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| QUOTATIONS 1185-1199 |
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| 1185. In practising different professions different personal qualities are needed for making success of them. But then the more these specific qualities get developed the more they tend to shape the whole personality of their possessor and very often to produce such an one-sidedness of character that one's entire interaction with the rest of the world begins to be governed by it. Take, for example, the teaching profession. The most obvious task of a teacher is to transmit knowledge to the students. But this clearly can't be done unless it takes place in the orderly atmosphere of a classroom in which there is minimum disruption of the learning process by some unruly students. Consequently, the most important quality any good teacher should possess is the ability to quickly identify the potential trouble makers and to control their disruptive for the rest of the class behaviour. But what happens when such a good teacher leaves the classroom and confronts the world at large? It is not surprising that having one's whole personality shaped by the necessity to control, one can't help but to view the rest of humanity as divided on either disruptive or easy to handle "students", and treats everybody accordingly. Needless to say, this does not endear him (or her) to whoever they come in contact with, and the same qualities which made one a good teacher become the real obstacle in relating to people who understandably are not willing to play a part of a "student". 1186. All revolutions have this one thing in common: everyone begins with the condemnation of the System and ends up by killing individuals. For apparently despite our vaunted capacity to reason, the majority of people feel much more comfortable when the real faces are attached to the abstract notions and concepts, confusing in the process the System and those who are just part of it, and not necessarily the most pernicious one. Hitler started his political career by criticizing democracy and capitalism and finished exterminating Jews, who were in his and his followers minds the living embodiment of both, the very personification of greed and corruption. Looking back at the actual experience of many revolutions, it is hard to deny, however discouraging it may be, that the primary motivation of their participants were not to change the oppressive System as a whole but to take revenge on the particular oppressors, to spill the blood, to kill. And you can't do it to the System, can you? You need the real living, breathing people to punish and to murder them. And for this the convenient scapegoats are always easy to be found. 1187. These are some of the questions concerning the Old Testament in particular and the history of the Jewish people in general I would have loved to have the answers to but probably will never get: 1. Was Moses really a Hebrew, or simply a high ranking Egyptian, who out of sympathy, compassion and solidarity with their plight (for some unknown personal reasons and not necessarily by blood kinship) had declared himself to be one of them? 2. In addition, how Hebrew were the Hebrews themselves, both culturally and racially, after living for 400 years in Egypt especially considering (in comparison) the total disappearance of the ten tribes of Israel later on in much shorter period of time? 3. Thirdly, was it possible in the highly centralized, steeped in the old traditions and relatively homogeneous society of the Ancient Egypt for such a small, without local roots, minority as the Hebrews to remain segregated and to maintain and preserve their distinct way of life and especially their unique religion generation after generation? 1188. The highly commendable nowadays tolerance, which we surely have to exhibit most generously toward others, if for no more lofty reasons than simply to get along well, should not be applied with the same liberality when judging ourselves. For while as the members of the society we certainly must pay close attention to the others' behaviour and, though to somewhat lesser degree, to what they think of ours, our primary responsibility is for our own conduct, and our self- evaluation is ultimately much more important than somebody else's opinion on this matter. And in this the consistency between what we preach and what we practice is of the utmost significance, and not only because it is universally admired, while inconsistency is looked down upon as the major character flaw, the manifestation of hypocrisy and lack of courage. For nothing is as harmful to one's peace of mind as the painful awareness of the discrepancy between one's professed and even strongly held convictions and the actions which are in direct opposition to them. And regardless of the validity of our ideas, their harmony with what we do is the indispensable foundation of the psychological balance and, consequently, of mental health, while the disharmony between words and deeds is rightly viewed as self-betrayal, leading ultimately to self-destruction. 1189. Looking back, as far as my memory would let me, I see nothing but uninterrupted chain of losses, big and small, of body and of soul, from tragic to trivial . I wish to think there were some gains too, but since I don't remember any, I begin to doubt it. For if one's life can be compared to a ledger, mine would have the ever growing number of debits, while the credit column always remains empty. And so for a long, long time, perhaps from the very beginning, my main task in life has been to deal, to the best of my abilities, with those losses, one after another, to face and to accept them, to reconcile with, to adjust to, to survive, to go on until the new ones came, and then to repeat the whole process again. And so on and so forth. Gradually, it became a habit, a way of life, an integral part of my personality. For since one cannot help but to judge the future by the past I live in a perpetual state of apprehension, in anticipation of some unforeseen disasters, big or small, constantly preparing myself in advance to somehow survive the next one. And I have to confess that as time goes by I think I'm getting better and better at it. Whether I'm going to reach the Nirvana when nothing would bother me anymore remains to be seen. Perhaps it is only matter of time, and if one has enough of it, one can arrive at such a blessed state. And then, even one's own death would probably cease to be such a big loss after all. 1190. One, no matter how ostensibly good his motivations are, is actually doing a great disservice to humanity when urging everyone to be always open, sincere, authentic and to act, regardless of what the circumstances are, in the most natural, true to oneself manner. But as few of us can do without some artificial means to embellish our physical appearance, so even fewer can afford to present themselves to the world as they really are - the sight would be too unattractive to behold. For, lets face it, most of us are mean-spirited, envious, petty, callous, vindictive, cruel, egotistical, violent, etc., etc. So, even if a relatively small fraction of humanity would follow this noble calling to behave according to one's true nature, the life on this planet would quickly become significantly more miserable than it already is. Like with our physical appearance, where the majority would be well advised to keep the clothes on, not so much to preserve common decency but mostly on the aesthetic grounds, i.e. not to expose the ugliness of their naked bodies, so is also with our private and public selves, which are better to be covered by conventional manners and the niceties of social etiquette, the so-called veneer of civilization, the removal of which will threaten the very core of human relations and make our coexistence next to impossible. Therefore, let affectation, dissimulation, deception, hypocrisy, insincerity, equivocation, lies reign supreme. Far from being detrimental to our happiness and peace, they are our only defence against the real, often horrifying, essence of Man. 1191. If the favourite game of 19th century was "Cowboys and Indians", in which colonization of somebody else's territory involved the forced displacement of an indigenous population by the newcomers who used any means available, including ruthless wars to get the land, the most popular, by far, game of 20th century has been "Nazis and Jews" - the outright extermination of the undesirable and completely powerless minority in our own midst, the minority whose only fault is being different. So, is it any wonder that as this murderous century is drawing to a close, the world is witnessing the ever growing demands by the smaller and smaller ethnic minorities for separate and independent statehood? For if the terrible experience of the Holocaust has taught us anything, it is about mortal danger of being a totally defenceless minority surrounded by the bloodthirsty majority. Thus, no matter how abhorrent it is, the nations would rather play "Nazis" (at least they survive the game). And nobody but nobody, if they can help it, would be willingly playing "Jews" anymore, which in reality means to be literally led like a cattle to the slaughterhouse, without any possibility to escape their horrible fate. Finally, unless the world collectively can offer protection to such vulnerable ethnic minorities , which is highly unlikely, Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechnia will be in the future less and less of an exception and more and more the rule in the inter-ethic relationships. So, it looks like the game of "Nazis and Jews" will remain popular for a long, long time. 1192. I see as one of the major factors contributing to the notorious callousness and insensitivity some of the doctors exhibit toward their patients, the callousness that in certain extreme cases and the extreme circumstances can lead to the blatant disregard for the sanctity of the human body, downright cruelty and even sadism, as had been practiced by the few (the actual numbers will never be known) German and Japanese physicians during WWII, I repeat I see it in the way the future doctors are trained in all medical schools. For after spending initially some time studying chemistry and biology which describe any living organism as a combination of chemical elements and cells, they move on to physiology and anatomy and have their first detailed encounter for the medical purposes with a human body in the form of a cadaver on which they can perform with complete impunity (albeit in the pursuit of knowledge) all kinds of cuts, dissections, dismemberments, removal of organs, etc. etc. Thus having for the first "patient', so to speak, a dead body, from then on the insidious process of detachment, of separation, of distancing themselves from the patients as another human beings, the process which for too many doctors eventually culminates in the view of a patient as a sum of parts, some of them good some bad, but not as a whole individual. Such mechanistic approach also leads inevitably to the view of the death not as irretrievable loss of a unique human being but as a natural outcome of the physiological dysfunction, and of themselves, the doctors, as the ones in possession of knowledge and power to fix it or, if it couldn't be repaired, to let the "machine" stop by itself or even to turn it off. This last option of "turning the machine off" is not that difficult to imagine if one will consider the well-known fact that some of the doctors eventually develop almost instinctive dislike of the sick people in general, and their own patients in particular, especially those who do not respond to treatment, the so called "incurable' . For they see them as a living testimony of their inadequacy as physicians and naturally wish them to go away, and in the extreme cases would even provide the means for the final exit, especially when the law allows them to act this way with impunity. Which was exactly the legal situation in Nazi Germany, the situation of which some German doctors had eagerly taken full advantage of by actively participating in the government's sanctioned killing of hundreds of thousand of innocent people, whose only fault was some physical deviation from the "Norm". And though we cannot blame the German doctors for the whole genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany, for I doubt if any were present at the Babi Yar, they certainly were responsible for some of it. And it is hard to avoid the fact that the medical training and the way medicine is practiced everywhere had something to do with their almost enthusiastic participation in it. 1193. In addition to death and taxes, there is one more certainty, increasingly becoming more and more obvious nowadays, in life - the government's overspending of public money. For from the times of the god-like pharaohs till the modern representative democracies no government in the entire human history, and of whatever political structure and professed ideology, had ever been able to live within its means. 1194. He cries worst who cries last. 1195. Though they had always proclaimed to be the staunchest defenders of Faith and Nation, kings, unlike their subjects never saw anything wrong, as far as they were concerned, with the inter-national marriages. On the contrary, this was the predominant matrimonial pattern in all royal houses of Europe. As a matter of fact, come to think of it, this has been the leading rule for the royalty all over the world. One can even say that the monarchy and the inter-national marriage appeared at the same time. For in order to secure the continuity of their supreme status and to keep alive the mystic of the royal exclusivity, the kings should only marry someone equal and in their own kingdom nobody, by definition, can be equal to them. And since incest has been from the times immemorial one of the most strictly observed taboos, if the kings had to marry someone of the royal blood, this person had to belong to the royalty of other nation. So, it was actually left to their subjects to preserve and maintain the vaunted purity of the race, which they certainly did through millennia with a fanatical zeal (occasional rape of the conquered people notwithstanding). Moreover, this exemption from the prevailing chauvinism was not exclusive to the royalty and encompassed much wider aspects of social conduct than just miscegenation. For in general, the upper classes are always much more cosmopolitan than the lower ones, and though both ostensibly preach nationalism, in their personal lives it is the poor who have no other choice but to practice it too, while the better off's have most of the times sufficient means at their disposal to find a lot of loopholes and exceptions when the rigid nationalism restrains their opportunities to enjoy their position and wealth to the fullest. And , however trivial it may sound, money do liberate and the absence of them enslaves a man. 1196. Marxist call for the workers of the world to unite was, as the subsequent historical developments had shown, yet another "cry in the wilderness". There isn't and there could never be any international solidarity of the proletariat in the world as diverse as ours, with so much economic disparity and inequality of the working conditions between different countries and regions. For what kind of common interests the Mexican and Canadian workers could have when the low wages of the first are used by international capital to depress the wages and standard of living of the second, when the ever so slight improvements in the life of one are achieved at the expanse of a lot of misery for the other, and when it is the multinational corporations that play the worker of different countries against each other and not, as Marx hoped, the other way around. 1197. One of the possible explanation for the recent dramatic increase in violence against women, most of which takes place in the relationships and committed by men who are either husbands or boy-friends of the victims, could be that unlike in the past the average man or woman enters "permanent" relationship nowadays after having multiple temporary ones, i.e. after they have had sex with several partners. Now, for some biological or social reasons, the men are much more jealous of their partners previous sexual history than women are and seem to be never capable to completely forget about it. This puts the majority of men into the permanent state of resentment, distrust and suspicion, creating constant underlying tensions which in certain cases, when other aggravating factors added, explode in physical violence. The explanation just given was not intended to deny the well known fact that there are a few sadistic psychopaths who don't need any reasons to abuse those who are weak and defenceless, be it a woman or a man. But they are a very small minority and the majority of the cases of violence against women, I believe, result from the men's jealousy for the reasons offered above. 1198. Lets imagine for a moment the world around us, the Reality, as the thousands of radio stations each broadcasting on its one designated frequency. And then lets also assume that each individual in this world is a small radio, capable of receiving radio transmission of only one wave length, i.e. able to hear only one radio station out of the thousands. Now, it cannot be denied that having a receiver of such a limited capacity an individual is prevented from having access to all stations, the complete Reality. On the other hand, it is perfectly clear that he is quite capable of receiving one of them, i.e. a partial reality. Leaving finally the metaphor behind, it simply means that our inability to gain the full knowledge about the whole world around us does not prevent anybody from getting the partial one, which though admittedly small and limited, is nevertheless as real and true as the whole. To reiterate, a small and partial reality is no less real because of the limitation of its smallness than the big and complete one. The difference is between completeness and incompleteness - in degree, rather than between true and untrue - in kind. 1199. Being a "nobody", that is an obscure and powerless individual whose existence is hardly acknowledged even in the narrow confines of the family and friends, and whose ability to influence events even in such a tiny circle, never mind in the larger world, is next to negligible, is the fate to which the overwhelming majority of men and women are condemned for life. And there are plenty of evidences, both social (as expressed in the perpetual political strife every society known to men has been, from the beginning going through), and personal (which everyone is painfully familiar with in the form of unhappiness, depression, frustration, anger, etc., etc.) that they don't suffer their "nothingness" gladly. For everyone has pride, everyone has dreams, everyone has ambitions. That is why every religion or ideology that changes, seemingly overnight, this humiliating to the human spirit status of nothingness get such a tremendous support and uncritical acceptance. But there is always a danger in any speedy transformation, and being suddenly elevated without the slightest personal efforts from a "nobody" to a "superman" could be quite dazzling: the blood can easily go to one's head and, as the horrible experience of Fascism has proved, one becomes ready and willing to do the most terrible things which only yesterday would have been considered unthinkable. |
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