Sunday, October 28, 2012 ******************************************** ON POLITICIANS ***************************** If you trust them, you deserve them. * ON HISTORIANS **************************** There are two kinds: those who deal in facts and those who deal in fiction; and of the two, those who deal in fiction are the most widely read and taught in schools. * WHAT WE SHARE ****************************** As children we have all been brainwashed, but as adults to remain brainwashed is a decision we make freely and on our own. * IF ************ If you speak the truth to fools and liars, they will all you a criminal guilty of a capital offense. Two familiar cases from the past: Socrates and Jesus. And if you say things like that don’t happen any more, I will have no choice but to remind you that persecution and injustice have been and continue to be routine occurrences in history. To be an Armenian among Turks during World War I; a Jew in Europe during World War II; a dissident in the USSR; a Sunni among Shias and vice versa; a Hindu among Muslims and vice versa after Partition in India; a Black man in America; and last but far from least, to be Armenian among Armenians. I rest my case. Nothing further Your Honor! # Monday, October 29, 2012 *************************************** IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER *************************************** Fools and dupes (but I repeat myself) outnumber those who can think for themselves a thousand to one. It is they (fools and dupes) who make wars possible, revolutions a necessity, and collateral damage (meaning the death of countless innocent civilians) an inevitable fact of life like tsunamis, volcanoes, and earthquakes. * If I speak about dupes and fools with some degree of authority it’s because I have been one most of my life and to some degree I continue to be one because I think I can reason with them and convince them being subservient to authority and believing in their lies is an aberration, a crime against humanity, and an insult to God; and when I speak of God I don’t mean the God of priests, imams, and rabbis, but as a point of reference, an abstraction like infinity and eternity, and an unknown and unknowable entity or power that has endowed us with a brain with which to think for ourselves as opposed to parroting the propaganda line of a sultan, king, emperor, and commissar – compulsive and habitual liars all and as such the source of all evil. * You want solutions to our problems? Begin by believing nothing you are told, including what you just read. # DEFINITIONS ***************************** Prejudice: infatuation with one’s own ignorance. * Wisdom: awareness of one’s own limitations. * Patriotism: collective narcissism. * Barbarism: a room without a single book in it. # INTERVIEW ************************** Q: How would you define a man? A: A man is he who views reality on its own terms as opposed through the filter of an organized religion or ideology. Q: What’s wrong with religions and ideologies? A: They are the source of all lies and violence – that is to say, evil. Q: Are you saying Christianity is evil? A: In so far it has justified, legitimized, and promoted intolerance, prejudice, persecution, war and massacre, yes. Q: I am a Christian and I have persecuted or killed no one. A: That’s because you have lived on the margins of history – a privileged position that allows you to assert moral superiority; and to assert moral superiority is almost to justify war and massacre, which amounts to saying, if the morally superior kills the morally inferior he does so in the name of God or justice. There is no greater liar than he who speaks in the name of God. Q: Do you believe in God? A: I believe in the Unknown and the Unknowable, the source of all good and evil. Historically speaking that’s what all men believed before the invention of gods, which happens to be an extremely recent development. Q: Am I right in assuming you don’t believe in progress? A: Technological progress, yes; moral progress, no! The last century has been the most morally degenerate century of mankind – more wars, massacres, and genocides than in all other centuries combined. * (To be continued.) #