Take stock of those around you and you will … hear them talk in precise terms about themselves and their surroundings, which would seem to point to them having ideas on the the matter. But start to analyse those ideas and you will find that they hardly reflect in any way the reality to which they appear to refer, and if you go deeper you will discover that there is not even an attempt to adjust the ideas to this reality. Quite the contrary: through these notions the individual is trying to cut off any personal vision of reality, of his own very life. For life is at the start a chaos in which one is lost. The individual suspects this, but he is frightened at finding himself face to face with this terrible reality, and tries to cover it over with a curtain of fantasy, where everything is clear. It does not worry him that his “ideas” are not true, he uses them as trenches for the defense of his existence, as scarecrows to frighten away reality.

José Ortega y Gasset, quoted by Ernest Becker in The Denial of Death

Philosophy

“No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.”
Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

To seek new experiences and ideas.

Interests

Philosophy, Logic, Critical Thinking and Changing the World!

Music, Movies, and Books

Books:
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson
The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Classical Music:
Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber
The Moonlight Sonata by Ludwig van Beethoven
Hunter's Funeral by Gustav Mahler
Sospiri by Edward Elgar
Light Reflecting on a Window by Kim Malmquist
Echoes of a Memory by Kim Malmquist
Serenade Melancolique by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Songs:
A Thousand Kisses Deep by Leonard Cohen
Dance Me To The End Of Love by Leonard Cohen
Fields Of Gold by Sting
Fragile by Sting
Nine Million Bicycles by Katie Melua

Documentary films:
The Examined Life
Religulous
Sex Death and the Meaning of Life
The story of science

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Still remains to be done!

Teach, Learn, Share

Learn: Greek and Arabic
Teach: Persian and English

What I Can Share with Hosts

My Time!

Countries I’ve Lived In

Iran

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