Think Twice

Let's start thinking

Do you think that you and I see the same thing in the same way? In other words,
do you perceive what I see from the same angle, reference, background or perspective as
I do? I guess what your answer would be, but occasionally I’ll overlook it until you come to
the end of this article that I urge you to read with your brain not your eyes because eyes
are only but a medium. They cannot “read”, in the exact sense of the word, but they can
help you read.

It is not how things are in reality that counts, but rather how people perceive them
depending upon their frame of reference. No research that I know has focused on
checking if people see the same thing in the same way. I bet it will be a grave mistake to
think that the "red flower" you see and describe as “red” is pictured by another man's eyes
in the same way. Who bets they have the same scope level? What you see as red is not
red but it is a color people are agreed on calling it so. However, is your red color, or what
you call red, the same “red” that everybody else call “red”? And above all which organs
are responsible for the perception of things in man? Are they his eyes or his brain or ...
worse, his mood?

I guess it is imperative that people should always ask the big question, “Do I
perceive the things round me in the same way the others do?” This will certainly lead to a
great discovery that may classify you among one of two categories of people, crazy or
philosopher. Are the people we name crazy really crazy? Aren’t we the crazy? May be, the
way a crazy man sees the so called normal ones is obviously unknown to us despite all
the long researches in the field of psychology and psychic. It is a gloomy world that we
live in and manage to understand. It is not necessary to go crazy to know? It is enough if
everybody sees the others as normal and himself as crazy. This attitude will certainly lead
to a certain level of compromise between people of diverse views and interests. This will
stop the clash between the people and the interests or at least will soften the shock. Are
normal people really normal? If I consider them all so, I am crazy. Worse than that, if I
consider all the others crazy, I am crazy, as well.

Each person is an independent waste island where intolerance, if it is not

oppressed by the authority of acceptance, is the ruler. Each one views himself as the
best, the purest, the most civilized and the noblest of all; whereas the others are just
rascals, futile and third hand human beings. We are not yet in that stage, but most
societies believe in their supremacy as a race. Where does intolerance start? Intolerance
starts when you think you are right and all the others should follow your example or else
they are abnormal. This attitude or method of thinking expands to ravage the remaining
cracked lances of humanitarian feelings we possess as human beings to wind up into
discrimination and rejection of the other. We, eventually, should not look each one his
way, but we are obliged to look together in the same direction if we actually believe in
cohabitation. No matter how stupid we are, we should know that if we keep rejecting the
others, one day we’ll find out that we are the rejected ones not them. The others, in their
turn, will reject us being not fit to understand our points of view in the matter we consider
ourselves experts. In order for us to see the very “red” that everybody sees we have to
rush to forbearance and compromise. Logically speaking, if you don’t accept my view to
things, I won’t accept yours. And by pushing me away for a reason or another, you are

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pushing yourself away from me in my place. You are doing my share of the reciprocal
opinionated contest.

Nobody has ever asked the very discomforting question, notably if the terrorists
aren’t just expressing our own views towards them in another way, I mean a little bit
aggressively. They are aware of the feelings we have for them and they are responding to
that in their own manner. Each of us has his own way and concept of terrorism. If you hit
the dog every time you see him, you are making of him an eternal enemy. He will never
appreciate your treating him that way. If you forbid him from eating or drinking you are
doing the same thing but differently. In both approaches you are terrorizing him.
Accordingly, you should be ready to accept and understand his reaction if he bites you or
at least barks at you. If we consider ourselves the only ones who live in a free world, we
discard all the others from the map we have drawn for ourselves and this triggers
haltered. What we, eventually, do is to force them to terrorize us because we indirectly
terrorize them or at least that is what we make them have in mind. It’s high time we
reviewed our approaches in dealing with the other nations and sat down and checked for
a compromise and got things crystal clear; but how?!

The red flower is not blue. And the red I am talking about here is the same that you
know. My “red” is your “red”. Nevertheless, if my “red” is different from what you call “red”,
in this case we have to reach a compromise as quickly as possible because later on many
other people will have their own private concept of the “red” and try to force us to accept it
as such. If we don’t, and surely we won’t, the consequences will be fatal for everybody.
No armistice, no middle ground but only warfare to impose one’s “red” on the others. Do
you think that a person you oblige to call what he sees “blue” “red” is going to accept you
as normal or sane? You are just a crazy aggressive person for him, you that consider him
crazy because he sees your “red” “blue”. Why if his “red” is the true “red” and yours is a
fake red color?

This is the cause of all hostility escalations in the present times. The free world for
some people is only a big prison for others. Without a compromise at the end, there will
be no free world despite the angle you visualize it. If my “red” is different from yours, your
concept of the “free world” is consequentially different from mine. So we are enemies until
we, both of us, admit that negotiation is the only salvation for the benefit of the peace in
the world which we share and have to cohabit in. The problem is that which red are we
going to accept as “red”, yours or mine? It is neither this nor that. We’ll give to your “red”
and my “red” a third name, may be “brown”. This is the ultimate solution to get out from
the bottle neck. “The bottle?!” What bottle? Are we talking about the same thing? Is the
thing you call “bottle” the same for me, too?

M. Abdessalami
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