Eighth Note to “Ajab Sabre Khuda Darad”

Asceticism – if anything – enables artistic and literary refinement and sophistication, even though the carnal and erotic “triumph” over the final and the theological. But even if we were to explore the final and the theological philosophically and intellectually, we arrive at the cosmological, in the sense that a cosmology develops: man is a speck of dust made out of the stuff of a broader universe, and that speck of dust which is man eventually dies and perishes and blends into the universe. This then distinguishes a cosmological worldview from just an ordinary worldview. If we were left to develop just a worldview, that worldview would culminate into a clash of cultures or civilizations, with Washington on one hand and Beijing and Moscow on the other hand. But a cosmology or a cosmological view takes the entire cosmos into account in addition to delineating where we as individuals and groups stand within this broader cosmos.