Istanbul Is Blooming

Literally, the spring has arrived to Istanbul. The tulips started to show up everywhere.

"Sümbüls" started to shade the terrace of my favorite day-time cafe again.



But more importantly, our much beloved "erguvan"s (Judas trees) started to bloom dotting the green landscapes of Bosphorus with its pink flowers setting gray winter-time imaginations free. To an Istanbullu, when erguvans bloom, it is time to end the hibernation and mix with life outside.

Indeed, the same time has been coinciding with Istanbul's major cinema festival for the last 28 years. The event - Istanbul Film Festival - is a two weeks cultural feast consisting of some 200 movies gathered from all corners of the world shown in movie theaters that mostly concentrate around Taksim area attracting thousands of loyal followers every year.

The lively crowd on streets melts all of a sudden during matinées making the Istiklal and its side streets resemble school corridors. Then when the movies are over, the crowd makes its way back to the streets rushing to cafes to grab a quick drink over a short chat with an acquaintance run into on street until making their way to the next movie.

The festival marks the cultural awakening of the city each year starting a chain reaction of festivals blooming one after another around the city making you believe whatever events you attended during winter time were merely preparations for the real thing - the cultural summer.

Link:

Being In The Middle

My last two posts gave me thoughts around a favorite movie of mine named "Taking Sides" from Istvan Szabo.

Those in the middle seem to be richest poors or the poorest riches.

Being one?

Happy Children Day

Yesterday, when children in the west were celebrating their day exchanging smiles with politicians, some children in the east had to deal with a slightly more unfortunate treat.


"...Video footage of the protest showed an officer from the special operations unit beating the boy in the head with a truncheon and then kicking him as he lay on the ground..."

Of course, this specific case is an indicator of a big problem with lots of dimensions. But the output is as simple as shame.

Decomposing Leafs

Today's April 23rd. It is the 89th. anniversary of the first assembly of the current Turkish parliament. Much more importantly, it is the national holiday that is completely dedicated to children.

It is in the republic's tradition that the primary statesmen (president, primary minister, chairman of the parliament and minister of education) invite children to their offices today, give them their seats for couple of minutes and let them symbolically give orders and talk before the press.


The tradition apparently began in 1929 when Ataturk started to invite children to his office; but no one seems to know exactly whose idea was it to give the children the seat. It is however one of the rare state traditions that is being followed by all without any objections - something very rare in this country.


This girl - apparently a natural republican - replaces the prime minister to give clever answers such as; "don't ask me questions about the possible revision in the cabinet, I've just sit here". To a question whether she thinks that the raise given to civil servants this year was enough, she answers "I want to see them well off as much as you do. But these are tough times and tough times require tough decisions."

Another young lady that was replacing the president was challenged by a more difficult question coming from an enthusiastic 5 year old boy:

"What happens to decomposed leafs when they decompose?"


Everyone laughs at the only question that would mean something in the universe.

The laughter ends, the bullshit continues.

Source of Violence & Equal Societies

I read an impressive article in The Independent yesterday.

Key points to me;

"...One of our most basic psychological needs is for status – to feel that we are a valued member of our tribe. We evolved in small, very egalitarian tribes of hunter-gatherers, and have only lived outside them for a few minutes in evolutionary terms. So when we feel our status is threatened – or there is no way of becoming respected by the rest of the tribe – we begin to malfunction in all sorts of ways.

Indeed, almost nothing makes humans more anxious than panic about our status. Endless clinical trials show what happens to our bodies when we feel we are going to lose our status"
...
"Our systems flood with a hormone called cortisol."
...
"...Yet we have built our societies on exaggerating this status panic, and we have been ratcheting it up over the past 30 years. The more unequal a society is, the more intense it becomes. Even if you slip to the bottom in Sweden, it's not so very different from the top. But when there is a long social ladder, and the bottom rung means humiliation and poverty, everyone at every rung feels a sweatier need to cling to their place – and the society starts to go wrong. This isn't left-wing speculation: it is an empirical fact."
...

...
"How can this be? Permanent status panic is an unnatural state for humans. High cortisol levels corrode our insides and massively increase the risk of heart-attack. We eat more – and our bodies store fat differently. It hugs them to our middles, rather than storing them lower down, in our hips and thighs. We look for ways to soothe ourselves – like drug addiction. We are far more likely to break down into depression or mental illness, or to snap and attack somebody. "
...
"James Gilligan, the psychiatrist running the Center for the Study of Violence at Harvard Medical School, explains that acts of violence are "attempts to ward off or eliminate the feeling of shame and humiliation – a feeling that is painful, and can even be intolerable or overwhelming". He adds that he has "yet to see a serious act of violence that did not represent an attempt to undo this 'loss of face"
...
"Our élites have adopted an ideology – the extreme inequality of market fundamentalism – that simply doesn't suit our species. It doesn't have to be this way. By democratically taxing the rich and using the money to lift up the poor, we can make life better for all of us. Of course there must be some income differentials, but nothing like our own grotesque rates. Plato suggested the richest person should be allowed to earn five times the wage of the poorest person, which seems fair to me. "

I Want War

Just occured to me; do you know anyone from history or from today's world sent to prison for wanting war? None that I'm aware of. Isn't it ironic when you consider how easy it is to find yourself in prison or even get yourself killed under certain circumstances when what you want is "peace" ?

Why Dunning & Kruger Effect?

Sometimes I tend to think that it's a pity that it wouldn't be very practical to implement a law to enforce people to study issues they write about. A quote I tend to find very important is "Bilgi sahibi olmadan fikir sahibi olmak" in Turkish; somewhat meaning "to reach a conviction without the necessary information".

W: Aaa, this joke is really funny.

W:I'm sending it to you

M: Send...

The reason why I named Dunning & Kruger effect this blog actually slightly contradicts with what I just said above. I chose the name because I wanted it to remind me these 4 observed phenomena whenever I would feel the urge to express my thoughts here:

• Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
• Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
• Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
• If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill

Under the horror of these 4 principles, I wanted to remind myself that I should be doubting every idea & thought no matter where they are originating from - from myself or someone else. On the other hand, I didn't want my doubts to prevent me from sharing them.

I try to remember not to reach convictions without adequate thinking. Especially motivated by the challenge that my posts are being followed by some of the minds I value in this world, I keep re-thinking issues already expressed here. I love to observe that in this re-thinking process, ideas I share here tend to evolve, mature and sometimes even completely change on my mind. It's like a diary where records keep ever changing. Precisely the reason why I started this blog.

Especially in our age of communication, when I see how some thought patterns are prepared, packaged into easy to swallow thought tablettes to be consumed by public and served through public opinion channels wordlwide is somewhat disappointing.

It's like these radioactive marker drugs they inject into your vein to see how your blood travels through your body; a thought is created and you see it travel from continent to continent, from country to country, from city to city, from neighborhood to neighborhood for years - without being questioned, without being re-thought, accepted as they arrive, used with confidence and pride in every intellectual conversation.

Let's avoid that.