societies Oppress Women

Let’s face it. Claiming that Jews control the US government is utter nonsense. They don’t. They do however have very significant influence through AIPAC in regard to matters related to the state of Israel, which brings me to the shift that I haven’t been alone in noticing lately. It started with this, but now it’s progressed into this: [click to continue...]

Two months ago, and after nearly five continuous years of being abroad, I returned to Khartoum for a short and much-needed visit that turned out to be rather rejuvenating. As soon as I was out of the airport cruising in my uncle’s pick up truck, the change was instantly noticeable.

It was already night time, and yet, it didn’t feel gloomy. Unlike before, most main streets were bright with lamps that stretched as far as the roads they lit. Most cars weren’t ancient moving chimneys anymore. The majority seemed to be Korean-made and manufactured within the last couple of years probably.

Everywhere I looked, there were new restaurants full of people. The few old ones I hung out in five years earlier like Amwaj and Steers were still in business and seemed overwhelmed by the demand of the endless hungry crowd.

Street advertisements launched by the new cellphone network provider Sudani One against Zain were hard to avoid. Anywhere you drove, there they were - again and again, in your face. Oh, and I also saw an Addidas store, and when I asked a friend about it later, he told me it’s genuine.

And it made sense. Addidas, after all, is a German brand. Hence, American sanctions have no effect on it.

It was a little hard to absorb everything all at once. My uncle was right. “It’s been five years since the last you came here. What did you expect,” he said.

Not everything was rainbows and butterflies though. Different things left me with different reactions. So without anymore further delays, yours truly will now begin sharing some of the many observations he’s made during his recent trip to the convergence of the White and Blue Niles.

Elections? What Elections?

Given that the elections are just around the corner, I was expecting to sense some excitement in the city. Posters everywhere for candidates, preparations, conversations centered around this historic event, something, anything, but soon, I found out that I had arrived with excessively high expectations.

“Here, in this part of Khartoum, hardly anyone cares really. People here just want to eat, dress nicely, talk for hours on their cellphones, drive nice cars, and live in comfortable homes,” my uncle began explaining the next day. “The ones who care about the elections are the people in Omdurman. You’ll notice the activism there,” he continued.

Ah, Those Pesky Turkish Soap Operas. Where’s a Fatwa When You Need One?

Arabic-dubbed Turkish operas spreading their “bullshit secular Turkish values” are the craze right now. Young and old, male and female, many just seem to enjoy watching them in Khartoum these days.

Where Did All the Southerners Go?

This one took me a while to notice. Five years ago, it was always so easy to spot crowds of Southern Sudanese walking around together in big groups in different parts of the city. Now, their numbers have dramatically gone down.

Drima: Where did they disappear to?

Friend: They were gradually pushed out of the city and forced to head to the South back to where they came from.

Drima: Interesting, I thought so. Well, there’s another reason to add to the list of reasons for why the South is going to separate into its own country soon.

Friend: Good, because I’m tired of this shit. Let them have their country.

The Jihad Lectures

So one day I got into a little amjaad van, and told the driver to take me to Solitaire to meet sommmmmebody. On the way there, the amjaad driver listened to some seriously horrifying shit preached by some seriously horrifying lunatic who probably escaped from a zoo.

“The infidels are the enemies of Islam. Everywhere, they are the enemies of Islam. If they respect the law of God and the rule of Islam in a country, they may go around minding their own business peacefully. However, if they transgress our ways and attempt to affirm their disbelief in the face of our creed, then we must fight them.”

Sigh. I thought this garbage lost its popularity within Khartoum after Turabi’s fall from power. Looks like I was wrong.

“Girls Who Smoke Shisha Are Sluts!”

There was this other time when another amjaad driver was listening to a lecture on some Sudanese radio channel. The whole thing focused on the “shisha-smoking trend amongst Sudanese university girls” and how it’s “a disturbing phenomenon that is spreading quickly within society.”

Sadly, the trend isn’t seen as a bad thing due to public health concerns, something which would be absolutely legitimate. Instead, it’s seen as a disturbing trend because ” a girl who smokes shisha, isn’t a worthy future wife or mother” because “she cheapens herself by engaging in such immoral behavior which is against our values” and “no wise young man would want to marry such girls.”

Meanwhile, the boys can smoke all the want. Yes, having a penis makes you exempt from criticism apparently. Not a single thing was mentioned during the radio lecture concerning shisha-smoking amongst young male Sudanese adults in universities.

Double sigh.

The Other Side of the “Indecent for Wearing Trousers” Story

Drima: What a bunch of assholes. How can they do this to her just because she was wearing trousers?

Friend: Man, that woman is an opportunist. You don’t have all the facts. They bothered her and arrested her because she writes shit against the government in newspapers.

Drima: Oh, how nice, so now everyone who writes against the government should get harassed?

Friend: No, no, cut the crap, that’s not what I meant. The woman is an opportunist. She used her arrest to get media attention, and now she’s milking her fame for all its worth promoting her book in France. Man, she freaking met the former French president.

Drima: She’s sharing her story, what’s the problem with that?

Friend: Well, obviously you don’t know that she was married to a wealthy man who was over 80 years old, do you?

Drima: Eh, really? No effing way!

Friend: I’m telling you, it’s true, just ask around.

Dear Sudanese readers out there, can any of you confirm this?

The Day I Almost Cried Tears of Joy:
My First Visit to Burj Al Fatih

I’ve seen it in pictures and on video, but never in real life. The first time I entered the building’s compound, I was in disbelief. Finally, after all these years, a well-constructed large modern building worthy of admiration rose up from the sands of Khartoum. It actually happened. And days later, I saw more buildings rising up as I dined at the top of Burj Al-Fatih in the sky view restaurant and inspected Alsunut project.

For all of you dear non-Sudanese reading this blog (and especially you dear uninformed ones who think Sudan is all just about genocide, genocide, and more genocide), here’s a video featuring the plan for the ambitious project known as Alsunut.

While there is progress, it’s not going as well as expected at all. Insiders tell me Osama Dawud had a fallout with corrupt government officials who wanted to grab a piece of the action. Some of his companies also got caught up and paralyzed by American sanction restrictions. Although now, with the monumental Darfur peace agreement signed at Qatar, thanks to the efforts of the Qatari government and other beebull, I predict we’ll gradually begin to see positive changes in Sudanese American relations.

My Visit to Maygoma

This one is going to require a whole separate post. But I gotta tell you though, visiting shelters for abandoned children left to die by “mothers” who gave birth to them out of wedlock, is no fun experience. It was tragic.

Anyways, as a conclusion, and simply put, Sudan, (erm, actually Khartoum to be specific) has made some very real progress in terms of infrastructure, living standards, and a bunch of other stuff impacted by the oil boom. However, all of this has also created distinct differences in lifestyle. On the surface, Sudanese in Khartoum love to portray the impression that they’re conforming to long-accepted social “guidelines” if I can call them that. However, once you dig a little deeper, you begin to discover lots of contradictions.

Meh, I’m gonna need a whole separate post for this one as well.

More later ya 7ilween.

Yalla, salam.

- Drima

Here’s a quote I read recently that I absolutely fell in love with. It’s from the book In the Mystic Footsteps of Saints, by the Naqshbandi Sufi, Shaykh Nazim Adil Al-Haqqani.

“Don’t worry about bringing people “in line” but rather concern yourself with making sure that your own practices are becoming a means for attaining inner peace and are not becoming an end in themselves. If your practice brings you inner peace and wisdom others will emulate those practices voluntarily.”

Where can you find Shaykhs who are well-known around the world, with this kind of thinking, nowadays? Answer? Sadly, not many. Or maybe I just haven’t come across them yet.

Shaykh Nazim is a breath of fresh air. I’m glad I discovered him and his beautiful insights. Yay to Sufi mystics who speak the language of love.

Good news: Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas, whom I had the pleasure of meeting three months ago in Beirut, will continue to walk free after the utterly nonsensical case brought against him.

Also, more news worth celebrating: Internet sensation, Kina Grannis has finally released her album.

To all of you lovers who went against the wishes of the holy bearded ones, and recently celebrated Valentines, I dedicate Kina’s song Valentine to you.

In other news: French cars suck. Kevin Kelly is awesome and has got a pretty damn huge sexy brain. Lastly, Apple is cooler than Microsoft, which is why I now use a MacBook Pro, and won’t ever be going back to the nightmare known as laptops running on Windows again.

EVER!

And yes, I will be publishing my Sudan post soon. Promise.

Sorry it’s taking longer than expected.

Later.

Hugz and high fives.

Edge recently asked some of the world’s leading scientists, authors and thinkers the following question: “How has the internet changed the way you think?”

One of my favorite answers came from the one and only, Kevin Kelly. And yes, I’m a huge fan of Kevin Kelly’s work. Here’s what he has to say in response to the question.

… my knowledge is now more fragile. For every accepted piece of knowledge I find, there is within easy reach someone who challenges the fact. Every fact has its anti-fact. The Internet’s extreme hyperlinking highlights those anti-facts as brightly as the facts. Some anti-facts are silly, some borderline, and some valid. You can’t rely on experts to sort them out because for every expert there is an equal and countervailing anti-expert. Thus anything I learn is subject to erosion by these ubiquitous anti-factors.

I can so relate to this. Think about the above and then just imagine the impact the web will have on religion in the long-term.

… My certainty about anything has decreased. Rather than importing authority, I am reduced to creating my own certainty — not just about things I care about — but about anything I touch, including areas about which I can’t possibly have any direct knowledge . That means that in general I assume more and more that what I know is wrong. We might consider this state perfect for science but it also means that I am more likely to have my mind changed for incorrect reasons. Nonetheless, the embrace of uncertainty is one way my thinking has changed.

Uncertainty is a kind of liquidity. I think my thinking has become more liquid. It is less fixed, as text in a book might be, and more fluid, as say text in Wikipedia might be. My opinions shift more. My interests rise and fall more quickly. I am less interested in Truth, with a capital T, and more interested in truths, plural. I feel the subjective has an important role in assembling the objective from many data points. The incremental plodding progress of imperfect science seems the only way to know anything.

Brilliant. Read the rest here.

I’m in love with the fact that “truth” is no longer what the guy sitting on the throne and a bunch of bearded men want it to be. Like inter-continental satellite television before it, the internet is now causing disturbances in the epistemologies of Muslim countries worldwide.

But, unlike the push medium of conventional media, the internet is a pull medium and the epistemic consequences of this massive property are as fascinating as they are exciting.

Me loves.

One the negative side, say hello to postmodernism on steroids!

Solution? What Carter Phipps said:

Rehabilitating confidence in truth and reason will undoubtedly be one of the tasks of the twenty-first century. As a culture, we must begin to recognize that while truth and objectivity may not be absolutes that exist perfectly free of time and history, neither are they hopelessly embedded in personal perspectives. Simply because truth is always subject to revision does not and could never mean that all truth claims deserve equal space at the table of cultural discourse. Let’s not put reason and science on the pedestal of perfection, but let’s also not confuse leaps of faith with rational inquiry. If the twenty-first century is being defined by an ongoing clash of traditional, modern, and postmodern worldviews both in individuals and in societies around the world, then escaping that clash with minimal harm and maximal development will mean finding a fourth way. It will mean learning to steer our ship of culture away from the overconfident certainties of theology and science but also away from the overwrought uncertainties of contemporary philosophy.

Right on.