THE CHAOS THEORY

“Understand-inc People 2.0: Cara Menjadi Ambivert Dengan Menavigasi 4 Tipe Kepribadian” by Erwin Parengkuan

Saya mendapatkan buku ini di training kantor yang diselanggarakan oleh Talk Inc. Di training tersebut kita diajarkan tentang elevator pitch, dimana kita belajar untuk grab attention, deliver inti nya, dan mendapatkan call-to-action dalam waktu yang sangat singkat se akan-akan kita cuma ada waktu ngomong di dalam durasi naik elevator.

Setelah pelajaran teori, kamipun di latih untuk langsung mempraktekan semua ilmu yang kita baru saja pelajari, dan bikin skenario elevator pitch dalam waktu maksimal 4 menit. Di training tersebut tim 3-orang saya yang menjadi juara nya, dengan elevator pitch selama 1 menit 56 detik. Bukan karena kita yang paling hebat, tetapi kita yang paling mendapatkan manfaat dari training ini, dan terrefleksi di dalam pemahaman kita.

Dan yang juara mendapatkan apa? Kita memenangkan buku ini, yang ditulis oleh Erwin Parengkuan, ahli komunikasi yang sudah berpengalaman lebih dari 30 tahun dan founder Talk Inc.

Menurut Erwin, “Memahami kepribadian orang lain dan melihat bagaimana mereka bereaksi terhadap satu informasi menjadi ilmu inti dari semua profesi. Profesi apapun yang anda jalani, percayalah, mengenali kepribadian dan gaya komunikasi seseorang akan memudahkan anda dalam berhubungan dengan orang lain.”

Erwin percaya bahwa kemampuan kita dalam mengenali gaya komunikasi yang ber beda-beda pada setiap kepribadian akan membuat kita menjadi orang yang lebih toleran dan tidak gampang menghakimi: Mengapa seorang ibu bisa memiliki gaya komunikasi yang keras, bagaimana seseorang bisa sangat sabar, atau suka melakukan kesenangan yang mengganggu orang lain, dll.

Erwin lalu menambahkan, “Dengan kondisi dunia saat ini yang serba-terhubung satu sama lain dengan begitu “hyper-connected”, yang terjadi justru komunikasi sering kali bersifat satu arah. Orang menjadi tidak terlalu peduli apakah lawan bicaranya mengerti dan memahami apa yang disampaikan karena banyak orang melakukan komunikasi tanpa membangun relasi. Pada akhirnya, meskipun proses komunikasi berjalan normal, tetap tidak berjalan maksimal dan sangat mungkin hasilnya meleset dari apa yang diharapkan. Bahkan proses konfirmasi atau feedback bisa berjalan bolak-balik sehingga menghabiskan waktu dan tenaga. Semua proses ini justru bisa dipangkas ketika kita memahami kepribadian kita dan lawan bicara kita dalam berkomunikasi.”

Jadi apa saja tipe-tipe gaya komunikasi? Erwin membedakan nya menjadi 4: si gesit, si kuat, si rinci, dan si damai.

1. Si gesit: senang berbicara, antusias, membujuk, kreatif, jiwa sosial, penuh energi, narsistik, spontan, mempesona, sensitif, komunikatif, imajinatif, rileks. Kepribadian ini lebih cenderung extrovert yang menggunakan perasaan.
2. Si kuat: agresif, ambisius, keinginan kuat, orientasi pada hasil, pemecah masalah, tidak sabar, pemegang kontrol, pionir, inovator, meyakinkan, cepat, bicara terus terang, mandiri. Kepribadian ini lebih cenderung extrovert yang menggunakan pemikiran.
3. Si rinci: teliti, sistematis, menjaga jarak, orientasi pada kebenaran, terlihat kurang percaya diri, perfeksionis, butuh waktu, objektif, analisis, refleksi, mengikuti aturan, evaluasi, pendiam. Kepribadian ini lebih cenderung introvert yang menggunakan pemikiran.
4. Si damai: sabar, santai, menguasai diri sendiri, dapat diandalkan, setia, stabil, bijaksana, sederhana, bertele-tele, berhati-hati, tekun, empati, baik. Kepribadian ini lebih cenderung introvert yang menggunakan perasaan.

Dan di perjalanan membantu orang untuk menemukan potensi terbaik nya, hal yang yang paling bagus adalah untuk membuat ke 4 tipe ini muncul secara seimbang pada situasi yang dibutuhkan.

Bagaimana cara nya? Pertama dengan mengenali diri sendiri. Seperti yang Erwin jelaskan, “tidak ada kepribadian yang lebih baik dari yang lain nya. Semua memiliki sisi terang (sunny side) dan sisi gelap (shadow side), tergantung dari kematangan diri seseorang.”

Dan kedua, mengubah kekurangan yang kita punya sehingga menjadi kelebihan unik kita. “Cara nya mudah”, menurut Erwin, “mulai sekarang, berpikirlah dengan cara berpikir lawan bicara anda.” Karena dengan cara ini kita tidak lagi mengedepankan ego, tetapi membuat kita untuk lebih terbuka dan kompromistis.

Buku ini lalu menjelaskan segala sesuatu nya dengan lebih detail, termasuk penjabaran 12 campuran kepribadian, penjelasan bagaimana karakter genetik sulit untuk diubah tetapi bisa dikendalikan, bagaimana perilaku seseorang akan menentukan sikap yang akan dilakukan selanjutnya, tantangan-tantangan di era VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, dan ambiguity), penting nya inovasi dan kemampuan ber adaptasi di era VUCA, penting nya mengkontrol indentitas kita untuk tetap kecil (sehingga bisa flexibel di dalam perubahan), bagaimana caranya menyelaraskan self-image dan social-image, bagaimana perubahan yang signifikan berasal dari perubahan pola yang baru, dan masih banyak lagi; termasuk analisa dari 5 skill yang penting: problem solving (si kuat), critical thinking (si rinci), creative thinking (si gesit), building relationship (si damai), collaboration dari semua nya (balance).

Untuk buku yang hanya 134 halaman, tulisan Erwin Parengkuan ini sangat lengkap sekali dengan informasi terpenting dalam hal komunikasi. Dan dari sini Erwin menunjukan bahwa skill komunikasi sangat bisa di latih, sesuai dengan kepribadian asli kita masing-masing tanpa harus memaksakan perubahan yang kita tidak nyaman. Sehingga kepribadian yang extrovert bisa berkomunikasi lebih tenang dengan individu yang introvert menggunakan empati, dan kepribadian introvert juga bisa membawa diri dengan baik di lingkungan extrovert; menciptakan kepribadian “balanced”, ambivert.

“A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess

“Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?”

This is a classic novel that was first published in 1962. The story is set in a near-future England, and it is about a youth sub-culture of extreme violence that is projected by the main character Alex, his second in command George, and his 2 muscles Pete and Dim.

We’re talking about mugging, robbing a shop, home invasion, beating a man, gang-raping a woman, and even killing; before a certain betrayal landed Alex in prison.

However, this is not a book about violence, per se. But instead, it is a book that exposes and demonstrates the notion of free will into the extremes.

And it is most prominently showed in part 2 where Alex undergoes an experimental rehabilitation program, in exchange with reduced prison sentence, that makes him physically sick whenever he’s thinking about violence or hears his favourite classical music (which was used as his conditioning). This experiment has effectively made him lost his free will and the ability to choose between good and evil, and instead incentivized him to become civilized like a robot.

Indeed, this is a dystopian novel. Or to be more accurate, this book is written in a pre-dystopian setting where the focus is still in the individual misconducts, to show the attempt to control a misbehave member of society, rather than the later-stage government control over the entire society.

As the author, Anthony Burgess, remarks on the core philosophy of the book, “by definition, a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State.”

Indeed, this is what a clockwork orange is: imagine an orange fruit that is organic, juicy, and natural. Now imagine inside it there’s actually a mechanical clockwork, which indicates that it is a controllable robot (with its humanity and free will stripped away), despite the outer natural appearance.

Burgess then continued, “It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.”

Part 3 of the book is where moral choice is further challenged, where a more controlled and defenseless Alex is now out of prison but rejected by his family, receiving revenge by those he has harmed in the past, and eventually attempted suicide due to the helplessness of his situation of living like a robot. But then after the failed suicide attempt, the government wants to avoid scandal and eventually reverses Alex’s conditioning. He was then “cured”, but crucially, his violent impulses also return.

Funnily enough, the argument about free will is also unintentionally presents in the way the book was published, where Burgess breaks down the story into 21 chapters (with 21 represents the age of maturity). The entire 21 chapters were published in England and all around the world, but in the US the publisher insisted to only publish 20 chapters and omitted the very last chapter.

What was in the last chapter? Throughout the book Burgess has showed how human beings can test the boundaries of evilness, if not controlled. But in the 21st chapter, the now “free” 18-year-old Alex eventually grows bored of violence. He then encounters an old friend who is now married and living a normal life, and Alex decides that he want something mature like this for himself.

This suggests that true maturation is a natural choice, and not something that can be forced by the state. And perhaps more importantly, it shows that even inside this outrageously violent human being there’s still a little good in him that can change over time. This is Burgess’ view at its entirety.

Meanwhile, in the US version (that was adapted into the movie by Stanley Kubrick) the 21st chapter was omitted altogether and Alex stayed evil until the end of the story, arguing that people’s basic nature don’t change that much when the controlling mechanisms are dismantled.

What a delightful contrast. So which one is correct? The US version is definitely more edgy and realistic. But the international version is more grounded and also realistic. I guess both versions are correct, that everyone can experience both depending on their specific circumstances.

Understandably, this unique philosophical dilemma has made this book often referred to as the third big dystopian book alongside the more popular 1984 and Brave New World. Or as I see it, the Johan Cruyff to the Pele and Maradona debate for the greatest football player of all time.

However, I also understand why a lot of people don’t like the book. It is so surprising for me that for such a popular book it writes poorly, making it a difficult book to read and comprehend, even for a merely 116 pages book (and I have just read a brilliant 562-pages book about a very violent Nigerian civil war, with no problem at all).

But if we can read on and endure the unnecessary “noise”, ignore the way the book is structured and instead actively reading to just find the silver linings; the deep philosophical talking points from the book are exceptional. So, the question remains, is it better to be violent out of free will or be good but like a clockwork orange?

“Post Office” by Charles Bukowski

What the hell was that? Charles Bukowski is one of my favourite authors thanks to his raw truthfulness and his no-bullshit approach in life, reflected in his book “Notes of a Dirty Old Man.”

But this book? It’s dull, it’s very boring, filled with so many vile shits that are not even amusing.

But maybe that’s the entire point of this book, to show how a low-life person live his life? Because, nothing is extraordinary about this person, just a piece of shit who is forced to work a menial job just to survive. No ambition, no sense of security, no sense of responsibility, only living paycheck to paycheck in order to afford his smoking and drinking habit, who spends his money on gambling, who doesn’t respect authority, really degrades women, but yet complains all the time about his misfortunes.

It is quite a different adventure, seeing life from this scum’s point of view. Afterall, you know that saying if you hate a character in a movie, then the guy playing the character is a good actor? This book has that kind of aura to it, where it is so detestable it becomes such an accurate book describing someone so despicable.

But then of course, I remember reading that this book is a semi-autobiography of Charles Bukowski’s own life. So, this might just be an honest retelling of his nasty early life, and nothing brilliant about his plot or style of writing.

I can’t help but thinking the entire time while I’m reading the book, that thankfully I got to see Bukowski’s more mature form in Notes of a Dirty Old Man before seeing this early version of him. I would’ve hated him. I get it now why the FBI kept a file on him.

“The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath

There’s something about clinical depression that I cannot quite put words in it. There’s something about the slow descending of it, the quiet and lonely journey of it. And by the time you realized that you’re in trouble, it might be a little bit too late.

This classic 1963 book tells a story about a smart and promising 19 year-old Esther Greenwood, who is 1 out of 12 college girls from around America who wins an internship in Ladies’ Day magazine in 1950s New York City.

She despises the high life of a big city, however, she doesn’t like its fashion nor its people. But here she is living in one of the biggest and loudest cities in the world, encountering all sorts of weird and wonderful characters.

The 1950s is a curious time between post-World War 2 and before the hippie movement of the 1960s, where the pressure of being a traditional woman with good Christian values is contrasted by the euphoria of post-war freedom and the quiet transition of feminism in the midst of the mad men era. And slowly but surely, Esther breaks down from the suffocating societal expectations and descends into depression.

I really love the way the story is not told in a linear way, but instead going back and forth between her current life in New York and her past lives during high school and college, before proceeding to post-internship where she comes back home and not knowing what to do next in her life after her plan suddenly gets derailed, and then jump to another different time when she has to introduce herself using a fake name. The book also intermittently tells the story about her being betrothed with the son of a family friend, but mix it up with her encounters with several men in the present, while secretly she doesn’t even want to get married. All of which create an intentional chaotic portrayal of this mysterious protagonist.

It is definitely deliberately constructed as such, so that the more we read the more we discover something new about her life, from past and present, all the potential things that she could have done with her brilliant mind, and wondering about what had happened or what will happen to her. Especially after she increasingly becomes more depressed at her hopeless situation and unable to sleep at night, which first landed her in an operating table conducting Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) that doesn’t work, and then led her to many more visits to other nasty doctors that only trigger more suicidal thoughts (which are being described in a detailed manner), before settling in a psychiatric ward.

The story itself is narrated from a first person’s point of view, with Esther herself describing the entire events in her life as if she’s only talking to herself or to someone in a distant future in a retrospective manner. Or to put it more accurately, it is as if the author herself – Sylvia Plath – wrote down all of her inner thoughts and project them into the character, making this book a semi-autobiography. Because the sad truth was, Plath herself also suffered from a depression. And we can really feel it in the book.

“I felt very still and very empty,” Esther said, “the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.” And this sentence perfectly captures the essence of the story, while the title of the book refers to her description of depression as a feeling of being trapped under a bell jar, struggling for air.

They say that Sylvia Plath is one of the titans of existential writing, alongside Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, and Albert Camus. But this only book of hers is different; it feels too real, too personal. And as it turns out that is indeed the case when after struggling with depression, on 11 February 1963 Plath tragically died by suicide, less than 1 month after the first publication of this book.

“Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment” by George Leonard

George Leonard has been practicing Aikido since 1970, and has taught it regularly since 1976. He even wrote a book called “The Way of Aikido.”

It was through practicing and teaching Aikido that he got an epiphany of the big-picture view that fitness and health are related to everything we do. This view that he developed then became an article that he wrote in 1987 Esquire magazine, where for the fourth straight year the May issue featured a special issue covering what it called the Ultimate Fitness.

As Leonard recalled, “The previous Ultimate Fitness specials had enjoyed exceptionally high reader interest, but the May 1987 number was something else again. The subject this time was mastery, “the mysterious process during which what is at first difficult becomes progressively easier and more pleasurable through practice.” The purpose of the feature was to describe the path that best led to mastery, not just in sports but in all of life, and to warn against the prevailing bottom-line mentality that puts quick, easy results ahead of long-term dedication to the journey itself.”

The article was so popular that requests for extra copies and even reprints poured in, Corporate CEOs gave photocopies to their employees, various training groups spent hours discussing the mastery principles. And in 1991 Leonard turned this article into a book. This book.

Leonard’s main argument is difficult to refute: if we can learn to touch our forehead as a baby, to learn to talk, to stand up and walk; then we can learn to do anything. The conclusion is very much inline with my favourite motto: everything is trainable.

And in the article (and thus, in this book) Leonard provides us with the tools to guide us into the path to mastery. As Leonard illustrates, “You started with something difficult and made it easy and pleasurable through instruction and practice. You took a master’s journey. And if you could learn to touch your forehead, you can learn to play a Beethoven sonata or fly a jet plane, to be a better manager or improve your relationships.”

So what are the tools? Leonard breaks it down into 5 keys:

1. Instruction: Find the best teacher or mentor or guide.
2. Practice: Dedicate a lot of time to practice what the teacher(s) tell us, make practice as our core habit.
3. Surrender: Surrender ourselves to the subject focus, willing to let go of ego or prior knowledge, willing to look foolish at first, accept our ignorance.
4. Intentionality: Be deliberate on every actions, use visualization and mental focus to guide our physical practice.
5. The edge: Cultivate that extra grit or extra nudge, take calculated risks, push new limits.

Each one of these keys have a dedicated chapter for them, using examples from various disciplines, such as aikido, tennis, basketball, golf, jazz piano, karate, running, and more.

But of course, nothing will be smooth-sailing. In reality, the way that the world is set up is providing us with the wrong kind of incentives, which is true in 1971 and 1976, true in 1987, true in 1991, and also true today in 2026. As Leonard explains, “The trouble is that we have few, if any, maps to guide us on the journey or even to show us how to find the path. The modern world, in fact, can be viewed as a prodigious conspiracy against mastery. We’re continually bombarded with promises of immediate gratification, instant success, and fast, temporary relief, all of which lead in exactly the wrong direction.”

This quick fix mentality and the yearning for a quick dopamine release or instant gratification can prompt us to learn just the basics of anything and then proceeded to stuck in a mediocre level in exchange with showmanship. This is not what mastery is. In fact, “If you’re going to go for mastery, it’s better to start with a clean slate rather than have to unlearn bad habits you picked up while hacking around.”

But the problem is if we take the proper path to mastery, it doesn’t look pretty. Leonard uses tennis as an illustration: “The practice just goes on and on: hold the racket correctly; know where the racket makes contact with the ball; move shoulders, hips, and arm together; stride into the ball—you seem to be getting exactly nowhere. Then, after about five weeks of frustration, a light goes on. The various components of the tennis stroke begin to come together, almost as if your muscles know what they should do; you don’t have to think about every little thing. In your conscious awareness, there’s more room to see the ball, to meet it cleanly in a stroke that starts low and ends high. You feel the itch to hit the ball harder, to start playing competitively.”

But when you think you’ve got it figured out, “Until now your teacher has been feeding balls to you. You haven’t had to move. But now you’re going to have to learn to move side to side, back and forth, and on the diagonal, and then set up and swing. Again, you feel clumsy, disjointed. You’re dismayed to find that you’re losing some of what you’d gained. Just before you’re ready to call it quits, you stop getting worse. But you’re not getting any better, either. Days and weeks pass with no apparent progress. There you are on that damned plateau.”

Ah yes, plateau after plateau. As Leonard elaborates, “Going for mastery in this sport isn’t going to bring you the quick rewards you had hoped for. There’s a seemingly endless road ahead of you with numerous setbacks along the way and—most important—plenty of time on the plateau, where long hours of diligent practice gain you no apparent progress at all. Not a happy situation for one who is highly goal-oriented.”

So, the majority of people will quit. Leonard identifies 3 types of people who fail to reach mastery because they cannot handle the plateau:

1. The dabbler: People who are enthusiastic at first but quits as soon as the early excitement fades and progress levels off.
2. The obsessive: Result-driven type of people, who are also impatient. They usually push too hard in order to get quick gains, but eventually burned out when they can’t maintain the pace.
3. The hacker: Those who stay in the plateau indefinitely and eventually settles for a “good enough” level of competence.

And then there’s a case of our psyche tying to protect the homeostatis. As Leonard explains, “Backsliding is a universal experience. Every one of us resists significant change, no matter whether it’s for the worse or for the better. Our body, brain, and behavior have a built-in tendency to stay the same within rather narrow limits, and to snap back when changed—and it’s a very good thing they do. Just think about it: if your body temperature moved up or down by 10 percent, you’d be in big trouble.”

“The same thing applies to your blood-sugar level and to any number of other functions of your body”, Leonard then continues. “This condition of equilibrium, this resistance to change, is called homeostasis. It characterizes all self-regulating systems, from a bacterium to a frog to a human individual to a family to an organization to an entire culture—and it applies to psychological states and behavior as well as to physical functioning.”

Moreover, homeostasis also applies in social situations: “Homeostasis in social groups brings additional feedback loops into play. Families stay stable by means of instruction, exhortation, punishment, privileges, gifts, favors, signs of approval and affection, and even by means of extremely subtle body language and facial expressions. Social groups larger than the family add various types of feedback systems. A national culture, for example, is held together by the legislative process, law enforcement, education, the popular arts, sports and games, economic rewards that favor certain types of activity, and by a complex web of mores, prestige markers, celebrity role modeling, and style that relies largely on the media as a national nervous system.”

The problem is, homeostasis is a mechanism to keep things as they are, regardless whether they’re a good thing or a bad thing. It simply resists ALL change. So, how do we deal with homeostasis? 5 steps:

1. Be aware of the way homeostasis works, that it is natural for our psyche to resist changes. And thus don’t be discouraged by a backlash from yourself, in fact it is expected and it is a confirmation signal that you’re on the right life-changing path.
2. When resistance comes, we don’t back off and we don’t bullshit our way through. Instead, we start to negotiate. For example, “the long-distance runner working for a faster time on a measured course negotiates with homeostasis by using pain not as an adversary but as the best possible guide to performance.”
3. Develop a support system. It can be a support from family members, or better yet joining a group of people who have gone through or going through a similar process, who can share stories, can hold us up when we’re having a backlash, encourage us when we’re down.
4. Follow a regular practice. People who are embarking on a quest to change can gain stability and comfort from implementing a new consistent habit. And once we get familiarized with it (usually takes about 21 days to internalized a new habit) we will have much less resistance. As Leonard remarks, “Practice is a habit, and any regular practice provides a sort of underlying homeostasis, a stable base during the instability of change.”
5. Dedicate ourselves to lifelong learning. As Leonard elaborates, “The lifelong learner is essentially one who has learned to deal with homeostasis, simply because he or she is doing it all the time.”

So, thus far we have the tools to mastery, and we know how to deal with resistance and backlash. What’s next? Like in any other efforts, we need energy.

As Leonard remarks, “Remember when you could barely keep your eyes open in class, yet were totally awake and alert during hours of tough after-school sports practice? And how about that rush of energy at the beginning of a love affair, or during a challenging job situation, or at the approach of danger?”

Indeed, as Einstein has said energy cannot be created or destroyed, but it can be changed from one form or another. Within the context of mastery, there are several ways to attract energy:

1. Maintain physical fitness.
2. Acknowledge the negative thoughts but accentuate the positive thinking.
3. Try telling the truth.
4. Honor but don’t indulge your own dark side.
5. Set your priorities.
6. Make commitments, take actions.
7. Get on the path of mastery and stay on it.

As you may have noticed by now, Leonard loves actionable bullet points. His explanation and elaboration of the bullet points are also compact and direct, which says a lot about his approach in life; making this book a concise and no bullshit guide to mastery that gives us the raw truths and the know-how to navigate ourselves in them.

And speaking about the raw truth, perhaps a last word on the pursuit of mastery: Nobody say it’s going to be easy, but as we can see from the book, it is not impossible, the path is actually clear, and it is trainable. The only question is, are we willing to make the time, effort, and sacrifices to go into the path of mastery?

“Half of a Yellow Sun” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This is a charming book that describes how life looks like from multiple vantage points in Nigeria’s society not long after independence in 1960.

Although it is a work of fiction it is inspired by real-life characters and it perfectly depicts the 1960s society in a historically accurate manner. It is written in an emotionally engaging way that lures us into the story and making us feel the emotions of the characters, from the heart warming encounters to the difficult emotions in a ravage conflict.

The story is told through the point of view of several main characters, all of whom are impressively interconnected in a growingly complicated web, but somehow easy to link due to the way the clear writing introduces them slowly. The main vantage points are (without spilling their developments as the story progresses):

1. Ugwu: An innocent young boy from the village, seeking to work as a house errand boy in a big city Nsukka (at the South East part of the country) for a rich master. From my understanding, his role in the story: the innocent eyes.
2. Odenigbo: Ugwu’s master, a math professor at University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN); the first indigenous university in Nigeria since independence. Odenigbo is frequented by fellow intellectual guests at his house, talking about history and current affairs. His role in the story: the intellectual voice of reason.
3. Olanna: A beautiful woman from a wealthy family, who has just finished her master’s degree in England. But she almost resent her high class status and her politically-connected parents, and finding more happiness when visiting her uncle aunt and cousins up North in Kano living the simple life, and living away from Lagos and settled in Nsukka in the South (with Odenigbo). Her role in the story: the moral voice.
4. Richard Churchill: A Caucasian journalist initially living in the expat bubble thanks to a racist Caucasian named Susan (but crucially, her brief role in the story: who provides the honest ugly truth about the stereotypes of the different tribes). Richard would proceeds to spend years in Nigeria, go local, and able to speak Igbo fluently. His role in the story: the impartial observer that explains the big picture of what is really happening.
5. Kainene: Olanna’s twin sister, an indifferent person who takes care of their father’s business empire. Her role in the story: the detached skeptic who turned into a reliable strong character.
6. Many other strong characters, such as Kainene’s friend Colonel Madu; Anulika (Ugwu’s sister); Olanna’s uncle Mbaezi, aunt Ifeka, cousin Arize; fellow house boys Jomu and Harrison; Odenigbo’s mother and her errand girl Amala; Muhammad (Olanna’s wealthy ex boyfriend who is a Muslim from Kano); Chief Okonji, Chief Ozobia, Aniekwena, several of Ugwu’s love interests; and Odenigbo’s intellectual guests such as Dr. Patel, Okeoma, Professor Ezeka, and Miss Adebayo. Even Nnaemka, a passing character (a worker at an airport who had a brief conversation with Richard) can play a pivotal role in the story.
7. Real-life political figures like Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu and Yakubu Gowon, who were both central in the early days of post-independence Nigerian politics, and pivotal in the story of this book.

As the story progresses, we get to learn a lot about Nigerian traditional society: such as the way the social hierarchy is structured; or how villagers still heavily rely on “Dibia”, a traditional doctor (or in a bad connotation: a witch doctor); or how they see polygamy as a normal custom, with senior wife and junior wife living together in the same hut as the husband and the kids.

We also get to learn about various ethnicities in Nigeria, with the big tribes of Christian majority Igbo in South East (with Port Harcourt as the biggest city), Christian majority Yoruba in South West (including capital city Lagos), Muslim majority Hausa in the North (with Kano as the biggest city), and the many minority tribes in the center part of the country (including the new capital city Abuja since 1991).

Moreover, inserted between the stories of these 5 characters (and their web of human connections), the book also paints a picture of how Nigeria developed since the early days of the independence, the history lessons on how the British colonized the land and mashed together several ethnic groups and forced them to live as 1 nation, shows how ethnic tensions began to develop in some parts of the country, and shows the potential future of the country through conversations filled with hopeful and heated talks between the intellectuals about what political or economic system suits Nigeria best as a newly independent country.

But then the charming tone of the book suddenly turns dark with the boiling point of the ethnic tension: firstly through a presidential coup by Igbo generals, followed by the counter coup by Hausa militants; with all the massacres and terrors that felt too real, and culminated with the birth of the separatist Republic of Biafra in Igbo area.

It is during these dark days, and only after chapter 13 (out of 37), that we get to learn what the title of the book really means: Half of a Yellow Sun is taken from the symbol of the flag of the short-lived Republic of Biafra that existed for 3 years between 1967 and 1970.

This is what the book, and the rest of the chapters, is really about. The story of Biafra.

It vividly depicts how a separatist movement looks like, it shows how messy and chaotic a civil war really is, how horrific it feels as civilians moving around towns to avoid bombings and raids leaving behind their house and possessions, how refugee camps barely get by, how the Western media is trying to biasly frame the civil war from their ex-colonizer point of view, how food scarcity becomes the norm, or how separated or missing people are common especially in the 1960s with no direct communication means.

And these stories are told through the human eyes, through these 5 characters and all of their web of human connections that we get to know intimately in the past 12 chapters.

And hence, with a heart full of worry, we witness a scene of a wedding in the middle of a war, leaving behind a stubborn mother that doesn’t want to evacuate and chose to stay alone at her home, seeing a rich person clinging to their jewelry and fly out of the country, scenes where electricity is starting to fade, basic food ingredients at markets disappear and food scarcity begins, mass starvations ensues, the epidemic of kwashiorkor, scenes where diseases starting to appear but medicine are depleting, where rape and pillages are rampant, scenes where the characters are reminiscing of the good old simple days in the middle of ruins, risking their lives by going across the border into enemy territory to buy goods, living as a refugees queuing for food ratio, the inability of growing anything without fertilizer, the scarecity of money and the little that people have are being robbed, book burning and the prosecution of intellectuals, dictatorial military commanders, and many more; all of which are the concerns and horrors of wars that would make instant death looks like an easy way out.

Moreover, the book also shows the way different characters deal with the trauma of the war, how people process the horror of witnessing a mass murder, the horror of forced civilian recruitment to become a fighting soldier, and showing how those same innocent recruits can grow to become a violent soldier, or those little details that seem too small to be significant but later reappear 7 years later as a good karma during war time.

But perhaps the most brilliant thing about this book is how the author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, constructs the book into 4 parts: 1. Early 1960s 2. Jump straight to late 1960s but with some information missing (which at first prompted me to scan back the book just in case I was skipping something) 3. Only to return to early 1960s with more twists that make me wonder how can all of this turn out to be the events in late 1960s? 4. And after the twist have been showed, we then switched back to late 1960s with a much richer back story. This is just simply a masterclass in storytelling.

All in all, it took me slightly more than 2 weeks to finish this book (while I usually read 1 book a week) because I read every single word of the gripping sentences, take it slow, and emersed myself in the story. With that kind of time spent and that kind of slow pace, I became strangely familiar with the characters and felt what they feel, got sad with the deaths, scared when the bombing came, tensed when the soldiers march towards them, worried with the missing persons.

Love, lust, death, hope, regret, loss, violence, kindness, panic, naivety, envy, respect, lies, cowardice, courage, intellectual stimulation, innocense, resentment, trauma, injustices, jealousy, reconsiliation, hypocrisies, and despite all of this, happiness. The book has it all. And that quiet but bombastic ending? No spoiler, of course, but let’s just say I can’t believe that I can have such a tremendous emotion over a fictional character. No wonder that Ms. Chimamanda has won multiple awards for her books.

The Nigerian civil war formally ended on 15 January 1970 following the surrender of Biafra, after their leader Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu fled to Ivory Coast. Around 1 to 3 million people reportedly died during this war, with the majority of them were Igbos who died from starvation due to the blockade of the Biafran region by the Nigerian army. It remains one of the deadliest famines ever recorded in Africa’s long history.

More explanation on the Nigerian civil war

“The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance” by W. Timothy Gallwey

According to W. Timothy Gallwey, there are 2 parts in every game of tennis: the outer game and the inner game.

The outer game is played against an external opponent to reach an external goal. Mastering this part includes training to use the racket properly, how to hit the ball, how to position arms and legs and torso, and more.

The inner game is happening inside the mind. And it is played against nervousness, lapses in concentration, self-doubt, and self condemnation, among others.

This book is about the inner game, the mental side of tennis.

The main premise of the book has a similar foundation as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s idea of flow state, where the key to a better inner game of tennis is to improve the relationship between our Self 1 (our conscious self motivator) and Self 2 (our unconscious mind and our natural ability). And the harmony between the two Selfs exists when the mind is quiet and focus.

As Gallwey remarks, “When a tennis player is “in the zone,” he’s not thinking about how, when or even where to hit the ball. He’s not trying to hit the ball, and after the shot he doesn’t think about how badly or how well he made contact. The ball seems to get hit through a process which doesn’t require thought. There may be an awareness of the sight, sound and feel of the ball, and even of the tactical situation, but the player just seems to know without thinking what to do.”

The opposite consequences also applied, however. As Gallwey explains, “The “hot streak” usually continues until he starts thinking about it and tries to maintain it; as soon as he attempts to exercise control, he loses it.”

So how do we achieve such effortless unconscious style of playing? First and foremost, by lots of training. This is where the early part of this book focuses on, in providing all the technical stuffs on how to train the outer game of tennis properly.

But crucially, the book then teaches us how to train ourselves to regulate, control, or even ignore the noise in our minds and aim to reach a flow state. This is illustrated through several impactful stories from the tennis world, even Gallwey’s own personal stories.

One story in particular that amuses me is when Gallwey once participated in a tennis tournament during his youth days, where he won a match but feeling miserable and lost the next match but with much more satisfaction. This is because in the first match he constantly battling his Self 1, while in the second match his Self 1 was more inline with his Self 2.

He then proceeded to form a formula that will ensure a winning strategy, but without losing the enjoyment of playing it. A winning strategy that has successfully applied by his tennis students, which is summarized in this compact book written in 1974. The book proceeded to sell over 1 million copies.

And the majority of the lessons are indeed applicable for anything else in other walks of life, which Gallwey then expanded to several other fields like golf, music, self-help, and business where he has consulted for several Fortune 500 companies such as Apple, AT&T and Coca-Cola. Bill Gates is a well-known fan of his, while elite athletes such as Tom Brady and Steve Kerr have been associated with the Inner Game Institute that Gallwey founded.

“The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness” by Karen Armstrong

This is a true story about the period of time before Karen Armstrong becomes the world renowned theologist.

In this engaging autobiography, Ms. Armstrong shares her struggles during her youth; from abandoning education to becoming a nun, living in a convent for 7 years, learning how to live with nothing under a strict disciplinary rule; before she started to struggle, rebel, fainted regularly, often wept uncontrollably, and eventually quit the monastery simply because she didn’t find God.

It is so refreshing to see Ms. Armstrong from this angle, from the human side. And in this book she really shows all of the vulnerable parts of her life.

This includes what happened after coming back to the real world as an ex nun in late 1960s, when the world felt like it was burning with Vietnam war and Cuban missiles crisis, among other Cold War proxy wars. An era also defined by sex, drugs, and alcohol, as well as hippie world peace counter-movement. Her time as a student at Oxford University was particularly interesting, where she attended rebellious protests, standing up for women’s education right, even fighting for rights that she herself didn’t actually practice.

All of this were happening while at the same time she was losing her hermit religious world and trying to find her place in this loud new world, struggling with her inability to express affection and warmth after 7 years of nun training, becoming a godmother, becoming a “failed heterosexual”, even being diagnosed with epilepsy and struggled because of it most of her young adult life.

But then things started to click, one serendipitous event at a time. Starting from being fired out of compassion from her teaching job because she’s too brilliant to do a relatively menial job, then finding the perfect cocktail of medicine for her disease, and eventually being dragged into doing a documentary about religion from the skeptic point of view (with her being an ex nun who quits the convent as the biggest credential), which ironically ended up leading her to the pathway to be a deeply spiritual theologian.

This transformation looks completed in the very last chapter of the book, where she lay out her research approach, her daily habit during writing period, and many other methodologies, all of which produce what I see as the clearest description of how Karen Armstrong sees religion (and I’ve been reading her various books for 2 decades). And it is so eye opening that I give this book 5-stars rating thanks to this chapter 8 alone.

So what is her view on religion, after all the events in her life that have shaped her views, after obtaining new insights from years of research to make the documentary, and the many more hours of deep dive into various religions?

“God, of course, did not exist”, Ms. Armstrong remarks, “but I would show that each generation of believers was driven to invent him anew. God was thus simply a projection of human need; “he” mirrored the fears and yearnings of society at each stage of its development. Jews, Christians, and Muslims had all produced the same kind of God because they had similar desires and insecurities, but increasingly, in the clear light of rational modernity, people were learning how to do without this divine prop.”

She then elaborates, “In the course of my studies, I have discovered that the religious quest is not about discovering “the truth” or “the meaning of life” but about living as intensely as possible here and now. The idea is not to latch on to some superhuman personality or to “get to heaven” but to discover how to be fully human—hence the images of the perfect or enlightened man, or the deified human being. Archetypal figures such as Muhammad, the Buddha, and Jesus become icons of fulfilled humanity. God or Nirvana is not an optional extra, tacked on to our human nature. Men and women have a potential for the divine, and are not complete unless they realize it within themselves.”

Indeed, according to Ms. Armstrong God (in a human reflection kind of way) doesn’t exist and religion is about how to be fully human and to live in the now. But she is not the typical non-believer. Because instead of dismissing religion and God, she’s searching for more understanding through various different means and deeply immersed herself in them: by reading the holy texts, researching many more insights from previous theologians, following the rituals, implementing the habits, visiting their holy places, and blending in with the practitioners. Perhaps if you really want to put a label on her, it would be more accurate to see her as a pantheist rather than an atheist. But it took quite a journey before she arrived here.

As Ms. Armstrong explains more about her spiritual journey, “back in 1989, when I started to research A History of God, I didn’t know any of this. For me, religion was still essentially about belief. Because I did not accept the orthodox doctrines, I considered myself an agnostic—even an atheist. But by unwittingly putting into practice two of the essential principles of religion, I had already, without realizing it, embarked on a spiritual quest. First, I had set off by myself on my own path. Second, I had at last been able to acknowledge my own pain and feel it fully. I was gradually, imperceptibly being transformed.”

Indeed, the acknowledgement of pain and the spiritual quest to find the remedy. As Ms. Armstrong further explains, “All the world faiths put suffering at the top of their agenda, because it is an inescapable fact of human life, and unless you see things as they really are, you cannot live correctly. But even more important, if we deny our own pain, it is all too easy to dismiss the suffering of others. Every single one of the major traditions—Confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, as well as the monotheisms—teaches a spirituality of empathy, by means of which you relate your own suffering to that of others. Hyam had quoted Hillel’s Golden Rule, which tells you to look into your own heart, find out what distresses you, and then refrain from inflicting similar pain on other people. That, Hillel had insisted, was the Torah, and everything else was commentary. This, I was to discover, was the essence of the religious life.”

And this is how Ms. Armstrong eventually found her own pathway to God. As she remarks, “For years I had longed to get to God, ascend to a higher plane of being, but I had never considered at sufficient length what it was that you had to climb from. All the traditions tell us, one way or another, that we have to leave behind our inbuilt selfishness, with its greedy fears and cravings. We are, the great spiritual writers insist, most fully ourselves when we give ourselves away, and it is egotism that holds us back from that transcendent experience that has been called God, Nirvana, Brahman, or the Tao.”

She then continues, “What I now realize, from my study of the different religious traditions, is that a disciplined attempt to go beyond the ego brings about a state of ecstasy. Indeed, it is in itself ekstasis. Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, or self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. They do not do this because it sounds edifying, but because this is the way that human nature seems to work.”

What did Ms. Armstrong trying to say here? “To my very great surprise, I was discovering that some of the most eminent Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians and mystics insisted that God was not an objective fact, was not another being, and was not an unseen reality like the atom, whose existence could be empirically demonstrated. Some went so far as to say that it was better to say that God did not exist, because our notion of existence was too limited to apply to God.”

Indeed, “God” as in the human reflection kind of way does not exist. But God as in the creator and the ruler of the universe, does exist, but so much bigger than what us humans can comprehend and can describe. Some call it God, the ancient Greeks call it Logos, the ancient Chinese call it Tao, others call it the universe. As Ms. Armstrong elaborates, “Many of them preferred to say that God was Nothing, because this was not the kind of reality that we normally encountered. It was even misleading to call God the Supreme Being, because that simply suggested a being like us, but bigger and better, with likes and dislikes similar to our own.”

This statement is of course weighted with the abundance of research findings. As Ms. Armstrong remarks, “For centuries, Jews, Christians, and Muslims had devised audacious new theologies to bring this point home to the faithful. The doctrine of the Trinity, for example, was crafted in part to show that you could not think about God as a simple personality. The reality that we call God is transcendent—that is, it goes beyond any human orthodoxy—and yet God is also the ground of all being and can be experienced almost as a presence in the depths of the psyche.”

This is indeed not easy to digest, but it helps to answer some of my own struggles and doubts and wonder about religion. And what better way to get one step closer to the truth by looking back into history: “Cantwell Smith was one of the first theologians to make all this clear to me, in such books as Faith and Belief and Belief in History. I remember the extraordinary sense of relief I felt when I read in his somewhat dry, scholarly prose that our ideas of God were man-made; that they could be nothing else; that it was a modern Western fallacy, dating only from the eighteenth century, to equate faith with accepting certain intellectual propositions about God. Faith was really the cultivation of a conviction that life had some ultimate meaning and value, despite the tragic evidence to the contrary—an attitude also evoked by great art.”

So unlike what religion has taught us, life has no ultimate meaning and value? Then what to do instead, in order to really connect with God? “You must first live in a certain way, and then you would encounter within a sacred presence that which monotheists call God, but which others have called the Tao, Brahman, or Nirvana.”

Indeed, same practice – like immersing yourself into the deep reading, practice, and habit of religious discipline – but with different intentions, understanding, and goal. God does exist but not in the way we know it today, and religion is still a medium of transcendence but not in the way we used to be taught.

Here’s Ms. Armstrong again, where she told a story from the Upanishads that perfectly encapsulates God’s presence: “I had often quoted the famous story from the Upanishads in which the sage Uddalaka makes his son Svetaketu aware of the omnipresence of the divine by telling him to dissolve a lump of salt in a beaker of water. In the morning, the lump has disappeared, but though the salt is now invisible, it pervades the entire beaker and can be tasted in every sip. “My dear child,” Uddalaka concludes, “it is true that you cannot see Brahman here, but it is equally true that it is here. This first essence—the whole universe has as its Self. That is the Real. That is the Self. That you are, Svetaketu.” Our task is to learn to see that sacred dimension in everything around us—including our fellow men and women.”

So funnily enough, while she quits the convent because she didn’t find God in the most traditional religious life, she eventually found God in her own way: through immersing herself in what she does best, researching about religion, practicing their good principles, implementing the habits, and becoming one of the greatest (if not the greatest) theologian that has ever lived.

“Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes” by Tamim Ansary

This is a thorough history of what the author, Tamim Ansary, called the Middle World. It is an area in the middle between Europe in the west, China in the east, and Africa in the south-west; a place that we all now familiar with the colonialist term of the Middle East.

The book is an impressively detailed but yet concise account of the long history of this place, complete with the geopolitics, social, economic, and of course religious factors. And it starts right at the very beginning with the cradle of civilization in Mesopotamia, with its plenty of kingdoms defeating each others, to the rise of the mighty empires in Persia, the collapse of Rome and the rise of the eastern part that became the Byzantine empire, which eventually sequenced to the main subject of this book: the rise of Islam and the subsequent Islamic empires that would dominate the next couple of centuries.

This is not your typical books on Islam, however, as it is written not from the religious angle but strictly from the vantage point of its political history. We’re talking about the power dynamics, the social economic struggles, the way they organized their reign, and many more, even telling the tales of political backstabbing between them. Oh the many backstabbings. That’s right, just like every other empire from the 7th century to the 20th century, the stories are filled with so many violence, murder, betrayal, deceptions, and of course war. And they are being told in a unfiltered manner that give us the complete human picture.

For example, the book told the story of how chaotic it really was after the Prophet’s (PBUH) death; with all the elections, the power struggles, even the forming of several separatist groups. In fact, 3 of the first 4 Caliphs – Omar, Othman, and Ali (Peace be upon them) – were all murdered in the end; not to mention the murder of Ali’s son, Hussain, by Yazid I that sparked the Shi’i movement.

But what makes this book stands out from the rest is Ansary’s ability to demonstrates the complex, multi-dimentional, angles of the characters, rather than just a single angle to fit a narrative. For example Abu Bakr, he was a highly regarded wise leader who actually struggled economically and borderline living in poverty. Or Omar who is tall and strong, famous for his epic temper but can become wise when needed. Or the wealthy and handsome Othman that looks almost perfect, but has a dark side that ended up sabotaging himself. Or the honest and pious Ali that was the hope for so many people, but with a weak personality that left him unable to handle a burning empire filled with traitors. Or the description of Muawiya who was arguably a treacherous person, but simultaneously a champion of arts and sciences that provided the critical foundations for the unleash of the Golden Age of Islam during the Abbasid rule.

Indeed, the real life is messy, nothing is one-dimensional, and characters can simultaenously be the hero and the villain in any given story. This approach is very much the template in every single story of the book: from the era of the Righteous Four, to Muawiya, the Sassanid rule, Umayyad, Abbasid, all the way to the Mughal Empire in India, Safavid Empire in Persia, to eventually the Ottoman Empire where the Turks would dominate the region. And then we have the modern Middle East with, among many others, the rise of Wahhabism through British-engineered Arab Revolt, the deeply troubled creation of Zionism, the transition from Persia into Iran (and who Reza Shah Pahlavi really was), the power dynamics in Egypt between secular nationalists and religious fundamentalists, the spillover to Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the rise of secular modernism most strongly demonstrated in Kemal Ataturk’s modern Turkey.

And alongside the dynamic power struggles in the Muslim World, Ansary provides us with the context of the bigger world history. For example, the Abbasid Golden Age of Islam occurred before Europe’s Renaissance, while the slow collapse of the Ottoman (even before World War 1) happened during the rise of the European empires from Spanish, to Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, to British Empire, as well as the Hapsburg and Austro-Hungary.

The interconnected parralel history are so wonderfully fascinating and eye opening, showing us a clearer context over where the Muslim World stands in the face of world history. And perhaps more importantly, it also gives a more complete big picture view over the dynamics between the West and the Muslim world, a vital piece of information puzzle to understand the world today.

In the sea of abundant information, please be careful with misleading information coming from half truths. Half truths are worse than no truths, because at least with no truths we can easily detect and debunk them.

But with half truths? Iran’s retaliation can be seen as the instigator in this war if we never read about the first attack by Israel. Without context, Iran’s attack on Saudi, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar will show Iran as the agressor while in the whole truth Iran already warned weeks before if US and Israel attack them they will retaliate by attacking 1. US military bases in the Gulf countries 2. US assets in the region (like sites in Dubai) 3. And overall US military presence, which is why Iran bombed civilian sites such as a hotel in Bahrain (filled with US military personnel). It may look chaotic, but it is not random.

At this point, inserting Sunni vs Shia element in the Iran vs Gulf narrative will make perfect sense, but it’s a half truth. Because yes there is still a tension between Sunni and Shia even after more than 1400 years, but the rift between Shia and Sunni has nothing to do with US-backed Gulf siding with Israel vs Iran that stands in the way of the Greater Israel plan. So the religious infighting element is so very tiny in this war context.

It is also so easy to jump into conclusion that the drone attack on Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura refinery is conducted by Iran due to their constant bombing onto the Gulf, but apparently it wasn’t (as claimed by Iran’s deputy foreign minister to CNN). Why should we believe the denial? Because Iran has so far take claims on everything they bomb without hiding it, and they would not have any issue admitting it if they did it. After all they do close down Hormuz strait (20% of global oil traffic) with a bigger impact on oil market than the attack on Aramco’s refinery. It is by not easily believing on the half truth narrative that Iran did the strike on Aramco (the first time) that we would be 1 step closer to the whole truth: if it’s not Iran, then who actually did it? And why?

Half truths can also mislead us in the progress of the geopolitic mapping. Like the posts by many X and IG accounts about a report by the FT that “Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Qatar are discussing withdrawing from contracts with the U.S. and canceling future investment commitments in the U.S.” First, I checked to FT directly and they don’t have any reporting of this (it’s such a massive, empire-shifting, news that if true they would have to report it). The only credible media or journalists (at X) that report it is [the often dodgy] Binance news, without any second source that can solidify the truthfulness. Secondly even if it’s true, notice that it’s still being discussed and not finalized. And so many social media accounts are misleadingly portraying it as if it’s a done deal that would practically end the Petrodollar Recycling engine that powers the American Empire.

And then we have Reza fucking Pahlavi. Half truths will describe him as the “exiled crown prince”, showing that his monarchy father was deposed in 1979 by Muslim extremists. That is correct. But those who said only this part of the story usually want to create a narrative that the current regime is a vicious and illegal regime. And the whole truth? In an action dubbed as the Operation Ajax the US and UK staged a coup in 1953 to topple a democratically-elected Iranian president Mohammad Mosaddegh after he decided to nationalise their oil. Afterwards they installed Shah Reza Pahlevi as their puppet dictator, they stole Iranian oil, bring in Rockefeller to handle the finance of the entire regime from top to bottom, and control the country with Pahlavi’s gruesome rule filled with violence. For Iranians who really understand their history, the last thing they need is the return of the son of a brutal dictator.

Now, this is an oversimplification (hey people write many books about this) but the only group that was brave enough to challenge the US-backed puppet was the extremists, who then staged a counter-revolution in 1979 to grab back their country. That’s why the US so resent this Iranian regime, because they dare to fight back the empire, with the West constantly trying to portray the Ayatollah’s regime as violators of human rights, especially on opression of women while in whole truth women are liberated (now they don’t even have to wear the hijab) with them making up around 70% of science and engineering graduates.

On a ligher side of half truths, Prof Jiang is probably the hottest commentator in this war, after he successfully predicted the rise of Donald Trump and the attack on Iran. I like him. But just because he was right few times, doesn’t mean that going forward he will be correct 100% everytime. Because, despite of his brilliant posts that make a lot of sense, he also a human that once said the strait of Hormuz (width of 33-97 KM) is swimmable, in order to make a point about how narrow the strait is. Hence, a bit of healthy skepticism is still needed in reading any information from any source.

The truth is never easy to learn, but the whole truth is easier to understand rather than a series of inter-connected half truths. The whole truth is always clear and logically make sense. If a reporting doesn’t make sense or feel too good to be true, then it might hide some crucial information that is designed to prevent you to know the whole truth.

And by contrast, don’t quickly dismiss any bizarre or unusual claims that don’t make sense, as long as they can give you the “receipt” or the evidence of the claims. Because, as they say, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The key to all of this is in the receipts.