What if the pipe alone was not enough

Sometimes, in order to see the facts right in front of our eyes, we may need to set aside our theories, our concepts, even the impressions we have drawn from past experience.

Because it is often none other than these explanatory theories and concepts of ours that prevent us from seeing the facts. They come between us and reality like a curtain and show us what we see in a different way.

You know the story of a group of social scientists from different branches who went to Erzurum to do social science in the field! As a requirement of the training they have received, everyone will explain whatever they encounter starting from the theories they learned and memorized within their own scientific discipline.

A cold Erzurum winter day. Outside, snow, winter, doomsday weather.

Our social scientists pop into a house with a smoking chimney. The host bids them welcome, and they go in. The first thing that catches the attention of all of them as soon as they enter: there is a stove in the middle, and it has been set up quite high, with supports built under it. As soon as they warm up a little, they all at once voice this strange situation that has caught their attention and set about explaining it in their own ways. The situation is strange because the heat loss caused by raising the stove is something everyone knows.

The sociologist explains that Erzurum, because of its geographical proximity to Iran, has been under its influence historically and culturally, and that therefore keeping the fire high is an expression of consecration, as a sign of respect for fire. Since in Islamic culture too there is a habit of keeping what is sacred up high, it is quite a logical explanation.

The anthropologist, while agreeing with this view, explains that people develop the culture best suited to their situation through their interaction with nature, and that there is a harmony between the building material used here and the use of fire. That is why he explains that we should not get stuck on the stove use or heating habits we are accustomed to from other cultures.

Of course, while the historian of religions gives another explanation and the economist yet another, the host looks from one to another in astonishment. For some reason, it occurs to one of them to ask him, and he asks on what tradition this stove-setting is based. The host, hesitant before the very familiar explanations of so many men of science, speaks timidly in a tone of voice: "Sir, to tell no lie, listening to you my head is quite confused, wondering why I did it this way. But truth be told, when I was setting up the stove the pipe did not suffice. So I built a support under it," he says.

Of course, this is an example that expresses in the funniest way the situation that all theoretical explanations can at times fall into. Sometimes the pipe truly has not sufficed. The reason for something's coming about is this simple and this obvious. But the credit we extend everywhere to the theories we develop supposedly to illuminate reality, though they may perhaps be truly explanatory in some places, can turn in many places into a veil over the eyes that prevents us from seeing reality.

Sometimes simple events feel no need for explanation at all. Because everything is perfectly clear. But accepting that it is this simple is not something the educated person can easily accept. If everything is so clear, what use will all the theories, concepts and jargon he has learned and peddles everywhere be?

Especially if, bringing international relations into the matter, an explanation on a simple event is expected from him, how will it be possible for him to show a difference from others?

In this case, will the only way not be to start from this simple event and expound some theories that not everyone knows, but that he knows very well?

If he does not sell those theories now, when will he sell them?

This is a handicap of the commentarism, scientism, academic expertise and theoretical explanations we often encounter. Truly, it is not something social scientists are unaware of either.

That is why the phenomenological school in sociology says that, in order to approach reality, the barest reality, we sometimes need to suspend all the theories and concepts in our heads and try to see reality in its most plain form in people's minds. Of course, although there is a heap of debate on how possible it is to do this, the important part is that this human infirmity is recognized.

However, even being aware does not always suffice to do what is required.

Regarding the conspiracy theories put forward today because of the Khashoggi affair, I am probably having an experience different from everyone else's. As someone who knows the inside, the real state of the affair, to be able to see the distances between those conspiracy theories and the facts is undoubtedly an entirely separate experience. The stories I have heard about how Khashoggi was steered into this like a robot from the very beginning, what was planned through this event, and how these plans were aimed at building a new world show me very well what traps human intelligence sets for itself.

I feel like saying "don't strain so much," sometimes the real reason truly is that the pipe did not suffice.

Are you burying it? That the Khashoggi murder did not go as planned is the plainest and clearest truth that has emerged so far. Can you not see that if it had not come to light, events would have developed entirely differently, and that because it did come to light, they developed in a wholly different way?

Leave aside those big balances of power in international relations and your rote beliefs or expectations about what each actor can do in every situation. You can do your analyses of that separately. But see the plainness of the situation in this event, and see how an utterly unexpected dirty reality can flatten my dear theories or my dear conspiracies, and see the Divine hand and believe in Him.