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| QUOTATIONS 55-63 |
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55. Who is writing about what. One of the reasons, it seems to me, that so many writers have devoted so many pages in their books to childhood and adolescence is that, for the majority of them, this was the only time when they were leading ordinary lives of ordinary people in all its fullness, richness and complexity, without thinking how to put it on paper. In the process they acquired invaluable for a writer firsthand knowledge. In other words, this was a period of their own and other people's lives they would always know the best. Because as soon as one becomes a writer one ceases to be a full participant in everyday life and is turned instead into an outside observer, more or less detached from it, depending on how much time is spent alone, in front of a typewriter, writing about life while other people are living it. But one does not gain a full knowledge of life without full participation in it. And one , certainly, can not write well about something one does not know well enough. But write they must, since writing becomes their profession, the way to make a living. Fortunately, there is another kind of life, besides childhood and adolescence, all writers know well - the life of a writer. So a lot of writers have written a book about a writer, writing a book. Having exhausted this rather limited and well explored subject, the writer has essentially three choices - to write about contemporary life, life in the past or life in the future. Those with enough courage (or gall), who consider themselves to be keen observers of the surrounding them reality and believe in their ability to convincingly depict people they have little if any personal knowledge about, choose the first and the hardest route - to write about their contemporaries who are not writers but, let's say, lawyers, doctors, politicians, businessmen, etc. The end result of such an undertaking is usually a gallery of more or less stereotypical, two-dimensional characters. Even if they have any depth or "third dimension", it is the same old familiar face of a writer just by any other name. Yet, there are enough live, real lawyers, doctors, politicians and businessmen walking around, who bear little resemblance to their literary counterparts, for these writers to be easily accused of not knowing what they are talking about. In consequence, they have most to lose but, as often happens in life, also most to gain, because it is from this category of writers that Nobel prize laureates in literature almost exclusively are selected. The writers who are relatively less ambitious (notice "relatively" because there is no writer without ambitions), and primarily concerned with making a good living, belong to the second and largest group. As it is the case with other skilful craftsmen (and that's what they essentially are, though some may disagree) their prosperity depends on the acceptance of their product by the largest possible number of consumers. Accordingly, they can't afford to take many chances which writing about the battlefields of the present entails, but, instead, prefer much safer pastures of the past - the recent one, not so recent or far removed. The safest and the easiest way is to write about the past far removed. The writer not only can, but virtually has no other choice than to rely on what has been written before. What is even more important, a consensus (or several of them to choose from, depending on the specific audience the writer addresses) has been established about the events, personalities, ideas, myths, etc. of the remote past. The only thing required from the writer is to provide "new packaging" which is both exciting and congenial to the new reader. The last but not the least advantage of writing about the far removed past is the enormous "generation gap" between people of this past and today's readers, none of whom can accuse the writer of "not knowing what he is talking about" since they don't know either. The writing about the recent and not so recent past has the same above mentioned advantages, only to a lesser and lesser degree as the past approaches the present. The third group of writers write about the future. Because nobody really knows what the future is going to be like, they have almost unlimited freedom to say just about anything they wish. Consequently, they are seldom taken seriously by anybody but children or those adults who have never lost the "child" inside of them. Appealing to the same category of readers and having just about as little interest in the truthful depiction of reality is the fourth group which can be called writers of fantasies. They may be sexual fantasies in the form of Harlequin romances or political fantasies in the form of spy novels, or scientific fantasies in the form of sci-fiction, etc. The fact, that the writers of this fourth group nowadays are more popular and, as a result, more prosperous than the previous three put together, tells more about mass psychology than about literature. Of course, as with any classification, the borders between the separate groups and sub-groups are often blurred, and there are some writers whose belonging to one of the group just described is not that clear at once. Yet none of them can escape either the "tyranny of time" or the "reader's whim" and unavoidably gravitate to the one or the other above -mentioned types, if not precisely, then in some variations. 56. Can Man be made good? Can Man be made good? Many have tried to make Him good, but none has succeeded in this noble, yet apparently unattainable pursuit. Moses had brought The Ten Commandments. His proposition was clear and straightforward - if Man follows The Law he will be good, and love and generosity of God would be his reward. But if Man disobeys The Ten Commandments he will be evil and would have to face the wrath of God. The rest is a history in a form of The Old Testament which is essentially a story of how the good and omnipotent God was defeated by the bad and weak Man. The terrible punishments God inflicted upon him over and over again were powerless to change man's evil nature. Where force has failed will argument succeed? Socrates certainly thought it could. A citizen of the free and enlightened Athens, Socrates had almost a religious faith in the power of persuasion. Isn't it what Athenian democracy was all about. You just have to convince a man that something is in his interest and he will do it. So, if Man can be convinced that to be good "is good for him" he naturally will do his best to become one. And Socrates, at least according to his disciple Plato, was uniquely qualified to do just that. Hasn't he always won the argument? Yes, he did win all the arguments but obviously not the hearts and minds of the Athenians, because finally tired of his persuasiveness, they condemned him to death -the most decisive argument of them all. Thus, the logic had been proven to be as powerless as force. Then came Jesus - the son of despairing God, God of the desperate men. "Turn away from your sins" he said, "because the Kingdom of heaven is near". For a man to be simply "good" wasn't good enough any more. Jesus wanted Man to be perfect - "You must be perfect just as your Father in heaven is perfect". Even to follow The Ten Commandments, which proved to be unattainable for men in the past, wasn't enough any more. Not killing wasn't enough, just for calling his brother "a worthless fool" one will be in danger of going to the fire of hell. "If your eye causes you to sin, take it out and throw it away." "If your arm causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away." "If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, let him slap your left cheek too. And if someone takes you to court to sue you for your shirt, let him have your coat as well." "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." Such kind of perfection only God, being immortal and invincible, could afford to possess, but not a mortal and vulnerable Man. Those few who had followed Jesus' teachings to the letter could not possibly survive in any human society and were doomed to suffer and die as their teacher before them. Others were condemned to life of hypocrisy, mixed with all-pervasive feeling of inadequacy and guilt. Man was no more close to be good than before. Thus another prophet, this time the greatest of them all, had failed. Man had to turn once more to philosophers for help. And in the next eighteen hundred years there was no shortage either of the solutions or of the philosophers offering them. Yet "many were called, but few were chosen." Amongst those few the most prominent one was Karl Marx. He achieved this prominence by discovering the irrefutable, in his opinion, law of human history. According to this law, which was based on Hegelian dialectic, mankind, spurred by relentlessly developing and improving productive forces, is inexorably moving along the road of progress toward a prosperous and just society where everybody would work according to one's abilities and consume according to one's needs. In such a society, Man freed from all problems of living would inevitably become good. Moreover, this would be allegedly achieved without any efforts on man's part - a crucial point in Marx's "iron law of history", which has carried a particularly irresistible appeal for Man who by now was fully aware of his powerlessness to change himself. Now, after the discovery of this wonderful law of the inevitability of progress, the most logical thing to do for Marx and his followers called Marxists or communists would have been to relax and let the productive forces do their job. After all, Christians have been waiting patiently for the second coming of Christ for almost two thousand years by now. Unfortunately, logical thoughts seldom, if ever, lead to the logical actions, since men rarely practice what they preach. Unlike Christians who obviously had no choice, communists had thought that those historical changes, as inevitable as they were, could and should be helped along. This way of thinking, and especially acting, had lead them eventually to the establishment in 1917 of the first communist state - the Soviet Union. Then followed seventy years of futile and often cruel attempts to create a "new society" and most of all a "new man". The results were disastrous. All who lived long enough to see the year 1990 witnessed the total collapse of Marxist ideology, rejected and ridiculed by the very same people who were its product. Finally, we have to accept the fact that none of these great creators of utopias - Moses, Socrates, Christ, Marx - has succeeded in making Man "good". So, why did they all fail? Because each one of them, despite his greatness had a limitation none of us could ever overcome - being a man of his times. As such, they saw the shortcomings particular to the society they were part of as the universal cause of man's evil thoughts and deeds. Accordingly, although each had found more or less adequate solution for those particular to his time shortcomings, each nevertheless had failed to solve universal and timeless problem of man's evil nature which like Proteus has always been capable of assuming different forms. Moses had forged the nation out of loosely connected tribes and had given the law to slaves deprived of any civil rights. Yet, the subsequent events have shown that though being disorganized and lawless does make men bad, the organization and the law does not necessarily make them good. Socrates had confronted his fellow Athenians, allegedly confused and uncertain about "what is good", "what is just", "what is beautiful", etc. with the necessity first to find the perfect definitions of moral and ethical principles and then to use this knowledge to become "good" and "just". Both Socrates and his disciple Plato, and later Aristotle had been unsurpassed even in our time in clarifying those elusive and ambiguous notions, making in the process Greeks in general and Athenians in particular unquestionably the best educated people of their times. Yet, the behaviour of such an enlightened people was not, as anyone familiar with history can tell you, much better than that of the most benighted of their neighbours. Which proves that though ignorance does make men bad, the best education and knowledge doesn't make them necessarily good. Jesus spoke to the despised, hated and persecuted people of Judea longing for acceptance, brotherhood and love. He also spoke to the poor, oppressed and powerless of all races and religions throughout the huge Roman empire longing for freedom, equality and release from suffering. But above all, Jesus spoke to the child which is inside of every man, the child longing to love and to be loved, to forgive and to be forgiven, to be just and to be treated justly, to tell the truth and to be told the truth - to be good. And these children of living God, as Christians, the followers of Jesus Christ called themselves, probably for the first time in human history genuinely and sincerely tried to be "good". Yet even they had not succeeded. This sad and tragic failure of Christianity has made it clear that though those who do not want and try will not be good, wanting and trying doesn't necessarily make people good either. It doesn't because it couldn't - declared Marx. People are powerless to change themselves because their behaviour is a product of the forces which are beyond their control - the so called "productive forces". They and only they determine not only the economical and political structure of a particular society but also its morals and ethics, right down to a personal behaviour of its individual members. As a statement of the universal principle this simple and straightforward declaration was and still is hard to argue with. But in practical terms it is no more reliable than the second coming of Christ. What level of the development of "productive forces" is necessary for such a radical transformation of the society that would make Man automatically "good'? When will it happen and how will we able to recognize it? These fundamental questions have been left unanswered both by Marx and his followers, and we know no more about the Marxist paradise and the time of its coming than about the Kingdom of God and its "day and hour". It is clear by now that all of the above mentioned systems contain some elements of each other and therefore are not mutually exclusive. Moreover, it is beginning to look as if the total sum of these four systems includes all the possible ideas humanity could have come up with up to the present date and in the foreseeable future, since nothing new is being offered to Man but endless reshuffling of already tried and failed solutions. Thus, at the end of the second millennium A.D. mankind finds itself lost in the labyrinth of broken illusions and unfulfilled dreams, still looking for the way out but more and more out of habit than of hope. In a state of complete disarray, we continue to carry life's load along the endless, boring old road with no hope even to go astray. 57. The only people we can ever hope to convince of anything are those who already agree with us before we even start arguing. 58. I wouldn't mind to sell my soul to the Devil, providing, of course, that the price is right. But I categorically refuse to get in line to give it for free. After all, a man has to have some principles. 59. Whatever you do in life, try to find interest and enjoyment in the process of doing it and not in the end result, which, by itself, very often could be quite disappointing. 60. Even if we concede that a statement like "two plus two equals four" is trite, boring and unimaginative, it doesn't follow that to say "two plus two equals five" is original, innovative and stimulating, for it is not. It is simply and plainly false, no more and no less. 61. Whatever we possess, be it our money, our time, our life, we can dispose of it in at least three different ways. The first way is to keep it all , the second - to give away everything we have to the others, and the third - to leave as much as we think we need to ourselves and to give the others the rest. The first way will never bring us real happiness. Of course, our immediate personal needs would be satisfied in the best possible manner our possessions can allow . But we will deprive ourselves of the most valuable and absolutely indispensable for happiness thing in life - companionship, love and respect of others. Because all this is given only to those who also give. If we follow the second route and give all that we have away, we shall subject ourselves voluntarily to much greater unhappiness than in the first case because of becoming from that moment on totally dependent on the mercy of the others for the satisfaction of our most basic needs. We will find ourselves in the position of King Lear who gave all he had away and then had to beg to get some crumbs of it back But what is even worse, we will begin to resent and sometimes even to hate the very people to whom we gave our possessions, seeing them as the reason for our misery and deprivation, now when they have all we had owned before. It is obvious by now that the third way of dividing one's possessions, when the giver still retains enough to be able to satisfy his needs, and the receiver is grateful for a gift, without feeling guilty of depriving the giver of all he had, and even hating him in some extreme cases for experiencing the guilt, must be the best way. 62. Life which is strictly vicarious is necessarily precarious, Both the victories and the defeats out of reach for the one that just sits idle spectator without a say in outcome of the game others play, Happy and loud, or quiet and sad, an empty drum beaten by someone's hand. 63. The words are invariably deceptive, even if unintentionally, but the facts could not be argued with. What we say about ourselves or how the others describe us is open to many and various , often conflicting interpretations. But what we've actually done is not. The life of a man, therefore, is the best key to the understanding of what he is. Even more, the detailed and truthful story of man's life, from the moment of his birth till the day of our inquiry, is, in essence, what he is. The rest is commentary. Facts of my life - only from them You can discover who I am. And it is equally true about humanity as a whole. For the truthful, and as detailed as possible, account of history of mankind from the dawn of civilization till the present time will give us both a portrait and an explanation of what the Modern Man is. Our history is what we are. |
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