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| QUOTATIONS 1211-1223 |
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| 1211. Because our behaviour is shaped primarily by imitating that of the others around us, and not by following or obeying their suggestions, prescriptions or directives, the today's authoritarian societies are, paradoxically, more conducive to the development of the varied and distinct personalities than the modern free and democratic ones, which claim to provide the unlimited opportunities for the flourishing of individual diversity. And the cause, the catalyst of this paradox is TELEVISION. In a authoritarian society TV is a propaganda tool, pure and simple. Everybody knows this and treats it as such. And as all straightforward propaganda it is insipid, unimaginative and most of all boring. As a result, it scarcely has any impact on mass behaviour - that which does not attract is not mimicked. But since mimic we must (to construct the Self), imitation occurs primarily in the family and one's circle of friends and acquaintances. Now, considering that there are millions of such social units, there is correspondingly the tremendous variety of the behavioural patterns to imitate, which in its turn produces in each successive generation the equally great variety of personalities. In the modern free and democratic society, founded on mass consumption, the role of TELEVISION, however, is quite different. Here it is first and foremost the selling machine and as such has to be highly seductive and entertaining to attract continuously the greater and greater numbers of viewers-buyers. It is extremely popular therefore and people spend much more with television than with their families or friends. Now, at any particular moment even such an efficient manufacturer of the mass entertainment as American Television cannot deliver more than 20 "hits" each having millions of devoted fans. Considering that each of these enormously popular shows has no more than 10 characters, there are maximum 200 different (more or less)patterns of behaviour for the viewers to imitate. And imitate they certainly do. It is not unusual to see one's friends and relatives acting exactly like their favourite TV personalities. Their hairstyles, the clothes they wear, the words they use, their facial expressions, the body language, the very thoughts and ideas they propound are but a mirror image of what they watch everyday on TV. It is hard to imagine such a slavish emulation under the greatest compulsion exercised by the most oppressive regime, yet people in a free democratic society do it completely voluntarily, even if they are not fully aware of it. Which explains, to repeat, why people in such a society exhibit such a limited range of personal behaviour in comparison with those who live in the authoritarian ones. 1212. In questions of morality and ethics, of what is good and what is evil, everyone's opinions count, regardless of whether they are right or wrong. For each holder of an opinion is endowed with a free will to act upon it and thus affect others in the most immediate way, whether they share his convictions or not. Unlike in the physical sciences where, for example, no one can overturn the law of gravity, in relations between people every act is possible and therefore the views and motivation leading to it are valid, albeit not in a logical but in experiential sense, i.e. where it really counts. And although it is quite natural to pay a much closer attention to the like-minded people, it is more prudent to do otherwise, for we ignore the views and opinions of those we disagree with at our own peril. Therefore, my advice to every Jew is to read "Main Kampf" instead of Tora, and to every black the pamphlets of White Supremacists rather than the speeches of Martin Luther King. For it is more important to one's survival to know not what his friends but what his enemies say and, which is even more crucial, how they think and what motivates them. It is my firm belief that unlike in other fields of knowledge, no matter how practical they are, there are no experts in the area of morality and ethics, for an average layman is as much a free agent, as far as his personal behavior is concerned, as a professor of moral philosophy, and the potential and actual impact of what one does in this capacity is equal to that of the other. 1213. If you are self-centred, (and who isn't) try to think about others. If you are calculating, (and who isn't) try to be magnanimous. If you are egotistic, (and who isn't) try to be altruistic. If you are callous, (and who isn't) try to be sensitive. If you are arrogant, (and who isn't) try to be humble. If you are not perfect, (and who is) try to be as good as you can. And no matter what, never stop trying. For this is the least and the best you can do. 1214. There is this maddening thing about Life: just when you finally get comfortable with this or that stereotype, which helps you to cope, more or less, with the bewildering confusion of the world, it throws at you an instance that completely destroys it. 1215. It is painfully obvious to anyone who've lived long enough that no one can change the world for the better. And the best one can do is not to allow this world to change him or her for the worse. 1216.The sure way to produce a monstrous ego is to persistently deny its possessor even a bare minimum of recognition and satisfaction. 1217. I find it somewhat paradoxical that the modern Left, which proudly (and with some justification) traces its origins to the classical Marxism, refuses to use in its analyses (which it does rather infrequently and reluctantly nowadays) of the socio-economic and political state the today's world is in one of the most crucial tenets of Marxism, i.e. the leading role the productive forces driven by innovation in technology play in producing this conditions. The obvious paucity of the theoretical thinking on the part of the Left is clearly responsible for its inability to confront the apparently triumphant Right, which, without giving the credit where the credit is due, has embraced this particular tenet of Marxism to explain the Global Economy as the inevitable outcome of technological progress. Thus, we are witnessing now a very strange phenomenon indeed: the Marxist capitalists and anti-Marxist socialists though both would certainly vehemently deny it. 1218.Because of the undeniable uniqueness (however small or large it may be) of every single human being the theoretical generalisations are much more rare in medicine than in other sciences. As a result, medicine throughout its long history has been and still, the recent discoveries in cellular biology and genetics notwithstanding, is primarily an empirical science, and the significant gains it has made have been achieved mainly through trials and errors and, God knows, there were countless numbers of both. The second, less publicised feature of medicine is that unlike in the other empirical sciences (botany and zoology, for example) the larger portion of its data is collected from women and smaller from men for the simple reason that there were always more female patients than male since it is a fact that women seek medical help more often than men. And here comes the conclusion which many today may find unacceptable, though objectively speaking it must be true: an empirical science, which derives more of its experience and knowledge from one group of population rather than the other, must be biassed in favour of the larger group and its diagnostic techniques and methods of treatment must reflect to a large extent this bias. Or to put it in more simple terms - medicine, as an empirical science, must be inevitably biassed against men, for it treats less men than women. Now, the modern feminists and their supporters usually try to prove false such an unfavourable to their cause conclusion by countering it with an argument, that despite the indisputable fact of both of previous premises (the empirical nature of medicine and the relatively larger numbers of female patients) being true, the conclusion, nevertheless, is not because it fails to take into account that the overwhelming majority of doctors until quite recently were men and therefore their interpretation of data gathered from women was contaminated by their maleness, thus still making medicine biassed against women and not the other way around. One doesn't have to go too far to refute this, deemed unassailable by feminists, argument. Let's stop for a moment to consider another area of scientific research - Genetics. It is common knowledge that modern genetics are based on the long and extensive studies of mutation of drosophila - a fruit fly. Does it mean that to avoid a bias in this case the interpreter of the data has to be a drosophila also and that humans are incapable of the objective evaluation of it? Such a suggestion is so patently ridiculous that no one in his right mind would propose it. Equally ridiculous therefore is the claim that men-doctors cannot fully appreciate the medical problems of women-patients, especially when it is put forward to promote perfectly correct idea of the necessity to have more women-doctors. The main reason for having as many women as men in the medical profession is not because men are not adequate, but because women are as good as men and therefore the society, which ostensibly proclaim equality of all, should prove it by giving the women the equal opportunities to exercise their abilities. 1219. Since the causes of the excessive verbosity are apparently different, the people afflicted with this annoying habit should be treated differently as well. The ones (usually unsure of themselves), who are talkative because of the consistent lack of attention given to them by the rest and, as a result, starve for "being listened to", should be treated with the utmost compassion, and provided with as much opportunity to express themselves as practically possible. This, in most cases, will eventually relieve them from the compulsive urge, whenever they get a chance, to talk nonstop, and make them more agreeable members of the group. The second, and in many ways the opposite type of the immoderate wordiness, is much harder to deal with. For it is exhibited by the people who, unlike the first type, are supremely self-assured and so self-absorbed they don't even want to listen to anybody else. Their idea of conversation is when they speak without interruption and all the rest are silent. To give them more attention only encourages them, for they see is as the confirmation that nobody but them have anything to say worth listening to. Consequently, as cruel as it may sound, they should be demonstratively disregarded whenever they go into yet another endless monologue until, hopefully, they get the message and adjust their conversational habits accordingly. But in reality such people seldom change. Usually faced with refusal of one group to play the part of admiring and silent audience they leave it to look for another, the more receptive one. Few, after a long search, may even find what they are looking for, but the majority will not. After many unsuccessful attempts they tend to withdraw from society at large and to become misanthropic recluses. And in the extreme cases some can resort to the outright violence and terrorism to punish the inattentive to their needs humanity. 1220. To anyone familiar with The Bible, it is abundantly, I would even venture to say, redundantly clear that man is less, significantly less than perfect. However, the related proposition, that the second part of Biblical dichotomy, God (who if you remember created Man in his own image) is not perfect either, is apparently impossible for a religious person to accept. Yet, the imperfection of God has to be acknowledged, if we wish to avoid endless contradictions and perplexities his assumed perfection inexorably leads to. And anyone who reads The Old Testament with open eyes should not have a problem with such an acknowledgement. For nowhere in it, to the best of my knowledge, the perfection of God is explicitly insisted upon. On the contrary, in one Biblical book after another, God, his omnipotence notwithstanding, continuously makes mistakes and continuously corrects them. Of course, some of them are unavoidable, as for example God could not have create Man and not to have endowed him with free will, for no life can survive without it. Deprived of free will a man would stay in a burning house and perish, or wouldn't abandon a sinking boat and drown. But once Man has free will, he is bound to do bad as well as good, and God with all His might can't change this fact without annihilating mankind altogether. God, by analogy, (for if Man is his image, He, following the principle of reciprocity, must be an image of Man - if A is like B then B is like A) should also have free will and therefore be prone to make mistakes too, and consequently to do bad, objectively speaking, as well as good. And once the fallibility of God is accepted then everything else falls into place. For to explain why the righteous suffer, while the wicked prosper, why the innocent die and the guilty go on living, why there is so much misery in the world, which God so much admired at the moment of its creation, etc., to answer all these crucial questions that confounded believers for thousands of years, we have essentially only two choices: either to conclude that God is a vicious tyrant who enjoys seeing men suffer or that He , despite the best intentions and love for humanity, makes mistakes. The first thought is so abhorrent to any religious person that it has to be rejected categorically right away. And so we are left with a picture of a less than perfect God trying to do His best, but not always succeeding, a God who is much closer to humanity than the one created by philosophers enthralled by the abstract notion of the infinite perfection. Of course, there is a third, an atheistic explanation, which by denying the very existence of God effectively removes the numerous moral contradictions the religious ones entail. But then it plunges us into the abyss of even greater cosmological perplexity. For the very few, if any, can consistently maintain the view of the infinite, both in time and in space, Universe which comes from nowhere and created by nobody. 1221. As long as I can remember I haven't met a single man who didn't think of himself as someone special, though when asked, few probably would be able to tell what exactly it is. Yet, there is something distinct about the artistic conceit, this almost innate conviction, however seldom it proclaimed openly, that what one as an artist is doing is better (or at least very different) than what every other artist in the same field has done. If one is a poet, his poems are better than the ones written by other poets, if a painter - his paintings are better than the ones painted by other painters, if a musician - his music is better than the one performed by other musicians, etc., etc. But while such an arrogance is definitely unappealing, it perhaps more excusable in an artist than in the rest of us. For if the artist doesn't believe in his uniqueness and creative superiority, what else could motivate him to go on, often against the almost insurmountable odds, doing his art? What would be the point to continue one's work, if it is only an inferior copy of what the others have done? 1222. There is, unfortunately, this one persistent problem with psychotherapy: while one is allegedly being cured from his/her obsession, whatever it may be, the therapy itself turns into an obsession. For a patient is so much afraid of the reoccurrence of the "old" obsession, and so much made to believe that the therapy is his only chance to escape it, that he/she becomes addicted to the therapy itself and now cannot live without it. Which is, I suppose, alright with a therapist, whose livelihood, after all, depends on this. But what good does do it for a man to get rid of one obsession only to acquire another. Then, perhaps, he/she should go to the second therapist to be cured from the first, and then to the third - from the second, and so on and so fourth. So after all that, may be it is much better, certainly much cheaper, to stay with one's original obsession and to accept it as inseparable part of living, especially considering the fact, though few are aware of it or would admit even if they are, that there is certain comfort in old miseries like in " better the devil you know than the devil you don't". Also, since before constructing a new personality, the old one must be taken, more or less, apart, there is always a risk that putting together the latter out of what has been salvaged from the former may very well proved to be an unsurmountable task, and then one would face the ultimate tragedy having to spend the rest of one's life in a state of psychological ruins. But even if a "new personality" could be created, there is absolutely no guarantee that it will fit you any better than the "old one" did, and then, of course, there is not too much time left to learn to live within it. All in all, before embarking on a long and difficult journey of psychotherapy, one should be fully aware that it is a gamble, and like any gambling there are a lot more chances to lose than to win. 1223. There is more than enough excessive cruelty, inflicted in the name of Justice, in the Old Testament to make a Christian brought up to believe that all his sins, past, present and future, are washed away well in advance by the blood of The Lamb, very, very uncomfortable. On the other hand there are equally enough excessive promises of unconditional Love and summarily forgiveness in the New Testament to confuse another Christian, who trusts the supreme justice of God to reward the righteous and to punish the sinners. Does the spirit of the New Testament contradict or compliment that of the Old one? Does the all-encompassing, all-absolving Love of Jesus oppose or temper the uncompromising Justice of Jehovah? I believe it is the second alternative in both hypothetical questions that is the true reflection of a complex religion which is commonly known as Christianity but more and more often referred to nowadays as the Judeo-Christian Faith. And in this Faith both Justice and Love have to coexist side by side in a not always comfortable symbiosis. But to coexist they must, for any time one side gets priority in this or that part of the Christian community the consequences are invariably dire. Justice given a full reign often leads to the unbridled cruelty and destruction, as anyone familiar with the history of the Church must be well aware of, while the indiscriminate Love fosters licence, unscrupulousness and immorality with the similarly appalling results. It is obvious that the only way to avoid falling into either of these two equally dangerous extremes is to combine them both in an appropriate proportion, fitted for each particular circumstance. Thus, it is when the Christianity accepts this as its ruling principle and, moreover, manages to implement it in solving the real life problems, it becomes the true embodiment of the Judeo-Christian Spirit and the Religion that most fully reflects Man's nature and serves Man's needs best. Finally, an individual Christian, who tried and succeeded in reconciling in his consciousness the apparent contradiction between Justice and Love, reaps the enormously gratifying rewards of comprehensive and internally consistent view of Life and God. But the one who fails is condemned to spend his days in a state of persistent confusion and uncertainty, never able to find peace of mind. |
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