"Experience alone decides"
I went to visit my elder brother…I saw my nephew’s fresh smile waiting for me at the entrance of the home…I approached him… then I knelt down…I carried him on my shoulders, kissing him… and then I gave him sweets!!!
I started playing with him…I pretended to cut his ear off with my hand and then eat it, and he started to cry. I asked him: “Do you want your ear again?” He shook his head affirmatively after he sobbed…I pretended to get it out of my mouth and place it again.
I was astonished at my nephew’s thinking…He has not reached three years of age yet; how did he believe that I had eaten his ear??!!! How did he think that it left its location? How stupid! Not even a single drop of blood rolled down his face!!!
Perhaps he does not dismiss this to happen because he has not yet discovered the laws of nature which we consider inevitable; neither does his mind see what prevents his ear from being ripped out in that way, nor finds it necessary to have a drop of blood escaping from his ear in such a situation. Perhaps, the drops of water coming down his face would be sufficient. As he does not suffer an intellectual crisis in perceiving the possibility of removing his ear safe from my stomach, as well as placing it in that simple manner. My belly is nothing but a vessel, as a box in which he puts his toys!!!And he did not wonder…how could he hear me without an ear? There is no relation between this masterpiece “ear” and the hearing sense, especially that his ear cavity has not yet been buried!!
One of the most important characteristics of children is that they see the world differently. They do not care what could be real or what is evident. They do not wonder about what we marvel at, they do not look upon a charmer who pours water into his hat as a hero performing something supernatural, because they ignore the law of gravity; so, no wonder that you put water in a perforated hat without causing it to spill!! And they would perhaps think we are crazy when seeing us applause for the charmer and express our astonishment at him!! But, at the same time, they marvel at things which we do not pay attention to- not necessarily because we know what they are, and then ask us for example: “Why do our shadows wear just black in spite of the various colours of our clothes?!!”
Scientists also have the child’s mind, because they do not perceive the obvious as do the general public, but rather seek to test it and try to understand the laws that govern it. Perhaps the way Newton addressed the idea of gravity through an apple’s fall is testimony to that. He asked a question that may seem stupid to us, “why did the apple fall? Why didn’t it fly up?”
The challenge is not only to discover your daily living issues, but most importantly to discover the real law and to assure the validity of interpretation. When bedtime coincides with the time for having a cup of milk, the child may wonder whether there is a relationship between milk and sleep! Yes, he may think that drinking milk is the secret that helps children fall asleep; he has developed a law linking between milk and sleep. Thus, if his mother brought him his milk during the day, he would just have run away, screaming and refusing to go to bed at that time.
As far as we are concerned, we should take care not to relate between things through an incorrect casual link, putting into place rules that can turn into postulates and transmitting them to those coming after us, as when we attribute political decline to reasons that are thought to be certain, while the reality is not necessarily so, or interpreting events in our lives that have nothing to do with reality.
Therefore, any interpretation should be subjected to experiment to confirm its validity. As a matter of fact, great minds believe in the importance of experience to verify the validity of axioms and perceptions of reality, seeking to discover the real face of rules, not as they will. They test what the ancients considered as established facts, and may find out the falseness or trueness of these axioms, approaching more to what our ancestors considered as red lines.
There are adventurous minds which are known as Red Lines Sweepers and which believe that these lines are the best catalyst for experience, because experience alone can reveal these lines practicability in reality. One can believe in the presence of a line, while it is in reality just an imaginary line. Add to this, the person doing the experience may confirm the presence of lines but which are not solid enough as far as their bloody red is concerned and perceived by his mind, and he may, perhaps, realize their toughness and their intensive red colour and then decides to stop trying to break them and, instead, look for another port, as he may also be convinced of their importance and add an additional line to support them.
After I had placed my nephew’s ear, he came to me laughing and sticking his tongue out at me and said: “the ear cannot be cut off” (laughs)…This was the law his father taught to him as a fact but when he grows up, he will find by experience that game rules can be changed, and that in the absence of laws in the world, anything can be cut off!!
Written By: Wael Adel
Translated By: Zoulikha K