 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
page 1
page2
page3
page4
page5
page6
page7
page8
page9
page10
page11
page12
page13
page14
page15
page16
page17
page18
page19
page20
page21
page22
page23
page24
page25
page26
page27
page28
page29
page30
page31
page32
page33
page34
page35
page36
page37
page38
page39
page40
page41
page42
page43
page44
page45
page46
page 47
page48
page49
page50
page51
page52
page53
page54
page55
page56
page57
page58
page 59
page59
page 60
page61
page62
page 63
page 64
page 65
page66
page67
page 68
page 69
page 70
Page 71
page 72
pare 73
page 74
page 75
page76
page 77
page 78
page 79
page 80
page 81
page 82
page 83
page 84
page 85
page 86
page 87
page 88
page 89
page 90
page 91
page92
page93
page 94
page 95
page 96
page 97
page98
|
|
| QUOTATIONS 1224-1239 |
| ||||||
| 1224.To tell someone, who is constantly, perhaps even obsessively, preoccupied with the "small", seemingly insignificant things in life, to stop worrying about them and concentrate on the "larger picture" is to entirely miss the point, namely, that the majority of us have no "larger picture" to look at, and if we stop taking care of the "small" things, there will be nothing else left in this world for us to do. And we all know where the realization of this fact can lead to. 1225. The process of the societal fragmentation, driven since the onset of the Industrial Revolution by the accelerating technological progress, had been given in the middle of 20th century an additional boost, when the scientific advances in the field of electronics had culminated in the invention of Television and its introduction on a massive scale into everyday's life. What the millions of TV sets have done was to have moved millions of people out of the public space - streets, city and village squares, theatres and move houses, etc., into the private one - confinement of the living room. Yet in those living rooms some vestiges of social life have been preserved, albeit on the ever diminishing scale, for the TV watching is still largely a collective family activity, even if the family itself is getting smaller and smaller. But now it is beginning to look more and more as if the wider and wider spread of the latest product of Electronic Revolution - the personal computer - is going to complete this trend of societal fragmentation which started several centuries ago. For unlike the TV set, which most of people tend to watch together, it is a single individual that faces the computer screen. And the more and more time this solitary individual spends, propelled by the ever increasing applications it offers, with his computer, the less and less of it remains to be shared with the other human beings. Whether the desperate attempts to reverse this trend by creating the virtual community on the Internet is going to succeed is doubtful. Up to now it probably has done more harm than good. For while promising to give the already lonely individuals (the most common type attracted to Internet) some sense of belonging every human being is craving for, and luring in the process more and more of them into the intangible world of virtual reality, it has separated those individuals even farther from the rest of the society, inhabited by actual people made of flesh and blood (with all the pleasant and unpleasant consequences it implies), which is not exactly what they hoped for when "getting on the Net". There is therefore every reason to suspect that giving up what is actual and here for something virtual and there would in the end produce only one result - even greater, if possible, fragmentation of the community. 1226. All his life he was looking for perfection, until he has found the WordPerfect. 1227. Even the greatest among the philosophers, whose views are usually surrounded by the aura of the utmost objectivity and whose ideas claim the widest possible universality of application, when they pass the judgement on, instead of the abstract conceptions, the affairs of men, cannot help but to see them through the prism of their own surroundings. Which makes them, at least in this respect, not that much different from the rest of us. 1228. No matter how much I admire writers and how strongly I wish to be one of them, there is this ever present danger inherent in any writer's life I'm well aware and afraid of - the danger of becoming self-sufficient. 1229. So, my fellow writers, let me clarify something. If you can only put aside your pens for a moment and take a look, as an impartial bystander, at what you're doing, you would immediately realize that your obsession to write is just that - an obsession. And so, the next time you're having "writer's block" consider it as a recovery from obsession, and instead of feeling miserable, rejoice in the newly founded freedom. 1230. The computer is a perfect symbol of the modern western culture (or at least of what it would like to believe itself to be) - it allows a user to explore many a hypothetical possibility without having actually to commit oneself to any. For it seems that an opportunity to escape is always only a button away. 1231. Isn't it strange (and somewhat intriguing) that both The Old and The New Testaments, which were canonized by the established religious authorities, first of Judaism and later of Christianity, have so little good to say about the priestly order, the professional clergy who were the living embodiment of this authority. On the contrary, it is a prophet, the essential outsider and uncompromising antagonist of the priesthood, who never misses the opportunity to denounce the priestly corruption, that is celebrated throughout The Bible. It is to him that God speaks directly and it is he, not the formal Churchdom, that carries God's message to people. And it is the admiration of the people for the honesty and integrity of a prophet, it is their trust in his vision that, I believe, forced the religious authority of the day to include into The Cannon the Books of the Prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, etc., books which invariably contain the scathing condemnation of its official representatives if not of the entire institutional religion. Such a conclusion can be also supported by comparing the democratic politics of today with the religious ones of the times we are talking about, the times when Religion was politics. And in this comparison we may find close parallels between the past and the present. For it seems that nowadays a politician can only be successful if he, like the prophets of old, condemns the whole political class and sets himself up as a critical outsider. And it is also clear that the political establishment of today, like the religious authority in the past, are well aware of the mistrust and animosity they arouse in people and are willing to let a prophet, either of a political or a religious type, to do his criticism, as long as it doesn't threaten their real power and position. Thus, paradoxically, by canonizing the Books that denounce the priesthood the priests assured their own survival for a long time to come. For the prophets come and go but the Church authority, the clergy, the priests abide forever in one form or another. 1232. Oh, the burden of unfulfilled ambitions. How hard it is to carry you. And yet, it is even harder to cast you off. 1233. While admiring the splendour and opulence of the Renaissance, it is worth remembering that it has been literally purchased with the "wages of sin". For it was the money that came from selling the indulgences, which promised the full or partial remission before God of temporal punishment for sins committed by the buyer, that paid for the magnificent cathedrals and inimitable works of Renaissance artists they were adorned with. 1234. Throughout the Old Testament and especially in the Books of Prophets there is this one accusation hurled against the People of Israel again and again, namely, that they went whoring after other gods. And this was not just a figure of speech. For the whoring in the Biblical sense was always accompanied by the whoring of the more conventional type - the wide spread of immorality. In book after book the images of the religious transgressions were closely intertwined with the vivid descriptions of the moral ones. And the former were invariably hold responsible for the latter. However, without questioning the validity of this Biblical proposition, the reverse one could be made as well, i.e. that the general moral degradation into which People of Israel sunk from time to time had lead them inexorably to embrace the other gods. To understand why, it is well to remember that the gods after whom the People of Israel went whoring not only allowed but sanctioned the type of religious practices and secular behaviour that would have been abhorrent to the strict observers of Judaism. The human sacrifices, the ritual prostitution, the sexually explicit fertility rites, etc.;etc., were the norm of the day. One doesn't have to be a specialist in the ancient religions to know that. Even the casual acquaintance with the Greek mythology - the best preserved artifact of that period - which depicts the Olympian gods as murderers, adulterers, thieves (the list can go on and on) would quickly give one the idea of what kind of gods the People of Israel could have gone whoring after. It is perfectly clear that to those who lust for sin (and they represent the overwhelming majority of human race) the promiscuous Olympians, or Baal, or Astarte would be much more preferable than uncompromisingly moral and strict Jehovah. And so they went whoring after them in the times of Moses, and then in the times of Elijah, and then in the times of Amos and Hosea... And they still do. Given an alternative between the gods who give men an unlimited licence to do as they wish and the God who imposes strict limitations on the possible fulfilment of their wishes we all know too well what would be the preferred choice by most of the people, most of the times. 1235. Before I had a life, sort of. Now I have a computer. And it is beginning to look more and more as if I wouldn't be able to have both. 1236. It is not just the beauty but everything about us, ugliness and absurdity including, that lies in the eyes of the beholder. And, looked from a certain prospective, anyone can be made fun of, even ridiculed, for everyone has a funny or ridiculous side, though some, admittedly, have more of it than others. But no matter who one is, like the life itself (only to a smaller degree) the personality of any particular individual has many sides to it, some of them tragic,, some comic, depending on the objective circumstances and subjectivity of the viewer. And again, since no one can embrace all in one glance, it is up to the viewer which side to choose to pay attention to, and which to ignore at any particular moment. The majority of people are rather impartial in this regard and, depending on their own state of mind and circumstances, may look at the same behaviour or a personality trait either as "normal", i.e. not deserving special attention, or as "abnormal" and open to ridicule. However, there are, unfortunately, some individuals (everyone knows at least one) who are cursed (or is it we who are cursed, in fact , with them?) with what I would call the "caricaturist vision", who like their name-sake tend to home in on the parts of our personality we would rather make invisible. Everywhere and especially in everyone they look for the slightest hint of "abnormality" and then exaggerate it to a grotesque proportions. As if born with a special knowledge that everyone is vulnerable at one time or another to ridicule, they seek and see nothing around them but these moments. Like true caricaturists they relish the opportunity to make everybody look ugly and turn everyone into a laughing stock. They are drawn to deformity, and if couldn't find it readily available in one of us, would create out of their own imagination.. Thus they live in a world populated by freaks and monsters thoroughly enjoying the illusion of being the sole exception. Now, besides being nasty and unpleasant individuals, at whose hands we all suffer from time to time, the greatest damage these habitual "caricaturists" do is making us act , more often than we would have wished, completely out of character. For since nobody likes to be laughed at, it is not uncommon to put forward one side of our personality to cover the other. And so, sometimes even the good-natured people would rather act nasty than look ridiculous. 1237. A perfect conversation between the two is like playing a piano "in four hands": both players sit together behind it, each contributing his appropriate portion to the music, one anticipating at the precisely right moment the intentions and the movements of the other and creating in the process one harmonious melody. To continue the analogy, a good conversation between the two could be compared to playing a piano duet: the players sit separately, each behind his own piano, and while one is playing the other is listening, waiting for his turn, which comes at the regular intervals, allowing both players to share the playing time more or less equally. Of course, since in this case the resulting music is actually the sum of the two separate instruments, it is not as harmonious as in the first instance, though if the players are sufficiently attentive to each other, their combined efforts would produce a melody still pleasant to listen to and to be enjoyed by both. And finally, to conclude the analogy, a bad conversation (if it even could be called conversation at all) is like having one piano again. Only this time, unlike in the first case, just one player sits behind it and is playing all the time, while the other is reduced to the position of a passive, even if appreciative audience. And no matter how good the music could be, it would still represent a solo performance, or, to return back to the main theme, not a conversation at all but a monologue. 1238. In a certain sense any family, regardless of its size and composition, can be looked at as an organism and the members of it as the parts of the whole, each performing its specific function, or several of them. Of course, we are talking here about the functional family, not the dysfunctional one. Some functions differ qualitatively (in kind), other quantitatively (in degree). As, for instance, the roles of a husband and a wife in child bearing differ in kind - only a woman can bear children, a man can't do it. On the other hand, in taking care of children already born the difference between husband and wife is only quantitative one, for each takes part in it but to a different degree. It is in this area of the shared functions, which differ only in degree but not in kind, that something akin to the Law of conservation of matter in a closed system can be observed in a family, namely, if someone does a bigger share of whatever is divisible then someone else will do the lesser portion of it. Take, for example, the family in which several members spend common money. If we assume, for the argument sake, that the total amount of expenditures is constant (which is often the case in the family living on fixed income during any particular period of time) then it can be easily observed that while one member of it is doing his or her best to save the money the other is eager to spend the remainder as fast as he or she can. Thus, in a family situation, when one or several members of the family are thrifty there is always someone who is profligate (to keep the balance, so to speak). Again, the same law of conservation of quantity can be applied to any other family function which allow the quantitative division, like for instance, the responsibility for the welfare of the family as a whole, when if one or several members of it display the heightened sense of responsibility there are inevitably the others who would act irresponsibly, so that the more duties the first assume the more the second relinquish. Similarly , each family has its pessimists and optimists, its realists and dreamers, its takers and givers, etc., etc. And since this phenomenon of containing the opposites in one family (and surviving the inevitable conflicts produced by this) is so widespread, one may conclude that having both extremes of whatever kind in one family must be necessary for its preservation. For not only having all the members of the family being irresponsible would quickly ruin it (which is quite obvious), but, paradoxically, even when everyone is highly responsible, the competition between the different members for the honour of performing the most vital functions in it , and thus deserving everybody else's gratitude, would be so fierce that it will lead eventually to disintegration of the family as well. Thus the dreaded family's demise would happen not only when everyone is a profligate, but also when everybody is thrifty, not only when everyone is a dreamer, but also when everybody is a realist, not only when everyone is a pessimist, but also when everybody is an optimist, an so on, and so forth. Now, if we extend what has been said about a single family unit to the Humanity at large then it becomes clear that having the opposites contained in a certain proportion to each other within this Big Family must be absolutely essential to its normal functioning, and any utopia which in its construct of a perfect society proposes to retain all the positive human traits and to eliminate all the negative ones would be ill advised, if not completely unworkable. 1239. In the perpetual attempts to escape loneliness, which seems to be inherent in an individual existence, the two most often chosen routes take one in the opposite directions. The first leads backward toward one's parents, the second - forward, to one's children (the direction which is limited, obviously, to those who have them). In the regressive journey, one looks for the physical and psychological similarities one is allegedly suppose to share with one's parents (or even some more distant relatives and farther removed ancestors) hoping to gain in the process a sense of belonging and rootedness. In the progressive movement, one tries to shape (not always being fully aware of it) the children in one's image, and thus not only to insure the continuity of own existence but also acquire the soul mates one couldn't find in the world outside. The success in both endeavours could be a source of great comfort, and depends to a large extent on one's ability to maintain throughout life a firm belief that one's similarity with parents is automatically given (and just remains to be found), and also that one's affinity with own children is achievable, as long as one brings them up in a right way. On the other hand, because each of these notions seems to be so vital for one's peace of mind, even the slightest doubt in either, by growing in time larger and larger may result in the failure to escape loneliness. The most dangerous times in this quest for connectedness are at first when one becomes a teenager, and second when one's own children reach that stage. For in the first case, one often discovers that contrary to the popular opinion one quite often has little in common with one's parents, sometimes almost to a point of beginning to doubt if they are one's parents at all. In the second case, one may have to admit finally that all the efforts to make the children in one's image had been wasted, and that they are as different from one, as one is different from his own parents. Both discoveries could be quite devastating, and the ability to overcome them would make a difference between the life of relative contentedness, or the bitter and disillusioned one. |
 Sign Guestbook |
 View Guestbook |
|
. |
| Visitors: 00824 |