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| QUOTATIONS 1425-1452 |
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| 1425. Cognitive dissonance and Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are, I'm sure, more scientifically correct definitions of this peculiarly modern psychological affliction "cognitive dissonance", but I prefer my own, admittedly imperfect one, which runs as follows: we experience cognitive dissonance when confronted by a phenomenon which though outwardly familiar to us yet contradicts our previous assumptions about it, and by proving that out projections from the actual past are mistaken leads to frustration of expectations, one of the most disagreeable human experiences. Our everyday reactions to and actions toward the world around us depend on the set of assumptions about how it works, the assumptions based on our own experience or that of the generations passed. And most of the times they serve us well, for otherwise life would be unbearable, if not impossible. We learned the hard way that fire is hot and ice is cold and act accordingly. But every now and then, mercifully not too often, we face a phenomenon which contradicts all our prior experiences and defies all assumptions we're used to rely upon in the past. The world and the people in it suddenly behave in a manner they aren't supposed to and we have to adjust our action to the unexpected. And if we can't, because of inertia of the past, the consequences could be quite serious, even disastrous. And that's exactly what's happening to the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular when they encounter Israel. Imagine yourself in their place. Before, your experience was: you hit a Jew, a Jew bleeds, he is trying to get away, you chase him an hit again. A Jew pleads for mercy. He offers his possessions as a ransom. Depending on your mood you either let him go or kill him. If you kill a Jew you take his property, if you spare him you rob him all the same. And what's happening now. You hit a Jew, he strikes back. You bleed. A Jew strikes you again. Now it is you who is running. He doesn't chase you, but he takes your land. You try to retaliate and it all repeat itself: you bleed, you run and a Jew takes more of your land. You don't understand what's going on. It is outrageous! Unbelievable! Enough to drive one mad. How dare he?! It wasn't suppose to be like that There is something fundamentally wrong about it. Cognitive dissonance. For the past two thousand years the rule was that the Jews could be abused, humiliated, robed, assaulted and killed with impunity. The basic assumption was that the Jews are an easy target to vent your frustrations, to enrich yourself, and to gain self-esteem at the expense of Jewish powerlessness. However in the last 50 years all this, at least in the Middle East, has changed. Every time the Arabs try to act according to the old assumptions the Jews strike back. It happened so many time one think they should have learned by now and change their attitude. But apparently due to the above described phenomenon of cognitive dissonance they can't and continue to act on the basis of the old assumptions which are clearly no longer valid. And this psychological handicap is at the roots of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Foe if instead of Jews Israel was populated by English, or Germans, or French, etc. after so many decisive defeats Arabs would have grudgingly accepted the reality and adjusted to it. But to accept a Jew as a winner, as stronger, as invincible? They just can't. For it goes against the thousand years of experience and therefore could not be true. There must be some mistake. They just have to try harder next time, to use some other tactics, to invent a different strategy. And tragically futilely they do it again and again, from one disaster to another... driven by cognitive dissonance. 1426. Imagine a man who, when accused of murder, would plead his innocence on the grounds that he has blue eyes and therefore could not possibly kill anyone. This type of defense would be considered by all sane people as an act of lunacy, and rightly so. Yet, the same sane people when presented with similarly incongruous statements in the religious books, like Bible, Koran, etc. either accept them at their face value, or declare them to be a mystery inaccessible to human mind. And in ours, supposedly enlightened age, very few have courage to question such position. 1427. In dealing with the real, verifiable phenomenon the language, definitions and names are of the secondary importance. The rose, because it is real, is rose by any name. Not so when dealing with abstract immaterial things like soul, spirit, God, etc. Here the language is paramount. The slightest change of term can dramatically alter the meaning, for there is no verifiable reality to test such notions against. 1428. Some will put up with companionship for the sake of sex. Others will endure sex for the sake of companionship. And, of course, there are those who need both, and the others who want neither. 1429. Even a cursory inspection of any bookstore nowadays leads to inescapable conclusion that there is no idea, fact or hypothesis, no matter how clearly obvious it is, that could not be expanded to several hundred pages and with a good publicity and heavy promotion presented to the gullible as the newest revelation absolutely indispensable for their well being. 1430. Anyone, who had ever been in love, knows that it's a state (in comparison with not being in love) of complete and purest emotionality in which rationality is present, if ever, only as something inimical to it. When one is in love one is not supposed to think, i.e. to weigh pros and cons, negative and positive. All this is only destroys the state of euphoria and enchantment which is universally recognized as love. But since in real life all those rational considerations are vital to our well-being and survival, the pure, unthinking love has a relatively short span of life. Sooner or later it has to give way to pragmatic and practical thinking, which is the true test if the "love from the first sight" is justified in a long run. 1431. The best thing we can do for the dead is to treat those who are still alive better then we treated them. 1432. Though soul-mind dominates body it doesn't preexist it. 1433. Whenever I write about myself, I'm running a risk of being accused of self-centeredness, for it always seems to be in a kind revelatory, even confessional mode. Yet, some of the most popular books in the history of literature are confessional in nature. Take, for example, St. Augustine's "Confessions", or "Confessions" of Jean Jacques Rousseau. However, my "confessions" are very different in one crucial aspect: theirs are full of juicy personal stories and mine have none. And it is not because I'm particularly secretive. I just have no stories, juicy or otherwise, to tell about myself. Alas, there are neither stolen apples nor illegitimate children in my past. Which most certainly shall guarantee my well deserved everlasting obscurity. People seldom interested in what you think about yourself, but extremely curious about what you actually did. Deeds, not words indeed. And I have done very little. By any objective standards, I consider my life as being rather dull, i.e. devoid of surprises, ups and downs, twists and turns of fortune. Perhaps, one of the reasons for this lack of exciting events in my life is that I always tell the truth, which simplifies my interactions with other people to a considerable degree. Since others usually know about my past and present, my thoughts, intentions and inclinations quite a lot there is little room for misunderstandings, ambiguities, false expectations and, hence, disappointments and that‘s exactly what makes life so interesting, both in good and bad sense. For most of things happen to us because of misjudgments caused mainly by the lack knowledge due to either natural or intentional distortion. And truth makes this much less likely. So, let's face it: lie is the spice of life. It is also what stirs its cauldron. 1434. No matter how many individual Christians do what is clearly against the professed ethical percepts of their faith, they are invariably categorized as the unfortunate, but unavoidable exceptions, a few "bad apples" on the otherwise healthy and productive apple tree. But to the Jews such magnanimity is never extended. On the contrary, the misbehaving even of a single jew is taken as a positive proof that they are all no better than he is. In this case a proverbial one drop of poison apparently has the capacity to infect the whole tun of wine, or one scabbed sheep will inevitably mar a whole flock. 1435. As far as parades are concerned, the people could be divided into three categories: those who watch them, those who march in them, and those who lead them. By analogy such division can pretty accurately describe the respective roles different people play in other social and political activities. 1436.Recently, the opera singers began to complain that pop stars are moving in on their territory, i.e. singing and recording opera arias, thus preventing them from performing for a wider audience or signing lucrative recording contracts. But it is not only career and financial considerations that are behind their grievances. Not wanting to be perceived as the selfish prima donnas, jealously guarding their privileges, they also want to be seen as driven by the best possible intention: to save classical, high art from debasement and cheapening by performers who lack proper training and good enough voices for operatic repertoire. And they are absolutely right. But they have nobody to blame but themselves. When they, looking for the larger audiences and broader popularity beyond narrow circle on connoisseurs of classical music, began to perform popular songs, either solo or in duets with pop stars, they, in effect, broke down the wall that used to separate high and low brow music. But once the wall is broken you cannot deny people from other side access to your territory if you enter their. And thus the two way traffic began. Yes, the pop stars are butchering classical repertoire. But opera singers are doing just as bad in distorting popular music. However, what is even more distressing to the second group is that the first one is doing much better in this popularity contest and, subsequently, in financial rewards. And for an obvious reason: the mass public, to which both group are trying to appeal, simply cannot tell the good from the bad art. And in such situation the pop stars have an enormous advantage because they were well know and popular before, while very few knew their opera counterparts. 1437. Not only they look a gift horse in the mouth, but have a temerity to ask for x-ray of the teeth as well. 1438. There is something about writers that sets them apart from the rest of mankind, namely, no matter how joyful or horrifying the experience they go through there is always this writer's detachment present, like a small but distinct voice telling them: "How can I use this joy or this horror in my writing. 1439. Though often accused of it, the upper classes have no monopoly on phoniness and hypocrisy. The lower ones, the so-called simple folks, are not that simple either. There is plenty duplicity and play acting going on in their humble abodes. It is just different from the palatial version of it. 1440. After observing for some time how the government funds to support science and humanities are distributed and who amongst Canadian artists and academics receives the grants and who doesn't I came to conclusion that the philosophy underlying this ostensibly commendable enterprise must be very closely related to the one expressed so aptly and succinctly two thousand years ago by Jesus in the following words: "For the person who has something will be given more, so that he will have more than enough; but the person who has nothing will have taken away from him even the little he has." 1441. Those who so optimistically enjoin people of different races and cultures to find the common ground based on their shared humanity are missing one important pont that quite often members of the same ethnic group has very little in common with each other as, for example, a person who spend most of his leisure time reading books and someone whose idea of entertainment is watching baseball and hokey while drinking beer. As a matter of fact, it is the common interests and not the shared humanity - too broad, extremely ambiguous and thus greatly misleading term - that ultimately unite people. Thus, an English intellectual would find the company of his Italian counterpart much more congenial, than that of English football fan who, in his turn, would be much more comfortable with Italian football aficionado than with his countryman who is an intellectual. 1442. There is this one thing about clever people: no matter how successful in a conventional sort of way they are, they never create anything original. It seems that this excessive cleverness saps up all their creative juices. Being clever is a social phenomenon, one cannot be clever in solitude and that's where the real creative originality dwells. Being clever also means to have many faces, i.e. to be able to present to everyone "a face" he or she would like to see. This, obviously, takes such an enormous amount of mental and psychic energy that very little of it left for the original thinking. All in all being clever will take you a long way wherever you're going but it would never make you Beethoven or Van Gogh. On the other hand, if you are clever enough may be you don't even want to become either, though cleverness has never provided a full guarantee from vanity. The fate of humanity, the conduct of human affairs, its successes and failures can all be explained by the understandable, but regrettable fact that the world has always been ruled by clever people. For while their social skills are indispensable, their creative capacities are limited. That's why we are forever condemned to muddle along , but have no hope for anything better, for the Big Breakthrough. 1443. Women, in general, are much more than men concerned with externalities of life than with its inner causes and meaning. They go to concerts, for example, as much to enjoy the performance as, if not more, for the opportunity to socialize and show of their dresses and jewelry. For the same reasons the majority of church attendees are women. The social atmosphere, the visual and auditory esthetics are more important to them than the content of a sermon. And it is not surprising, considering the fact that in human species it is a beauty of female that attracts male. This biological imperative to look attractive is conducive to the development of appreciation of other attractive things and easily translates into giving to attractiveness and beauty in all things a position of primary importance. 1444. The Global informational revolution was supposed to show how essentially similar we, the citizens of this Planet, are. Which it did. But it also revealed how different we are as well. Moreover, it made it clear, only for the most blind believers in the unity of mankind not to see, that those unessential differences are more important than the essential similarities. For people, unlike plants or animals, are driven more the nonessential, external, social motivations than by essential, internal, biological imperatives. 1445. Now, with all these deceitful, scheming Jews hiding behind Christian names, how are the honest and trustful anti-Semites to chose whom to reject and whom to accept, whom to blame and whom to praise, whom to hate and whom to love? Could somebody help us to figure out who is who? 1446. As one grows older "listening" to one's body take more and more efforts, until it becomes the main preoccupation. 1447. A men's eyes are a woman's mirror. 1448. Paradoxically, it was a progress in European science, specifically medicine, the progress which has been achieved despite and against the opposition by the Church, that helped the Christian missionaries to acquire many grateful converts, who attributed their recoveries from the mostly fatal hitherto illnesses to the miracles of Christian God instead of secular science. 1449. Such are the signs of progress (or regress, depending on one's point of view) - when once upon a time the false prophets were considered the scourge of humanity, nowadays it is the false profits, as declared by the executives of the major industrial corporations that is the main source of grief of Mankind. 1450. I suppose the Eastern European countries, like Poland and Hungary for example, would have found Communism more palatable had it been imposed by the revered West, let's say the glorious and civilized France, rather than by the deeply despised as backward and barbaric Russia. For not unlike the proverbial Nazareth, from which in Biblical times nothing good was expected to come, so it was with Russia - as far as Eastern Europe was concerned nothing good could come from it either. 1451. As one approaches the end of one's life, one can derive a kind of perverse satisfaction from knowing that nothing essential will ever change for the better in the future, the future one is not going to be part of. Of course, there are going to be almost obligatory technological innovations of one sort or another, which will alter more or less some aspects of men's physical existence. But the most important things - the relationships between people, which are the main cause of human misery and happiness, grief and joy shall never change. And, for whatever it's worth, such perverse satisfaction can make one's inevitable death look less devastating and more acceptable. 1452. The wide-spread usage of e-mail, besides providing the fast and convenient way of communication at present, will also benefit, quite unexpectedly, the generations to come by sparing them from reading the numerous volumes of the selected letters of the famous personalities of the past, which while intended by their illustrious authors to be revelatory (or at least titillating) are in fact the tedious and bloated monuments to arrogance and presumption, full of phony sentiments and contrived thoughts. For there is something inherently artificial about collecting (or encouraging one's corespondents to collect) one's letters, which in this case are clearly written with more, much more than one pair of eyes in mind and with the implicit hope of the posthumous publication. Ultimately, however, they are designed, quite consciously, to supply the future writers of one's biography with the "appropriate" material to insure the "correct" interpretation of one's life and therefore should be read, if at all, with scepticism and suspicion. |
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