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| QUOTATIONS 1072-1097 |
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| 1072. The game, or any other collective activity, can only last long enough to give all the participants the satisfaction of exercising their skills and abilities, if they are all more or less equal as far as these skills and abilities are concerned. But if one of the players is visibly superior to the rest, there are only two possible outcomes: either this person has to leave to let everybody else to enjoy themselves, or the game is over very quickly for nobody, if he can help it, will agree to remain in a state of the obvious inferiority for a long time. The conversation or discussion in which several people take part is also a kind of game, an intellectual one, and therefore falls under the same rules, i.e. it can only go on providing mutual enjoyment for all present if they are more or less equally informed on the subject at hand and none is substantially better at putting his ideas across than the others in the group. But if one of them knows much more than the rest about this or that particular topic under the discussion and, in addition, possesses superior discursive abilities, it is better for all concerned that such a person voluntarily withdraw himself not just in spirit, but in body as well. Otherwise, the feeling of inadequacy experienced by almost everybody else in the room will very soon destroy the ambiance and bond of brotherhood necessary for the pleasure of conversation to be equally shared by all participants, inevitably bringing animosity and frustration into what was supposed to be an enjoyable pastime. 1073. The greatest mystery nowadays is not how the one and only God can be personified by three distinct entities, or whether soul is immortal and there is or there isn't life after death, but what kind of criteria are used in the world where there are at least a dozen and often several dozens, or even hundreds of applicants for every available job, to choose one particular person and to reject all the rest. And what sort of exceptional qualities this "chosen one" possesses that everybody else is wanting? Or may be it's just a mystery for those who didn't get a job? 1074. Why is it that for so many people the holidays which are supposed to be the best times of the year are in reality are the worst? The answer is quite simple. For while for those (arguably a minority) who have in general a fulfilling and satisfactory life all year around the holidays represent the icing on the cake, something like a final touch to the already almost perfect picture, for the rest, whose everyday existence is but relentless chain of drudgery and depravation, the occasional holidays (especially if not personally planned but imposed by some organizational regulations) only highlight and exacerbate the life's all pervasive misery, and instead of providing relief only remind how one's life should be, but never will. It is like giving from time to time a candy to a starving child. For this rare moment of happiness changes nothing, and only underscores the permanency of hunger, making it so much clearer how truly terrible the rest of his life is. 1075. A husband who finally is capable to read the mind of his wife has achieved the highest degree of wisdom any man can aspire to. 1076. Reflecting on the enormous proliferation of books in pop psychology in the recent years, I've come to the conclusion that their greatest literary achievement lies not in the supposedly beneficial effect they allegedly have on the personal lives of their readers, but in the miraculous abilities of the writers of such books to stretch a single and rather simple, even obvious thought, idea or hypothesis into 200 or more pages. 1077. The most common conceit and one of the greatest delusions of many a great statesman is that unlike the ordinary run of men they alone are capable of killing not just two, but many more birds with one stone. But since at any moment in history there is always more than one of these cunning schemers, and because they invariably tend to work at cross purposes (unfortunately for them and tragically for their subjects, since even in the freest democracy the majority are but the subjects to those in power) the extra birds to get killed are most likely to be their own. 1078.The problems with the unanticipated and unpredictable questions is that one seems never to have the ready and satisfactory answer to them. But this is precisely the point, for how is it possible to have a ready answer to something unpredictable and therefore unusual? 1079. Whatever it may be, whether absolutely essential or totally frivolous, there seems to be never enough of it in any group or society for everyone to get the equal share of it. And so those with the discretionary power to give or to withhold practice forever the subtle art of figuring out who could be overlooked with the greatest impunity. 1080. No matter how wise some precepts are, even greater wisdom is required not to carry them to the extreme. "The unexamined life is not worth living" is certainly a kind of warning anyone could, by heeding it, benefit from. Yet, too much introspection clearly could be detrimental to one's mental and eventually physical health. And some individuals had managed completely to wreck their lives by making self-analysing its main preoccupation. By concentrating excessively on the inner and not so inner self they gradually lose the vital connections with the outside world. But since, contrary to modern psychology, what is without not what is within that our personal well-being depends on, one usually disregards it at one's own peril. 1081. It must be one of those strange paradoxes life apparently is so full of, that the more one tells about himself either in speech or in writing the more mysterious he seems to be to his readers or listeners, as if each personal statement, no matter how sincere it is, only arouses more bewilderment and calls for more questions. For example, while listening to yet another self-revealing poet, one can't help but to feel this nagging suspicion (more likely than not unjustified) that the sincerity and openness of such poetry is rather selective and that much more had been left out than actually said. On the other hand, and here lies the paradox, the poets who would rather write about anything but themselves appear to be much less of a puzzle to the listeners. There are several possible explanations of this phenomenon. One is that whatever we say, poets and non-poets alike, about ourselves is going unavoidably to be taken out of context of our whole life and being, and the greater our personal outpourings are, the less the sheer quantity, complexity and inevitable inconsistency of it all makes sense to the listeners. And again, conversely, to understand those who hardly disclose anything personal seems so much easier. Another explanation is that we all, but especially the poets, tend to overestimate our abilities for self-perception and don't realize that contrary to the popular notion we reveal much more about ourselves while talking just about anything else. 1082. Unbeknownst to them, the ethnic minorities perform very important therapeutic service to the dominant majority by enhancing and maintaining its psychological well-being. For since the ethnic minorities never seem to be able to fully assimilate (at least in the eyes of the ever watchful majority) and therefore are never up to its cultural and linguistic standards, they are always viewed by this majority as somewhat deficient, and thus provide it with the sense of superiority our species apparently in such a need of to sustain so much vaunted and yet ever flagging, even amongst the most arrogant nations, self-esteem. 1083. We all feel somewhat guilty when not listening to those who try to tell us something, and, when in reverse situation, are more or less miffed or even angry if it is us who are not being listen to. And yet, understandable emotional reaction aside, most of the times it is hardly the fault of a listener if he is not paying enough attention to a speaker, but must be that of the speaker who has nobody to blame but himself for not being sufficiently interesting to warrant the undivided attention of the listener. Of course, quite often out of politeness or a sense of social obligation one forces himself to listen to the most boring or irrelevant speech, but this is nothing but a self-violation. It is better for all concerned if possible to interrupt, and if not, to leave. As Hamlet said: "I must be cruel only to be kind" and so are you, by refusing to listen to what in your opinion is not worth listening to. For you are actually doing the speaker a favour, albeit in an admittedly cruel manner, by showing him that the next time he'd better come up with something more engaging, not only to him but to somebody else. And he probably will. 1084. One of the most important socio-economical trends of our times is the rapidly increasing, due to the ever accelerating speed of technological innovations, division of labour, which forces, on a much grander scale than ever before in history, more and more people to spend their entire lives doing things they, given a choice, would rather not do. But since for the overwhelming majority of the working people such a choice is but a luxury they can never afford, in order to survive they must, no matter how dreadful their jobs are, do them. Which leads to the unparalleled hitherto level of mass unhappiness and frustration, especially in the developed world where this division of labour has reached its highest degree. In response to this social problem a totally new field of modern psychology has developed recently to help all these chronically unhappy and frustrated workers to accept the unacceptable and to reconcile to the unreconcilable. And the claim and the promise of this new breed of psychologists is that these people could be taught how to go on doing what they hate to do with less aversion and hopefully with greater satisfaction and ,what is the most important for capitalist system, which is the true hidden force behind this psychological innovations, with the ever greater productivity. And yet the call to accept something detestable, and may be even to learn to enjoy it, isn't such a new idea after all, since it also used to be suggested to the rape victims not so long time ago. For isn't being forced to do your entire life something you hate to do the worst kind of rape? And instead of treating the casualties of the socio-economical war, only to return them back to the trenches, psychologists would do much greater service to humanity by using their considerable expertise to help the rest of us to abolish the war itself. 1085. If one wants to preserve one's sanity, one has no other choice but to accept the world as it is, and the people in it as they are. 1086. How true the saying that "None so deaf as those who won't hear" must be. For no matter how sensible and cogent your arguments are, the person you are trying to convince will never give free consent to them if he believe that agreeing with you could be detrimental to his interests. And it is not because such a thing as an objective and impartial truth does not exist. It does. The problem arises from the fact that the majority of men and women will categorically reject it if they perceive it to be harmful to them. 1087. It is unreasonable, even foolish to expect a whore in bed to turn into a nun in the jewellery store. 1088. Lacking the essential fighting and survival skills, like egotism, deceitfulness, guile, treachery, callousness, malice, vindictiveness, greed and ambition "the upright man has no other choice but to find life through faith"(Hab.2:4) For he almost certainly, as a result of such an obvious social handicap, will have very little else but his faithfulness. 1089. Any socio-economic system, no matter how ostensibly fair it appears to be, which justifies the difference in the material rewards by the alleged differences in the personal abilities and merits, will inevitably (and very quickly) deteriorate into the one in which the apparently superior few will consume the lion share of common goods, while the supposedly inferior many will be reduced to spend their entire lives in the perpetual poverty. But if one acknowledges as self-evident that as far as our appetites are concerned there is essentially no difference between one human being and another, how can any society that disregards this obvious fact of nature by providing the conditions for the inevitable economic inequality be called just? 1090. It is infinitely easier to dispose of what one already possesses than to get it when one suddenly is in the dire need of it. 1091. Here is one example in support of this proverbial notion that "Extremes meet". Take someone for whom the primary consideration in whatever he/she does is to get what he/she wants, regardless of what anybody thinks about him/her. Then take another person who is a complete opposite of the first one, i.e. whatever he/she does the most important thing for him/her is a good opinion of the others and he/she would rather act to please them than him/her self. Now when such extremes meet the relations between these two opposite types can work out quite well, and the pattern of it is more or less predictable. For the first type will always get what he/she wants by playing on the overpowering need of the second to be always thought well of. And the second type will invariably sacrifice his/her desires when threatened with the disapproval of the first. And such a relationship, no matter how one-sided and unfair it obviously is, can nevertheless last for a long, long time. Though it doesn't mean that it is a happy one. 1092. The more wants one has, the more probabilities there are that the greater number of them will be denied to him and, consequently, given the human nature, the more resentful one will feel toward those whom he perceives, rightly or wrongly, as responsible for his deprivations. On the other hand, one whose desires and demands are sufficiently moderate should have a better chance to fulfill most of them and will have, therefore, less reasons to blame others for his occasional misfortunes. Thus it is perfectly clear that the less wants we have, the more we are at peace with the world and the better relations we have with the greatest possible in each individual situation number of people in it. The ideal condition would be, of course, not to have any wants at all. But this for as long as one lives is impossible and so we will always feel somewhat resentful, because no matter how few wishes we have some of them will be inevitably denied to us. And so it all comes down to a matter of degree. One can be either slightly unhappy or completely miserable. One can chose either to be at peace or at war with the rest of the world. And in either case the number of his friends or enemies shall be proportional to his wishes, desires, demands and ultimately wants. 1093. There are some people who are unquestionably mentally ill, i.e. delusional, paranoid, psychotic, etc. The causes of their illnesses are clearly biological, i.e. internal and as such could be treated with the various degree of success by doctors, mainly the psychiatrists. Fortunately, the number of such people relatively to the rest of population is very small for the society, given the necessary amount of resources and sufficient degree of commitments, to cope with it. On the other hand, there are many more people who are simply unhappy, frustrated, disillusioned, bitter, etc. The causes of their afflictions are predominantly external, since no one would voluntarily put him/herself in such a miserable state and experience such debilitating emotions. But since nobody, including psychiatrists, can change the world, to make it a healthier place, the doctors can do nothing, or next to nothing to help this kind of "patients", and so they have to try, to the best of their abilities "to cure" themselves. Even psychologists and various therapists are powerless to help such people. For the protective layers of the sophisticated psycho-terminology, theories and numerous and diverse types of treatments are not thick or strong enough to protect the wearers from the "flings and arrows" of life. 1094. If anyone still needs a factual confirmation of this largely accepted as self-evident principle that the road to the true knowledge lies thru the direct and extensive experience, the United States of America in the area of interracial relations and Canada in constitutional matters can afford the perfect examples. For as the US had to struggle thru several centuries of racial inequality and the numerous attempts to alleviate its worse consequences it has built up the most-comprehensive knowledge of it. Canada, in a similar manner, being plagued since its inception by the vital for its survival as one country necessity to continuously readjust its provincial structure and to keep Quebec as a member of Confederation, has acquired in the process the unique expertise in this field. But, on the other hand, if one is looking for the equally convincing illustrations of the admittedly somewhat controversial thesis that knowledge in the human affairs, unlike in science and technology, seldom produces positive and practical results, the very same countries can be used to support it as well. For US, despite its most comprehensive knowledge in the area of the interracial relations, is as far from solving its racial conflicts as ever, and Canada , notwithstanding its unique expertise in the constitutional matters is just the last tiny step from finally breaking up. 1095. One will never get anything in life worth having, if people lose nothing by withholding from, nor gain anything by giving it to him. 1096. Since I decided to devote my time and life to the reading and writing to the exclusion of almost any other activities, unless they are absolutely necessary for the biological survival, I also begin to measure it not by days, months or years but by the number of pages read or written. And in my mind people around me are increasingly being divided into the two distinct categories - those who read what I've written and those who don't. Moreover, I strongly suspect that amongst the writers I'm not that unique in this respect. 1097. The main difference between the philosophers living in different epochs and belonging to different generations is that while continuing to describe the same phenomena again and again they use different vocabularies, which creates, at least in their own minds, the illusion of progress and innovation in a discipline that is as old as human civilization itself and which, despite the efforts of thousands devoted practitioners remains essentially throughout the millennia of it the same. |
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