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| QUOTATIONS 739-784 |
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| 739. In our post-Darwinian world, it is taken for granted that for any living organism to survive it must adapt to the changing environment. Yet, Man reversed this law by remaining the same and changing the environment to suit himself. By being flexible and adaptable one can survive but in the process becomes someone else. By being inflexible and by refusing to adapt one can survive by remaining oneself. The first survives as a biological organism, the second as a species. The lives of individuals and the history of groups offers us numerous examples of both and tells us that either is possible. 740. Beware of people with big ideas because it is you who is going to pay for them. 741. The rationalization of any work-process or activity, be it the industrial production, domestic chores or some personal undertaking has as its rationale and by-product the spending of less time on doing it than before. If thus saved time can be employed in doing something else then such rationalization is rational. On the other hand, if the time saved becomes the time on our hands with nothing else to do with it then the rationalization is irrational. So, if you see someone spending too much time on doing something, do not rush to advice him how to save time, but think first if he will have anything to do with the time saved. Since, if he won't, instead of doing him a favour you can actually cause harm. The rationalization is for the good of man, not man for the good of the rationalization. 742. Oh, what a thankless and ultimately futile task the older man is condemned to perform for the rest of his life - to desperately try to recover the years wasted when he was young. 743. The ideas one acquires by burrowing through the mountains of books, no matter how good and wise they are, are like a black coal dust a miner is covered with when digging it up - both are easily washed away, as the second with water so is the first with time. Only those ideas which are produced by our own thinking, out of our own experience, in their due time and no sooner, become the integral part of our being and stay with us for as long as we live. 744. It is a regrettable but undeniable fact of life that the majority of the people cannot either think for themselves or form their thoughts into clear opinions or ideas, and, therefore, have to repeat as cliches what has been said by the few who are distinguished from the rest most of all by their ability to articulate their own sentiments and then to believe in them as the objective and irrefutable truths. That is why this majority cannot have any strong ideology and can be so easily persuaded to exchange one set of cliches for another. The recently "reprogrammed" former members of the religious cults is one of the most vivid manifestation of this phenomenon and can serve as a universal metaphor of it. Their "cure" is as illusory and superficial as it is short lived. They just exchanged their former guru's set of cliches for that of their present therapists, and can be as quickly and as easily persuaded by the next guru to make yet another switch. For all through the process they remained what they were before - the wearers of somebody else's clothes. 745. When women and men begin looking forward to sex as primarily a source of pleasure instead of the opportunity to prove their attractiveness and desirability (in case of women) and their sexual prowess (in case of men), the relationship between the sexes would become more simple and much more satisfying. 746. If I had to describe my emotions while viewing several clips of pornographic movies (put together as an illustration of what has been censored out), the sexual arousal would not, most certainly, be one of them. Rather, it was a mixture of an excruciating boredom and uncontrollable laughter - the boredom produced by incessant and monotonous repetition of the same worn out sexual cliches and appalling poverty of imagination even when trying to talk and act "dirty" and "perverse", the laughter - by the sheer ridiculousness of the whole situation, including the script, music, cinematographic techniques, bodies and faces of actors, props - the works. The only conclusion I can make after viewing these clips is that people who produce these movies and people who watch them must be very dull, if not stupid, and probably completely lacking any sense of humour. If I had the power to proscribe pornography I would have done it not because pornography corrupts, but because it inflicts a"cruel and unusual punishment" on the human intelligence. But so, alas, a lot of other things in life do. 747. The way to the top, especially if one has to start from the very bottom, is plentifully bestrewn with the obstacles of humiliation, insult, degradation, abject servitude, etc., etc. And those who eventually reach "the summit" are usually so damaged, hurt and embittered by such an experience that they want all who follow them to pay as high a price for the success as they did, and would do whatever is in their power to make sure of it. 748. The desire to be listened to and the need to be heard are the essential attributes of Man. For other animals can hear, but none can talk. Only Man has developed the ability to speak in order to fulfill this need and desire. And to deny a man the free exercise of them is to deny him his humanity and to reduce him to the animal state. But since no man can be reduced voluntarily to such a state, sooner or later such a denial causes a revolt, violence of which is proportional to the degree of the denial. 749. Ignorance is not a bliss. On a contrary, in life with its unceasing struggle for survival, it is a weakness, since what we don't know is more likely to hurt us than what we do know, which may help us to do something about it. Again, ignorance would not protect us from harm and pain, but, since we are ignorant of their causes, would only impair our ability to prevent them. 750. One may, relatively easy, get accepted by almost any group or society, as long as one is willing (and able) to be what one is not. But if I'm not, as I am, acceptable, then, when I pretend to be somebody else in order to gain acceptance, it is not me but "the pretender" who has been accepted. And I can never erase from my consciousness this fact that I am, as I am, still unacceptable, and nothing therefore has really changed. And I feel as rejected as before. 751. As I look back at my life I see it as a long process of learning how to do without one thing after another. And now, eventually, the time has come when, I am afraid, I've reached the point when I'm not sure whether I really want or need anything anymore. 752. If one looks at the history of the Judeo-Christian faith, both as a whole and as divided into the separate stages in its development, as a relay-race, where the placement of each member of the running team is relatively unimportant (for they all are running toward the same goal, and what counts the most is the collective effort), then the position of the Israelites as the "chosen people", which is so grating to many, can be thought of as just that of a runner who simply started the race and then passed on the baton to the Greeks, who, in their turn, handed it to the Romans, Romans to the Europeans, and so on, and so forth. In this view, the placing order is essentially irrelevant, and no runner is more "chosen" than the other, as far as the end of the race is concerned. To continue using a relay-race as a metaphor, if one observes that the moments of "passing on of the baton" coincided with the significant, even drastic changes in the secular (as oppose to religious) history, and if one believes that God, by creating Man the way Man is, had essentially predetermined the human history (for if mankind be given another chance to start afresh "from Adam", it would undoubtedly repeat its history, in general, all over again), the apparent contradiction between God's predestination and Man's free will could be removed, at least as far as human history at large is concerned. Then, this History may also be compared to the River, formed by the continuous confluence of millions individual free wills perpetually added to its body without changing its inexorable flow into the predestined direction. And though this River is conceived sometimes under attribute of the secular history, at other times under the attribute of the religious one, it is one and the same river. Thus, the predestined development of the secular history produces the predestined development of the religious one, and vice versa. 753. To learn how to cope with the vicissitudes of life one has to descend, at least once, to the very "bottom" (which is, admittedly, highly subjective, for what one man's "bottom" could be another man's ...). And if one survives it, then anything faced later wouldn't look half as bad as the worst experienced already, and, hopefully, would be easier to deal with. 754. One can imagine the tremendous effect the rediscovery of Greek and Roman classical writers of antiquity had on men of the medieval Europe, where ignorance and superstition reigned supreme, when even now, 500 years after the triumph of Renaissance and several centuries of enlightenment, the writers like Cicero and Seneca, Lucretius and Virgil, not to mention Plato and Aristotle still sound as fresh and unsurpassed as ever. Moreover, after the acquaintance with such a treasure of human thoughts, Renaissance itself was simply inevitable, for one can go from ignorance to knowledge but having obtain knowledge one cannot go back to ignorance: the way of truth is the way of no return - once you know something, you cannot go back to not knowing it. 755. Nothing could be as damaging to a poet's sense of self-worth (as a poet) than to completely rely on the reactions and opinions of other poets. For their reactions are seldom genuine and their opinions lack objectivity which only non-poets can offer. Yet, in today's culture, it seems that the only people who are willing to read or to listen to poetry are the other poets. Unless, of course, one becomes "a celebrity", but then one knows that he is read not because of his poetry, but because of his fame. 756. One can be and often is mistaken about the sources of one's unhappiness, but never about feeling unhappy per se, for our emotions never deceive us, only their causes. And since it is natural for a man to look for the reasons of his unhappiness, the most valuable thing his friends can do for him is to help to find the real causes of his misery, which would open at least a possibility of doing something about it. Though, of course, there is always a risk of misplacing the cause of one's unhappiness, which could do a lot of harm not only to the one who is mistaken, but also to those who are mistakenly perceived as being the cause of it. Still, it is better than trying to convince a man that he either doesn't, or is not suppose to feel the way he does, for it is completely futile - our emotions are much stronger than our will. 757. The only reason I can think of, which makes any sense to me why we were put on this Earth and given this life to live, is to help each other to get through it with the least possible amount of pain and suffering. I know it's not too much, but it is better than nothing, and it's a great pity that so few are aware of it. 758. If boredom is produced by the lack of something interesting (or even not so interesting) to do, then depression could be viewed as the extreme form and the highest manifestation of boredom, when a depressed person not only can't think of anything worthwhile doing at present, but has lost all expectations and hope of finding it in the future, having no goals and, ultimately, purpose in life. Yet, the cure for such a malady lies not in search for any goal, for this might only turn the constant boredom into the intermittent one: as soon as one goal is reached the new boredom begins causing the search for a new goal and so forth and so on, but in setting for oneself the Goal - the one that could never be reached and thus would keep one going for as long as one lives. 759. When doing "good" to others, one should not expect gratitude. The best a "do-gooder" can hope for is not to be despised and abused for being so weak and timid as to be incapable of doing evil. 760.It must be self-evident that wisdom cannot be obtained without knowledge, for it is hard to imagine a wise man who is ignorant. On the other hand, knowledge by itself does not necessarily lead to wisdom, for there is no shortage, unfortunately, of knowledgeable people lacking wisdom, to support this assertion. Sometimes the knowledge can even be a great impediment to wisdom, when it breeds the arrogance, for wisdom and arrogance cannot coexist in one man - one necessarily negates the other. 761.One who wants to save the world will have to accept that among the saved there are going to be a lot of people he personally would rather have nothing to do with. 762. To save my face or to save, i.e. to live my life, that is the question. I am 55, my life is coming to its end, and I still have no answer. 763. The full enjoyment is only possible when one has no fear of losing what one is enjoying. Thus, the indifference which the stoics enjoined us to cultivate must be directed not toward the things we possess (and, presumably, enjoy) but to the loss thereof. 764. Man masturbates to free himself from the tyranny of the "cunt", woman - from submission to the "dick". 765. The woman one was dating and the woman one is married to are two different women. For every woman has at least two personalities: one before and one after marriage. 766. A lot of marriages are like the British monarchy, i.e. even those who know that it doesn't make sense anymore, think, nevertheless, that it isn't worth the trouble to abolish it either. 767. The one who starts from the premise "I am going to die", and another - from the premise "I am going to live", even if they have everything else in common, like age, life-span, abilities, interests, etc., will still have completely different lives. 768. If, with the attainment of nirvana, the otherwise endless cycle of rebirth is broken, then the legitimate, even unavoidable question should be posited to Budda: suppose all human beings reached Nirvana, would it mean the end of the human race? 769. To the degree I accept others as they are, I accept myself as I am, and to the degree I accept myself as I am, I accept others as they are. 770. Not by orgasm alone woman lives, but by... 771. The Universe is the expression of the multiple personalities of God. 772. For many people the easiest way to relieve themselves of forever gnawing doubts whether their way of life is the best possible one (for everyone seems to be in need of such certainty) is to find some faults with or even to denigrate and condemn those who think and live differently than they do. 773. If the attainment of Nirvana presupposes the ending of the cycle of rebirth, then it can be achieved by humanity as a whole by stopping the reproduction and thus depriving the souls of the dead of the bodies of the new born to inhabit. 774. A man would not change his ideas, feelings and behaviour just because he has been proven wrong by somebody's else superior arguments. It takes a long time and a lot of experience, most of it very painful, for a man to begin to think and act differently. 775. Though everybody praises fairness (which is essentially self-serving, since nobody wants to be treated unfairly) there is such a thing as being too fair, especially when dealing with the ideological opponents, for it could easily backfire. A good example of this is provided by Thomas Aquinas who, when writing "Summa contra Gentiles" in order to be (or to appear to be) fair to non-Christians, studiously and conscientiously enumerates all their objections against Christianity. And he is so good at assuming, for the sake of objectivity, their point of view that, to an impartial reader, their arguments appears to be much stronger - lucid, cogent, logical and commonsensical - than his own subsequent arguments in the defence of Christianity. Consequently, the so-called gentiles, infidels and heretics by reading SCG are going to be strengthened in their believes rather then being disabused of them, which makes the whole purpose of writing SCG self-defeating. 776. Though a man is free to choose, the choice is limited by the external circumstances and the freedom by his inner state. 777. Some people view the rest only as the passive and (better be) grateful receptacles of their wisdom. 778. I do not ask others to agree with me. All I want is for them to understand what I am saying. 779. As one, undoubtedly, learns more from life and personal experience than from the exhortations and sermons, no matter how wise and well-wishing the teachers are, and since life is so infinitely varied that it contains in equal measure the multitude of the opposites, one's natural tendencies are only going to be reinforced, as one goes on living, not changed. For while the one who is predisposed to be kind finds many reasons and opportunities to remain as such, the one who is naturally unkind finds equal numbers of excuses and motives to stay unkind. And the same rule applies to those who are naturally honest or dishonest, brave or cowardly, moral or immoral, etc. Thus, from the cradle to the grave, we don't change, but stay the same. 780. A book of poetry, in which the excessive art work often obscure the meaning of the text, remind me a woman who, uncertain of her beauty, uses too much make up. 781. How irrational it is that we tend to condone some of the most odious instances of human behaviour on the grounds of their universality when, in truth, they have to be condemned that much stronger, the more common they are. For the more widespread moral failings are, the more grief and suffering they produce and, consequently, the stronger efforts have to be made, instead of condoning, to eradicate them. 782. Unlike those who wouldn't take "No" for an answer I, for one, come to accept it as a natural response Life invariably gives to the powerless, and, consequently, I base all my plans on such an assumption. I would go even further and admit that, by now, I find "No" as familiar and comfortable as the old, well worn-out shoes. It is the "Yes", on the contrary, because it is so unexpected, that frightens me and throws my well-constructed inner world into a complete disarray. 783. I'm ready to subscribe to any set of principles, as long as I don't have to follow them. 784. Like everybody else, I dislike to be told to do what, given a free choice, I would rather not do. Even more so, I resent being asked to think differently than I'm accustomed to, and which is my natural way of thinking. But what makes me really angry is to be literally demanded to feel what I don't (and perhaps, even incapable of) feel. |
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