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| QUOTATIONS 600-645 |
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| 600. God's life must be very boring. To know all that will ever happen, from here to eternity. No surprises, nothing unexpected. This year - flood, the next - earthquake. Couple millions killed now, more millions later. It's all so depressingly predictable. One starts to envy even such a despicable creature as Man. His life is definitely more exciting. But "short, nasty and brutish". Yeah, nothing is perfect. In the next couple billions of years must come up with something better. As for now - the rest is boredom. 601. The art of conversation consist in the ability to say as much as necessary in as few words as possible to be fully understood and thus allowing the others the opportunity and time to do exactly the same. 602. Women dress up to stand out, men - to blend in. A woman wants to be noticed and chosen among many - it means success. A man is afraid to attract attention and to be single out - it means danger. 603. The older one grows the harder it gets to carry the cross of one's own insignificance and obscurity. 604. A lot of what is considered "self-evident" now were not, apparently, so evident 2000 years ago. And some of what is not self-evident today will almost definitely be viewed as obvious 2000 years from now. For what is accepted as the self-evident at any particular moment in time is defined by the contemporaneous state of consciousness, which in itself, is the product of the collectively accumulated and widely assimilated totality of knowledge up to that time. 605. Christians can't have it both ways - on the one hand, to accept, albeit selectively, Judaism as the Source and to use it as the foundation of their religion and theology, and, on the other hand, to accuse the Jews of rejecting Christ and Christianity, despite the obvious fact that not only Christ and his apostles, but the overwhelming majority of the early Christians were circumcised Jews who followed precepts and regulations of Mosaic Law, and that even the Gentile proselytes at the beginning were almost indistinguishable from the Jews both in their appearance and behaviour. Yet, Christians, like the rest of us, are only human (though they often love to imagine being more than that) and it is quite human to wish to have it both ways. It is also hard to blame them for this apparent contradiction, considering the kind of theological baggage they inherited from the early Church's Fathers who literally (and admittedly with a certain amount of inner logic) had predicated Christianity from the start on the condemnation of the Jews as unworthy of God's favours. For example, the central point of St. Augustine's theology and the main thrust of his arguments, as it is presented in The City of God, is to prove that the promise of the Old Testament made repeatedly by God to the Jews, the citizens of the earthly, and therefore false Jerusalem, was actually concerned the future Christians - the citizens of the heavenly, and therefore true Jerusalem - the real City of God. For knowing the tragic history of the Jews, one cannot escape the conclusion that if God made them the promise, He undeniably had reneged on it. Yet, this is totally unacceptable to the Christians, who had fully assimilated and eventually developed ( by St. Thomas Aquinas) to its ultimate end the ancient Greek notion of the absolute perfection of the Supreme Being and applied it to Jehovah - the common God of Jews and Christians. Consequently, the salvation of God's reputation has become predicated on the repudiation of the Jews, who, to save His perfect integrity and trustworthiness, had to be declared not worthy of His promise and mistaken in their belief that it was made to them. And in the 2000 years of their "coexistence' with the Jews, Christians have certainly made everything humanly, or rather inhumanely, possible to turn this specious premise in the almost self-evident truth. It is mainly because of such and similar quasi-theological arguments that the habitual rejection of "a stranger in our midst" has evolved into the innate and vicious hatred, and the ennobling appellation "Christian" for hundreds of years have become synonymous with the obnoxious term "anti-Semite". 606. The task of turning Jesus-man into Christ-God, undertaken with the all-consuming passion and solemnity of proselytism in the first five centuries of Christianity has proved to be unsurmountable and beyond the abilities of the best Christian theologians. Despite the appropriation for their use of the unsurpassed since metaphysical achievements of Greek philosophy, despite the expenditure of the enormous amount of time and energy, talent and devotion, despite, when argument had ultimately to yield to a sword, the slaughter of countless numbers of Christians by their "brothers in faith" in order to extirpate the endless and hardly distinguishable "heresies", at the end they had to settle for a decree of a creed imposed by a secular force, exercised by the essentially pagan Roman Emperor, instead of embracing the free religious conviction of understanding. 607. Some people are never satisfied, no matter how much they're given, the others are always content, no matter how little they've got. 608. Philosophy like sleep is the last refuge of the unhappy. 609. 3000 years ago, when Ecclesiastes proclaimed that "all is vanity" he was proclaimed a wise man. Today, in America, he would have been put on Prozac. 610. The attempt to reconcile the anthropomorphic Jehovah of the Old Testament - a god who displayed a wide range of distinctly human characteristics and emotions like mildness and anger, patience and frustration, love and jealousy, mercy and wrath, a god who "walked in the garden in the cool of the day" and talked to Adam and Eve, Abraham and Moses face to face - with abstract and unchangeable, totally impervious to any sensations and feelings, the immovable Prime Mover - a god produced, or rather deduced, by Greek philosophy, was never successful even when undertaken by such outstanding Christian theologians as St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas. 611. Such is the typical progress of human aspirations: to begin, optimistically, with a wish for a maximum, then, reluctantly, switch to a middle-of-the road, and, finally, end up by resigning to the inevitability of settling for a minimum. For to wish for the maximum may be divine, but to settle for the minimum is only human. 612. The perversions of any kind are caused either by the unavailability of the ordinary and normal, or by the superabundance of it to the point of oversaturation and boredom. 613. It is not what is given but what is received that matters. For as some plants can extract enough nourishment to bloom from the poorest soil, while the others wither on the richest one, so some people can derive knowledge from the simplest message while the others wouldn't get any wiser even listening to king Solomon. 614. There is a price to be paid for everything under the sun - a price for belonging and a price for not belonging. 615. One should never look or sound wiser than it is "appropriate" to one's station in life. Otherwise, instead of attention and respect one would be subjected to resentment and jealousy. For it is not what is said but who said it that counts in this world. 616. Burning heretics is still the favourite pastime of the crowd, only now it has to content itself with the somewhat more civilized ways of doing it. 617. The relentless sophistry of the endless theological speculations aimed to prove the unprovable by piling up dubious assertions on the top of equally dubious assumptions until it is next to impossible to find even a grain of the original truth ( provided there was any to begin with) underneath this artificial quasi-intellectual mountain of words, may eventually turn the most religiously inclined person into an atheist. 618. The simplicity of faith Jesus Christ enjoined on his disciples is best exemplified in the words: " Do for others what you want them to do for you: this is the meaning of the Law of Moses and of the teaching of the prophets." Yet, thousands of the Christian theologians have written millions of pages to explicate and interpret such a straightforward message. Why is it that the simplicity of truth is not satisfactory or insufficient for so many? 619. Why are we all engaged, seemingly forever, in the intellectual "foreplay" instead of going directly to the heart of the matter? The usual answer to this question is that we are afraid to acknowledge the true reality as it is, which is not surprising, for we all know too well what this sinister "reality" can do to us. But, perhaps, equally valid explanation could be found by considering the relative abundance of the free time on our hands, especially if one belongs to the so-called "chattering classes". For what is one supposed to do if everything is resolved in the first few minutes of a discussion? It becomes rather boring after that. So, let's pretend that everything is very complicated, and then we can play this game forever, provided, of course, that there is no "child" amongst us who does not know that it is only a game and may begin to shout something about the "naked truth". But unlike what had happened in the famous story by Hans Andersen, such a "child" is usually completely ignored, or if he stubbornly and foolishly persists in his insolent revelations, then of course something has to be done about "the child", hasn't it? And something usually gets done. For the play shall not be interrupted. It has to go on, sine everyone who is not a "child" knows that when it stops the boredom begins - the dreadful state of having nothing to do, nothing to say, nothing to think of... 620. The "emperor without clothes" hates, naturally, the child who is saying it loudly. But so do the rest of his subjects, who also naturally, go along with the lie, pretending to believe that the emperor is dressed up splendidly to protect their own lies. For they all feel like little emperors, having also nothing on to cover their nakedness, and are afraid that the child having said the truth about the emperor's clothes would turn around and start telling the truth about theirs. 621.In this age of "instant" this and "instant" that, even nostalgia which, both by definition and by tradition, requires some respectable separation in time between the actual happening and a melancholy recollection of it, has acquired such an undignified sense of urgency that on January 1 of the new year the December 31 of the previous one is instantly remembered as if it had happened 100 years ago and is already shrouded in the mist of distant past. 622. I concur with nationalists to the extant that culture, language, and other attributes of a national character are very important. But I strongly disagree with them that this superstructure is more essential than the basis - the people themselves and their security, well-being and happiness. And I am not willing to sacrifice a single human life for the sake of a few different rules of grammar or few distinct movements of dance. 623. Why do some poets today , especially of the female "persuasion" write so explicitly (on those preciously rare occasions when they reveal something personal) about their sexual experiences, whether real or imagined, and are so secretive about other aspects of their lives, which are, presumably, as important as the sexual ones? Or are they? 624. Telling people, literally without interruption and in infinite variety of ways, that sex is the greatest Good and cure of all ills inevitably leads to the widespread sexual perversions. For as soon as one discovers that his/her sexual activities do not bring the advertised total happiness, he/she , instead of realising that sex as a cause of happiness has definite limitations, embarks on a search and "experimentation" to find the "right" kind of sex which would presumably deliver the promised bliss. Such search and willingness to try almost anything could result only in variety of sexual perversions and, in some extreme cases, cause people with cruel personalities to commit sexual crimes. This is further aggravated by another message, incessantly drilled into our heads, that one is personally responsible for one's success or failure in everything (including, by extension, sexual satisfaction as well) and that being persistent in getting whatever one is striving for would ultimately bring the desirable results. Yet, while such an attitude has its limited utility in business transactions, in the matters sexual it inevitably leads to violence and rape. 625. The majority of conflicts between men and women are caused by the inability to understand and the unwillingness to accept the essential differences that separate the sexes, and the seemingly innate aversion to seeking the true similarities that might unite them. 626. Looking back at the human history, it is clear that the many had always been ruled by the few. And the only choice the ruled ever had (on those rare occasions when power that was had either collapsed on its own or was overthrown due to its fatal weakness) was between more or less harsh rulers. Even the modern parliamentary democracy, ostensibly celebrated and recommended as the paragon of the rule "by the people for the people", presents to an unbiased view just another variation of a choice, albeit on a regular basis, of a new set of a few rulers, with mostly vain, yet ever undying hope that they will be more gentle in exercise of power than the previous ones were. 627. Many relatively simple and reasonably quick solutions to the persistent social problems had been and still are being rejected precisely because of their simplicity and facility, for their speedy implementation might render a lot of people redundant and what they do unnecessary, and, consequently, create another problem to be solved. 628. God gives a wife to a man to exercise his patience and to test his endurance, and children to discover his limitations and to learn humility. 629. Confront a man with the unavoidable necessity to choose only one option out of many and his choice would define who he is. 630. Two horses of a different colour, size and shape had a great difficulty to find anything in common... until they saw a cow. 631. There are many useful and even beautiful things which could be made out of a piece of iron. But nobody can turn it into a golden brooch. 632. Civilization at its basics is a process of continuous negotiation by intrinsically unique individuals the terms of their peaceful coexistence. 633. I open myself to others as a hospitable host would open his house to the welcomed guests. Come in and make yourself comfortable. Feel free to observe, to inquire, to browse, even to touch. Just do not try to re-arrange the "furniture". For through the years, as if by taking roots, it became such an integral part of the house that it cannot be moved without the destruction of both. 634. Given the sufficient time and more than the average abilities, some people can indeed achieve a remarkable degree of self-knowledge, and thus almost fulfil, so to speak, an ancient precept enjoined on all men: "Know thyself". But this should not lead to a mistaken belief that if one does not like what one has discovered, it could be changed at will. 635. The Great Ideas are forever destined to be created by the enlightened few and corrupted by the benighted many. 636. An attempt to change the long-established pattern of a relationship by one of the partners unilaterally and abruptly is akin ( to use the modern phraseology) to firing the other on a very short notice and without an opportunity of retraining. 637. Quite often, being creative means doing something people are not willing to pay for. 638. The famous expression "history always repeats itself twice - the first time as a tragedy, the second as a farce" initially, no doubt, rings true, until you realize that it is more descriptive of our own perception of historical events than of their essential significance. For, in reality, tragedy and farce are often inseparable, and the true history is a combination of both. And only the mystery of yet unknown, which inevitably surrounds the first encounter with the phenomenon, makes it appear more tragic than it is, while the familiarity, understandably implicit in the second, breeds an equally inevitable contempt, when the farcical tends to overshadow ( though never for long) the tragical which is seldom far away. 639. As for me, one of the biggest dilemmas in life will always remain whether it is more preferable to be macro-wise and micro-stupid or vice versa. For to be equally prudent in the matters of the long term overall importance and, at the same time, of the everyday trivial and fleeting concerns is the ideal few of us can live up to. 640. The American culture is like a huge supermarket wherein the dazzling variety of goods obscures, rather successfully, the fact that they are all produced by the same few companies and made of the essentially the same few ingredients. 641. It is by no means an accident that a writer who compared the world with " the stage where every man must play his part" was an Englishman - one William Shakespeare. For the only world Shakespeare knew was England and the English society, apparently even then, but more so later in the Victorian age and to a substantial degree now, closely resembles the play in which every member of the cast knows his or her role very well and feels comfortable and proud of it. Moreover, the " actors", no matter how humble their roles are, would resent and resist more than anything else any attempt to make them switch their parts. It never ceases to amaze an outsider to observe a peculiarly English phenomenon of the London cockney who is as much proud of his status and accent as the upper class graduate of Cambridge or Oxford. 642. There were three stages of human civilization we know of. The first and the longest one was the Stone Age. It was succeeded by the Bronze Age, which in its turn gave way to the Iron Age. The present stage, which by all indicators promises to be the shortest one, when it is finally over would probably be named by our descendants as the Garbage Age. For the mountains of garbage is the most conspicuous and enduring artifact we are going to leave to posterity. 643. As you sow, so you reap. Thus, the obnoxious arrogance of the English upper classes inevitably provokes the reaction of the equally obnoxious rudeness of the lower ones, especially on the part of its most unconstrained subgroup - the youth. And the truth of this statement is clearly demonstrated by the notoriously bad behaviour of the British working class adolescents, the behaviour which is being imitated now, mostly without a similar justification, by the young people all over the world. 644. By observing the obvious differences between the diverse groupings of people some educators have come to a conclusion that to accommodate these differences the knowledge itself has to be separated too. Yet, the separate knowledge tailored to fit the peculiar experiences and sensibilities of the various social, racial, cultural, gender, etc. groups can only perpetuate and widen their estrangement, thus depriving knowledge of its most important feature - universality, and its most important function -unification. 645. Every popular movement, be it political, religious, national, etc. has to have its heroes who serve as the enduring symbols of hope and as the source of continuous inspiration, since the wide imitation is essential for success. But it also needs, no less and probably more, its martyrs, both to explain its origin and justify its cause, but mainly as the constant reminder of the fate awaiting those who fail. |
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