The book Oh Crap! I Have a Toddler: Tackling These Crazy Awesome Years – No time-outs Needed by Jamie Glowacki is blunt and funny. If you are searching for a polite book, then this is not your book, but if you seek practicality – and language you can easily understand, then you want might to give it a try.

Jamie started her book by explaining to parent that their children from 0-6 years old are in the process called individuation – that is they are coming to a conscious that they are a separate human being from their parent, capable of making their own choice. But as they have literally inadequate experience in this world, they needed their parent to survive.

If you read a lot of parenting book, you will notice one trend – they tended to contradict each other. If you read book by Faber & Mazlish for example, they advocate for giving choices to children. In some area, there are some sense if we are to use Faber & Mazlish’s approach, for example choosing a pajama, but if could be dangerous in other situation such as crossing a street. Jamie contended that 0-6 are the years of governing, not guiding, as children brain is not yet capable of making complex and long-term choices, but for simple situation, of course they can, and we should give them.

She contended that it is the child job to push your limit and testing things. They are learning every day, even if we are not talking, they learn by observing and feeling. That is why, the first important thing in her book, is set up rules and boundaries, so that the children can be creative in a safe environment. They can explore within safe boundaries. You should strive to be authoritative but not authoritarian. Because they are very new to the world, everything is an exploration for them, and we the adult might mistakenly seem them as a bad behavior. In reality they were just curious how the floor would look like if they were all covered with talcum powder!

Parenting is also about the parent!

Jamie also stress out that parenting is not just about your child, it’s also about you, your partner, and your marriage. I personally loved this advice. Some parent devout their whole life to the child, they become the center of their universe, at the cost of their personal well-being and the health of their relationship with their partner in their marriage. This is wrong. When they crash and burn, they will pull down their children together with them, all parties stand to lose. That is why caring for your partner and marriage must be on the agenda, when this is healthy, it will become an umbrella protecting your child and enable them to grow and flourish.

How we connect with our children, was one of my favorite themes in the book. The need for us to be there 100 percent with our children. If we watch movie together, and wanted it to be a connection time, we should watch with them 100 percent with attention without scrolling our phone. But if we gave them screen time for us to take a break, we should say so, so that he will not expect us to sit with them. Jamie stressed out that short 100 percent connection time is much more valuable and productive, then spending time together without our thought never actually “be there”.

Phone is really a gap that create disconnection between parent and their children. While many advise us to put it away, Jamie understood that parenting can sometimes make us lonely and isolated. Being with a child all day is not the same as spending time with adults where you can understand each other’s. But we had a choice to make, whether we want to connect with a child or the world, it can’t be both at the same time. Its better for us to put 100 percent attention to a child until their emotional tank full, then we can spend time on the phone 100 percent. Dividing the attention will not work.

The other point that I think was an important one raised by Jamie, is the issue of parent’s self-care. Especially the first 5 years when the kid entered your life. In these crucial times, self-care is brutal, sleep deprivation and emotional stress slowly creeps in. There’s always a push and pull between partners on whose turn to take the time and look after the kids. This issue is an important one, because there is no family without parent, so a healthy parent, both physically and relationshiply are important for the kid’s development.

You dont have all the time!

Then there is the issue of time management, yes, we were told that busy is good, so we always keep ourselves and our kids busy! But that is not the case, you need a time to not being busy. There is no problem of letting your kids being bored, Jamie rightly pointed out that boredom is the gateway where we find creativity, when we did not plan anything for our kids, they have time to think for themselves what they want to do, what they want to play. If we keep planning their day up to minutes-detail, then there is no room for them to get creative and work their wonders.

Although different parenting books might give you different opinion, different approach, some contradicting each other, but what I found useful in it is that all of them always been a good reminder. A reminder that you are new to child rearing, you can’t master it without experiencing yourself. Jamie made a good reminder that, whatsoever our expectation was about parenting, we don’t know anything about it until we have our own child to take care of. Until we go through that sleepless night, all that tantrums, all that screaming and shouting, that is when we understand what is parenting actually is.

One unconventional thing I found in the book is that Jamie freely recommend TED talks for parent to further explore their conquest for parenting knowledge, I find talk by Gever Tulley on letting our children do dangerous things very enlightening. The book also gave a broader range meaning of creativity, especially what it means for little children.

The topic on sleep window do ring a bell. I for instant felt very sleepy at 10 pm that is my sleep window, and if I missed it, I will only be sleepy again at 2 am. Jamie make it as an utmost important points about sleeping, how sleep help your child and their behavior, you should let them sleep more, not less! She also talks about being firm, being firm means that you mean what you said. If you said something, you had to do it to mean it, this is related on setting boundaries, so that children understand where things stand.

You got this!

In conclusion, what I get from this book is that, your parenting needs to have a flexibility, if something is not working, you should change it, don’t be afraid of straying from your original parenting philosophy. Jamie ended the book by saying “you got this!”.

Syed Ahmad Fathi Bin Syed Mohd Khair

Author of several books including Berfikir Tentang Pemikiran (2018), Lalang di Lautan Ideologi (2022), Dua Sayap Ilmu (2023), Resistance Sudah Berbunga (2024), Intelektual Yang Membosankan (2024) and Homo Historikus (2024). Fathi write from his home at Sungai Petani, Kedah. He like to read, write and sleep.

independent.academia.edu/SyedAhmadFathi

Reading history book is much more easier than reading economic or political science book, that I must say. Much of this, I think, is the human inclination toward stories rather than abstract theories, rhetoric, and argument. It took me just 11 days to finish Firas Alkhateeb’s book Lost Islamic History: Reclaiming Muslim Civilization from the Past.

To compress 1400 years of history of Islamic civilization into 274 pages is very hard, if not impossible. To do this, of course, you have to pick and choose on what is important, what to be included, what to exclude and what is history and what is not. This selection  is exposed to the bias of individual historian, all historian cannot escape from this dichotomy, Alkhateeb included.

 Alkhateeb made ‘lost’ as a title to fill the gap that American textbook left about the Islamic history in their teaching of world’s history. So, for average Muslim, who received Islamic education, much of the book is pretty similar to what they were thought in school, especially on the early history about Prophet Muhammad and the first four caliphs. There are a lot of interesting stories, speculation, myth, but none were dealt in details as this work is a compression of 1400 years of history. But all in all, it was a pleasant read, one that spark your brain cell to have a long thinking.

Commenting on how Muslim scholar such as al-Razi and Ibn Sina contributing to the human knowledge, which further the studies of previous scholar such as Galen and Hippocrates, which was used to lay the pillar of modern medical science in the West, Alkhateeb dispelled  the theory of ‘the clash of civilization’ stressing that civilization not only interact in aggressive and warring attitude. They also inspire each other and advance the work of each other in many fields in harmonious ways.

If there is one thing that is new from the book, at least for the Muslim who are well versed with Islamic history, is that Alkhateeb is successful in breaking the romanticized narrative of Islamic history. As we often thought that across the time there were great unity among the Muslim, the fall of one Islamic empire is succeeded by another, politely taking turns. This was not the case. The division is bloody, especially after the killing of Uthman, the third caliph. There are a lot of politicking and civil war, in fact in the 900s, there were three dynasties claiming the caliphate: the Abbasids, the Fatimids, and the Umayyads.

The saddest part of Islamic history may be the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols on 10 February 1258. Not only the population of estimated 200,000 to 1 million was massacred, but the fall of Baghdad also means that hundreds years of scholarship in the field of mathematics, science, history, lost forever as the Mongols razed down the ancient institution of House of Wisdom and dumped all the books into the Tigris River, turning the river black with ink.

The story of Islam in Spain also were discussed, from my point of view, in adequate detail, although the student of history might want to find other sources which delve in it deeper. From the founding of Ummayyad Caliphate of Al-Andalus by Abdul Rahman Al-Dakhil until the fall of the last Muslim Kingdom in Granada under Muhammad XII, known as Boabdil by the Spaniards. The most interesting part of that history is how the Berber Muslim of North Africa frequently crossed the strait of Gibraltar to defend their Muslim brethrens, first by the Murabitun, then by the Muwahhidun, but in the end the infighting among the Muslim brought down the Muslim rule in the Iberian peninsula.

As a Malaysian, I chuckled a little bit as I read how Alkhateeb wrote the issue of how the Malay identify greatly their identity with Muslim identity. Not that it was wrong, it kind of funny to read how our culture were written in the international writing. He even quoted ‘masuk melayu’ the term given when someone embraced Islam with the meaning that he had enter the realm of the Malay. This issue actually very contentious at home, as the Muslim in Malaysia want their non-Muslim brother to understand that you can keep your culture even if you embraced Islam.

We often think that Mustafa Kamal, was the one responsible to secularized Turkey from their Islamic roots. But, the fact was it started much earlier, from the reign of Abdulmecid I (1839-1861) which brought in the era of Tanzimat or re-organization. During this era the legal code was changed from Shari’a to the French system in favour of a liberal and secular Western approach.

As the Islamic empire crumbled, the Muslim was instilled with nationalism, their land were carved under colonialism and imperialism. In the end they entered the modern world as individual nation states, much of which the boundaries of these new nation states was drawn by their previous colonial master. Ending his book, Alkhateeb noted that in this modern world, the Muslim now are in the cross road. To return to their former glory, some revivalist scholar preached that they need to return back to their faith, at the same time emerged a new class of scholar that preached that they should not return to the past but embraced the new ideals of the modern world. These two ideas are still contesting with each other, and their future will be determined by how this contest played out.       

Syed Ahmad Fathi Bin Syed Mohd Khair

Author of several books including Berfikir Tentang Pemikiran (2018), Lalang di Lautan Ideologi (2022), Dua Sayap Ilmu (2023), Resistance Sudah Berbunga (2024), Intelektual Yang Membosankan (2024) and Homo Historikus (2024). Fathi write from his home at Sungai Petani, Kedah. He like to read, write and sleep.

independent.academia.edu/SyedAhmadFathi

I was naive to think that I could understand Marx’s thinking by simply picking up the Communist Manifesto out of the blue and start reading it. Indeed, after this futile exercise several years ago, I understand and remember nothing except for the call for workers to unite, the last line of the manifesto.

Paul D’Amato did a brilliant job in this title explaining to layman reader the essence of Marxist thinking. It is a perfect place for any person to begin their journey to understand Marx’s elaborated thinking. I discover the book some time ago when I asked myself a question “If we gave everyone equal decent living wages to everyone, what will be the motivation for people to work, innovate and use their creativity?” – I landed on one of D’Amato writings on the net and discovered his book.

In his introduction, D’Amato exposes the need to have an alternative thinking to solve various social issues. The raison d’état for this need is the failing of capitalism – or the uncontrolled mess created by modern capitalism to be inherited to future generation. Capitalism created a huge gap between the rich and poor, often unbalance with unimaginable wealth and great misery stood side-by-side. He gave a stark example where per capita income of Sub-Saharan Africa stood at $490 whereas per capita subsidy for European cow is $913.

Marx was heavily influenced by Hegel’s philosophy, in fact he was considered a Young Hegelian during his early years. Initially he considered the workers as a suffering being, not a shaper of the world social condition. He still believed that change must come from philosophy, not crude material struggle. But after witnessing French workers commitment, workers strike in Britain, Germany, and France, Marx ceased to view workers as a secondary component to social change.

Marx materialist method insist on the importance of material change instead of only abstract value, ideologies, or theories. In the absence of enough food, equality as a value means slow death – an equality of suffering. Working class, now, viewed by Marx as active agent for their own liberation. When he wrote that “The philosophers have merely interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it” he is not saying that abstract ideas are meaningless, it is meaningless if its stay on its own without any change on the physical and material ground, idea must transform material changes in society to be considered useful.

Through this thinking materialist rejected the idea that “people are poor because they are lazy, if they work harder, they can become wealthy”, which suggested human has unrestricted “free-will”. The fact is however, people were poor because of material condition such as factories close, wages are low, or people fell ill and can’t work. These all are material condition that can be change, its not a matter of abstract theory.

Because Marx was heavily influenced by Hegel, D’Amato discussed in adequate depth the concept of Hegelian Dialectics, which I enjoyed very much. He discussed how the death of old idea, and the birth of the new idea, is not separate and distinct, but one that negate from the other, the old idea create a condition for a new idea to emerge. Its like a plant which grew out from a seed, it grew into a new shape and form, yet both are the same plant. Marx applied this Hegelian Dialectics with materialism for social change. He viewed that the development of new society only made possible with the abundant material produced by capitalism. In other words, capitalism provided material condition to create a new socialist society. For example, the efficiency of food production makes it possible to eradicate hunger, the material condition exists, what’s needed is a new distribution system.

Other than Hegel, the book also discussed Thomas Hobbes in the chapter of Marxist view of history. Hobbes stated that a state, separate from the society is needed as an alternative to war. The state, in Hobbesian view, acted as referee that regulate social brawl, regulate conflict between different parties within society to maintain order by exerting its coercive force. But this view is flawed as it assumes that the state could be neutral, in reality the state also had interest in every issue. He explained how Marxist rejected this justification for power, stating that, through the writing of Engels, that the concept of state came at the later part of history and does not arise in the earlier time when the society exist in its egalitarian and classless form.

The discussion on economics, or Marxist economics was confined in one chapter in this book. It started with the flawed mainstream economic models that cannot predict economic crises, the mainstream economics dressed up themselves as “science” but it isn’t. He then put forward the labor theory of value (LTV) which was the foundation of Marx’s theory on capitalism. The theory supposed that value came from workers labor, and to create profit, capitalist cannot simply mark-up the price because these will cancel each other’s out in the commerce, they need to pay workers less than what their labor produce, the surplus become profit. This is the core of injustice towards workers, the book also discussed workers condition in company such as UPS and Amazon where workers literally managed and treated like “robots”.

In the capitalist system “over-production” means that a product was overproduced and cannot be profitably sell for profit. The supply and demand of overproduction does not correspond to human needs. That is why we can have “grain-glut” yet millions of people go hungry every year. India have 200 million malnourished people, yet India export 5,000,000 metric tonnes of rice in 1995.

Socialism according two D’Amato was possible and necessary for two main reason, one, the material abundance created by capitalism. This abundance makes it possible for everyone to live with dignity, without hunger, what socialist advocated is the distribution system base on human need not greed. Two, is the periodic crisis brought by capitalism, socialist advocate for a much more sustainable system, that is not based on short term profit, but by long term sustainable planning. The systemic change also possible, by the creation of a new set of people by capitalism, the proletariat.

Revolution is not a fancy vacation. Through out history it filled with blood, the question then is, can we reform the system without revolution? Or change the system gradually within the bound of constitution? D’Amato brought a wealth of historical example on the failure of the “reformist” and “constitutionalist”. One of them is the killing of Allende of Chile, he concluded that the ruling power will not give the key to power and privilege easily, it needs to be wrestled. To make sure that the power can be wrestled, the military must be on their side, and remain on their side once they have the power, so that restructuring can be carried out without falling back to the counter-revolution.

The history of Russian revolution also was discussed, albeit somehow briefly. D’Amato take the readers on how the Revolution was won, the tactics and strategies played out by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and also how the revolution was lost, degraded into autocratic dictatorship of Stalinism. One of the strategies of Lenin was to never halt the work even though if the organization was thrown into illegality, the work must continue underground, according to the current condition, and resurface once condition allowed. The Russian Revolution failed because of the lack of material condition at that time, in order for socialism to succeed it needs material abundance, something that Russia was lacking. This disadvantage put a halt to the revolution from becoming, in Trotsky’s word “permanent revolution”, that is revolution works permanently until all her aim achieved. Permanent Revolution also means that it will not stop at national border, socialism cannot survive when confined in a nation as an island surrounded by an ocean of capitalism.    

At the core of his argument, D’Amato insist on the definition of socialism, it not about nationalization, but what important is that workers control over production and distribution. What we have today is abundance of produce but disproportionately distributed, the system distributed product base one profit. Socialism on the other hand will base their distribution on human needs. This distribution system can only be achieved through internationalism, it cannot survive as island of socialism in the middle of capitalist ocean, as the failing of Soviet Union has shown.

Quoting the English writer William Morris on profit:

“It is profit which draws men into enormous unmanageable aggregations called towns, for instance; profit which crowds them up when they are there, into quarters without garden or open spaces; profit which won’t take the most ordinary precautions against wrapping a whole district in a cloud of sulfurous smoke; which turns beautiful river into filthy sewers; which condemns all but the rich to live in houses idiotically cramped and confined at best, and at the worst, in houses for whose wretchedness there is no name.”

On Zionism, D’Amato is very clear that the project is racist, but different from their South African counterpart, Zionism goes further than just oppressing native population, it seeks the removal of native Palestinian from their land to build exclusive Jewish state. D’Amato dispelled Zionist propaganda that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land”. He also elaborated on the connection and contact of Zionist leaders with the Nazis, as they share the same goal, the Nazis want Europe without Jew, the Zionist want all Jew to fled Europe to resettled in their new Jewish nation, both shared the same goal of “separation of Jews from gentile”.

Finally, what does the future that socialism seek to build?

D’Amato answered this with the words from Eugene Debs “Production and distribution for all the people, collective ownership of industries and their management, elimination of rent, profit, and interest, the end of class rule, slavery, ignorance, poverty, cruelty, and crime”. Socialism seek to abolish class, and with that it rendered the existence of state as instrument of enforcement disappears. Whilst we may find that many of the solution proposed is hard to churn, many would agree on the failing and flaw of capitalism in structuring our modern society. We don’t have to be a Marxist or socialist, but, we all need to work together to re-created a more just and sustainable society.

Syed Ahmad Fathi Bin Syed Mohd Khair

Author of several books including Berfikir Tentang Pemikiran (2018), Lalang di Lautan Ideologi (2022), Dua Sayap Ilmu (2023), Resistance Sudah Berbunga (2024), Intelektual Yang Membosankan (2024) and Homo Historikus (2024). Fathi write from his home at Sungai Petani, Kedah. He like to read, write and sleep.

independent.academia.edu/SyedAhmadFathi