this and that

March 14, 2010
***************************************************
SLOGANS
*******************************************
To be brainwashed is bad enough.
What is infinitely worse is to be brainwashed by idiots who pretend to be smart. And what could be easier for an adult than to appear smart to a child, which is when they get you – when you are a child and cannot yet think for yourself. And they get you not with logic or sentences that make sense or have any connection with reality, but with slogans – slogans like “America the Beautiful,” “The Land of the Brave and the Free,” “Deutschland uber alles.”
Massacres and genocides come naturally to people who are brainwashed to parrot slogans like “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”
All slogans should come with a warning or a counter-slogan, such as “Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.”
“Workers of the world unite, provided you don't drop your pants and bend over to murderous morons.”
“Allawa akhbar!”
God may be One.
God may be Great.
God may even be Almighty.
But God is also Incomprehensible, and to speak in His name is to bluff and blaspheme.
#
March 15, 2010
***************************************************
QUESTIONS
*******************************************
Toynbee: “When prophets disagree, are we to give credit to either of their opposing voices?”
Likewise, when our dividers disagree...
*
The difference between an agnostic and a man of faith: the agnostic will not kill and die in the name of an entity whose existence is based on hearsay evidence.
*
Simone Weil: “It is impossible to forgive whoever has done us harm if that harm has lowered us. We have to think that it has not lowered us but revealed our true level.”
*
A noted French philosopher (Merleau-Ponty) once described the German occupation of France during World War II, as being “raped by history.”
How are we to describe our own experience?
After being gang-raped for 600 years we were eviscerated?
Are we dead or alive?
*
Questions that I ask myself seven times every day (which is how many times a pope is said to doubt his faith every day):
Am I wasting my time?
I am.
Why do I go on?
I don't know.
#
March 16, 2010
***************************************************
IF YOU LIE DOWN WITH DOGS....
*******************************************
If you lie down with cannibals, you are sure to end up in their digestive tract. Perhaps genocide was the price we had to pay for being not only subservient to them for 600 years but also their “most loyal subjects.”
*
Winners say they won because God was on their side or it was their “manifest destiny” to win. Losers say they lost because their enemies were predators who spoke with a forked tongue.
*
Prejudice comes as naturally to men of faith as extremism to fanatics and big lies to dupes.
*
The greater the number of divisions, the great the number of panchoonies and letters that end with the words “mi kich pogh.”
*
Who benefits from our divisions? Only our dividers.
*
I plead guilty to the charge that I recycle ideas as opposed to propaganda, and to propagandists, recycling ideas might as well be a capital offense.
*
Our crypto-sultans and neo-commissars are so insecure that they will promote any mediocrity that knows how to flatter them, and silence anyone who dares to question their infallibility.
*
I am not personally acquainted with any one of our leaders but I have dealt with some of their underlings and I am appalled by their intellectual mediocrity (which I am willing to forgive) and moral moronism (which is at the root of all crimes against humanity”).
*
Incompetent leaders might as well be shepherds who drive their flocks in the direction of ravenous wolves.
*
A belief system or faith is a product of man's creative mind as surely as the composition of a great symphony, and man has created many more gods than great symphonies.
#
March 17, 2010
***************************************************
THIS & THAT
*******************************************
The Irish like to say, “There are two kinds of people: the Irish and those who would like to be Irish.” How many kinds of Armenians are there? I would say, as many as there are Armenians; but I could also say there are also two kinds: dividers and their dupes.
*
If I am wrong, I can be corrected. But if those who are in charge of our destiny are wrong, the result may be another massacre – if not “garmir” (red) than “jermak” (white).
If I have said this before, I apologize. I happen to be an addict of reiteration. Or, as Socrates used to say, “To know is to remember.”
*
Awareness of ignorance is better than false knowledge.
*
When an American politician needs a dedicated aide, my guess is, he says: “I need a Young Turk.” I doubt if anyone of them says “I need a rug merchant.”
I read recently that Khrushchev referred to Mikoyan as “my rug merchant.”
*
My English dictionary defines “Young Turk” as “a young person eager for radical change to the established order.”
*
If what you say makes sense,
let your words speak louder than your emotions.
#