McGilchrist’s argument is deceptively simple:

the two hemispheres of the brain attend to the world differently. The left sees parts, the right sees wholes. The left abstracts, the right embodies. The left seeks to manipulate, the right seeks to understand. These modes of attention are not equal, and certainly not neutral. Societies that fail to maintain a balance between them, he warns, inevitably collapse under the weight of their own rigidity and overreach.

His central argument that the left hemisphere’s narrow, grasping, and control-driven mode of attention has come to dominate modern life, is a cultural diagnosis. And while he speaks to broader civilizational trends, I couldn’t help but feel how acutely this applies to Pakistan. Especially in our education system, where the effects of this imbalance are becoming tragically clear.

Every year, fewer students opt for the social sciences. Philosophy, history, literature, political theory, disciplines that once shaped how we understood ourselves and our place in the world, are now seen as impractical, even indulgent. The same is true globally. STEM fields dominate policy agendas and funding streams, while the humanities are quietly eroded. In Pakistan, students are encouraged to pursue degrees that promise quick monetization, not deep reflection. But in doing so, we are depriving ourselves of the very tools that help us understand nuance, ambiguity, identity, and meaning.

McGilchrist warns that when a civilization becomes dominated by left-hemisphere thinking, characterized by reductionism, abstraction, and obsession with measurable outcomes, it loses its soul. We see this in how our education system now prioritizes standardization over curiosity, efficiency over empathy, and algorithmic thinking over critical thought. The decline of the social sciences is not accidental, it is deeply symptomatic. We have created an environment where students no longer feel that these fields are valued or even necessary.

But without the social sciences, how do we develop the capacity to question systems, understand power, or imagine alternatives? How do we interpret history, culture, or identity in a world that is fracturing under the weight of simplistic binaries and rigid ideologies? If we abandon the disciplines that teach us to see the world in context, to hold contradictions, to honor complexity then we are not just failing our students; we are failing our future. And perhaps, as McGilchrist might suggest, inviting a quiet but irreversible collapse of our collective imagination.

Let me leave you with some questions that I am struggling with. Engage with them, think about them but only once you have finished the documentary:

What is the cost of a civilization that cannot wonder? If awe, mystery, and reverence are signs of right-hemisphere perception, what does their absence signal about our cultural trajectory? it worries me on the level of our collective humanity!

In what ways does AI embody our collective left-hemispheric hubris? What does it mean for humanity when we build tools that mimic the very mode of perception that reduces, fragments, and abstracts?

And for us as academics, what role should education play in reviving the right hemisphere? Should we rethink our STEM-heavy priorities and re-center the humanities not as luxury, but as survival?

We do not need new ideologies. We need a new way of seeing. And with it, a new kind of civilization, one that remembers its whole self before it fragments beyond repair.

I just watched one of the most remarkable things I have encountered in a long time, a resurfaced interview from 1934, where Nikola Tesla shares his thoughts on consciousness, frequency, and the hidden structure of the universe. Whether fully authentic or creatively dramatized, it doesn’t matter. The message stands on its own.

Tesla, often remembered for alternating currents and eccentric genius, here speaks like a mystic physicist, dissolving the boundary between science and spirituality. He talks of the ether as the memory of the universe, of thoughts and feelings encoded in vibration, of death as a frequency shift, not an ending.

He warns us: we have forgotten who we are.

“We are fragments of a great light, temporarily separated, here to remember.”

That line hit hard. His words echo in a world that often feels unmoored, where fear, division, and control dominate the landscape. What Tesla saw, what he possibly feared, is a humanity deafened to the hum of its own source. And yet he remained hopeful, he believed a mass awakening would come, a shift in vibration.

You and I, we are not accidents. Our pain is not meaningless. Our consciousness is not confined to the brain. And our death is not the end.

This piece is not about fact-checking Tesla’s metaphysics. It is an invitation to listen more deeply to ourselves, to the silence between thoughts, to the vibrations we ignore. Whether you believe Tesla accessed truths veiled by suppression, or that this interview is a beautiful allegory, it leaves you altered.

So I will leave you with this:

Let the awakening begin. Tune in and listen to the interview. I promise it will be so worth your time.

Where Do We Go After the Last Border?

There are poems that are not poems but are declarations, wounds, and altars. Mahmoud Darwish did not write for applause. He wrote to keep a nation breathing. The Palestinian nation. And in this piece from Earth Presses Against Us, he does not just grieve; he asks the unanswerable.

“Where should we go after the last border?
Where should birds fly after the last sky?”

What happens when there is no sky left to fly in, no land left to claim, no breath left to offer? Darwish is not seeking refuge. He is naming the condition of those for whom geography has collapsed, for whom even resistance feels like an inheritance of pain.

“We write our names with crimson mist.
We end the hymn with our flesh.”

This is not metaphor. It is the story of Palestine, yes, but also of every people whose struggle for dignity has been dismissed, displaced, or dismembered. Think about Kashmir too.

Yet the final line breaks you with its quiet, defiant hope:

“Here or there, our blood will plant olive trees.”

Because even in exile, even in death, there is seed. There is future. There is hope. There is a tree that will grow from loss and offer shade to someone who may never know your name.

So I ask you:

What are your last borders?
And when the world forgets your name, what memory will you still etch into time?

Sometimes I think I am a whirling dervish in rhythm. My life moves in circles, always returning to the same questions with deeper understanding each time. I am constantly in motion, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, trying to hold together opposites: stillness and restlessness, surrender and control, logic and intuition.

Spinning becomes a way of staying balanced while everything else shifts. The center I revolve around is unseen perhaps a belief, a memory, a pain I have made peace with. Or maybe it is just the need to make sense of chaos through movement.

But at the heart of this turning lies tawakkul. A radical, unwavering trust. A trust that even as I whirl through uncertainty, an unseen wisdom steadies the axis. Tawakkul is what allows my motion without panic, action without certainty, and surrender without loss. It is the quiet conviction that my letting go of certain things or people in my life is not collapse, but alignment with something far greater than control.

I often find myself reflecting on what it truly means to be a whirling dervish. For me, it has come to mean staying in motion without losing my center, keeping faith steady even when everything else feels uncertain. It means learning to live with intensity, but holding it lightly. It means not retreating from the world, but moving through it again and again until the repetition begins to reveal something deeper.

Some days, that turning feels like chaos. Other days, it feels like prayer. But either way, it is where I find meaning.

I don’t always know where I will land. But I have come to trust the motion.

Rind’s art is a visual homage to the poetry of Ghalib, Faiz, and Iqbal, each brushstroke echoing verses that refuse to fade. His signature style blends delicate female forms adorned in traditional dress and jewelry with poetic text and timeless symbols. The result is a canvas that sings.

What I love most about his work is its emotional layering. It is narrative. His portraits are never passive. They look back. They remember. They remind.

Rind began as a super-realist and calligrapher, but found his true voice in the early 2000s, fusing the old and the new, the lyrical and the visual. Whether in oil or acrylic, his mastery of form, line, and color creates a richness that is hard to look away from.

His art is memory, music, and meaning, all stitched into silence.

Welcome to the world of A.S. Rind, my favorite art! Pls visit the website, engage and buy his art! It’s breathtakingly beautiful.

This space exists because I need it for my own sanity. Because it is entirely possible, necessary, even, to talk about the annihilation of the world and the heart in the same breath. Deterrence teaches us restraint, calculation, and brinkmanship. But life asks for softness, awe, and sometimes, letting go.

What are the things that call for surrender?

This is where I hold those things. Welcome to the other half of my spectrum.