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| QUOTATIONS 857-873 |
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| 857.PROPOSITION In the New World's countries of immigrants, such as the United States or Canada, the ethnic divisions stand in the inverse proportion to the availability of jobs, i.e. these societies will become increasingly divided along the ethnic lines, as the job opportunities, especially for the newcomers, get progressively scarce, and vice versa. PROOF 1) A job is of paramount importance in the life of an immigrant not only to satisfy his immediate material needs, but also because his social status in the new society almost entirely depends on it. While in the "old country" one's social position was largely determined by family, friends, the neighbourhood, village or city one grew up in, as well as one's reputation, all these, upon the arrival on the new shores, are left behind, as no longer relevant, and the job assumes all out of proportion significance in an immigrant's life. Witness the questions the strangers ask each other after the introduction: " What are you doing (for living)?", "What is your field (of work)?", etc. They are always, one way or another, related to one's job and absolutely crucial to the evaluation of one's social standing. 2) More than any other times, in the time of job scarcity any job, especially the "good" one, is obtained through connections (based on my own experience and observation of others I hold this truth to be self-evident). In the "old country", one relied on family and friends for such connections. All these, again, are to the large extent lost in the process of immigration, and in the New World for the first, and even the second generation of immigrants, such personal job-getting connections are largely unavailable. As the result, the ethnic community assumes the role of "surrogate family" as the next best provider of them. Consequently, maintaining the close ties with one's ethnic group becomes more and more the economical rather than socio-cultural imperative. This situation leaves the newly (and not so newly) arrived immigrant with little choice whether to try to assimilate into the society at large or not. The necessity to find a job forces him to stick to his own ethnic community, whether he wants or not. Thus, the assimilation into the mainstream society is in reality retarded, and the ethnic divisions flourish - which was the proposition to prove. Corollary 1 Since the already employed members of ethnic community can only help the newcomer to find a job where they are working themselves, there is a tendency for certain professions and even industries to become mono-ethnic, which leads to the further division of the society along the ethnic lines. Corollary 2 The full, or the fullest possible employment is the only way to prevent the countries of immigrants from disintegration into the separate ethnic communities. When jobs are available for everybody, dependence on ethnic connections to get one disappears, and everyone is turned into "a free agent" so to speak, and as the free agents, the overwhelming majority of newcomers would opt for the membership in the largest possible group, which is the society as a whole. And this is another self-evident truth, based on the American experience, for the fire under the proverbial "melting pot" has been fuelled by the unprecedented in human history economic expansion and growth of job opportunities. 858. The only reason there is still some fish left in the ocean is that Man is not an aquatic animal. But since the advancement of technology helped Man to overcome this biological " handicap", it is only a matter of time, before the edible (and those who just got in a way) creatures of the sea will experience the same fate as befallen the land animals that Man has found useful or entertaining to kill. 859.Not everybody would go to hell in a hand basket. The privileged few, as usual, shall travel the first class in a Guicci bag. 860. A man is characterized not so much by the ways he makes money but by how he spends them. 861. Despite the indisputable fact that ours are the most enlightened of all previous times, the excessive religiosity, no matter how bizarre and irrational by today's standards, is still treated, even by those who consider themselves to be free-thinkers, with the kind of respect bordering on veneration that used to be accorded in the past to the saints. Why is it that irrationality in the name of religion so much more acceptable than in any other of human endeavours? Is it because every religion has, as an important part of its creed, the code of ethics and we automatically assume, contrary to the numerous evidences, that the more religious a person is the more ethical his or her behaviour would be? Or is it because in the times of enlightenment-induced uncertainty, when every additional piece of knowledge seems to reinforce, instead of overturning it, those, who claim with the apparently unshakable conviction to be certain of something, at least, are looked at as a rare exception by the rest, who can no longer be certain of anything? Or is it because they symbolize the past which is always shrouded in nostalgia? Or is it because they seem to be more content and happier than the rest of us? 862. We are quickly approaching the time (some would say it is here already) when the most creative people will be also the least informed. For the real creativity requires an enormous dedication and huge investment of time in a single-minded pursuit of perfection in one's chosen field or subject, the same time which is more and more needed to digest and absorb the ever increasing amount of new information. And so, in order to avoid the fate of the proverbial one, who went to the ground when tried to sit between two stools, we have to choose now between being well informed and being creative. 863.Marriage used to be like a tango. The leading partner, a man, originated (or thought he did) all the moves and the led, a woman, had to be nimble and clever enough to anticipate them and to create an illusion of perfect harmony. And if she did, the marriage was judged to be a success. Nowadays, it is more like a disco dancing. Everybody is doing his or hers own things, and it's hard to tell who is dancing with whom. 864. Every society exists and maintains its relative stability by imposing on its members the code of the moral behaviour and civic obligations, and having the majority to submit, however reluctantly, to them. Those few who are either unwilling or unable to do that, but want to escape the punishment for non-compliance, have to find the safe way to avoid what the society demands from them as a price of membership. The membership, in itself, is, of coarse, unavoidable. No human being, or any other being for that matter, can exist alone. Most moral laws are directly or indirectly concerned with preservation of the family and the main function of the family is the production of the next generation. In this production, a woman undoubtedly plays the principal part as a primary care-giver, while a man's duty is to provide a woman with the necessary support to do her job. Now few men, for whatever reasons, would agree to support a woman for a long time, if not for the sake of children. But even parental obligations are not strong enough to keep some men in a family. Yet, because of the prevailing moral laws, even such men look for some excuse to flee it. One of the most common and even "acceptable" nowadays ways of doing it is to embark on "the self-discovery", i.e. to camouflage man's urge to escape his moral and social obligation as a noble and admirable quest for self-knowledge and thus to avoid both the societal condemnation and personal guilt. In reality it means that the husband, who is tired and unhappy with the marriage and/or parenthood, "discovers" that he is ill-suited for both and that his real destiny lies in having an affair (or succession thereof) with women who are much younger and better looking than his "old lady". Needless to say, since woman's opportunities to find a new and younger partner are much more limited (especially if she has children) it is not surprising that we seldom hear about women trying "to discover" themselves. 865. A person, fully confident about what he wants, is going to be, at least potentially, more successful in obtaining it than the one who isn't. The same rule is applicable, by analogy, to the socio-economic classes and their respective ideologies, which have to be, ideally, the true expressions of what these classes collectively want. Thus, the class, whose ideology is in a better harmony with its needs, is going to be better at achieving its goals. The politico-ideological "right", which speaks on behalf of "the rich" and those aspiring to be like them, obviously knows what they want which is very easy to state: whatever I have I want more, and after I got it, I want more still, and so on ad infinitum. They also know how to get it, their knowledge having been acquired through practising over several thousand years what they preach. Such a direct and simple congruity between the needs and ideology creates the enviable climate of unity in the rightist camp. There is little ideological division in it, and any inner conflicts result from the clashes of personalities and not from the differences in views. Now, it can't be overemphasized that this unity is largely due to the fact that the formulators and practitioners of the "right" ideology are full-fledged members of the class they represent, which implies the intimate knowledge of its desires and total convergence of their personal interests within it. The same could not be said about politico ideological "left", for its spokesmen are very seldom "poor" by birth. Most of them grew up in the middle class families and continued, the vicissitudes of life notwithstanding, belong there, if not economically then culturally and intellectually. Consequently, their "left" ideologies are, for the most part, not the natural outcome of their personal experience but the end intellectual product of sympathetic and compassionate observation by the outsider of those who are "less fortunate", or, at best, the result of the vicarious identification with the "poor" and "working class" by the one who is neither. It is clear, for this reason, that the ideological "left" is concerned about what the others need or want, which is not so easy to know and, therefore, has to be assumed. Unfortunately, those doing the "assuming" - the left intellectuals and ideologists - often have little in common with the people on whose behalf they are making assumptions. For how the one, whose ultimate bliss is to travel to Europe and visiting art museums, can empathize with the one, whose idea of "good time" means a "six-pack" and endless watching of baseball or hockey games? And yet, the first assumes that he knows what the second needs or wants. Which leads, despite the best intentions, to the invention of various unrealistic schemes, ending inevitably in disasters. The reasonable question to ask at this moment is why don't the "poor" produce their own indigenous ideology which truly reflects the needs and aspirations of their class. Now, if we accept that "ideology" is just another term for a particular philosophy of life and "to philosophize", in the full sense of the word, means first to acquire the widest possible knowledge of the subject, and second to connect all its numerous pieces into one coherent whole, logically valid, with the minimum of internal contradictions, and providing the ties of inevitability between the causes and effects, it is then perfectly clear that the "poor", lacking the means to obtain such a comprehensive knowledge and time to engage into long contemplations of it, just can't do it on their own, being all their lives chiefly preoccupied with day to day physical survival. Hence, a seemingly unsolvable dilemma - those who have the knowledge and time are no longer (if they ever were to begin with) the genuine members of the "poor", and thus are intrinsically incapable to reflect its needs, while those who could have, the real poor, have neither. 866.First, conceding that the Renaissance was a precursor and probably a catalyst of the Reformation, then acknowledging that the Reformation, by shattering the millennial unity of Western Christendom, unleashed the Demon of religious rivalry and strife, which has been chained for thousand years, and plunged Europe into yet another of its recurring paroxysms of barbarism and fratricidal horrors, this time in the form of the Wars of Religion, and, finally, accepting the wisdom of the proverb that "a tree is known by its fruit", may be the Renaissance wasn't such a great rebirth (the promised new happiness turned out , as it often did before and after, to be the old nightmare only under the different, artistically more perfect disguise) and the so-called Dark Ages were not so dark, by comparison, after all. For the superior quality of writing or painting technique are not the only criteria by which the age is judged. 867. Even if we allow Philosophy to be called a science, it must be admitted that it's a very unique kind of science. For unlike Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, etc., it doesn't produce any tangible goods but is solely devoted to the enlargement of human understanding. And if in the process of doing so, Philosophy creates confusion instead of clarity in the minds of the ordinary people (for whose benefit it's supposedly labouring) as it often does by contriving various esoteric concepts and next engaging into the endless deliberation of them, then it defeats its own purpose and makes its very raison d'etre highly questionable. For while the benefits of the electric light are obvious to anyone, whether he understand the theory of electricity or not, the benefits of Philosophy which doesn't make anybody but the few professional practitioners of it, hopefully, more enlightened, is practically nil, and the attention and efforts of the reader and the listener are wasted on trying to understand what the philosopher is saying, instead of being used much more productively to enlarge his own knowledge. 868. As we in the West - the privileged minority of the World - are bombarded daily by the horrific images of the millions, fleeing their collapsing into the nightmare of violence, starvation and death native lands, and as these millions threaten to overwhelm us with the flood of refuges, it is easy and excusable to become nostalgic about the times in human history when empires ruled the world, and when the countries, which for whatever reasons could no longer provide even the minimum of personal security to their citizens (due to the disintegration of the essential socio-political and economic structures), were either conquered by or absorbed into the ones who were capable of such provision, i.e. the countries with the stable governments and functioning economies. And even if for a while these "newly conquered" felt as the second or third class citizens, their fate was immeasurably better than that of the hundreds of thousand of Rwandans, Somalis, Yugoslavians, etc. For as far as ordinary people, whatever nationality they are, are concerned as long as their basic human needs are met, they don't care who govern them - the perennial mass migrations into the countries with higher standard of living is the best proof of it, and being an immigrant must be the second oldest profession. And if their lot can be improved just by joining the countries which are better off, to avoid the agony of uprooting themselves and going to a strange new land, so much the better. So, it is not them but the national ruling elites who resist the longest the beneficial integration of a small and unable to sustain itself country into a larger and stronger one, and it is these elites who are ready to fight to the last drop of somebody else's blood to maintain their power and privileges. Of course, all empires, no matter how big and strong they are, eventually die like any other biological or social entities. But it doesn't mean that the idea of the mutually beneficial unification of several mono-national countries into a multinational one has outlived itself - the death of a single individual doesn't spell the disappearance of the whole species, and if a small country ceased to be a part of the dead empire it doesn't mean it cannot join another living one or become fully independent. Now, if the word "empire" carries the unpleasant connotation, perhaps the terms "federation" or "union" could be more palatable to those who are more concerned with the semantics than with the substance. Finally, the great irony of all national liberation movements is that as they culminate in the newly founded independent national state, this new state begins immediately to treat its own ethnic minority's aspiration for independence with the same ferocious stubbornness and callous insensitivity they had experienced in similar circumstances, while being the national minority in the bigger unit. Thus, as far as the fundamentals of relationship between the majority and a minority in a single state, nothing but the names of the players changes. 869. When Marshall McLuhan first introduced the notion of the "Global village", it was supposed to describe the world in which everyone, as allegedly in a real village, has an equal access to information. But anyone, intimately familiar with village life, knows that even in such a small society only the privileged few know "everything". It's usually the mayor, the sheriff, the doctor, the priest,"the madam", who are aware of most people's comings and goings, while the rest consume the diet rich on gossip and rumours and poor on facts. For information gives the power to benefit oneself and to hurt the other. And even in a small village such power can make a big difference between comfortable life and misery. Undoubtedly, the Information Age provides the ordinary people almost everywhere in the world with ever increasing amount of information, but from a strictly utilitarian point of view it is all useless. It ostensibly expands one's knowledge, but it doesn't make one's life any better. For the information that does, the kind which can be used to obtain status, power, wealth, etc. has always been and always would be guarded closely and never be given away free, but to be traded only in exchange for the tangible "goods". 870.There are seemingly so many different words to choose and different ways to say the same thing, yet the language is such a sensitive tool that each new word and distinct turn of the phrase add or delete another nuance of meaning. 871. Never acquire a thing the loss of which you may regret. 872. When I was young, how generous my willingness was to embrace somebody else's suffering, which seemed then so close to my own that I'd quite often fully identified with it. But the older I grow, the more I realize how different I am from anybody else, and, consequently, the more selective my empathy becomes. Moreover, many things I previously thought of as universally and tragically significant, I see now as ridiculously petty, blown all out of proportion and amateurishly contrived. For it is getting increasingly harder and harder for me to have sympathy for someone, who suffers from the absence of what I've learned long time ago to do without. And since in my case, this process of self-denial, both voluntary and involuntary, never stops, it is no wonder that as years go by, the number of people I feel deserve my sympathy is getting smaller all the time. 873. One, who has been counting for too long on "tomorrows", is bound to be rudely awaken one day by the realization that all his "tomorrows" have become "yesterdays", and there are none more left where they came from. |
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