Sunday, April 14, 2013 ********************************* ON WAR AND PEACE ************************************* There are no just wars. A war in which innocent civilians die cannot be said to be just. * Countless wars have been fought since the beginning of time and in all of them there were winners and losers. * No nation on earth can assert military invincibility or, for that matter, moral superiority. Only Americans believe in their own moral superiority only Muslims believe in theirs, and so on... * If Americans and Jews were to behave like Turks did at the turn of the last century the world would witness a series of genocides on several continents. * Muslims may think they are invincible because they have Allah and oil on their side, in the same way that we (Armenians) thought we had the might of the Great Powers of Europe, plus God and the justice of our cause (freedom from oppression) on our side. It didn’t do us any good. It was all an empty illusion. * All political leaders (including Kemal, Arafat, and our own) are first and foremost baloney artists. They may successfully brainwash their dupes but they cannot fool reality. * If so far Americans and Jews have not behaved like Turks it may be because there is a difference between the autocratic East and the democratic West. * If Muslims want to coexist with their enemies they have no choice but to reject their undemocratic ways and realize that the concept of fundamental human rights is not an invention of the corrupt and decadent West. But even if it were, that does not make Muslims more progressive, civilized, and just in the eyes of the world. * Our choice is seldom between good and evil but between bad and worse; and sometimes even between worse and worst. # Hegel’s famous last words: “No one understood me except one, and even he didn’t understand me.” # The Nazis believed God to be on their side. So do jihadists today. The God of fanatics is the Devil. # ON MODERATION ******************************* “Moderation in all things,” Greeks said even as they condemned Socrates to death. * For every believer there is a non-believer. Who is right? Neither. Who is wrong? Both. * Trust your friend but respect your enemy. * Modify your assertions with their contradictions. That may not be the best way to live but it is the only way to survive. # REFLECTIONS ********************************* My real education began on the day I realized I was a brainwashed dupe and a self-satisfied idiot. * Words and reality (like ideas and God) move in two different dimensions that like parallel lines never meet (except in eternity). * Scientists tell us space has an end. What does this end look like? Is there some kind of invisible wall? What’s on the other side of the wall? * God is not a being, Thomas Aquinas tells us, but “being itself.” Whatever the hell does that mean? * Plato put it best when he said reality is like fire and words only shadows. * It is to be noted that after having a mystical experience Aquinas gave up writing and said something to the effect that all writing was no better than verbal trash. #