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| QUOTATIONS 952-969 |
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| 952. Women, a popular notion to the contrary, must be as lonely as men always, and rightly so, thought to be. For their ostentatious sociability and friendliness toward each other is but a facade concealing the fierce rivalry and competition (which men seldom bother to disguise, their range of contention still being so much wider than women's), and when two women put a claim to one man, this veneer of civility is quickly blown away and they will fight for this man tooth and nails, like two dogs over a bone. 953. Perhaps this feeling of being alone in a big cold World, which is so common to both men and women, is the result of each gender's unwillingness or inability to accept the other half of humanity as an integral and inseparable part of the Whole, instead of only as a source of the potential sexual partners. 954. I have no doubt whatsoever that if the majority of the innocent victims of the Nazi perpetrated Holocaust during Second World War had been not the Jews but, say, the English, or French, or Dutch, or any other nationality, the historical revisionists and the Holocaust deniers, like Ernst Zundel & Co., would have never found such a receptive and sympathetic audience as they enjoy now. For considering the almost universally pervasive sentiments of antisemitism among the European nations, everyone feels somewhat implicated in the Nazi atrocities toward the Jews and consequently guilty, if not by commission then by omission and tacit approval, even if only on a subconscious level. And it seems that the easiest way to assuage this nagging feeling of the collective guilt is to pretend, or perhaps even sincerely believe, that despite the overwhelming evidences to the contrary, the genocidal extermination of the Jews either didn't happen or, if it did, then on a much smaller scale. To repeat again, if the millions of the English, or French, or Dutch, etc. had been slaughtered as the Jews had been, few people would believe and even fewer would dare to say that it is not true. 955. When you are a passenger in somebody else's car, you go where the driver goes. The only way to go where you want to is to get your own car and be your own driver. 956.The people one encounters most often on the streets of Toronto could be roughly divided into the two major categories - snobs and slobs. Or, if one wants to be more precise and to give an all-embracing picture, two more sub-groups may be added - snobbish slobs and slobbish snobs. 957. It should have happened sooner or later, and so it did come as no surprise - after "no name" cottage cheese, "no name" spaghetti sauce, "no name" laundry detergent, etc.,etc. we are finally (no pun intended) offered "no name" burial and cremation, or, as the recent ad in the newspaper put it: "The dignified, modestly priced alternative to dealing with a commercial funeral home". 958. One who grew up among the nasty and malicious people has only two choices - either to become as mean as they are, or to spend the rest of his life as a proverbial "door-mat", continuously abused and insulted by almost everybody else with impunity. 959. You can judge whether the members of a particular society peacefully coexist or live in a state of "cold war" with each other by the amount of personal information they are willing to reveal voluntarily. For while one not only doesn't mind but is actually eager to talk openly to those believed to be allies or friends, as a way of strengthening the bond, to tell too much about ourselves to the potential enemies is clearly foolhardy. And so, it is quite natural that in a society where "homo homini lupus est" people are so reluctant to talk without reserve about themselves, and so nosy about the affairs of others. Consequently, the reverse is equally true, i.e. if people are excessively secretive about their personal matters, it means they live in and are conditioned by the society based on the mutual fear, rather than common trust. 960. For the past 2000 years the Jewish dilemma has remained essentially the same - either to stay where you are now, despite the growing antisemitism, hoping it will eventually subside (though never expecting it to disappear altogether), or to move some place else which looked, at least from afar, as more hospitable at the moment. And the perennial Jewish choice has always been between two or more different brands of antisemitism - Spanish or French, French or German, German or Polish, Polish or Ukrainian, Ukrainian or Russian, etc. But the question has always been the same - which antisemitism was more dangerous at the moment, which less and for how long? So, almost every generation of Jews were faced with the same dilemma and, depending on its evaluation of the comparative viciousness of different brands of antisemitism, had to make a decision, as their parents and grandparents had done before, on where it would be better and safer, to stay or to go. Thus, every time the move was made, it wasn't, as it should have been expected, from "hell" to "safe heaven", but rather "out of the frying pan into a fire". And even the State of Israel, created out of the ashes of the Holocaust, had proven to be less than assured sanctuary. For instead of the supposed "promised land", it turned out to be, in truth, a 5 million strong Jewish ghetto in the midst of the 100 million resentful and hostile Arabs, forever planning a next "pogrom" - a tiny island surrounded by the ready to swallow it ocean of hate. Yet, it cannot be denied that the latest migratory trend of world's population has made at least Europe - the cradle of antisemitism - the less dangerous place for the Jews to live, by creating millions of "new jews" e.g. Turks in Germany, North Africans in France, Albanians and Yugoslavians in Italy to name just a few, and thus displacing the "old ones" as the primary target of hate and persecution. Being one of the many, made the Jews less visible, which is a good state for any minority to strive for, and the hatred, which for centuries had concentrated almost exclusively on them, is now shared with others, making it less potent and harmful - the bigots get tired chasing too many victims at once. Thus unfortunately, somebody else's misery has become a blessing in disguise for the Jews. But as it is, this is the way of the world - to benefit from other's loss. And if it is not done intentionally, one can be grateful for it, without feeling guilty. 961. The lives of the wise and the prudent, i.e. ones who are able, as much as it humanly possible, to foresee the future consequences of their present action, are not, at least on the surface, as eventful or exiting as the lives of those who live "one day at a time" and for whom, no matter how sinister the omens are, the "tomorrow" is always full of promise of better things to come. The same holds true for history - the life of mankind - in general. For the World History, as we know it, would have been much duller and immeasurably less eventful if not for this notorious inability or refusal of men, both individually and collectively, to see "beyond their noses". The modern history, in the case of Hitler and Nazi Germany, affords us one of the most obvious instances of such myopia. For neither the leader nor the followers in this case were able or willing to acknowledge the virtual impossibility for Germany, no matter how highly developed industrially and strong military it was, to defeat the combined forces of the Western Europe, United states and Soviet Union. Had they been more foresighted and capable to discern in advance the hopelessness of their design, the Second World War would have never happened with its hundreds of large and thousands of small battles, its glorious victories and agonizing defeats, millions of killed and maimed, countries destroyed , cites and villages ruined, etc., etc., which is the stuff the History is made of, and which is going to keep historians busy for centuries to come. And the ancient history is as replete with the examples of human folly as the main cause and the driving engine of it, as the modern one. Take, for instance, the revolt of Galilee and Judea against Rome in 66 A.D. Anyone but totally blind could have predicted that this tiny, backward speck of a land in the huge, omnipotent Roman Empire had n‘t have a fighting chance in hell to win this war of liberation. And yet the Jews, against the better judgement of a few Pharisees, had joined the revolt en masse. The rest, as they say, is history. The uprising was drowned in the rivers of blood, Jerusalem levelled with the ground, the remaining Jews dispersed all over Roman Empire... and the World history has been changed forever. For without all this Christianity would have never survived to become the world religion, the Crusades, the European history of competing Christian kingdoms, the Renaissance, the Reformation, ... the list can go on and on, would have never happened and the World would be quite a different place today. Thus, as regrettable as it is, either looking back or forward, it is clear that it is not the wise and the prudent, but the shortsighted and reckless, who are the creators of History. And as entertaining or educational it may be for the outsiders like, for example, Martians or historians to look at from the safe distance of space or time, most of this planet inhabitants, having no means to escape, given the choice would have probably preferred less dramatic, even if not as exciting a spectacle to take part in. 962. If the society does not allow me to do what I would prefer to, I have to find out what can I still enjoy doing which doesn't require its permission. 963. Some spouses see the marriage as a licence giving them the exclusive rights to abuse their partners. 964.A life of any individual is divided into at least two main parts. The first is spent in blissful ignorance of one's own mortality, the second begins with its realization, triggered usually by a life-threatening disease or a death of someone very close, like a parent, a relative or a friend. And from then on, one has to learn to live with this knowledge of the inevitability of one's own death and yet, at the same time, as if being unaware of it. 965. No piece of garbage in trousers, however revolting he may be, would be completely dismissed by a woman hungry for men's attention, and one often wonders if there are any who don't. 966. Most people's role in the "greater scheme of things" is to be no more than fertilizers for a few "selected" to flourish. 967. An orgasm is a nice diversion but a poor substitute for a real life. 968. It is not the desires and longings which are pretty much universal (perverts of all kinds being an extremely tiny minority), but the length to which one is willing and capable of to go to satisfy them and the means which are employed in doing so that ultimately differentiate the people. 969. The type of conversations, lacking either generalizations or conclusions, which are so prevalent in some, predominately educated upper middle class social circles of the North America, resemble by their form and substance the truncated syllogism. For the Major premise - the universal or general statement (either negative or affirmative) like - "all men are animals", and the Conclusions (either universal or particular, negative or affirmative) like - "Socrates is an animal" are missing, and the listener has to accept the Minor premise, which is an affirmation or negation (either universal or particular) like - "Socrates is a man" as a revealed truth, which provides all the information one will ever need, though in all honesty it is but an empty platitude, devoid of any meaningful content. Amazingly, for an outsider, the conversations consisting of nothing but such platitudes and common places, as long as they are adorned with the perfect grammar and a rich vocabulary, are considered by the above mentioned groups as the only proper way for the intelligent and sophisticated people to talk to each other. And anyone would make the inexcusable faut pas when trying to introduce into such conversations the missing parts of the discursive syllogism - generalization and conclusion. Such a person is immediately branded as "argumentative" and will forever be frowned upon as the undesirable in the polite society. The best advice, which could be given to one who doesn't want to become the object of such an ostracism, is Forget about wrong or right, nobody cares , just be polite. |
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