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A Few Quotations....
(at least it was a few when I started; it seems to have gotten out of hand.)
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure
that just ain't so.
--Attributed to Mark Twain and others.
Plutarch's Lives, Modern Library paperback 2001 (Dryden translation) p. 214:
So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything
by history,
when, on the one hand, those who afterwards write it find long
periods of time intercepting
their view, and, on the other hand, the
contemporary records of any actions and lives, partly through envy and
ill-will, partly through favour and flattery, pervert and distort truth.
The Six Mistakes of Man
by Cicero
1. The delusion that personal gain is made by crushing others.
2. The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected.
3. Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it.
4. Refusing to set aside trivial preferences.
5. Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of
reading and studying.
6. Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.
When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes
have been committed
in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the
name of rebellion. -- C. P. Snow
"Thought is a disease of the brain. The mind defends itself against the degenerative process
of creativity;
it begins to jell; notions solidify into inalterable systems."
--Thomas M. Disch Camp Concentration
"Some people's idea of free speech is that they are free to say anything they like, but if
anyone says anything
back, that is an outrage." --Winston Churchill
"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything." --Mark Twain
"Jesus is coming -- look busy!" --Wavy Gravy
"A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking." --Arthur Block
"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history --
with the possible
exceptions of handguns and tequila." --Mitch Ratliffe
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
--Groucho Marx
Time is nature's way of preventing everything from happening at once. ------- Graffito.
He who mounts a wild elephant goes where the wild elephant goes. --------Randolph Bourne.
It does not do you good to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.
---- J. R. R. Tolkein
[Robert A.]Wilson also criticized scientific types with overly rigid belief systems, equating
them with religious fundamentalists in their fanaticism. In a 1988 interview, when asked
about his newly-published book The New Inquisition: Irrational Rationalism and the Citadel
of Science, Wilson commented: "I coined the term irrational rationalism
because those people claim to be rationalists, but they're governed by
such a heavy body of taboos. They're so
fearful, and so hostile, and so narrow, and frightened, and uptight and
dogmatic... I wrote this book because I got tired satirizing
fundamentalist Christianity... I decided to satirize fundamentalist
materialism for a change, because the two are equally comical... The
materialist fundamentalists are funnier than the Christian
fundamentalists, because they think they're rational! ...They're never
skeptical about anything except the things they have a prejudice
against. None of them ever says anything skeptical about the AMA, or
about anything in establishment science or any entrenched dogma.
They're only skeptical about new ideas that frighten them. They're
actually dogmatically committed to what they were taught when they were
in college..."
"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."
-- George Bernard Shaw
"...you may tend to get cancer from the thing that makes you want to smoke so much, not
from the smoking itself." (from Not Dying, 1963) William Saroyan
We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had:-- the individual’s right to oppose both flag and
country when he (just he, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and
with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.
-- Mark Twain
Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for
patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And
when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed,
the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and
blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For
this is what I have done. And I am Caesar. --Julius Caesar
[Three similar quotes:]
Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current;
no sooner is a thing brought
to sight than it is swept by and another takes
its place, and this too will be swept away.
--Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
---
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent
him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate
in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too,
shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of
pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!
-Abraham Lincoln
---
Artist/Band: Crowell Rodney This Too Will Pass
Album: Fate's Right Hand
When the winds of change hit hard and knock you off your guard
And you find out there's a serpent in the grass
Though forked tongues might speak if truth is what you seek
This too will pass
---
When you're all tied up in knots and your friends are taking shots
And the sun comes up and kicks you in the ass
When your stumbling down the aisle and you feel like you're on trial
This too will pass
Sometimes you've gotta go down the middle of the road
Where compromise puts speed bumps in your path
If you know what you won't let no one say you don't
This too will pass
Sometimes you gotta crawl through the middle of it all
But don't compromise your heart for something crass
When everything you do just feels like nothing new
This too will pass
When your all locked up in pain be careful who you blame
This too will pass
I wanted you to see what real courage is,
instead of getting an idea that courage is
a
man with a gun in his hand. It's when
you know you're licked before you begin
but
you begin anyway and you see it through
no matter what.
--Harper Lee
To be a good Zen Buddhist it is not enough to follow the teaching of its founder; we
have to experience the Buddha's experience. When we just follow the teaching, that teaching,
however noble and exalted it may be, does not become our own. Buddha did not want his
followers to follow his teachings blindly. He wanted his disciples to experience what he
himself experienced, and to have his teachings proved by each follower's personal experience.
Experience, therefore, counts much more in Buddhism than its teaching. In other religions
the founder expects his teachings to be followed by his devotees, who do not necessarily
repeat the experience of the founder. The founder gives instructions, and the followers follow
those instructions; they do not necessarily experience the same experience. In some religions
the repetition of such experience is even considered to be impossible because the founder's
experience is divine, and we humans cannot have the same divine experience.
D. T. Suzuki, The Awakening of Zen, p. 90 (Explaining Zen I)
From the notes (p. 375) to I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter:
"My father's friend Bob Herman (a top-notch physicist who famously co-predicted the
cosmic background radiation fifteen years before it was observed) loved to recite this riddle,
putting on a strong Yiddish accent: "A tramp in the woods happened upon a hornet's nest.
When they stung him with alacrity, celerity, assiduity, vim, vigor, vitality, savoir-faire,
and undue velocity, 'Oh!', he mused, counting his bumps, 'If I had as many bumps on the
left side of my right adenoid as six and three-quarters times seven-eighths of those
between the heel of Achilles and the circumference of Adam's apple, how long would it
take a boy rolling a hoop up a moving stairway going down to count the splinters on a
boardwalk if a horse had six legs?'"
In 1991 [Yehudi] Menuhin was awarded the prestigious Wolf Prize by the Israeli Government. In the Israeli
Knesset he gave an acceptance speech in which he criticised Israel's continued occupation of the West Bank:
This wasteful governing by fear, by contempt for the basic dignities of life, this steady asphyxiation of a
dependent people, should be the very last means to be adopted by those who themselves know too well the
awful significance, the unforgettable suffering of such an existence. It is unworthy of my great people, the
Jews, who have striven to abide by a code of moral rectitude for some 5,000 years, who can create and
achieve a society for themselves such as we see around us but can yet deny the sharing of its great qualities
and benefits to those dwelling amongst them.
[Aminals] lack a symbolic identity and the self-consciousness that goes with it.
They merely act and move reflexively as they are driven by their instincts. If
they pause at all, it is only a physical pause; inside they are anonymous, and even
their faces have no name. They live in a world without time, pulsating, as it were
in a state of dumb being . . . The knowledge of death is reflective and conceptual,
and animals are spared it. They live and they disappear with the same thoughtlessness:
a few minutes of fear, a few seconds of anguish, and it is over. But to live a whole
lifetime with the fate of death haunting one's dreams and even the most sun-filled
days--that's something else.
-- Ernest Becker
[Smart guy, to know all that about how it is to be an animal.]
"...from the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they were
far wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this
was they were old, too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture...."
W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale
"...I began to meditate upon the writer's life. It is full of
tribulation. First he must endure poverty and the world's indifference;
then, having achieved a measure of success, he must submit with a good
grace to its hazards. He depends upon a fickle public. He is at the
mercy of journalists who want to interview him and photographers who
want to take his picture, of editors who harry him for copy and tax
gatherers who harry him for income tax, of persons of quality who ask
him to lunch and secretaries of institutes who ask him to lecture, of
women who want to marry him and women who want to divorce him, of
youths who want his autograph, actors who want parts and strangers who
want a loan, of gushing ladies who want advice on their matrimonial
affairs and earnest young men who want advice on their compositions, of
agents, publishers, managers, bores, admirers, critics, and his own
conscience. But he has one compensation. Whenver he has anything on his
mind, whether it be a harassing reflection, grief at the death of a
friend, unrequited love, wounded pride, anger at the treachery of
someone to whom he has shown kindness, in short any emotion or any
perplexing thought, he has only to put it down in black and white,
using it as a theme of a story or the decoration of an essay, to forget
all about it. He is the only free man."
W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us--don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
Emily Dickinson
"Victory was to be bought so dear as to be almost indistinguishable from defeat."
"The sufferings and impoverishment of peoples might arrest their warfare, the collapse
of the defeated might still the cannonade, but their hatreds continue unappeased and their
quarrels are still unsettled. The most complete victory ever gained in arms has failed to
solve the European problem or remove the dangers which produced the war."
p. 291
The World Crisis 1911-1918
Winston S. Churchill,
Abridged and Revised Edition (1931/1959)
[Free Press/Simon and Schuster]
And p. 507 (Chapter XXXV)
"The Christian States of the Balkans were the children of oppression and revolt.
They had recovered their freedom after cruel struggles only during the last hundred years.
Their national characteristics were marked by these hard experiences. Their constitutions
and dynasties resulted from them. Their populations were poor, fierce and proud. Their
governments were divided from one another by irreconcilable ambitions and jealousies.
Every one of them at some ancient period in its history had been the head of a considerable
Empire in these regions, and though Serbian and Bulgarian spendours had been of brief
duration compared to the glories of Greece, each looked back to this period of greatness as
marking the measure of its historic rights. All therefore simultaneously considered themselves
entitled to the ownership of territories which they had in bygone centuries possessed only
in succession. All therefore were plunged in convulsive quarrels and intrigues.
"It is to this cause that their indescribable sufferings have been mainly and primarily
due. It was not easy for all or any of these small States to lift themselves out of this dismal
and dangerous quagmire or find a firm foothold on which to stand. Behind the national
communities, themselves acting and reacting upon each other in confusion, there were in
each country party and political divisions and feuds sufficient to shake a powerful Empire.
Every Balkan statesman had to thread his way to power in his own country through
complications, dangers and surprising transformations, more violent, more intense than those
which the domestic affairs of great nations revealed. He arrived hampered by his past and
pursued by foes and jealousies, and, thus harassed and weakened, had to cope with the
ever-shifting combinations of Balkan politics, as these in turn were influenced by the
immense convulsions of the Great War.
"In addition to all this came the policy of the three great allied Powers. France
and Russia had each its own interests and outlook, its favorite Balkan State and its
favourite party in each State. Great Britain had a vague desire to see them all united,
and a lofty impartiality and detachment scarcely less baffling. To this were super-added
the distracting influences of the various Sovereigns and their Teutonic origins or relations.
In consequence, the situation was so chaotic and unstable, there were so many vehement
points of view rising and falling, that British, French and Russian statesmen never succeeded
in devising any firm, comprehensive policy. On the contrary, by their isolated, half-hearted
and often contradictory interventions, they contributed that culminating element of disorder
which led every one of these small States successively to the most hideous forms of ruin.
"Yet all the time the main interests of the three great Allies and of the four Balkan
kingdoms were identical, and all could have been protected and advanced by a single
and simple policy. The ambitions of every one of the Balkan States could have been
satisfied at the expense of the Turkish and Austrian Empires. There was enough for all,
and more than enough. The interest of the three great Allies was to range the Balkan States
against these Empires. United among themselves, the Balkan States were safe: joined to
the three Allies, they could not fail to gain the territories the coveted. The addition of
the united Balkan States to the forces of the Entente must have involved the downfall of
Austria and Turkey and the speedy, victorious termination of the war. For everyone
there was a definite prize. ....[list]
".....To realize these advantages, certain consessions had to be made by the
Balkan States among themselves. ....[another list]
"It is astonishing [to Churchill] that when all interests were the same, when so
many powerful means of leverage and stimulus were at hand, everything should
without exception have gone amiss."
[Churchill explains why there was no united effort, and then wonders why! This whole
thing also applies to other wars and is still applicable to the present: narrow-"minded"
squabbles among various vested interests consisting of a terrified and greedy (small in
numbers, large in "possession" and "power") section of societies, willing to do
anything to maintain their positions. So obviously, the main interests of all these
clowns was not the same.]
In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing.
Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is
some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a "party
line." Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless,
imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets,
leading articles, manifestoes, White Papers and the speeches of
under-secretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are
all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid,
home-made turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the
platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases--bestial
atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world,
stand shoulder to shoulder--one often has a curious feeling that one is
not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which
suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the
speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have
no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who
uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance towards turning
himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his
larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were
choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that
he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost
unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the
responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not
indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of
the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India,
the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on
Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too
brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the
professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to
consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy
vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the
inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned,
the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called
pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent
trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is
called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are
imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or
sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called
elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one
wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.
Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending
Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing
off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so."
Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
"While freely conceding that the Soviet régime exhibits certain
features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I
think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political
opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and
that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to
undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete
achievement."
The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words
falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering
up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.
When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one
turns, as it were instinctively, to long words and exhausted idioms,
like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. In our age there is no such thing
as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and
politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and
schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must
suffer. I should expect to find--this is a guess which I have not
sufficient knowledge to verify--that the German, Russian and Italian
languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years as a
result of dictatorship.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A
bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who
should and do know better. The debased language that I have been
discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not
unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no
good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind,
are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's
elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that
I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting
against. By this morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with
conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he "felt impelled" to
write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence
that I see: "[The Allies] have an opportunity not only of achieving a
radical transformation of Germany's social and political structure in
such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but
at the same time of laying the foundations of a cooperative and unified
Europe." You see, he "feels impelled" to write--feels, presumably, that
he has something new to say--and yet his words, like cavalry horses
answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar
dreary pattern. This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay
the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be
prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such
phrase anesthetizes a portion of one's brain.
---------------------------------------------------------
....one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is
connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring
about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify
your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You
cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid
remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political
language-and with variations this is true of all political parties,
from Conservatives to Anarchists--is designed to make lies sound
truthful and murder respectable. and to give an appearance of solidity
to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at
least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if
one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase--some
jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable
inferno or other lump of verbal refuse--into the dustbin where it
belongs.
Politics and the English Language
BY GEORGE ORWELL
"Formerly tyranny used the clumsy weapons of chains and hangmen; nowadays even despotism,
though it seemed to have nothing to learn, has been perfected by civilization. . . . Under the absolute
government of a single man, despotism, to reach the soul, clumsily struck at the body, and the soul,
escaping from such glows, rose gloriously above it; but in democratic republics that is not at all
how tyranny behaves; it leaves the body alone and goes straight for the soul."
Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America
As soon as a man does something admirable, the
entire universe conspires to see that he never does it again.
Goethe
O servant, where dost thou seek me?
Lo! I am beside thee.
I am neither in the temple nor in the mosque,
neither am I in rites and ceremonies
nor in yoga nor in renunciation.
If thou art a true seeker, thou shalt at once see me.
Thou shalt meet me in a moment's time.
Songs of Kabir (trans. R. Tagore)
[found in The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen]
This is a consideration which is too often neglected in the present-day
rehabilitation of scholastic thought; viz. the reaction of layfolk from the unjust
neglect or misrepresentations of the past. We must face both sides equally frankly.
The more we admire the intellectual and moral greatness of those scholastics, and the
greater gratitude we feel for their achievements in many directions, the more deeply we must
deplore those now abandoned falsehoods which, dominating their age, naturally fettered
their thought. Nor is there anything Pharisaical in this outspoken condemnation, so long
as we remember the exhortation "Physician, heal thyself". The specialist in every age (not
excepting the scientist of to-day, who here has least excuse of all) is tempted to
create, or accept on insufficient evidence, dogmas of his own. In every age, the supreme
achievement is a Socratic realization of our precise intellectual limitations.
Therefore, if there exists in modern Europe a mind of the calibre of Aquinas, it must be
even more deplorable that he should be infected as Aquinas was by the fatal illusions of
this, his own century. Stubbs, one of the weightiest and most balanced among all our great
English historians, summarizes the Scholastics in words which would probably commend
themselves to the majority of impartial historians. "They benefited mankind by exercising
and training subtle wits, and they reduced dialectics, almost, we might say, logic itself,
to absurdity. I do not undervalue them, because the great men among them were so great that
even such a method did not destroy them: in reading St Thomas Aquinas, for instance, one
is constantly provoked to say, what could not such a mind have done if it had not been
fettered by such a method?" By their application of reason to theology, they carried the
West far beyond its earlier semi-barbarian stage of still more uncritical citation of
authorities and frankly emotional exposition. In combination with the lawyers, who were
pursuing parallel methods in their own sphere, these Schoolmen laid the foundations of
modern political science. Thus they added definitely to our social inheritance: the West
was thenceforward on a higher plane.
Moreover, within their limitations the Schoolmen often showed amazing
industry and acumen. Aqunas, in especial, commands hearty admiration even from modern
philosophers who are least disposed to accept many of his most important conclusions. They
commend him for the almost incredible volume of work which he completed in a comparatively
short life, and for his penetration and philosophical grasp. He, like by far the greater
number of distinguished Schoolmen, was a fiar. In this field England may boast
extraordinary distinction.
A Swiss Franciscan scholar writes: "The English nation has given to the Franciscan Order
a greater number of eminent scholars than all the rest of the nations put together.
Indeed, if we consider the real leaders of the Minorite schools, they all belonged, with
the exception of Bonaventura, to England." No other country can produce such a Franciscan
trio as Roger Bacon (d. 1294), Duns Scotus (d, 1308) and William of Ockham (d. 1349).
Duns, it is true, was born in Lowland Scotland; but he taught at Oxford, and the
culture of Lowland Scotland was then as characteristically English as that of modern
Belgium is French, or that of Austria German. And Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln,
though not a friar, set an impress upon the Franciscans at Oxford which brought that
University to the front rank of Europe.
G. G. Coulton, Medieval Panorama, Chapter XXXII. (1938)
Here, however, we are confronted with a paradox which, thrown out by
one brilliant journalist, is sometimes repeated seriously even by historians. Mr. G. K.
Chesterton once wrote: "Never in the whole history of the world did so many people believe
so firmly in so many things, the authority for which they could not test, as do Londoners
to-day." Here would seem to lurk three gross fallacies. In the first place, the complexity
of modern life compels the Londoner to face a multitude of ideas, right or wrong, out of
all proportion to those of the medieval peasant, the narrow simplicity of whose life forms
one of its greatest attractions for modern romance. The ideas thus forced upon him are
probably at least tenfold as numerous, perhaps even a hundredfold; yet he has not ten
times more hours in the day for pause and verification. Since we are dealing with ancient
times, it may not be too trivial to quote an ancient quip: Why do white sheep eat so much
more than black? The answer, of course, is as incontestably true as the fundamental
implication of the question is foolish. White sheep eat more than black because there are
so many more of them. The modern londoner has so many more ideas unverified, because he
has more ideas altogether. Secondly, again, the modern Londoner does
in fact verify a larger proportion of his ideas than this cynical observation would
imply. Complete verification is possible to none of us, not even to the greatest expert;
in the large majority of cases we can but roughly test the authority upon which we accept
any statement. This testing the average Londoner performs very imperfectly, perhaps, but
at least far more fully than his medieval ancestor. He knows that a great many false
assertions and false claims are current; but he knows also (competition being such as
it is, and young critics so healthily eager to correct their seniors) that we may
generally trust the scientist, the lawyer, and the doctor to be right in the main [!!!].
Our Londoner has never seen a bacillus; but he could give an incomparably more accurate
account of the causes of typhoid than could have been given by the medieval expert, let
alone by those patients, who, on the strength of that expert's astrological calculations,
believed themselves to be smitten from the stars. And, thirdly, the importance of these
things believed without full examination by the modern Londoner would seem incomparably smaller than in the Middle Ages. .........
[Heaven & Hell]
G. G. Coulton, Medieval Panorama, Chapter XXXVI.
"...---Death we can face: but knowing, as some of us do, what is human life, which
of us is it that without shuddering could (if consciously we were summoned) face
the hour of birth?"
Thomas De Quincey, very end of Suspiria de Profundis.
“The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of
the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that
in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a
fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the
inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable
inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their
misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent
their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the
delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are
challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in
the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this
vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save
us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a
humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind,
there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits
than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our
responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another
and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've
ever known.” [I
personally question that last phrase....only.]
? Carl Sagan <http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10538.Carl_Sagan>
"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)
"Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch!"
[That is not only not right, it is not even wrong!]
-Wolfgang Pauli
My Dear Colleagues and Fellow Earth Companions,
I was born in Crete, a beautiful island of Greece, where even from a
very young age, I had heard about the dreadful act committed against
humanity during WWII in Japan.
On a recent radio show in the USA, I was asked the question: How many
more people would have been killed if the war had not ended? My answer
was that we do not know. The host of the show was happy with my answer,
believing many millions more would have died, which justified the use
of nuclear bombs to end the war. Obviously, he understood precisely
what he was conditioned to believe, not what I was trying to convey. My
point was that the war was almost over and the abhorrent act was not
necessary, while he saw it as a heroic act.
It is what we see that we bring into our lives. What people think is
eventually manifested in the world. And the world thinks of war when it
prepares for war. We still continue with the same way of thinking. We
have not learned the lesson.
I consider it a privilege to be here today, to feel your history first
hand. There are some people who have realized that the human species
has become an endangered species and that we are running out of time.
What should scientists do? How many more times can we ask that question?
We scientists who have understood the seriousness of our human
condition must act on behalf of those who have not. I am asking these
scientists worldwide to come together and establish a relief agency for
assisting those scientists who are still within the system, but are
ready to wash their hands of work that supports war; an agency that
will support them in every possible way when they take the leap of
faith to advocate for peace.
Let us take the food from our storage houses and provide it for those
who want to work for peace but do not have the faith to depart from
their unsatisfying jobs. There are thousands in this condition who have
no place to turn. They are trapped. A similar relief agency should be
established for military officers and other occupations that promote
violence in our lives. We scientists have created a monster and it is
time to take responsibility for its abolition. Let us start talking
about solutions and acting rather than just describing the problem.
Activists today are spending an incredible amount of resources to
describe the hell we have created, fewer are working towards solutions,
and even fewer are acting on the suggested solutions. We will not see
any real change towards peace unless we start caring for one another
and stop caring for our institutions. Let us give a hand to one another
instead of to the institutions. Today I am appealing to you, a
scientist to scientists. Let us make changes with determination to stop
sacrificing life and instead, to support it.
For the first time in the academic history of the human species, we
must consciously establish programs in our schools to promote peace. We
must replace the culture of violence with a culture of peace. We must
act now, each of us, to avoid the universal catastrophe that Einstein
and others predicted. Our governments will not do this for us.
People around the world want to live in peace. They do not want to
continue to be deceived and manipulated by their governments to accept
war and devastation as a path to peace.
Let us form global partnerships here in our new role as scientists of
conscience, and leave Japan, committed to concrete solutions for a
nuclear-free 21st century. We must bring the voices of indigenous
people, communities, and NGO’s to every scientific society. It is
time to take responsibility for the harm we have inflicted upon the
earth and its life.
We have over-emphasized the miracles of science and technology for the
benefit of a few, and we know it. We cannot understand or find
solutions to these global issues in the isolation of our laboratories
and conferences. The interfacing of communities and science
democratizes the process of public policy and decision-making, and
demonstrates how science has served the public and how it has failed.
The community knowledge perspective is necessary to improve science
Since my resignation I have envisioned a group made up of scientists
and engineers, medical doctors, journalists, indigenous people and so
forth, who will travel in a bus around the United States talking to
students about peace, the abolition of nuclear weapons, health, and
environmental issues. The “Traveling Teachers Project”, as
I like to call it, has found support in the form of great enthusiasm
from many activists, among them being Dr. Helen Caldicott, founder of
Physicians for Social Responsibility. This can become a model for a
similar group in every country.
It is time to take our fingers away from our calculators and talk about
scientific ethics. Why can we not see our destiny? Why are we ignoring
what we see? Our science policy is based on the irrational fears about
survival driven by a tiny group of elite who shape public opinion. We
scientists have to use our skills for humanity, not for a machine we
have no control over. We are enticed into comfortable positions, grow
dependent on the security, and then many of us are tormented, playing
tricks with our own minds to justify continuing to work. When we start
working consciously, then we can begin to change our lives.
Mainstream media in every country allow their governments to go
unquestioned by citizens, while weapons of mass destruction labs stay
busy. The opening of the doors of secrecy is desperately needed and
long overdue. Interfacing communities and science is a new and simple
solution that any of us can do. To those who believe that there is hope
I say: “What are you waiting for?” Truth is the most
powerful force in the universe. It is greater than the force of the
atom.
Making weapons of mass destruction in the name of peace and possessing
nuclear weapons is nothing but an act of murder waiting to happen.
Humanity still thinks of war as a fight of many people against many
people, but our times show that sooner or later it could be one man
against the whole world. No nation is better than another. There are no
rogue nations and nations of concern here and perfect nations there.
There are people here and people there and they are expecting their
leaders, who control the instruments of indiscriminate destruction, to
renounce their use for permanent peace. If these elected officials will
not accept this desire of the human race for the highest right, the
right of survival, it will not be too long before people will begin to
demand it. When the first serious miscalculation takes place, the
public will react violently, either by panic or by revolt.
Worldwide the public is kept in ignorance of the facts about weapons of
mass destruction. People have the right to know the truth about this
thorn of humanity; they have the right to decide if they want to go on
with this burden, which is already unbearable if they want to protect
life for future generations. People in each nation have the right to
know. The preparation for and conducting of war is amounting to over $1
trillion annually.
Education worldwide is on the bottom of the list. Mikhail Gorbachev,
addressing the International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War
in 1987 in Moscow stated, “As a possessor of nuclear arms, our
state will never be the first to use them”. Today these
statements are invalid. In the past, US presidents made good movements
toward stopping nuclear tests. Today all these efforts seem to have
been lost. At the same time, thousands of people worldwide are dying
from cancer and suffering from pain due to past nuclear tests. People
are being led like lambs to the slaughterhouse and they don’t
know why or how.
Do nations possess nuclear, chemical and biological weapons because of
fear of attack from some other nation, or is it mainly because without
them the stronger cannot otherwise exploit the weaker? Real disarmament
cannot come unless the nations of the world cease to exploit one
another. And nations will not stop exploiting one another unless we
stop exploiting one another individually. It will take sacrifices by
all of us if humans all over the earth are to avoid the unthinkable. If
a foundation or institution is corrupt you must wash your hands and
withdraw from it. As Gandhi said:
“Replace greed by love and everything will come right.”
Our world is crying out for compassionate, wise, courageous, and
skillful leaders to provide vision and direction. We as scientists
should provide that leadership by taking the first step to form
interdisciplinary partnerships and initiatives, by becoming scientist
activists. We must invite indigenous and community voices to our
conferences so that we
can work together to do better science.
Japan is the nation with people who have suffered the effects of the
atomic bomb. I feel your duty as my duty. I join you with all my heart,
soul, and body to fly like birds around the globe to announce the
choices we have.
I will not conclude my message without bringing attention to the root of our troubles…
Let us not fool ourselves. So long as we invest in organizations of
profit, nuclear weapons will never be abolished. Thus the choice is
clear. If the people of the world choose to exploit each other with the
clever mechanisms they have invented, then the dreadful day is waiting
to happen.
Our societies are in chaos because those with power force their way by violence.
Our duty is to realize who the ones who create this kind of power
really are. We, the scientists, must take the initiative in educating
people and arousing public opinion around the world to render the
utmost priority to the grave issue of human survival. We must come
together to seek solutions.
I would like to finish with the words of your citizen Nichidatsu Fujii:
“Civilization is neither to have electric lights, nor airplanes,
nor to produce nuclear bombs. Civilization is not to kill man, not to
destroy things, not to make war; civilization is to hold mutual
affection and to respect each other.”
Thank you.
Isaac Deutscher quotes:
His most famous statement regarding Israel is "A man once jumped from
the top floor of a burning house in which many members of his family
had already perished. He managed to save his life; but as he was
falling he hit a person standing down below and broke that
person’s legs and arms. The jumping man had no choice; yet to the
man with the broken limbs he was the cause of his misfortune. If both
behaved rationally, they would not become enemies. The man who escaped
from the blazing house, having recovered, would have tried to help and
console the other sufferer; and the latter might have realized that he
was the victim of circumstances over which neither of them had control.
But look what happens when these people behave irrationally. The
injured man blames the other for his misery and swears to make him pay
for it. The other, afraid of the crippled man’s revenge, insults
him, kicks him, and beats him up whenever they meet. The kicked man
again swears revenge and is again punched and punished. The bitter
enmity, so fortuitous at first, hardens and comes to overshadow the
whole existence of both men and to poison their minds."[10]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Deutscher#cite_note-10>
In "The Israeli Arab War, June 1967" (1967), Deutscher, a Marxist of
Jewish origins whose next-of-kin died at Auschwitz and whose relatives
lived in Israel, wrote:
“Still we must exercise our judgment and must not allow it to be
clouded by emotions and memories, however deep or haunting. We should
not allow even invocations of Auschwitz to blackmail us into supporting
the wrong cause.” (Quoted in Prophets Outcast, Nation Books,
2004, p. 184)
He believed,
"To justify or condone Israel’s wars against the Arabs is to
render Israel a very bad service indeed and to harm its own long-term
interest. Israel’s security, let me repeat, was not enhanced by
the wars of 1956 and 1967; it was undermined and compromised by them.
The ‘friends of Israel’ have in fact abetted Israel in a
ruinous course.” (Quoted in Prophets Outcast, Nation Books, 2004,
p. 184)
"Intelligences* are far superior to humans in mental capacity,
interfacing capability, and reaction time, but even so they are nothing but servants,
and artificial servants at that, lacking in any real awareness of human fragility or
human ethical complexity. They must only be used as tools, not decision-makers. A
society which delegates responsibilities of life and death to its servants will
eventually find the servants' hands at its throat."
Robert Silverberg, in The Secret Sharer. [1987]
*He is referring to robotic/artificial intelligence functions and devices on a spaceship.
Story of a story told by science fiction writer and editor Frederik Pohl in his
autobiography, The Way the Future Was, 1977. p. 49 (chapter 3)
The story (written probably in the 1930s) was about a rich university professor [!] who
built a rocket ship in his backyard which took him after his death into orbit around the
Earth. The idea was that his body would be preserved in the cold so that he might be
revived when later technology made this possible. Time passed and the human race became
extinct. Finally some "machine men" (who had formerly had flesh bodies) came along and
found him, built him a machine body, put his thawed brain into it, and he lived again.
Pohl goes on to tell of his friend Bob Ettinger, who also liked the story, recalling it
later when he was now a scientist, doing some research, and finally publishing a book
called The Prospects of Immortality, about the freezing and preserving of people. It is
now called cryonics and I don't know how many people have grasped at this straw.
[Later...] According to Wikipedia, as of 2014, about 250 people have done it (in the
U.S.) and another 1,500 are signed up when they are fnished knock off. The flaw in the
thing is the belief that the person/life is in the brain.
But the punch line for me was "Right now there are a couple of dozen corpsicles in the
U. S....." That gave me a big laugh. Later he asked Ettinger why there were so few
customers for this service, he answered, "Many are cold, but few are frozen."
[Note: Not Walt Disney, Robert Heinlein, Timothy Leary....as rumored.]
[After describing various shenanigans by kings, emperors, popes and generals, Will Durant
makes the comment: "The comedy of the rulers hardly relieved the tragedy of the people."
[The Story of Civilization, Vol. 6, The Reformation, p. 513.]
All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good:
And, spite of pride in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.
Alexander Pope, at the end of his Essay on Man [last lines of Epistle one]
Petrarch: [14th century]
He earnestly warned the sick Pope Clement VI against trusting physicians:
I know that your bedside is beleaguered by doctors, and naturally this fills
me with fear. Their opinions are always conflicting, and he who has nothing
new to say suffers the shame of limping behind the others. As Pliny said, in
order to make a name for themselves through some novelty, they traffic with
our lives. With them-not as with other trades-it is sufficient to be called a
physician to be believed to the last word, and yet a physician's lie harbors
more danger than any other. Only sweet hope causes us not to think of the
situation. They learn their art at our expense, and even our death brings
them experience; the physician alone has the right to kill with impunity.
Oh, Most Gentle Father, look upon their band as an army of enemies.
Remember the warning epitaph which an unfortunate man had inscribed on his
tombstone: "I died of too many physicians.
[A page of Will Durant quotes: ]
"https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Will_Durant#Quotes"
Declaration of INTERdependence [written by Will Durant]
Human progress
having reached a high level through respect for the liberty and dignity of men, it has
become desirable to re-affirm these evident truths: That differences of race, color, and
creed are natural, and that diverse groups, institutions, and ideas are stimulating factors
in the development of man; That to promote harmony in diversity is a responsible task of
religion and statesmanship; That since no individual can express the whole truth, it is essential to treat with understanding and good will those whose views differ from our
own; That by the testimony of history intolerance is the door to violence, brutality and
dictatorship; and That the realization of human interdependence and solidarity is the
best guard of civilization.
Therefore, we solemnly resolve, and invite everyone to join in united action.
To uphold and promote human fellowship through mutual consideration and respect;
To champion human dignity and decency, and to safeguard these without distinction of
race, or color, or creed; To strive in concert with others to discourage all
animosities arising from these differences, and to unite all groups in the fair play
of civilized life.
ROOTED in freedom, bonded in the fellowship of danger, sharing everywhere a common
human blood, we declare again that all men are brothers, and that mutual tolerance is
the price of liberty.
Note: The Declaration of Interdependence was introduced into the Congressional Record
on October 1, 1945 by Hon. Ellis E. Patterson. [And promptly forgotten?]
Agrippa begins his devastation with the alphabet, and upbraids it for its bewildering
inconsistencies of pronunciation. He laughs at the grammarians, whose exceptions are
more numerous than their rules, and who are repeatedly outvoted by the people. Poets
are madmen; no one "well in his wits" can write poetry. Most history is a fable; not
"une fable convenue", as Voltaire would mistakenly call it, but an ever-changing fable
which each historian and generation transforms anew. Oratory is the seduction of the
mind by eloquence into error. Occultism is a sham; his own book about it, Agrippa now
warns, was "false, or, if you will, lying"; if formerly he practiced astrology, magic,
divination, alchemy, and other such "nesciences," it was mostly through the importunate
solicitation of patrons demanding esoteric kmowledge, and able to pay. The Cabala is
"nothing else but a pestilent superstition." As for the philosophers, the self-canceling
diversity of their opinions puts them out of court; we may leave them to refute one
another. So far as philosophy seeks to deduce morality from reason, it is stultified
by the irrational contrariety of morals in place and time; "whereof it cometh to pass
that that which at one time was vice, another time is accounted virtue, and that which
in one place is virtue, in another is vice." The arts and occupations are as vitiated
as the sciences with falsehood and vanity. Every court is "a school of corrupt customs,
and a refuge of detestable wickedness." Trade is treachery. Treasurers are thieves;
their hands are sticky with bird-lime, their fingers end in hooks. War is the slaughter
of many in the sport of the few. Medicine is "a certain art of manslaughter," and often
"there is more danger in the physician and the medicine than in the sickness itself."
Henry Cornelius Agrippa On the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Sciences (1530)
From The Reformation - Will Durant
I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done
to overcome him?... All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and
do you want to be the ebb of this great flood, and even go back to the beasts rather
than overcome man? What is ape to man? A laughing stock or painful embarrassment. And
man shall be that to overman: a laughing stock or painful embarrassment. You have made
your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even
now, too, man is more ape than any ape... The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let
your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth... Man is a rope, tied
between beast and overman rope over an abyss ... what is great in man is that he is
a bridge and not an end.
from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
We can say, Cicero says thus; these were the manners of Plato; these are the very words
of Aristotle: but what do we say ourselves? What do we judge? A parrot would say as
much as that.
Montaigne - Essays, chapter 24
Presumption is our natural and original disease. The most wretched and frail of all
creatures is man, and withal the proudest. He feels and sees himself lodged here in
the dirt and filth of the world, nailed and rivetted to the worst and deadest part
of the universe, in the lowest story of the house, the most remote from the heavenly
arch, with animals of the worst condition of the three; and yet in his imagination
will be placing himself above the circle of the moon, and bringing the heavens under
his feet. T'is by the same vanity of imagination that he equals himself to God,
attributes to himself divine qualities, withdraws and separates himself from the the
crowd of other creatures, cuts out the shares of the animals, his fellows and companions,
and distributes to them portions of faculties and force, as himself thinks fit How does
he know, by the strength of his understanding, the secret and internal motions of animals?
from what comparison betwixt them and us does he conclude the stupidity he attributes
to them? When I play with my cat who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she
makes me? We mutually divert one another with our play. If I have my hour to begin or
to refuse, she also has hers. Plato, in his picture of the golden age under Saturn,
reckons, among the chief advantages that a man then had, his communication with beasts,
of whom, inquiring and informing himself, he knew the true qualities and differences
of them all, by which he acquired a very perfect intelligence and prudence, and led his
life more happily than we could do. Need we a better proof to condemn human impudence
in the concern of beasts? This great author was of opinion that nature, for the most
part in the corporal form she gave them, had only regard to the use of prognostics that
were derived thence in his time. The defect that hinders communication betwixt them and
us, why may it not be in our part as well as theirs? T'is yet to determine where the
fault lies that we understand not one another, for we understand them no more than they
do us; and by the same reason they may think us to be beasts as we think them. T'is no
great wonder if we understand not them, when we do not understand a Basque or a
Troglodyte. And yet some have boasted that they understood them, as Apollonius Tyanaus,
Melampus, Tiresias, Thales, and others. And seeing, as cusmographers report, that there
are nations that have a dog for their king, they must of necessity be able to interpret
his voice and motions. We must observe the parity betwixt us, have some tolerable
apprehension of their meaning, and so have beasts of ours, much about the same. They
caress us, threaten us, and beg of us, and we do the same to them.
Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Book 2, Chapter 12
Oh, war, my children, what a terrible thing it is! How are men cozened and cheated by
the rare trappings and prancing steeds, by the empty terms of honour and of glory, until
they forget in the outward tinsel and show the real ghastly horror of the accursed thing!
Think not of the dazzling squadrons, nor of the spirit-stirring blare of the trumpets,
but think of that lonely man under the shadow of the alders, and of what he was doing
in a Christian age and a Christian land. Surely I, who have grown grey in harness, and
who have seen as many fields as I have years of my life, should be the last to preach
upon this subject, and yet I can clearly see that, in honesty, men must either give up
war, or else they must confess that the words of the Redeemer are too lofty for them,
and that there is no longer any use in pretending that His teaching can be reduced to
practice. I have seen a Christian minister blessing a cannon which had just been founded,
and another blessing a war-ship as it glided from the slips. They, the so-called
representatives of Christ, blessed these engines of destruction which cruel man has
devised to destroy and tear his fellow-worms. What would we say if we read in Holy Writ
of our Lord having blessed the battering-rams and the catapults of the legions? Would
we think that it was in agreement with His teaching? But there! As long as the heads
of the Church wander away so far from the spirit of its teaching as to live in palaces
and drive in carriages, what wonder if, with such examples before them, the lower clergy
overstep at times the lines laid down by their great Master?
Micah Clarke (Novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, Chapt. 32)