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The Art of Holism - Antidote to Critical Thinking by mfarnold May 2024

Critical thinking employs the left-lobe of the brain, used primarily for Maths and Science and processes, driving individualism and competition. The marginalization of the Right hemisphere of the brain, which holistically connects individuals to the universe in and around the self, creates imbalanced human beings, within the education and academics of the westernized world. Even the Art World, which is a natural expression of the holistic, creative self, has been straight-jacketed by western critical process thinking, losing the opportunity for beautiful holistic thought and action which should underpin Real Creativity, found to be unrelated to pre-knowledge and conventional process-thought elements of the brain. Real Creative thought shows multiple and even unrelated firing of the whole brain activity.

Competition is the world of industrial capitalism - profit at all cost, including mass human and world resource exploitation. Indigenous people knew the Art of Holism, placed community progress above individualism and maintained a balance, until Westernism came with their cameras and introduced modern technology. This allowed them to sell schools to some indigenous communities, who today travel miles to schools, for so-called “progress”, only to be met with competitiveness that leads to poverty of the soul, loss of identity, ensuring brand names vulnerability and major debt traps that further corrode human freedom. Maths, science and technology promoted in western school, is actually the trap to marginalize the masses into blue collar jobs, to ensure that the talented and resource rich, can access the few top jobs in the highly capital/machine intensive industries that aim to reduce labour issues by investing in computers to do the jobs. The drive for maths, science and technology is an actual clever ploy to marginalize the masses, with their brainwashed participation, and thus voluntary acceptance of the low wages offered to those marginalized by the global maths-science-tech ploy - where only the talented can survive. Schools do not produce the A’s. They are often head hunted by enfranchised schools. A-candidates are naturally talented. It is only the talented that get sponsored bursaries, again leaving the masses, who lack the resources to achieve high marks in Maths, Science & Technology, to settle for less. This is the strategy of the rich - creating an enslaved exam-culture of passing grades and ignoring the natural other talents of children. This makes them frustrated and prone to crime, addiction and ill-health through the stresses experienced in schools. Art is then encouraged as an expression of personal emotions and protests, instead of real transformative works of art. Some Art has become a personal expression of distorted minds and souls. The western art forms often express personal disharmonies or protests caused by western capitalistic exploitation, which is designed through politics.

People often do not realize how the arts are used to brainwash the masses. The first things destroyed and replaced when a new government takes over are the art pieces, statues and paintings that decorate the walls of previous parliament and state buildings. People are then subconsciously driven to accept the new authority in power through the new replaced Art Pieces. The second removal from the public eye is the names of streets of the previous government “icons”. In other countries the King's face is posted all over. This is modern idolism wrapped in art forms. The Arts in Islam, with its ban on human and animal figures, prevents authority brainwashing and expressions of animalistic tendencies and thus forces on the artists holistic thought that creates beauty that transcends rulers. It is this kind of art that creates growth of the self, beyond individual, subjective emotional outpourings of the souls which has occurred in western art forms. Europeans created Art as a separate investment for the rich Art-auction-players. During the Egyptian, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libyan wars, America and Britain boasted new Islamic art galleries that opened there, from the stolen artefacts the armies accumulated before they bomb the places.

Critical thinking is primarily a process of actually alienating the self from one's holistic personality that seeks harmony, connectedness and belonging. The Western art forms display the society’s loss of true human identity, while the beautification of the built and utensil environment of indigenous people create identity, harmony, openness and connectedness, because they do not see their creativity and a separate canvas or stone art, but rather as beautifying the environment for all to enjoy and be part of. It is this kind of art I wish to bring forth in ICRA-HLL-University’s FADDS [Film, Arts, Design and Drama Studies] - in shaa Allah Aameen. I invite all to a new world of positive expression that draws us closer to our Fitrah (Divine Purity & Beauty) and hence closer to Allah SWT, in shaa Allah Aameen