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January 22, 2010
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OUR REVOLUTIONARIES
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Their dreams were too big,
their ability to realize them too small,
and their faith in the West misplaced.
Result: the perfect storm of genocide.
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MY CRITICS
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They are unanimous in letting me know that
I should bugger off,
get a life, and
mind my own business.
And may I confess that there are times
when I am tempted to do exactly that.
What keeps me going?
Perhaps Abovian knew better.
Instead of getting a life,
he chose death – either that
or death chose him.
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CHILDHOOD
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They were so sure of what they were doing
and I was so confused and uncertain
as to why I felt as I did
that it never even occurred to me to ask:
“Why are you doing this to me?”
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January 23, 2010
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FROM THE MOUTH OF BABES & COMEDIANS
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George Carlin: “Traditional American values: Genocide, aggression, conformity, emotional repression, hypocrisy, and the worship of comfort and consumer goods.”
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RISE & FALL
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In his STUDY OF HISTORY, Toynbee writes: “A growing civilization can be defined as one which the components of its culture [economic, political, intellectual, scientific, etc.] are in harmony with one another; and, on the same principle, a disintegrating civilization can be defined as one in which these same elements have fallen into discord.”
You may now decide whether we are growing or disintegrating.
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TWO KINDS OF MEN
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“Hell is other people,” wrote Sartre. But according to his life-long friend-enemy, Merleau-Ponty: “When a man takes an oath to exist universally, concern for himself and concern for others become indistinguishable for him; he is a person among persons, and the others are other himselves. But if, on the contrary, he recognizes what is unique in incarnation lived from within, the other person necessarily appears to him in the form of torment, envy, or at least uneasiness.”
Wars, revolutions, and massacres are committed by Sartrian men. By contrast, great spiritual leaders from Socrates and Jesus to Gandhi and Schweitzer conform to Merleau-Ponty's definition of men who choose to “exist universally.”
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