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| QUOTATIONS #1934-1946 |
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| 1934. Fame's fringe benefits Fame, and the riches which usually accompany it, but especially fame, besides the obvious benefits also bestows on its favorites a kind of insurance against neglect and abandonment which waits most of us at the end of our lives. For though neither fame nor fortune save anyone from getting old, unattractive and decrepit , unlike the rest of us who are treated accordingly, the famous continue to enjoy love and affection, attention and care regardless. Young, healthy and attractive women and men often fall in love with them and are ready to devote themselves to take care of all their needs for as long as they live, while those who are neither famous nor rich are routinely mistreated and deserted. And at the age when ordinary people, however reluctantly, "resign from life" the renowned ones famously feel themselves to be well above such mundane considerations. And there seems to be an inexhaustible supply of people willing to prove them right. Thus when Georgia O'Keeffe in her late eighties and going blind was still looking for someone willing totally commit himself to her and her career she developed very close relationship with 26 years old Juan Hamilton who came first as some one to help to do the odd jobs around the house and soon became indispensable assistance/ companion. He was her eyes and ears, protected her from annoying visitors, handled all her business, traveled with her, co-authored several books, etc., etc. And there was more to it, as it usually is. In Georgia O'Keeffe own words "for the first time in many, many years she felt like a woman again"; she dressed, for him, she tried to be perfect, for him (remember, we are talking about 90 years old woman and a 30 years old attractive man.) Not that Juan Hamilton was completely altruistic either, far from it. We may assume, without doing too much damage to his reputation, that basking in the reflected glory of the world famous artist , promoting his own artistic career (which otherwise could have been non-existent) and looking forward coming into possession of some very tangible assets must have been prominent among his other motivations. So, as we can see, all things being equal, famous women are as eager to cash in on their celebrity as famous men. And this time we don't have to go too far for a male parallel. A man in this case is Alfred Stieglitz, a famous photographer and a husband of Georgia O'Keeffe. At the age of 63(his wife was 40 at the time) he also went looking for support, affection and adoration of a much younger woman and easily found it in 20 years old Dorothy Norman, young, attractive and adoring and very much willing to be molded by Stiegliz, thus satisfying both his ego and his lust. In her turn, through Alfred tutelage Dorothy became amateur photographer and a writer. Thus, as the above mentioned relationship this one was also mutually beneficial, as these type of relationships inevitably are –both sides know very well what they are getting into, though both invariably deny this, even to themselves (they are not called artists for nothing.) Of course, this subject would be incomplete unless we mentioned Pablo Picasso. Like king Solomon who in his declining years had young women in bed to keep him warm, so Picasso, the superstud of artistic world (mostly in his imagination) never had shortage of beautiful females fighting among themselves for this privilege, almost up to the point when the object of their contention was barely alive. But it is not only in love that the famous have more, much more luck. They also often get free ride when nobodies like you and me have to pay, sometimes dearly, for not following the rules of the traffic. For unlike the rest of us, hoi-polloi who when in Rome have to do what the Romans do or else, the famous enjoy much greater latitude, and when crossing one line too many are usually called endearingly eccentrics instead of trespassers or deviants. What is allowed to Jupiter is not allowed to a bull. And so, whether a man or a woman, if you have any chance to acquire fame while still young, healthy and attractive go for it, because it will come very handy when you are none of the above any longer. Think about old age, get famous. P.S. As she was dying, 10 people took care around the clock of 98 years old Georgia O'Keeffe. How many people do you expect at your deathbed? 1935.The most important life's lessons are usually learned too late to be of any use to a tardy student. 1936. Though a statement that ours is a consumer society is a truism by now, yet it is one, I believe, worth repeating every once in a while, because despite the fact that its inherent excesses unquestionably have the grave ecological consequences nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. For the main problem with consumer society, i.e. one where people consume according to their wants instead of needs, and of which we, the citizens of the so-called developed world, are at present the privileged members, is that even those who wish to protest against its most obvious shortcomings or outrageous extravagances can only do it through consumption itself, albeit by buying the "right" products instead of the "wrong" ones. The truly revolutionary notion that the protest can take a form of refusal "to consume" altogether never occurs to us. For ours is a society so permeated by consumption for consumption sake (the very act of buying apparently releases some pleasure inducing chemicals in women's brain according to the latest medical research –think about a trip to a boutique as a foreplay) that consumption became its very essence and not to consume is tantamount to drain life of all its meaning – I consume therefore I exist. And the "system," i.e., capitalist system is happy to oblige. In the consumer society a law of supply and demand really means: "Whatever you demand, we'll supply." Organic food instead of "fertilized and pesticized?" As much as you want. Natural fabrics instead of synthetics? It is our pleasure. You want small, fuel efficient cars? Can do. You want gas guzzling SUVs? No problem. The only thing the "system" cannot handle is the reduction in consumption. And so , it seems, its critics, even the most vociferous ones. For in a consumer society most, if not all, ways of self-expression are channeled through consumption, and understandably so. For everyone nowadays aspire to creativity, everybody longs for self-expression, but only a few are capable of either. For only a few are capable of the true self-expression which is in the production, not in the consumption, in the production of writing, music, visual arts, political ideas, scientific and technological discoveries, etc., etc. The rest, the essentially uncreative majority have no choice but to resort to the illusory but universally accessible form of self-expression which is through consumption. Thus, even those who "reject the system," when their rejection is materialized in actions, act by choosing one form of consumption instead of another. But what about the Sixties, "turn on, tune in, drop out?" In truth, nobody ever "dropped out." They just switched the consumption preferences. To think of taking LSD instead of aspirin and paying for the first 100 times more than for the second as a rebellion against dominant Culture must be the greatest delusion among many attributed to this "consciousness liberating" drug . The failure of countercultural revolution reveal the futility of rebelling only against the ends. One has to rebel against the means as well. Moreover, contrary to the popular among the Left believe, a desire for the excessive consumption is not artificially created by advertising brainwashing and consumerism propaganda. It is an innate characteristic of our spices, it is what separates the humans from the rest of the animal world. A man is a consuming animal, if you wish. He will consume to the limits of what is possible, and "max nature's credit card" whenever the opportunity presents itself. For those "huddled masses" in the so-called underdeveloped world who at present seems to want nothing more than food and shelter are just waiting for their turn to "crash the party." And if drive to consume is "natural" it can only be restrained by natural means. For most of human history the Nature imposed the limits by applying the Malthusian brakes in the form of mass starvation. And the fact that we've learned now how "to override Nature," doesn't mean that we will be as successful in imposing the artificial,"unnatural" limits on the natural drive to consume as well. The failure of Communism to create a consumer society to satisfy this drive was the main cause of its spectacular demise despite the enormous repressive apparatus it possessed and was willing to employ to suppress it. And though the West saw it as a triumph, the celebration, I believe, was somewhat premature. The victory, at the end, may prove to be a Pyrrhic one. 1937. To dispense with false modesty, I do believe that some people can benefit some times from experiences of someone like me. Or to put it more generally, we can all benefit from experiences of each other by openly sharing them. And in doing so, we have nothing to lose but occasional but temporary embarrassment. 1938. Two men and one woman is a dream of every woman and a nightmare of every man. Two women and one man is a dream of every man and a nightmare of every woman. So, as you can see, we are not that much different. It all depends not so much on a point of view as on the point of viewing. 1938. Why do heroes need hero worshipers? To assuage the nagging self-doubt that they are but imposters. Why do hero worshipers need heroes? To bask in their reflected glory, as in "if I admire something I probably have an affinity with it." 1939. An intelligent, dare we say wise, writer is always read with both pleasure and profit, regardless of a subject matter. Whether it is about gardening or international politics, love or war, etc.,etc., the work of such a writer is invariably illuminated by the powerful intellect and worldly wisdom, making the reading both pleasurable and profitable. In a sense, one doesn't read a book, one reads a writer. 1940. The test of true originality is not when the first response to it is, "I would have never thought of it in a thousand years," but "Why didn't I think of it first." 1941. The great knowledge does not always produce the great wisdom. For wisdom is of universals, but the knowledge is of particulars. And though no great wisdom can be attained without great knowledge, knowledge by itself is only necessary but not sufficient for obtaining wisdom. Thus erudition should not be confused with wisdom (as many mistakenly do), for the first may or may not lead to the second. Hence the question, what is it that transforms knowledge into wisdom, how a mind makes a step, perhaps a leap, from one realm into another? Plato believed that universals (he called them ideas) are eternal. He also believed that soul is also eternal and therefore knows universals through eternity. And when eternal soul becomes a soul of a man he has to recollect what his soul knew always. But how he never fully explained. Aristotle taught that universals are discovered first by accumulation of particulars and then by induction from them. But he didn't tell how many particulars one needs to make an induction, and why some can do it even with a small number of them and the others couldn't, no matter how many particulars they know. And so it remains a mystery. For there is no explanation of how one becomes wise. It is just given to some but not to others. By whom? Nobody knows. It is like asking why Mozart is Mozart, and Salieri is Salieri? 1942. These are the unmistakable signs of aging: what used to pain pains more and more, and what used to pleasure pleasures less and less frequently. 1943. No matter how classless a society is or will become in the future, one form of social division would always be with us – the division between successful and unsuccessful people, between the winners and the losers. Now, one special thing about success is that unlike many other desirable "goods" it cannot be bought. But it could be bartered. And so, the successful people, to maintain and increase their success always deal only with the other successful people. They trade success, influence and status with the successful, influential and prominent to gain more success, influence and status. If it sounds a little bit incestuous it's because it is. The successful people simply cannot afford to waste their success, influence and status on nobodies, because nobodies have nothing to give them in return. They may be allowed, or even encouraged to approach the successful people as the humble worshipers, but should never be so presumptuous as to ask the successful ones to share even the tiniest part of their success. For the successful people cannot be generous with their success. It is their capital, and everything else they poses and enjoy is an interest on this capital. And everyone knows you should never live of your capital. And the only way not to lose it is by exchanging it on another capital. Also, there must be an element of superstition (or worldly wisdom) at play here. Like, success breads success, and failure –failure, and both could be contagious. Thus, rubbing shoulders with the successful people one becomes more successful, and any intercourse with the losers may expose one to the deadly bacillus of failure. And that's why it is so important to be on the A-list. One just cannot afford not to be on it. 1944. As one who's spent the first half of his life in authoritarian East and the second in democratic West I am embarrassed and appalled by how naive my old compatriots, now the citizens of the emerging democracies which have replaced former Soviet Union, are. For fighting, as they did in Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, etc., against corruption and for democracy they don't realize that democracy and corruption are as inseparable as the two sides of the same coin. Here how it goes. A democratic government is the elected government. To run for an office one needs money, more and more every year. To get money a candidate has to ask for it. People, especially the business people who have the most to give, do not give money for nothing. They expect favours in return, i.e. they expect government to be corrupt. If they don't get special treatment, they wouldn't give money at the next election. If the candidates don't get money they couldn't run. If they don't run democracy couldn't function. Ergo, democracy is equal corruption. Can someone explain it to Ukrainians and Georgians. Can someone remind it to Canadians and Americans. 1945. Yes, the old may have wisdom and vision, but they lack physical strength and longevity to put them into actions and to see it through. Thus, they have to trust their disciples to carry on, the disciples who being different men of different generations invariably distort their wisdom and subvert their vision not willing to sacrifice their own ambitions to those of the dead men. 1946. People are different and so are their spiritual sensibilities and religious intuitions. Therefore, ideally the world should have as many religions as there are unique individuals in it, for no one would deny that we are all unique in some respects. Yet, no man or woman is an island, and to survive, both physically and psychologically, one must be a member of a group. Understandably, the initial groupings from the beginning always involved the development of a group's spirituality. As those initial groupings continued to coalesce into larger and larger conglomerates, to maintain their spiritual cohesiveness they had to develop new common religiosity. This was always done through competition, for the convergence of different cults is usually not possible because of their irreconcilability. And since these larger conglomerates were frequently the result of tribal wars, the religious competition also assumed the military form and the winning tribe would habitually impose by force its religion on the conquered. Ultimately, it were the soldiers and not the priests who had the last word on which is the true religion. This militaristic legacy became an integral part of every religion through metamorphosing into theological militancy. Two of the world dominant religions, Christianity and Islam, together with their common progenitor Judaism, present the perfect illustration of this symbioses of military power and militant theology, for in each case the conventional war was followed by the religious one. Each of these three religions emerged as an opposition to the preceding faith. Judaism arose in opposition to paganism, Christianity –to paganism and Judaism, and Islam–to paganism, Judaism and Christianity. Because they had to fight both militarily and theologically for their existence they are all militant in nature, and intolerant and ruthless to their opponents, seeing any compromise with them as a fatal flaw and sign of weakness. Moreover, the more opponents they had to defeat and destroy in order to survive(and the religious struggle for survival is as real and crucial as any other, make no mistake about it) the more militant they are. Thus Christianity is more militant than Judaism, and Islam is more militant than Christianity. Of course, they all occasionally have to pay a lip service to peace, for the majorities of their devotees are ordinary people who, unlike their leaders, abhor the perpetual fighting, knowing very well that "when the nobles fight the peasants die." All of the above sounds a death knell for ecumenicalism, for it is as doomed as Esperanto. Though both may be highly desirable, nations, especially the great ones, aren't going to give up their languages, and no religions, especially the dominant ones, will opt for something else instead. They see ecumenicalism as a dangerous Trojan horse, a hostile takeover, an insidious attempt to rob them of their hard won share of spiritual market. Paradoxically, despite their apparent strength in numbers, the dominant religions live in a constant fear of being overwhelmed by competition and Islam at present seems to be the most anxious, some would say paranoid, of them all. It is because Islam initially emerged triumphal mainly due to the strength of its arms rather than superiority of its theology, Muslims today are afraid that Christianity, the dominant religion of the West will use the West's military superiority to defeat Islam (those who lived by the sward, presume to die by the sward). And this is one of the main reasons of the recent Islamic militancy in the form of Muslim fundamentalism driven by the fear of losing a religious war. But Christians feel insecure too. One of the underlining factors of the Cold War was the fear that atheistic Soviet Union will use its armies to impose atheism on the Christians of the West by force. And though the Soviet Union has gone, the fear hasn't, and there is a wide spread feeling in the Christian community that they are still being persecuted. Which is the reason for the rise of Christian fundamentalism. And it is getting ready for Armageddon. How many are in a similar mood is hard to tell. For now what we have can be described as a kind of Cold War between the world religions. They're biding their time and jealously guarding their flocks. But situation is inherently unstable, for the spirit of religious militancy is still alive and the likelihood of the religious wars is still real. |
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