পথ

পথ First Published: October 06, 2023

পরের জনমে যদি সুযোগ পাই, তবে আমি চাইবো পথ হতে। না, খানাখন্দে ভরা জীর্ণ-শীর্ণ পথ নয়। হয়তো রাজপথ, কিংবা হাইওয়ে, কিংবা নিতান্তই তুচ্ছ কানাগলি।

পথ কখনো কারোর গন্তব্য নয়। ছিলোও না কখনো। পথই মানুষকে পৌঁছে দেয় তার গন্তব্যে, তার গৃহে। তবে 'গৃহ' শব্দটায় আমার ঘোর আপত্তি। গৃহ যে শুধুই মাথা গোঁজার ঠাঁই নয়, ইহা বোধহয় আজ সর্বজনস্বীকৃত একটি স্টেটমেন্ট। আর পথ? পথের সমস্তটাই গৃহ, সমস্তটাই এই অসীম মহাকাশের নিচে এক অন্তহীন কাব্য।

পথ হয়ে আমি সবার হৃদয়ের গল্প শুনবো। শুনবো তাদের আত্মার করুণতম সুর, জানবো তাদের মননের জটিলতম চিন্তাটি। উপলব্ধি করবো পথিকের দুঃসহ যাতনাগুলো। উপভোগ করবো তার সুখ। কণ্ঠ মেলাবো তাদের বিষাদমাখা গানগুলোর সাথে,

“আমার সময় হলো অন্তবিহীন পথ তোর সময় হলো নীরব যন্ত্রণা…”

দিনের বেলা অনুভব করবো শহরের ব্যস্ততা। এই ব্যস্ত নগরীতে কেউই কারোর নয়। কি এক বেনামী প্রতিযোগিতায় সবাই ছুটে চলেছে। কিন্তু কিসের আশায়? কেন আমাদের এই শহর-নগর-জনপদ? এসব প্রশ্নের সুতো হঠাৎ কেটে যাবে কোনো এক দরাজ কণ্ঠের সুরে,

“আলু বেচো, ছোলা বেচো, বেচো বাখরখানি বেচো না বেচো না বন্ধু তোমার চোখের মণি…”

পথ হয়ে আমি উপভোগ করবো আকাশের অঝোর কান্না। আকাশের কান্নার ভালোবাসার স্পর্শে পূর্ণ হবো। অথবা কোনো পূর্ণিমা রাতে চাঁদের স্নিগ্ধ আলোয় ভীষণ মায়া নিয়ে তাকিয়ে থাকবো মারিয়া'র দেয়া পাঁচটি নীলপদ্ম হাতে পূর্ণিমা দেখা হিমুর দিকে। সে নীলপদ্ম গ্রহণের ক্ষমতা হিমুর নেই। কিংবা দেখবো স্ট্রীটল্যাম্পের আলোয় দ্রুত হেঁটে চলা কেরানীটির দিকে। হাতে তার বেলিফুলের মালা ও খেলনা। ঘরে হয়তো তরুণী স্ত্রী, একটি ছোট সন্তান। কিংবা হয়তো কেউই নেই তার। এসবের স্থান হয়তো কোনো কবরস্থানের দুটি চিহ্নহীন কবরের ওপর।

পথ হয়ে সবচে' তীব্রভাবে অনুভব করবো সময়। কালে কালে পুরনো পদচিহ্ন মিলিয়ে যাবে সব, জয় হবে নূতনের। শুনবো নতুন নতুন কথা, গাইবো নতুন সব গান। তবু হয়তো কোনো নির্জন নিশুতি রাতে নস্টালজিক হয়ে ভাবতে বসবো,

“আমাদের গেছে যে দিন একেবারেই কি গেছে, কিছুই কি নেই বাকি…”

এরপরে একদিন পথের মৃত্যু হবে। কোনো এক ইঞ্জিনিয়ারের পরামর্শে দানবের তাণ্ডবলীলা নেমে আসবে আমার উপর। হয়তো ততোদিনে ক্লান্ত, বিধ্বস্ত আমি খুশিই হবো। মুছে যাবে আমার কাছে সঞ্চিত তোমাদের সব গল্প, গান, কবিতা, কথা… স্মৃতি।
এসো, আমরা বিষাদের আনন্দ খুঁজি।

Book Review: "The Only Study-Guide You'll Ever Need" - Jade Bowler

Book Review: "The Only Study-Guide You'll Ever Need" - Jade Bowler
Personal Rating: 4.6/5
Ahnaf Anjish | October 21, 2021
Hey guys! Welcome to the blog post. Today, I want to review a book that I read recently, "The Only Study-Guide You'll Ever Need". It was the maiden book written by a famous StudyTuber, Jade Bowler. The book became an instant bestseller, and loved by most of the students. As she passed her highschool recently, it is believed that most of us can relate to her ideas. So, without further ado, let's dive in!

The first thing that I noticed that she referred to various research papers whenever necessary, but the book is not a summary of those papers at all. She used her own, informal tone - which is known well enough to her regular viewers. The book was full of both fun and grim experiences, and her storytelling is amazing. The book is of 13 chapters, and all of them are organized and correlate to each other very well. She described various methods and hacks in details, and she also gave her own thoughts on "Night-Before-Exam Preparation". The best part of the book is that she thought of her readers as humans, not some productive 24/7 working robots. The way she included the Mental Health Portion is very basic, yet valuable enough. She also included a note from various famous StudyTubers after each and every chapter- which has provided a great insight on those topics.

Even though the book is great, I still found some drawbacks. For me, I didn't like the style of her "Revision Timetable System". I found it quite rigid personally. Instead, I prefer Ali Abdaal's Retrospective Revision Timetable a lot. It's much more superior and dynamic than what she mentioned in her book.

Overall, I think that the book is quite a good read, and probably it's truly the only Study-Guide you'll need - if you are comfortable with her rigid system of daily routine.


Let me know your thoughts in the comments section. And don't forget to check out my other book reviews here. Thank you.

Noam Chomsky: The Philosopher

Noam Chomsky: The Philosopher
Introduction to Professor Noam Chomsky.
Ahnaf Anjish | June 23, 2021

Speechless!!! Stunned!!!

Saw the FB Live between Noam Chomsky and someone called Miraj Ripon or somethin' a couple of hours ago[1]. What on earth was that? How can someone insult another person like that? I can't be ashamed anymore.

Anyways, let's take a quick look at the life of Noam Chomsky and his best works.

Professor Noam Chomsky is one of the best philosophers, linguists, and political activists of both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He is also regarded as one of the founders of Cognitive Science.[2] Born on December 7 in 1928, Noam Chomsky was interested in Anarchism from a very early age. His philosophy aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism. Chomsky has written more than 150 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, and mass media so far. He wrote his first article about the spread of fascism when he was only 10 years old.[3] In his first book called Syntactic Structures, which was published in 1957, he argued that for the independence of syntax (the study of sentence structures) from semantics (the study of meaning). It had a major impact on the study of knowledge, mind and mental processes; becoming an influential work in the formation of the field of cognitive science.[4]

Chomsky is Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was also named "Killian Lecturer"[5] on May 22, 1991. His works have influenced Computer Science, Visual Perception, and the Field of Immunology. On the other hand, many of his political comments have gained him international fame. He also got arrested multiple times for his strong opinions. The Killian Award Committee quoted,

"His criticism of the actions of government and of press for the way in which it has reported these actions have received world-wide attention. They also have disturbed many. Chomsky's response has always been that it is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth as they see it and that the reaction to his views is less due to the content of his message than to the effectiveness of the media in manufacturing consent."

You can find the list of Noam Chomsky's books here.

References:

Mental Health: Why is it so important while being so underrated?

Mental Health: Why is it so important while being so underrated?
"A sound mind lives in a sound body." But does it, really?
Ahnaf Anjish | March 6, 2021
We know many famous proverb highlighting the importance of physical health and exercise, like,
“Health is Wealth”
or,
“Physical fitness is the first requisite of happiness.”
– Joseph Pilates.

But, can you really be happy if you cannot get out of your bed in the morning due to clinical depression and want to kill yourself? Or imagine, you are lifting a dumbell and you want to break your very own head cause you wanna escape from all the pains you have inside. Or you might be in a math class and you cannot concentrate cause your brain is constantly telling you to kill yourself? Relatable, right?

And this is the very reason why we should give enough attention to our mental health. But, what actually is "Mental Health"? According to WHO,

"Mental health is a state of well-being in which an individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her community."

To put it simply, Mental Health is your ability to think rationally and logically. It gives you a sense of power and control over your ownself, and it has the capability to keep you happy and productive as well. When a person is mentally ill or not-okay, that's when the problem begins.

But, what do I mean by being "Mentally Ill" or "Mentally Not-Okay"? Well, Mental Illness indicates to mental disorder. As I've argued in another post that Mind is a process, we can actually say that Mental Illness is something internal that hinders you from thinking and analyzing anything. Here, the term "Internal" refers to your nervous and endocrinological system, but let's put it away for some another day.

So, there are various ways or determinants to determine your mental health condition; mostly based on multiple social, psychological, and biological factors. I would like to discuss them briefly before getting into my main argument.

According to WHO, violence and persistent socio-economic pressures are recognized risks to mental health. The clearest evidence is associated with sexual violence. Poor mental health is also associated with rapid social change, stressful work conditions, gender discrimination, social exclusion, unhealthy lifestyle, physical ill-health and human rights violations. There are specific psychological and personality factors that make people vulnerable to mental health problems. Biological risks include genetic factors.

So, What makes it so important?

Human behaviour is always prone to darkness or to unknown things, and we fear them the most. Naturally, we cannot see or read someone's mind whereas we can easily understand whether someone is physically ill or not. But the truth is, human mind is the most-unique that makes us different from other creatures. So, even though it is complex, it has a distinct health condition. It's health condition is so much important that if it's suffering, then you will suffer. For example; if you have a slight fever or you have cold, then you might be okay with little to no medications - as your body has its very own immune system to fight against unwanted germs and bacterias. But for mental illness, it is your body that is sick. And that's why there's no internal immune system to fight against it. If you have a mental health condition, you will suffer based on its severity. You probably won't be able to do all the things you used to did once to keep yourself "physically" healthy, as mentioned in the introduction.

So, Why is it so underrated or neglected? Or why are we so much stigmatized about it?

Now that we know how important your mental health really is, then we may ask why we do not give enough attention to it. Simple. Because WE DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT. Well, it is not the only reason, but it is the most important one in my opinion. And probably it is the reason why WE DO NOT CARE ABOUT IT. I would like to list some of the other important reasons down below,

  • Firstly, it is not in our educational system. We are not taught about EQ (Emotional Quotient, also known as Emotional Intelligence) at our institutions. We learn about mitochondria and plastid, but we do not know how to regulate our mind and emotions.
  • Most of our parents do not understand a single thing about mental health or mental illness, let alone teaching us this very unique aspect of this species. Especially in this sub-continent, where people spend most of their time bullying other people (mostly online) or doing superstitious chores; it is quite hard to imagine someone from that generation who understand it based on their common-sense. But hopefully, we will change for the better in future.
  • The most common reason is the Society. I hate to say this; but we want to be accepted by the cruel society at all costs, rather than making the society kind enough to accept and respect people of all types. We often wonder What will people say?, and then leave our passion and happiness to keep our head "high" on other people's eyes.
  • The next point is the internet. As social sites can easily make people addicted, cyber-bullying is another cause behind mental illness. I might call my friend "fat" today, and probably he will laugh outside; but we never know what is going on inside his mind?
  • As psychology is a quite new term, and visiting a therapist costs a lot; people tend to believe that mental illnesses onlu happen to the rich. And as we have a potrait of a rich person in our mind, we think that only doing those works can bring mental illnesses.

Now that we have detailed the reasons why it is so importand while being so stigmatized, we should also know how we can change for the better. I believe that you certainly do understand what are the things we need to change. And if you have any other reason you think or hypothesis on this topic, please let me know in the comments below. Thank you all very much.

Inspiration VS Manipulation: and the Idea of Influencing People.

Inspiration VS Manipulation: and the Idea of Influencing People.
Inspiration, Manipulation, and the Catalysts behind them.
Ahnaf Anjish | January 9, 2021
Hi guys! I hope you all are doing great. As usual, back to my blog after a week. In the past week, I've started reading a book of one of my favorite podcaster and YouTuber, Simon Sinek. The book is called "Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action". I haven't finished the book yet, and I am looking forward to write an full-fledged review on this book soon after I finish it. But today I am going to talk about one of the topics introduced early in this book: Inspiration VS Manipulation. Hope you enjoy the post, as well as my other posts on this blog; and feel free to comment or share your opinions. So, without further ado, let's begin.

At first, we have to learn about what Inspiration is, and what Manipulation is. These two are the approaches a man or a company can take to achieve certain goals and to influence people. Another buggy term comes in, damn! What is Influence, and WHY is it often necessary? Influence is a term that we use to explain impact. It is the impact of something, or the consequence to something; where something mostly indicates to an event or an occurance. Influence is the power that makes you to go for lunch with your friends, or to a nightout, or makes you buy a shoe, or makes you study more or to take alcohols. As you may have noticed that you do not do all of those happily, rather sometimes you do these reluctantly or you feel like your life depends on it. Yup, you got it right! You are either inspired or manipulated to do so.

Let's talk about Manipulation first. Manipulation is the skillful handling, controlling or using of something or someone. But what does that mean? It means companies cutting down the price or giving cashbacks, or installing fear among the customers or making them believe that they "MUST" need to buy these products to achieve their goals. It means a man convincing his friend to listen to podcasts without mentioning why they should, or taking someone to dinner via blackmailimg. These are the commonly-known aspects of manipulation as well. Manipulation is not a good practice at all, and doesn't help an entrepreneur or a CEO to run his business for long.

Now let's check on the second-most important part of todays blog: Inspiration. Inspiration is some type of feeling, that enables you do creative stuff as well as to buy products naturally without being forced. The idea of "Inspiration" is like standing for something and voting for it to be the best. If you look at the tech-giant Apple, or a sportswear manufacturer Adidas - you can see that these companies stand for their product, so they don't need to manipulate you to buy their products. It has a beautiful thing:
People do not buy your product based on how or when or where do you make it or market it, rather they buy your product based on WHY (or on which purpose) you have created it.
So, you can't actually inspire anyone for anything unless YOU START WITH WHY.

Now we come to an extra part of our discussion, and I am including it because this part is super-confusing. So, what is it? Simple! Here, I would love to talk to about the differences between Inspiration and Motivation. Well; Inspiration is all about you, and your questions of WHY. On the other hand, Motivation is mostly about giving examples; examples of successful & productive men and women. Motivation goes like, "If I/he/she can do this, then why you can't?" But it often gives a negative thought on the listeners' mind. So, at the end of the day; Inspiration, if implemented perfectly, lasts forever.

The post is lengthy already, and I won't extend it any longer. I will just end the post with a simple, yet inspirational message by Simon Sinek,
“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
Thank you for reading this lengthy post with patience. Stay happy, stay safe.

Asking Why? A discussion about the BYLC Workshop I took.

Asking Why?
Mind, Critical Thinking, Cognitive Bias, Conformity Bias, Anchoring Bias.
Ahnaf Anjish | January 2, 2021
Hi there! Hope you are well. I attended a workshop a couple of weeks ago on "Asking Why?", and it was taken by our beloved Chomok Hasan vaia at the BYLC Yearly Seminar. It was about Critical Thinking, and he was kind enough to speak about Cognitive Bias and some of its classifications as well. I would love to discuss some key points he mentioned in the workshop, and I will also try to add a summary at the end of the post. Please feel free to comment and join the discussion.

At first, what is this Critical Thinking? Is it something to eat or wear? No. Well, to take an in-depth look at critical thinking; what we need to know first is something called Mind. Mind is a process, or a mechanism of your thinking paths. We can think about something in many ways. For example; I think that mental health is equally important to physical health, if not more; while my friend, which is you, may believe that mental health is not important at all: while some other friend of ours may have a belief that mental health does not exist. All of them are thoughts, processed by an important mechanism called Mind.

But what is Critical Thinking? You just gave an explanation on mind, but what is the relation between mind and critical thinking? To answer these questions, I'd like to ask YOU a question - WHY we call the RHS of a Cartesian Graph positive, and the LHS negative? The question may seem irrelevant, but that's the basic of critical thinking: Asking WHY. But is asking Why in every occasion possible means that I am a critical thinker? Nope. Here are some precautions that we need to follow when thinking deeply or critically,

  • Your question must be Objective. Well, here's a good point. What is meant by this "Objective" thing? Let me copy from the internet,
    From the image above, we can simply say that you have to be more object-oriented rather than being personal. For example: you may ask people about many incidents, but it's not really a critical thinking when you ask for opinions and things like that. Why? Because you can be easily get skewed by people, and that leads us to the next point.

  • Think from a Neutral POV. There are various kinds of bias that you may find while studying fallacies, but we'll keep things simple here. Cognitive Bias. What is cognitive bias? "Cognitive Bias" is something of an error, that often occurs when a man "Think" about something. As we've seen earlier, thinking is a process called Mind. But we should also be aware that this process is analytical, and its result is known as Mentality. But the matter that one should be aware of is that you might be biased by your emotion or you might often think subjectively, which produces a high chance for you to be biased.

  • Be aware of Conformity Bias and Anchoring Bias. Conformity Bias and Anchoring Bias are two of the sub-types of Cognitive Bias. Conformity Bias can mostly be seen when you are with your peers or with your seniors; because in most of these cases, you have to agree to their opinions in order to avoid confrontations. And you are familiar to Anchoring Bias as well I believe, cause that's what a salesperson does to you when you are in a market. Yes, you got it right! That's the reason they ask for more price in the beginning, cause that's what gets stuck in your head; more commonly known as Anchoring Bias. You should overcome these two and think freely, if you want to become a critical thinker.


  • The post is quite lengthy already, and I have discussed most of the topics covered in the workshop. While discussing, I tried to come up with my own examples. Now I would love to shortly summarize the whole concept again:

    Mind is a process, by which you think something or analyze things thoroughly. But critical thinking starts when you think through something that isn't subjective, meaning that no personal influence has acted upon your mind. You may often get biased or prejudicial, so you should better have a good control over your thoughts. You may have a major hole in your thinking, you may agree to things reluctantly due to peer pressure or due to the fear of losing a relationship, you may not know the price of a product and pay more than enough when buying one - all these things happen very often; and they are the biggest problems you will encounter when thinking critically.

    Thank you for reading this lengthy post with patience. Stay happy, stay safe.

    - Ahnaf Anjish

    Poetics (Discussion-1) — Aristotle

    Poetics - Aristotle (Discussion-1)
    Definition of Poetry. Causes of Origin. Classifications. Points of Difference.

    Ahnaf Anjish | May 19, 2020
    Aristotle is one of the famous & important philosophers from the Classical or the Socratic Period. He was the student of another famous philosopher named Plato & in 355 B.C., he founded his own school named “Lyceum”, just outside the walls of Athens. He was the pioneer of various terms of knowledge & education. He was also interested in “Poetry” and wrote a book on this topic with the name - “Poetics”. In this blog, we’re going to have a vivid discussion on what he wrote back in that time. As a preview, we can say that the book mostly covered Tragedy and some parts of Comedy & Epics. Hence, we are also going to keep our discussion focused on Tragedy. I hope you guys will find the discussion(s) helpful.
    At first, let’s take a close look at how Aristotle defined “Poetics” in his book. He simply said,
    “Imitation, then, being natural to us—as also the sense of harmony and rhythm, the metres being obviously species of rhythm—it was through thier original aptitude, and by a series of improvements for the most part gradual on their first efforts, that they created poetry out of their improvisations.”
    Chapter-4
    The first thing you may notice from the definition that the definition also gives us a proper hint on how “Poetics” was created & improved throughout the time and what inspired the ancient poets like Sophocles & Homer into this. But the first question may rise that what the general origin of poetry is.
    As Aristotle mentioned in his book, poetry was originated & inspired from two different causes,
    • Imitation
    • Experience


    So, what “Imitation” is ?
    Imitation, according to the “MacMillan English Dictionary -American”, is the act of copying someone's actions, words, or behaviour. Think about it this way :
    You have an infant kid & you want to raise it until it’s adulthood. So, at the beginning, you’ll treat it in your own way & probably it’ll inherit some of your own habits & will try to do them accordingly.
    In the given example, the kid trying to copy your works - is actually trying to “Imitate” you. We, the human being, are naturally imitators. We first start learning through imitation, & carry this habit throughout our life. Even our behaviour is often influenced by others’ behaviour, & we insert those behaviours in ours by imitations.

    After we understand the idea of “Imitation”, the question is : What is “Experience” ?
    Again, according to the “MacMillan English Dictionary -American”, Experience is knowledge and skill gained through time spent doing a job or activity. As a human being, we all have a natural sense about experience. Let me try to represent a bit more specific insight :
    When you first got your job, you might felt confused at completing all the files or holding the cash. But with time, you got so much familiar & gained so much skills that you could do them even blindfoldedly.
    As you can see, throughout doing a particular job for a long period of time, you gain a certain type of skill for that job - which is “Experience”. For an example [1] ,
    After doing fMRI Scans of an experienced Taxi Driver of London, you’ll notice that the posterior(back) hippocampus of the brain has increased its activity while the anterior(front) hippocampus’ activity has been reduced.
    So, it is noticeable that experience is not something like a mere word after some practice, as it plays an important role in brain’s activity, & thus - our behaviour.
    But the question you are maybe thinking that, how “Experience” plays a role at poetries ? You are maybe thinking that a poet might be inspired by an incident or something - which is what we naturally think. But Aristotle has showed another approach to poetry which is based on “Experience”. Let me quote,
    “Though the objects themselves maybe painful to see, we delight to view the most realistic representations of them in art, the forms for example of the lowest animals and of dead bodies.”
    Chapter-4
    As you can see, Aristotle pointed out a simple psychological fact :
    We hate to experience any negative events, but we always enjoy them in an artistical way.
    And that is, what we may say, the base of Tragedy.


    After the making of “Poetry” it got classified into 2 different kinds based on the character of a poet,
    • Tragedy
    • comedy



    Before going to a vivid discussion, I think we should know from the POV of Aristotle about the basis(s) on which all the types of Poetry differed in their means, in the objects, in the manner of their imitations :
    • Combination : A combination of rhythm & harmony or the usage of voice either in prose or verse always differs from another genre of poetry, and so - the imitations.
    • Imitator : An “Imitator” always represents something called “Action”. The act exhibits men (and women) - who are either good or bad or just-like-us, and this difference is also possible not only in the imitators but also the personells who does the background-arts.
    • Object Representation : Let’s look at an projection first :
      Take 2 equally sharped blades and 2 equally sized pieces of paper. Give one of those each things to a happy-person, & the leftovers to a person who is severely depressed (declared by a certified Psychologist, of course). You might notice that the happy-one might try to be creative with all the things you have given to him; while the one in depression might harm his ownself & put all the blood-drops on that very piece of paper which you have given to that person
      If you study the projection well, you might notice the difference that every person has, which is often regarded as their own “Creativity”. Give the same thought here, every person’s own creativity & uniqueness will lead them to create something different, even for the same script. Aristotle had pointed out 3 ways of telling the story on this regard,
      1. Speak at one moment in narrative and at another in an assumed character, as Homer does.
      2. One may remain the same throughout, without any such change.
      3. The imitators may represent the whole story dramatically, as though they were actually doing the things described.
      As we understand, there are actually 3 ways of storytelling on a bold line. Hence, the difference is quite probable.



    As there are certain differences among different types of poetry, it is evident that different types of poetry actually exist. Among these types, the Tragedy & the Comedy are the most popular to discuss about, & the book thoroughly emphasizes on Tragedy - and we’ll discuss them through in the next discussions. Till then, stay home - stay safe. And please feel free to comment. You can also email me. Happy Reading!


    Acknowledgments

    • Poetics – Aristotle
    • [1] Understanding Psychology (10th Edition) — Robert S. Feldman
    • Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia
    Special Thanks to,
    My family, friends, teachers, seniors, & all of my well wishers. Thank You.