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| QUOTATIONS 211-225 |
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| 211. We are not only what we eat, we are also what we remember. And if food makes what we are physically, our memories make us what we are psychologically. For as food is the physical "matter" that goes into building our body, the memories, similarly, are the psychological "matter" that goes into building of our spiritual being. And since our psychological self is clearly made up of many and different kinds of memories, and also because the Whole can not be known without knowing all its parts, the knowledge of all our memories is necessary for the complete self-knowledge, if that's what we are looking for. Now the general memory consists of the two main parts: the larger one is the potential or, to use the modern terminology, the subconscious memory, the smaller one is the actual, i.e. the conscious memory, immediately available to us. And since we are obviously and by definition is in possession of our actual conscious memory, it is the recovery of the potential and subconscious one that is needed to fill the gaps, so to speak, to reconstruct our whole personality. Thus, the recovery of the first, the largest, the subconscious part of the memory is absolutely essential to the understanding of what each of us as an individual is and that's why this aspect of Freudian psycho-analytical method has been such a great revolutionary achievement in the quest for man's self-knowledge. To repeat again, if we are what we eat, we must also be what we remember. On the other hand, the reverse is probably true too, viz. given the opportunity we will chose the particular kind of food because of what we are, and we all, certainly, suffer from the "selective memory syndrome", remembering one thing and forgetting the other because, again, of who we are. Therefore, our inquiry, unfortunately, cannot proceed any further because at this point we are faced with the question which had been asked by the philosophers since time immemorial (no pun intended) and which cannot be answered with any more certainty than the proverbial one "what comes first - a chicken or an egg". 212. Pleasure according to Plato, is a feeling of satisfaction derived from getting something we lack, and the more we are lacking it the more pleasure we derive from eventually obtaining it. As, for example, when we are thirsty, it is the water that gives us most pleasure, or when we are hungry it is the food, etc. It is especially true in the case of water and food for both are absolutely essential for our well-being hence we suffer the most when lacking them. By following this way of reasoning one may argue that understanding of what we perceive is also essential to our well-being and, as such, can bring pleasure, while the absence of it may cause discomfort or even suffering. Such understanding may manifest itself either as a simple and automatic reaction of our body to the sense-perception, like for example shrinking from a fire to avoid burns, or more complex and deliberate response of our brain to the information we receive from looking, listening, reading, etc., in order to choose the most appropriate and beneficial for us course of action. In the extreme situation the incorrect understanding of the perceived information can threaten our very life, as much as driving through the red light or drinking medicine intended only for external application. And so, throughout our lives we acquire, because of its essentiality, the habit of understanding, which serves us even in a situation when it is not essential to our well-being, at least not in a direct way, as for example when reading a book, looking at a picture, etc. Thus all men and women need understanding since it is as natural for them to understand as to drink or eat (hence the expressions: "hunger for truth", "thirst for knowledge"). And while the absence of either causes discomfort and suffering, to have them is to experience satisfaction and pleasure. 213. The ethnic minorities are both proud and resentful of their members who "had made it" in the Majority world. They are proud because the achievement of the "one of us" gives to all of them the opportunity to bask in the reflective glory without actually having done anything "glorious" themselves. But they are also resentful, because they view the success of the "one of our own" (whom they, rightly or wrongly, consider to be their "equal"), as the reminder to and the accusation of the rest of them of being unable to achieve the same. In general, depending on the circumstances and on the prevailing at any particular moment mood, the group will perceive the success of its individual member either as their collective success, or as a failure of each of them. Thus, both pride and resentment of the ethnic minorities toward their successful members stem not so much from what they feel about those who succeed as from how they, as the members of the same group, see themselves in the light of such success. Of course, it is also true that any ethic minority in itself is not a monolithic homogeneous group but, in its turn, can be divided into the so-called "sub-minority" and "sub-majority" with their own specific dynamics of interaction. 214. If the World were a hotel and each room in it were a different country, on the doors of Canada there would be a sign: "Do not disturb, please." 215. Never compete with a man you think of as an inferior to yourself; for if you lose the meaning of an expression "adding insult to the injury" will become painfully clear to you. 216. In a certain sense, the subconsciousness is a former consciousness that is either not used anymore, or used only occasionally, and then simply automatically, without making a choice or arriving at a decision. 217. It is no wonder that the older we get the less we think about the future and more about the past. For it seems that all that is good about life had already happened and what is going to happen doesn't look good at all. The pleasant memories are always better than the unpleasant reality, and what is pleasant about the old age anyway? Comparing with being young (and, unfortunately, the old are able to do just that) is preciously little. In their longing for the past the old sometimes go as far as reverting into childhood which is one of the few psychological weapons they have to fight off the grim reality of getting old. 218. There is only one straight line between the two points but there are many curved and broken ones. There is only one right answer to a riddle but there are many wrong ones. There is only one true version of the events that have already taken place but there are many false ones. The truth is both limited and limiting and as such attainable by and attractive to only a few, but the unsubstantiated speculations and hollow fantasies, distortions and deceptions are limitless and as such accessible and attractive to many. 219. Despite the widely publicized but rarely substantiated cases of the pathological multiple personalities, most of us, the so-called "normal" people, have to be satisfied with a single one. But some are not, and being probably unhappy with such a limitation (yet showing no visible signs of pathological personality disorder) they claim to be different persons at different times, which essentially amounts to having the "multiple" personality, though without attainting its sinister connotation. What they are, however, has nothing to do with the multiple personality phenomenon. They are, like the rest of us who are simply less "ambitious", just normal (as dreary as it may sound) individuals behaving quite naturally differently at different times and displaying in the process different sets of personal traits under different circumstances, which all living things do in order to survive, albeit some better than others. To achieve this goal all living things have evolved into the more or less complex organisms with many different attributes and Man, admittedly, is the most complex of them all. So it is no wonder that having so many diverse characteristics Man displays some of them at one time and some at another. To repeat, no living organism would be able to survive without having such flexibility, since the world we live in is in a state of constant change. Man again has to be the most flexible of them all since he lives not only in the physical natural world but also in a very complex social one in which the most successful are those with the most diverse set of personal attributes including even apparently contrary ones. As a result, people who are the most skilful in practising the intricate art of social interaction sometimes indeed can give the impression, not only to the others but even to themselves, of having separate and distinct personalities, which is of course untrue and misleading. But the greatest of follies is committed by those who believe that it is possible to chose at will what you are at different points in your life, as if the personhoods were like dresses in a store where we can walk in and buy the one we think would suit us best for this or that appropriate occasion. In reality, however, whether you like it or not, what you, figuratively speaking, see looking in the mirror is all you are ever going to get. For there are no other "YOU"s. There is only one and by the time you decide that you would like to have another version it is too late. And, probably, it has been late right from the start. Despite the apparent multiplicity and complexity of the personality's attributes the sum-total of them represents one unique "I", which, under a close scrutiny, is very much consistent in whatever it is doing or saying, as a direct result of what it essentially is. And all those different "I"s, each one of us occasionally displays, are nothing more than just different manifestations of the same, the whole and indivisible, always true to itself "I", and no more represent different personalities than the different phases of the Moon represent different moons. That is why the greedy can't be genuinely generous, for even when they try to it is the generosity of greed caused by vanity not by compassion. And the dishonest person is always dishonest, even when acting honestly, for in such an instance honesty serves his selfish interests better than dishonesty would, but not because he has suddenly become honest. Thus in all similar situations when one is trying to be, whatever the reason, what one essentially is not, the failure is inevitable, since nobody can be somebody else. I am what I am, and You are what you are. 220. Most of the times we get not what we want but what is available. Then, in order to feel happy, we try to convince ourselves, almost subconsciously, that what we've got is what we really wanted in the first place. And it is this ability of self-persuasion (or if one wants to be brutally honest, of self-deception) which truly separates happy people from the unhappy ones. Life is an art of compromises, to settle for the second best, forever getting all the rest, but not the coveted few prizes. 221. The mixed marriages between individual members of different ethnic groups is something all of us (especially those living in huge the cosmopolitan metropolises, the most vivid symbols of the end of the 20th century) witness almost every day. And they are, on average, as successful or unsuccessful as the marriages within the same ethnic community. Yet the symbolic socio-cultural "marriage" between different ethnic groups in one country seems, judging again by everyday life and historic experience, to be impossible. One of the apparent reasons for this dissimilarity is that sex, which is of paramount importance in uniting the individuals belonging to different ethnic groups, is obviously absent from the symbolic socio-cultural "marriage" of different ethnic groups themselves. The other reason, closely connected with the first one, is that in a mixed marriage (as in any other marriage but even more so) the individuals entering into it are willing to adjust and accommodate each other, though in reality they rarely succeed completely. Usually, the stronger partner dominates the weaker one and the adjustment and accommodation are mostly one-sided Yet, such seemingly unfair situation is accepted, if grudgingly, by the weaker partner, again because the sexual compensation tends to create the illusion of equality. The different ethnic groups in one country, no matter how hard they may try (though, in truth they seldom if ever do) to adjust and to accommodate each other, can never succeed, since the stronger one (numerically, economically, politically, culturally, etc.) will inevitably dominate the weaker one. And the injustice of such an arrangement is so glaringly obvious and compensation, if any, for the weaker "partner"is so insignificant that such a "group's marriage" sooner or later ends up, at best in a bitter "divorce" or, at worst, in almost total annihilation (cultural, political, etc.) of the weaker ethnic group. 222. Having started originally as a revolutionary liberating moral philosophy, Christianity had been gradually reduced and still largely remains a religion of the people with a guilty conscience who are afraid of death. 223. In the same way we speak about the universal grammar as fundamental substructure underlying all world's languages, we can also say that there is the "universal religious grammar" underlying all world's religions, namely, the sum total of the basic principals governing the essential relationships between the sacred and profane, body and spirit, god and man, etc. We can also extend this analogy between language and religion a little bit farther: in the same way as the distinct languages, while sharing the common universal grammar, differ, sometimes drastically, in their particular grammars, vocabularies and method of writing, the different religions, despite their shared "universal religious grammar" vary greatly in the specific theologies, numbers and functions of gods, ethical teachings, rituals, tabos, etc. But while it is impossible to give a reason (though many have tried) for each distinct language being what it is, namely, having a distinct grammar, vocabulary and writing, the connection between religion of a particular group (tribe, nation, etc.) and their life is much easier to discern. And since men have no other materials but the surrounding them reality from which to build their myths and religions, when looked upon objectively, most of the religious laws, rituals, taboos, etc. can be traced back to what were originally very important and practical everyday activities. Later, when the progress made them no longer necessary in a strict pragmatic sense, those activities, by now traditional, had been ritualized into sacred ceremonies, symbolizing the metaphorical meaning of the originally down-to-earth activities and, in the process, transforming the mundane into the sacred. These activities, notwithstanding some basic similarities, admittedly vary from region to region depending on a peculiar to each locality set of conditions, and, if we accept that a religion is the ritualistically symbolic, spiritually mystical, metaphorical expression of a socio-economic, cultural, historical and psychological experience of a particular national group, then we can make the next step and connect each particular religion with its original creator - the specific nation (using the word "nation" not in a modern political sense but more in a tribal, ethnic one.) Seen in this light, every religion reflects history and character of its original creators as, for example, Judaism - of the ancient Hebrews, Buddhism - of the Hindus, Islam - of the Arabs, Christianity - of the Hellenised Jews and Greeks, and so on... Then as always there are those who invent and those who imitate and use what has been invented by somebody else. This rule is applicable to such invention as religion too. For besides the original creators of indigenous religions there are other nations, let's call them "users" who adopt these foreign religions, either voluntarily or under pressure. Thus, for example, Buddhism has been adopted by the Chinese, Vietnamese, Tibetans, etc., Islam by the Turks, Persians, Indonesians, etc., Christianity by the Romans, Germans, Slavs etc. But those who embrace somebody else's religion never adopt it in its pure original form. It always undergoes more or less drastic transformation while being "digested" by the national character of the recipients, until it eventually becomes, by mixing local myth and folklore with the original theology and rituals, a truly national religion. That is why there is a Chinese Buddhism different from a Hindu Buddhism, which is different from a Tibetan Buddhism, which is different from a Japanese Buddhism and so on and so forth. Similarly, both Christianity and Islam had undergone national changes so that a Russian Christian, for example, is as different from an Italian one as a Turkish Muslim from his Indonesian co-religionist. At the same time, as religions have been set apart by the national differences, they have also been split along the denominational lines, which sometimes, but not always, coincide with the national ones. This shows that even within one national religion there are different groups which have to further subdivide the already divided and transformed religion in order to assimilate it in their own peculiar fashion to fulfil their specific needs. Of course not all indigenous religions are "portable". In order to be "digestible" by the foreign users they, like Christianity, Islam and Buddhism have to emphasize the primacy of the Universal over the Particular and to promote the Unity of Men instead of dividing them. Their theologies, in order to have the broadest possible appeal, ought to be sufficiently vague and abstract and, consequently, flexible enough to allow many different, sometimes even contradictory interpretations, without destroying the basic tenets of the creed. 224. Forget your titles entering this door, we don't worship idols anymore, one will be listen to, no matter what one says, as long as one gives other the same chance. 225. We like those who share our dreams and aspirations, until they try to turn them into reality or, even worse, when they succeed in doing so. For then their success becomes our failure. |
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