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| QUOTATIONS 930-951 |
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| 930. All my life I enjoyed talking to women, and not because they possess superior to men conversational skills (the widely held opinion to which I, however, do not subscribe) but because such encounters have not only provided me with the fresh perspective on the things I knew, but also allowed me a glimpse into the part of life which was totally unknown to me, either from my own or my male friends experience. But as I both look back and observe myself now, I realize that the substantial difference in age between me and my female interlocutors was always a constant in such conversations. When I was young the women I used to enjoy talking to the most were of my mother's or even my grandmother's age. And now, when I've reached this stage of life myself, I notice that the most interesting discussions I have are with the women who are young enough to be my daughters or, pretty soon, granddaughters. I, personally, attribute this to the fact that because of the significant age difference in both situations any possibility of a sexual involvement are so remote as practically non-existent, which gives both of us this precious and rare liberty in the relationships between men and women to be what we essentially are - just the different human beings and not simply male and female, perpetually acting the Nature-prescribed respective gender roles. Finally, there is also this additional benefit a man can derive from talking to a woman (wives and girl-friends are excluded) - the comfort of feeling that if at some point in conversation it may seem that he knows more about this or that particular topic and is able to come up with, perhaps, more interesting and innovative approach to it, a woman would usually not begrudge his knowledge or cleverness and wouldn't try to go out of her ways to prove that it is not true. 931. Life and death are as inseparable as the two sides of a coin. And no matter what Man invents to escape death, it becomes its very cause only under the different disguise. Consider, for instance, the deadly contagious diseases that periodically used to decimate world population. To discover their causes and to find the means to fight these plagues the enormous scientific and technological progress had to be made first. But such a progress would have been unthinkable without the wide spread of education which in its turn used the printing press as its main tool. Now, the printing of millions of books requires a huge amount of paper, printing ink, various chemicals, machinery, etc., etc. Their production has caused enormous industrial pollution and such a degradation of the environment that it has triggered the explosion of another "ten plagues", as deadly as the old ones. The vicious circle was closed. Or take another example - the modern refrigeration. It prevents food from going bad and thus saves people from food poisoning, quite a common cause of diseases and death in the past. But the gases which are used to run refrigerators are found to be the main culprit in the catastrophic depletion of the Earth's ozone layer, which allows the increasing amount of radiation to reach the Earth's surface, causing proliferation of the skin cancer and probably other forms of it as well. Again we see that the means to avoid one kind of death only produces the another kind. The things which help us and the things which hurt us are the same. There is no escape. 931a. At this stage of my life (I'm 56), I can no longer afford the luxury of storing up my experiences, emotional responses, opinions, ideas, etc. to be used later. For at my age, the later could well never come. So, whatever I want to say, or rather to write down, since for some time now I've been fancying myself a writer, I'd better do it today. 932. A man who follows his penis as if it were a needle of a compass will never get anywhere. 933. When now somebody trained as a linguist becomes a dress-maker, or the one who has a degree in philosophy works as a sales clerk, it is praised under the encouragingly sounding name of "a career change". Yet, come to think of it, only recently it used to be called "a waste of life". 934. Having a university degree without having a permanent address could be considered in a certain sense as a positive thing. For one is thus spared the pain of receiving numerous letters of rejection in response to the job applications. 935. Having a sense of humour and the corresponding ability to crack jokes in a kind and friendly manner is, nevertheless, a double-edged sword. For while some listeners, may be even the majority, find somebody else's wit amusing and gladly share the pleasure of laughter, there are always the others who (even if they cannot help laughing) will be jealous of all the favourable attention a witty person is getting and their dislike of the wag will increase in proportion to his success with the rest. And if, God forbid, they have the slightest suspicion (however unfounded) that they are the real target of the jester then the dislike quickly turns into hate. 936. In the ethnic and national disputes what each side claims and does depends largely on their respective chronological points of departure, i.e. which moment in the common history each nation or ethnic group chooses to regard as the beginning of its particular one. For example, in the famous Israeli-Palestinian conflict the Jews have chosen the kingdom of David and Solomon, established around 1000 B.C., as the starting point of their political history, while the Arabs of Palestine regard the conquest of Jerusalem in 637 A.D. by the Muslim armies as the beginning of theirs. Considering such a huge discrepancy in their respective terms of references, it is hard to imagine how these two antagonists can reach mutually satisfactory compromise. 937. Some writers are much more interesting to listen to than to read, and whenever I encounter such a writer I always wonder what kind of metamorphosis his thoughts undergo in the process of writing them down. Why can't the freshness and originality, elegance and wit of his speech be reproduced on paper? At many public readings I attended these writers usually devote a larger part of their "performance" (for that's how it looks and sounds) to introduction, explanations and comments on what they intend to read rather than to the actual reading of the selected excerpts from their works. Sometimes they would even digress into completely unrelated topics. It feels as if they know (only subconsciously I hope) that what they have to say, and how they say it, is much more exiting than what they had written, and of which they, without realizing it, are somewhat embarrassed. To return back to the questions posited at the beginning, though I have no answers, immediate or otherwise, I firmly believe that before trying to find a possible explanation for such a discrepancy between the verbal and writing skills in the same individual(especially in a writer) it has to be acknowledged first that though both mediums, speech and writing, use words, grammar, sentences, etc. as their building blocks and thus belong to the same genus of Communication, specifically they are different. Therefore, it shouldn't be more expected that a well-spoken person must be also a good writer (or vice versa) than a good singer be an equally good pianist, though the last two crafts also belong to one genus - Music. Finally, to prevent any misunderstanding, I would like to emphasize that by saying " it shouldn't be expected" I don't mean to deny the possibility of combination of both talents in one person. I only want to make it clear that it is extremely rare, and the one who possess them in equal measure must be an exceptional individual indeed. As for the rest of us, the road to contentment lies in trying not to perceive the absence of the second talent as "a fly in the ointment", spoiling the satisfaction of having a single one. 938. Man can never get used to injustice. He can only become, provided willingness on his part, unjust himself, and thus derive, at least, the dubious satisfaction from getting even. 939. The easiest way to ingratiate oneself with others is by pretending to follow their "helpful" advices and to do it as convincingly as possible, without actually hurting oneself in the process. For to act upon someone's well-meaning counsel is tantamount to acknowledging, if only tacitly, the superiority of his judgement, which is the kind of flattery nobody can resist. 940. Whoever I am, both psychologically and ideologically, can be, to the large extent, attributed to being brought up in one of those, not atypical working class families which resign to their thankless lot in life and derive their only pride and satisfaction from the ability to support themselves by hard and honest labour and by deeply ingrained knowledge that they are "the salt of the earth", and those above them is but a parasitic scum. 941. Whether rich or poor, one has to know how to handle money, though the means and the ends in each case are, understandably, quite different. The poor have to learn, and the sooner the better, how to survive on as little as they have, yet maintaining some resemblance of independence and dignity. As for the rich, the abundance of money presents an opportunity and challenge to find various ways of spending as much as possible (and then some more) in order to show to the selected few how sophisticated, discriminate and ultimately conspicuous consumers they are, and thus, proving (to those who still need the proof) that they deserve unquestionably their fortune, if for nothing else then for possessing superbly unique knowledge of spending it with class. 942. The other day I saw a photograph of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, a husband and wife accused of kidnapping, raping and torturing, and finally killing two teen-aged girls. And the moment I looked at this picture of "Paul and Karla" I realized that despite of the deluge of information provided daily by the newspapers, radio and television about this horrible case, essentially I learned nothing from it. For what I saw in the photo were two healthy and beautiful young people, their faces lightened up by happy and kind smiles, not the slightest trace of anything which could even remotely suggest the malice, the evil, the Murder. And I was struck immediately by this unsettling question which all of us are compelled, from time to time, to grapple with: "What do we really know about others?" For I can also recall the faces of some of the people I occasionally meet on the streets of Toronto, namely, the derelict and the homeless, the ex-con and planning to commit the crime, the marginalised and outcasts, the drug pushers and pimps, etc., etc. The unmistakably familiar tales of suffering and depravation, of crime and punishment, of inflicted upon themselves and others destruction, could be read without any difficulty on their faces, which make one apprehensive and fearful, constantly threatened with a potential explosion of anger and violence. Yet I feel, with an almost inexplicable certainty, that none of them is capable of what this young and lovely couple on the photograph did. And so, the question still remains stuck in my head, begging and demanding the answer: "What do we really know about each other?" 943. The obvious contradiction between the Predestination - the belief that the eternal destiny of a person is predetermined by God's unchangeable decree - and the Free Will - the power and ability of human mind to choose a course of action, without being subjected to the restrains imposed by the Divine predetermination - has been explained by numerous theologians through the centuries of Christianity more or less satisfactory (at least for those who want to maintain their faith) as the magnanimous act of the omnipotent God to allow essentially powerless Man to have some degree of control over the variation of the ways he can choose, yet arriving finally at the predetermined point. Thus, while God's sovereignty remains absolute and his resolve unshaken throughout eternity, man, through his own action, can vary the means, but not the end. Yet at the same time, no less obvious and perhaps even more striking contradiction between the Predestination and the power of prayer, done for a sake of requesting something of a deity who had presumably already determined one's fate from eternity to eternity, never attracted, to the best of my knowledge, the same attention of theologians, though the resolution of this particular contradiction is probably even more crucial to maintaining of Faith than that of the previous one. For the act of a prayer, which is a petition ( for oneself and the others), presupposes that a man can change God's mind as far as man's destiny is concerned. It shows God as the one who isn't certain in his resolve and is capable of being swayed one way or another by man's plea. This not only destroys the idea of Predestination but, what is even worse, makes man more powerful than God. For if God answers Man's prayers, then, speaking strictly philosophically, the one who originates the act (man by praying) is more powerful than the one who reacts to it (God answering). In the act of praying man becomes a cause while God an effect, man is an active and God is a passive force. Which overthrows the fundamental for any religion concept of the supremacy of the Omnipotent God. Also, a god who listens to a man's prayer and acts accordingly is not an Omniscient God either, for the act of listening implies that God doesn't know something which man knows, which logically impossible for the one who as the Omniscient suppose to know everything. It is clear therefore, that unless the contradiction between the Predestination and the power of prayer is resolved, it will continue to undermine the belief in God's omnipotence and omniscience, and, since a God who is neither is not, at least in Judaism and Christianity, the God at all, the Faith itself. On the other hand, for how long the religion in which God doesn't answer men's supplications is going to last? Hence is the dilemma - to resolve or not to resolve the contradiction. Each way there lies the threat to the Faith, and perhaps to choose neither is the only practical solution for the Church which want to preserve it existence and maintain its relevance. 944. It is amazing how some people and especially the women at a certain age are actually proud of behaving foolishly, considering it, mistakenly, as a sign of youthfulness. 945. As far as morality is concerned, one doesn't have to be a Christian or even a religious person to follow this excellent and universal precept from the Gospel of Matthew(7.12) - "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." And yet, even those who remember it by heart seldom live accordingly. Most are preoccupied with their own welfare to such an extent that they have little time or inclination to think of anybody else's. When on rare occasions they do, it usually happens in a conflicting situation, when the choice whether to do what is "good for me" or for the others has to be made, and when the satisfying both selfishness and altruism seems impossible. Needless to say, selfishness wins, again and again. It is quite natural therefore that such people can hardly imagine any other impetus for the moral behaviour than the fear of punishment. And since they represent the majority of humanity, any religion that considers morality as its integral part has to deal with it. Hence, for instance, the moral paradox of Christianity which, while offering this famous quotation from Matthew as a guiding rule, has to ultimately rely on the fear of God - the final judge and the executioner of eternal damnation - to convince the believers of the imperative of moral behaviour. 946. Exposed for the first time to the views of the ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, for example, on the subjects of ethics, virtue and morality the modern reader (providing he can free himself from the obligatory veneration) is struck by the unabashed sincerity of their profound egotism. "How to win friends and influence people" is as good as any summation of their ethical precepts, which in the main could be roughly considered as a manual on how to get to the top for the upwardly mobile young men of Athens - a kind of nobler, slightly more democratic version of Machiavellian "Prince" - while the virtues are often confused with the abilities to successfully achieve above mentioned ambitions. Finally, the morality in the present sense of the word seems to be totally unknown to them, at least in theory. For all their writings are devoted to achieving one's personal happiness, and they seem to be incapable of realizing that ethics, virtue and morality have nothing to do with personal happiness but with the happiness of others, that they are not self- but outwardly directed and motivated by love, kindness, compassion, sympathy and commiseration, and not by the desire of the personal fulfilment and glory. It is hard to tell now, after almost 2500 years have passed, what had caused such "a moral blindness" in the ancient philosophers. Perhaps the limitations of the times, perhaps their personalities. I suspect both. For as much as the times make men, men make the times, especially the men of Plato's and Aristotle's stature. 947. "I love You and therefore I'll try to do as much as I can to make You happy, and as little as possible to make You miserable" is the expression of true love directed at somebody else. "I love you and therefore I want You to do as much as You can to make Me happy, and as little as possible to make Me feel miserable" is a pseudo-love only disguised as love of somebody else, but in truth is nothing but the love, most and foremost, of oneself. 948. Do not poison the pleasure of giving by the resentment of not receiving. 949. If Poetry is fire, then a poet is fire-wood throwing himself into it to feed the flame to keep it alive, until finally turning into ashes. 950. Our greatest enemies are not those who try to destroy us but the ones wanting to destroy our convictions. For if they succeed, then we are left with nothing to fight, or for some even to live for. 951. Trying to make sense out of one's own life, either as a whole or just of some part of it, no matter how small, insignificant and, to all appearances, simple it is, isn't easy, and, judging by the experience of most men and women, probably impossible. Consequently, a lot of our problems, especially in the area of personal relationships, stem from the repeated, despite the almost invariable failures, attempts to do just that, i.e. to resolve them using common sense and natural logic. Perhaps then, to make a virtue out of necessity, we should all take a clue from the early Christian theologians who, after struggling for 300 years (and doing a lot of damage, physical and otherwise, to each other in the process) to reconcile the monotheism with the doctrine of Trinity, were probably more than happy (few diehards notwithstanding) to obey emperor Constantine's "order" to accept the Nicene Creed of Trinity as given, whether it make theological sense or not, and to defend it from then on by invoking the concept of Mystery - something beyond the human capacity to understand. And so will we, by following their example, do ourselves a great favour by accepting the human relationships as a Mystery unyielding to sensible resolutions, and by learning, like the Christians, to live with such an acceptance. |
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