Loving the Unlovable

Eric Segal says love means never say you are sorry. Siddartha Gautama says we must love one another as Love heals and transforms while Hate reinforces and perpetuates the status quo. A wise friend of mine says Love means you love those who need love the most, i.e., the unlovable. Love does not mean much if we only choose to love the lovable. I am only an ordinary, unwise, immature human so I am only capable of loving those who are lovable and staying away from the spiritually leprous and the unlovable. 

Yesterday, somebody called me an idiot. I politely told him, "please call me by my true name, I am only a moron". Seven other persons at the table, where I was at, burst out laughing. He then said I didn't know how to speak English. I quietly asked him for a financial contest of English vocabulary. Each contestant puts up ten words, asking the other guy for spelling and definition. Online dictionary on the smartphone would be the judge. Who scores the most correct answers would be the winner. Each word would be worth $10. Predictably, he backed down and kept his mouth shut. But at least that guy, though full of puffery, had enough common sense to shut his mouth when realizing he met his superiors. Another dude whom I know quite well, is so fond of bestial imagery, especially that of horses and water buffaloes, when dishing out insults, that makes me often wonder if his forebears had lived closely among horses and water buffaloes or even committed acts of bestiality with these poor animals. This dude doesn't have common sense so he doesn't know to shut his mouth up. He does not know (from pitiful, pathetic lack of self-awareness) the more he talks, the more he reveals his stupidity, his ignorance, and his bestial background. 

I have a lot of shortcomings, but I fancy that I have a modicum of self-awareness. I know I am unlovable. That's why I am thrilled to have Bác Tiếp and Bác Trác consider me as a friend. More importantly, I am delighted, grateful, even ecstatic, that my wife has not said goodbye to me. 

I am trying very hard to be affable like Messrs. Tiep and Trac. Maybe I should take Buddha's words more to heart. Maybe I should open my heart to those who don't know how to shut up since I am the one who don't know how to shut up either. 

Postcriptum:

A not-so-secret and quite ardent fan of mine religiously follows my blog although she lives way up in Fairbanks and has not actually met me in person though she has seen my photos (I am a very vain man. Vanity has its own advantages. It has forced me to hit the gym and the books. Besides, I am not bad in the looks department, either. Okay, now, you know that I love to brag. My mantra is that a man has got to be his most ardent fan. To me, a man, especially an insecure one like me, must be allowed--in fact, must be encouraged---to brag from sunrise to sunset [other time periods are for rest and recuperation]. Bragging is good for the soul. It brings a smile---sometimes even laughs, and along with them a lọt of much needed oxygen into the system---to the braggart, helping him to look cheerful and happy, even if inside, he's dying of loneliness and wrecked by feelings of insecurity and self-doubt.) called me up and we had the following conversation. I'm going to recollect it as much as I can.

-Roberto, mi querido, que' paso'?

-Nada. 

-Bollocks! Dime la verdad. Que' paso'? Goddamit, speak up. What happened? I just read your latest post, the one about loving the unlovable and shit. And I didn't like it. Just fucking didn't like it. I just didn't understand why you had to debase yourself?

-Did I debase myself? 

-You sure did. You wrote about your being called an idiot while you are only a moron and that you are "delighted, grateful, and even ecstatic" that your wife has not left you. You made me sick.

-Calm down. You should know I was just speaking in a metaphorical manner.

-Metaphorical, my ass! Sounded very real and literal to me. 

-Did it really?

-Yes, it sure did.

-Sorry!

-Sorry? One thing I didn't understand was why you had to lie. Why didn't you speak the truths and facts like you always preach to me?

-What facts and truths?

-Goddamit! Roberto, stop being coy with me.

-I honestly don't know what's the fuck you're speaking about.

-Okay. Unless you fed me a bunch of bullshit before, I couldn't understand why you didn't speak about your amorous accomplishments instead of being "unlovable" and all that shit.

-But I didn't want to brag!

-Now you're telling me. But you did brag with me!

-But you're a friend. It was bad form, especially in a mixed company, to talk about my being a Don Juan, a magnet to women. I didn't want to talk about women of all ages, falling for me, left and right, day and night , because of my charms and magnetic personality and easy, pleasing manners, not to mention my drop-dead, gorgeous physique which gets better with each passing week. 

-What's going on with that Vicky, the one you met in a poker room? Is she still after you?

-She sure is. She just invited me over to her house again and cooked for me a marvelous four-course meal, complete with dessert and after-dinner drinks. 

-That was all? 

-Should there be more? 

-You tell me!

-No, a gentleman never kisses and tells.

-Okay. I can't force you to do what you don't want to do. Sorry for yelling at you. You know that I care, right?

-It's okay. I understand.

-But do you also understand that I more than care?

-Please, don't go there. I can't handle it. 

-One more thing and I'll let you go. What's the fuck with that asshole whose forebears you intimated that they appeared of having committed horrible, shameful acts of bestiality with horses and buffaloes because he now looks so much like an ass whose language is full of self-righteous lies and replete with disgusting references to human female genitalia in clear and full spelling.

-The asshole is indeed an offspring of cross-species transgressions all right. Thst's why the mothefucker has no sense of shame. He is stupid and shamefully ignorant and wrecked by inferiority complex. He has no honor at all. He brazenly lies about me all the time. Let me tell you something. There's a thing called karma. Tragedies are befalling his goddammned, cursed family left and right. Every time I heard about it, I went to a bar and quietly savored my beer while contemplating about karma and the evils in this world. The motherfucker, for sure, will rot someday in some forsaken corner of a poorly funded hospice, dying of some horrible disease brought on by his own sins and misdeeds as well as the sins and misdeeds of his forefathers. I understand he's a stupid Christisn convert, so I know he thinks he will be "saved" and all that shit. What's a fucking joke!

-Loving the Unlovable

Eric Segal says love means never say you are sorry. Siddartha Gautama says we must love one another as Love heals and transforms while Hate reinforces and perpetuates the status quo. A wise friend of mine says Love means you love those who need love the most, i.e., the unlovable. Love does not mean much if we only choose to love the lovable. I am only an ordinary, unwise, immature human so I am only capable of loving those who are lovable. I religiously stay away from the spiritually leprous and the unlovable. 

Yesterday, somebody called me an idiot. I politely told him, "please call me by my true name, I am only a moron". Seven other persons at the table, where I was at, burst out laughing. He then said I didn't know how to speak English. I quietly asked him for a financial contest of English vocabulary. Each contestant puts up ten words, asking the other guy for spelling and definition. Online dictionary on the smartphone would be the judge. Who scores the most correct answers would be the winner. Each word would be worth $10. Predictably, he backed down and kept his mouth shut. But at least that guy, though full of puffery, had enough common sense to shut his mouth when realizing he met his superiors. Another dude whom I know quite well, is so fond of bestial imagery--- especially that of horses and water buffaloes, when dishing out insults---that makes me often wonder if his forebears had lived closely among horses and water buffaloes or even committed acts of bestiality with these poor animals. This dude doesn't have common sense so he doesn't know to shut his mouth up. He does not know (from pitiful, pathetic lack of self-awareness) the more he talks, the more he reveals his stupidity, his ignorance, and his bestial background. 

I have a lot of shortcomings, but I fancy that I have a modicum of self-awareness. I know I am unlovable. That's why I am thrilled to have Bác Tiếp and Bác Trác consider me as a friend. More importantly, I am delighted, grateful, even ecstatic, that my wife has not said goodbye to me. 

I am trying very hard to be affable like Messrs. Tiep and Trac. Maybe I should take Buddha's words more to heart. Maybe I should open my heart to those who don't know how to shut up since I am the one who don't know how to shut up either. 

Postcriptum:

A not-so-secret and quite ardent fan of mine religiously follows my blog although she lives way up in Fairbanks and has not actually met me in person though she has seen my photos (I am a very vain man. Vanity has its own advantages. It has forced me to hit the gym and the books. Besides, I am not bad in the looks department, either. Okay, now, you know that I love to brag. My mantra is that a man has got to be his most ardent fan. To me, a man, especially an insecure one like me, must be allowed--in fact, must be encouraged---to brag from sunrise to sunset [other time periods are for rest and recuperation]. Bragging is good for the soul. It brings a smile---sometimes even laughs, and along with them a lọt of much needed oxygen into the system---to the braggart, helping him to look cheerful and happy, even if inside, he's dying of loneliness and wrecked by insecurity and self-doubt.) called me up and we had the following conversation. I'm going to recollect it as much as I can.

-Roberto, mi querido, que' paso'?

-Nada. 

-Bollocks! Dime la verdad. Que' paso'? Goddamit, speak up. What happened? I just read your latest post, the one about loving the unlovable and shit. And I didn't like it. Just fucking didn't like it. I just didn't understand why you had to debase yourself?

-Did I debase yourself? 

-You sure did. You wrote about your being called an idiot while you are only a moron and that you are "delighted, grateful, and even ecstatic" that your wife has not left you. You made me sick.

-Calm down. You should know I was just speaking in a metaphorical manner.

-Metaphorical, my ass! Sounded very real and literal to me. 

-Did it really?

-Yes, it sure did.

-Sorry!

-Sorry? One thing I didn't understand why you had to lie. Why didn't you speak the truths and facts like you always preach to me?

-What facts and truths?

-Goddamnit! Roberto, stop being coy with me.

-I honestly don't know what's the fuck you're speaking about.

-Okay. Unless you fed me a bunch of bullshit before, I couldn't understand why you didn't speak about your amorous accomplishments instead of being "unlovable" and all that shit.

-But I didn't want to brag!

-Now you're telling me. But you did brag with me!

-But you're a friend. It was bad form, especially in a mixed company, to talk about my being a Don Juan, a magnet to women. I didn't want to talk about women of all ages, falling for me, left and right, day and night , because of my charms and magnetic personality and easy, pleasing manners, not to mention my drop-dead, gorgeous physique which gets better with each passing week. 

-What's going on with that Vicky, the one you met in a poker room? Is she still after you?

-She sure is. She just invited me over to her house again and cooked for me a marvelous meal, complete with dessert and after-dinner drinks. 

-That was all? 

-Should there be more? 

-You tell me!

-No, a gentleman never kisses and tells.

-Okay. I can't force you to do what you don't want to do. Sorry for yelling at you. You know that I care, right?

-It's okay. I understand.

-But do you also understand that I more than care?

-Please, don't go there. I can't handle it. 

-One more thing and I'll let you go. What's the fuck with that asshole whose forebears you intimated that they appeared of having committed horrible, shameful acts of bestiality with horses and buffaloes because he now looks so much like an ass whose language is full of self-righteous lies and replete with disgusting references to human female genitalia in clear and full spelling? 

-The asshole is indeed an offspring of cross-species transgressions all right. Thst's why the mothefucker has no sense of shame. He is stupid and shamefully ignorant and wrecked by inferiority complex. He has no honor at all. He brazenly lies about me all the time. Let me tell you something. There's a thing called karma. Tragedies are befalling his goddammned, cursed family left and right. Every time I heard about it, I went to a bar and quietly savored my beer while contemplating about karma and the evils in this world. The motherfucker, for sure, will rot someday in some forsaken corner of a poorly funded hospice, dying of some horrible disease brought on by his own sins and misdeeds as well as the sins and misdeeds of his forefathers. I understand he's a stupid Christisn convert, so I know he thinks he will be "saved" and all that shit. What's a fucking joke!

- But Roberto, don't you think it's time for you to practice what you have preached to me? I see that the motherfucker is toxic to your soul. Just forgive him. Love him even, like a stupid, ignorant, self-righteous little prick that he is. Assholes never grow up. That's why they're assholes. How we react to events and assholes reveal to who we are. You're much better than you sound. You can think. Assholes cannot. So why do you hate them so much?

-Hate is an emotional, strong word. I don't really know if I really hate them as much as I despise them. You see, believe it or not, I have a nagging fear that deep down I may not be able to conduct myself as a real human with rational and moral faculties intact, instead of as a disgusting, filthy animal with only bestial tendencies. We hate those who remind us what we fear we might be. The asshole motherfucker reminds me what I may end up looking and being like, if I am not careful: a human from the outside but only an ass in feelings and conduct.

-But Roberto, life is a race against oblivion. Time is precious. Please, darling, don't squander your resources on assholes and scumbags. Start living. You don't have much time left. .

(To be continued)

(To be continued)

Love and Brotherhood

Yes, Love (and its usual manifestation, Forgiveness) heals and transforms the persons and situation involved whereas Hate reinforces and perpetuates the status quo. Siddartha Gautama profoundly understood this dynamics and advised his followers to abjure hate and violence. 

Muhammad understood it, too, contrary to the stereotyped portrayal of him and his followers by those Christians and Zionists who have an obvious agenda. In fact, the concept of Mercy features strongly in the Qur'an. It was Muhammad's practice of Mercy that accounted largely for the mass conversions in the early days of Islam. Only after two Jewish tribes treacherously allied themselves with other Arab tribes with the intention of killing Muhammad and his followers, despite their agreeing to a special covenant with Muhammad not to take arms against him, did Muhammad order the surviving adult male members put to the sword after their ill-fated alliance with the like-minded Arab tribes ended in abject failure in the battlefield. After this treachery of the Jews, Muhammad stopped praying in the direction of Jerusalem (as an acknowledgement of his intellectual debt and his beliefs in the Old Testament) and turned to the direction of Mecca, his birthplace, instead. 

Fairly or not, this attempt on the life of Muhammad by the Jews and their complicity in the death of Jesus of Nazareth, as well as the daily conduct of most Jews, that earned them the enmity of Muslims and Christians. Anti-Semitism did not just arise out of thin air. 

For those who really want to understood Love and Brotherhood, Islam could be an answer. The ideology and brutal behavior of present Islamic extremists do not represent mainstream Islam, just like the ideology and behavior of the Crusaders during the Middle Ages, of the Nazis and the Japanese fascists during first half of the 20th century, do not represent mainstream Christianity and Buddhism.  

If I am not a diehard atheist, I would embrace Islam in a heartbeat. As much as I love its powerful message of Love and Brotherhood, I couldn't bring myself to accepting its nonsensical doctrinal copy of Judaism and Christianity. I don't believe in God, in Judgment Day, and in an afterlife. I only believe in this very life, the only life I ever have; in Love's healing and redemptive power; in fair play and karma; and in my ability to pursue facts and truths. 

Yes, sometimes certain painful memories come back and remind me of my youthful immaturity and impetuosity, but I don't regret for falling in love with certain women who turned out to be even less loving and kind-hearted than me. I made mistakes and I sm learning from them. I was stupid and not a keen reader of the human heart. 

Love is Love. One must keep on kissing a lot of frogs before finding a prince. Yes, like Desiderata says, Love is perennial as grass. Despite the heartaches and pains and disappointments it may bring, it is the thing that keeps us going in this hard, lonely world. I believe in Love and continue looking for it. My heart is always open for its possibilities. Yes, I agreed with the message delivered by both Siddhartha and Muhammad. 

Mental Illness and Psychiatry

Preface:

The following were words previously used in an exchange with a nice, gentle, but touchy and overly defensive individual. Nobody is perfect, I know that. But I take pride in pursuing facts and truths to the bitter end. That's why I have nothing but contempt and bitterness for an unaccomplished and impecunious bitch who opened its mouth and barked intemperate and false characterization of me. But I have to admit that without that stupid and false characterization, I would not know its true character. 

My words below clearly demonstrate who I am and how I regard myself. Fuck, as Nietzsche himself said, "I am no mere man. I am a dynamite". The more I live and improve my mind, the more I realize most humans are cowardly and fearful of ugly truths about themselves. Not me. Not me. Never ever. Not in a million years.

1. If my intention was nitpicking about grammar and spelling, I would have a field day and come across completely obnoxious due to my obstreperous behavior. I routinely make those mistakes myself. Sorry if my words drove certain folks who are averse to facts and truths to the edge of uneasiness, but words relating to concepts are important and must be used with care. 

2. The distinction about a "mental disorder" having a medical, organic (brain) or behavioral root is important but not always recognized. 

2.a. If a mental disorder manifesting itself in socially unacceptable behaviors originates from the brain's disease or injury, then even a psychiatrist might not be of effective help. A neuro scientist should be consulted in this case.

2.b. If a mental disorder having behavioral roots (granted, there's a constant feedback back and forth between brain and behavior), then a question should be raised concerning if the manifested socially unacceptable behaviors come from the environment (being taught or exposed) or the individual himself has poor adaptive skills. Poor adaptive skills themselves derive from low intelligence, lack of awareness (including self-awareness) or failure to transcend common emotional and social afflictions that almost all humans fall prey to. These afflictions are but not restricted (not exhaustive of) to : ego, pride (not as bad as ego, and indeed can be beneficial if properly harnessed), greed, power, fame (desire to be approved and recognized), instant gratification (and its twin sister, unmet expectations), selfishness, vengeance, self-projection, displacement, and destruction (including self-destruction). Help can be sought from talk therapy (hence psychologists and psychotherapists) and examples set by more enlightened humans and teachers (hence the trend of flocking to "gurus" and "masters" who supposedly have answers as to why the affected individuals are not happy, dissatisfied, and have anti-social thoughts and even behaviors). Psychiatrists, if they are not sensitive, empathetic, and sympathetic, are not needed in this instance. The reason why affected individuals rush to (or are being rushed to) see psychiatrists is because psychiatrists have medical training and can prescribe drugs in addition to the unwarranted respect and trust the society has for psychiatrists. The recent books exposing the inadequacies of psychiatry and the reclassification of certain behavioral disorders (autism, Asperger's syndrome) should be a sobering reminder that blind faith in medical "knowledge" can be dangerous. 

3. Loneliness and aversion to facts and truths can be devastating if not properly addressed by the affected individuals. 

4. Psychiatrists are overrated and usually mis-employed. 

Fluid Handle of Language

Contrary to conventional "wisdom", bragging, like porn, is "good" for the soul. It relieves loneliness, reinforces self-worth, and relaxes oneself. But it has to be based on facts, otherwise it is just empty lying. You can be your own most ardent fan. But you must not lie to others, and especially to yourself.

Read the following and understand why I regard myself of having a fluid handle of the English language. It"s not bad for a guy who, as a kid, had severe linguistic problems. 

"My dear friend:

I couldn't help but have a growing affection and respect for you based on your conduct thus far. A lesser man---and there have been at least five Mitchongs who have revealed themselves as such after engaging in a verbal warfare with me---would be pulling his hair out and take refuge in cheap sarcasms, outrageous lies, and gutter language to cover up his sense of inadequacy and, dare I say it, "defeat". I have such an effect on my inept interlocutors. You are far from being inept and you have conducted yourself admirably. My hat is off to you! 

My "accusation" of sophistry was leveled more at the writers that you quoted to support your interpretation of the phrase "illegal immigrant" than at you. You merely found a kinship with those writers and may have embraced their position and the supporting arguments a bit too enthusiastically. 

I don't want to rehash our intense but friendly semantic discourse on the adjectival phrase "illegal immigrants" either. You and I would be just repeating our respective positions. So I would like to do just two things:

1. Let's wait for about 15-20 years from now---hopefully we are both still alive and still blessed with mental acuity by then---to see if the phrase will still be in widespread currency as it is now, despite the distaste you and the majority of the Latino community have for it.

2. I took the liberty to enclose a brief exchange between another Mitchong whose name was deleted to protect his/her privacy, and me on the phrase.

 "Thanks so much for your prompt reply. It made me feel I was right in interpreting the phrase. As readers, we need to have empathy to the writer's intent as well as cultivating a sensitivity to the meanings of words and the context  in which the words appear, and avoid injecting our own personal interpretations or blindly following what others say what the words mean, Words mean what the majority users take them to mean. We must avoid the trap warned by Lewis Carroll, i.e., words mean whatever we want them to mean. 

Wissai

canngon.blogspot.com

On Jul 18, 2014, at 9:16 PM, wrote:

I think "illegal immigrants" is a legal term and it just says the immigrants enter the country "unlawfully" and that should be it. We should not read too much into the phase. The article I forward to you try to explore the reasons why people takes this unlawful action.

Sent from my iPad

On Jul 18, 2014, at 8:28 PM, wissai <wissai@yahoo.com> wrote:

Thanks for forwarding the article from the Washington Post. I was curious of your thoughts on the pieces written by me that touched on the subject, especially regarding the phrase "illegal immigrants".

 I am writing these words in a sports bar, relaxing with a beer and almond nuts and chicken wings, enjoying my anonymity amidst the cacophonous noise and din. I made some little money today and I am being happy and enjoying my existence on this planet. I hope this mildly euphoric feeling persists till tomorrow. Tomorrow I will be treating my friend Bob and his wife to lunch at a nice restaurant. Bob and Omar are my two best friends. "

Affectionately, 

Wissai

canngon.blogspot.com

Knee-jerk Liberalism versus The Imperative to Understand

Knee-jerk Liberalism versus The Imperative to Understand

Political philosophy and Ethics based on values and preferences are not enough. In fact, it is downright dangerous and misguided to do. so. Conclusions without understanding based on facts and knowledge are often erroneous.  Knowledge deep down in indivisible and interrelated. To understand racism one must know political science, biology, ethology, psychology, and history. To understand rape, one must know more than just biology. One must get acquainted with sociology and psychology as well. In fact, it is sheer ignorance to attribute rape to biological urges brought on by the presence or exhibition of a sexy object. More often than not, it is all about power. Prison rapes are prime examples. Little children and old women are the targets of weak, powerless, unaccomplished males. Surely, little children and old women are hardly called sexy. Those in powerful positions all have high levels of testosterone. That's why male bosses get turned on by subordinate females and masters of the house sleep with female servants or slaves (in plantation days). The testosterone drops off markedly if the power-holders suddenly lose power. Power is tied with economics. Laid-off spouses, usually males, have low sexual urges and routinely become temporarily impotent, and permanently so if the spouses treat them like dirt and hint at divorce! 

Sense and Sensibility, Language and Speech

Sense and Sensibility; Language and Speech

Damn, I've been in such a combative mood lately. Maybe the summer heat is getting to me; maybe I'm just being who I really am. But I don't really give a fuck, you know. I'm not running for a Mr. Congeniality contest. I'm just after facts and truths, as usual. 

Those who have bothered to follow my blog should know that I'm fucking strongly against hypocrisy, bullshit, and false modesty. I'm always hankering after unvarnished truths, even if they are ugly and obscene because I strongly believe in freedom. Truths make you free. Don't you ever forget that truism. Free from what?, you may stupidly wonder. Free from emotional and intellectual slavery and bondage, asshole. Don't you know that scumbags and power-hungry religious and political leaders of yours would love to treat you like a mushroom by keeping you in the dark and feeding you bullshit all day long? That's what the realities are. Nobody really cares about you. You're damned lucky if your spouse and kids really cry their hearts out when you die. You're truly blessed if somebody really loves you, dies for you, and helps you, unprompted, with money, labor and time, if you need help. 

 

Anyway, a dude publicly proclaims that he's against bragging, but I and everybody else whose IQ is above room temperature know that the dude does brag, though subtly, but he brags nonetheless. As I said before, contrary to conventional wisdom, bragging is good to the soul, as long as it is factually correct. One must be one's most ardent fan.  Now I don't think he's capable of handling facts and truths. He lets emotional attachment get in the way. I'm stupid and ignorant about many things, but I'm strangely perceptive about some things, one of which is the dark recesses of the human mind. I have yet met anybody like me: ready and eager and willing to search and confront facts and truths. Everybody I have met so far puts on a front, a show of piety and goodness. Nobody is willing to say: here I am, standing naked before you, love me or reject me on my own terms; I am not going to pretend who I am not or who you want me to be so you would love me because I am too fucking proud of myself to do so. 

Who we are reflects in how we write. How we write is influenced by how we read. As readers, we need to have empathy to the writer's intent as well as cultivating a sensitivity to the meanings of words and the context in which the words appear, and avoid injecting our own personal interpretations or blindly following what others say what the words mean. Words mean what the majority users take them to mean. We must avoid the trap warned by Lewis Carroll, i.e., words mean whatever we want them to mean, contrary to common sense and conventional usage. By insisting that our own interpretations are the correct ones while labeling the meanings agreed to by the majority of the language users as "wrong" and " insensitive", we cast ourselves as self-righteous and ridiculous, if not downright stupid self-appointed agents of thought and language police.

But I'm not really brash and insensitive to human follies as I'm making myself to be. I'm really stupidly soft-hearted and sentimental and have paid a heavy price, even now, for my stupidity. Many songs in the late 1960's still bring tears to my eyes. Certain memories are impossible to eradicate. All I can do now is to vow that I must not be stupid again. But I don't know if stupidity will ever depart from me.  

Day rolling into night and back to day again as I wonder what I am doing on this planet and whether I am finally wise and happy. Lately I have a feeling that compared to most folks on this planet, I am comfortable with and proud of who I am. I am not rich or famous or accomplished, but I am healthy, virile, aware of what's going on, and, most importantly, emotionally and intellectually liberated (unlike the majority of humans, I am not burdened by superstitions and fallacious thinking, or hankering after fame). I don't think a God is looking after me. Nor do I  believe in afterlife. I think reincarnation is an unadulterated bullshit. Wishful thinking is for children and adult losers. But I don't call anybody a "dense" loser straight to their face as a stupid, ignorant, inarticulate, impecunious woman characterized me. I don't think I fit her description of me. I am financially independent. I go on a cruise twice a year, drive a brand-new car paid for cash, own a nice 3-bedroom condo, also paid with cash, in a resort area, speak 4 languages and read 4 more, write short stories in one language and poems in 4, have women of all ages falling for me, and am well-read and very good at logic and debate. People I interact at the poker rooms think I am a former college professor based on my diction and the level of general knowledge I evince. So, I think the woman who labelled me a "dense loser" after I rejected her romantic overtures was simply an asshole, considering the fact she was and still is ugly, very short, impecunious, stupid, ignorant, inarticulate, and nasty. No man in his right mind would consider her as a romantic material. She conveniently and blithely failed to realize that if she could not find a single man willing to spend time with her, there must be something seriously wrong with her. Nobody rejects a person of value. On the other hand, nobody wants to spend time with trash and garbage. Trash and garbage stink! When one opens one's mouth, words must be sweet and pleasing and factual, not outrageously biting and false. Biting and false words indicate the speaker is nothing but a stinking, fucked-up person. In fact, her stupid and false characterization of me infuriated and enraged me and got herself near the top of my black list. I will never forget such a stupid and outrageous insult of hers. Nor will I ever forgive her transgression. She is useful to my intellectual development, however. She reminds me in this world there are creatures like her who have no respect for truths and for themselves. They would say and do anything to alleviate their misery and sense of no-worth.

(To be continued)

A Fight for the Right to Read Heidegger

This spring, the Students’ Union at the University College London banned meetings of a group called the Nietzsche Club, which was formed to discuss the ideas of philosophers who inspired, among others, far-right politicians and leaders of the past, like Benito Mussolini, an admirer of Nietzsche’s work. The Union Council decided that the discussion of such thinkers and ideas would foster a dangerous wave of fascism among its students, and prevented them from holding a public meeting.

To those of us in philosophy concerned with ideological censorship, this incident seems like the tip of the iceberg in an impending struggle over the prospects of a serious scholarly engagement with some of the most important philosophers of the 19th and 20^th centuries. But, unlike the actual Arctic ice sheets that are melting at an alarming rate, the freeze imposed on thinking is showing no signs of abating. In particular, there is a menacing chill forming around the work of Martin Heidegger.

With the publication of Volumes 94-6 in Heidegger’s “Complete Works” containing the infamous “Black Notebooks” (or private diaries, not yet translated into English) earlier this year, his critics, pointing at the incontrovertible evidence of Heidegger’s anti-Semitism, now claim that his philosophy is suffused with objectionable ideas through and through — so much so that the critique of modernity developed by the German thinker is being reinterpreted as a way to “launder” his anti-Semitism.

As a Jew, who suffered from anti-Semitic discrimination in the final years of the Soviet Union, I am weary of the contemporary manifestations of this hateful ideology. But I also find irksome the attempts to use the label “anti-Semitism” as a tool for silencing dissent. Both opposition to Zionism and the thinking inspired by Heidegger now incur this charge, which is leveled too lightly, thoughtlessly, and therefore without a minimum of respect for the actual victims of ethnic or religious oppression.

Of course, none of the recent revelations about Heidegger should be suppressed or dismissed. But neither should they turn into mantras and formulas, meant to discredit one of the most original philosophical frameworks of the past century. At issue are not only concepts (such as “being-in-the-world”) or methodologies (such as “hermeneutical ontology”) but the ever fresh way of thinking that holds in store countless possibilities that are not sanctioned by the prevalent techno-scientific rationality, which governs much of philosophy within the walls of the academia. It is, in fact, these possibilities that are the true targets of Heidegger’s detractors, who are determined to smear the entirety of his thought and work with the double charge of Nazism and anti-Semitism.

Now, if canonical philosophers were blacklisted based on their prejudices and political engagements, then there wouldn’t be all that many left in the Western tradition. Plato and Aristotle would be out as defenders of slavery and chauvinism; St. Augustine would be expelled for his intolerance toward heretics and “heathens”; Hegel would be banned for his unconditional admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte, in whom he saw “world spirit on horseback.”

As for Heidegger himself, those minimally versed in his thought will know — whether they admit it or not — that his anti-Semitism contradicts both the spirit and the letter of his texts, regardless of the ontological or metaphysical mantle he bestows upon anti-Semitic discourse. Perhaps the German thinker did not sense this contradiction, but this does not mean that it was not there. Let me give you an example.

In one deplorable turn of phrase in “Black Notebooks,” Heidegger writes about the “worldlessness” of Judaism and associates the Jews’ uprooting from a national territory with the “world-historical ‘task’ of uprooting all beings from Being,” which, according to Heidegger, Judaism presumably shares with modernity as well as with Bolshevism, Americanism, British imperialism, and so on. The French philosopher Emmanuel Faye is correct to trace this concept of “worldlessness” that describes the state of an inanimate object, such as a stone, back to Heidegger’s 1929 course on “The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics.” As worldless, the Jews are reduced to the level of things — a classical dehumanization technique. But from this valid argument, Faye jumps to a ridiculous conclusion that “the Heideggerian notion of ‘being-in-the-world,’ which is central to ‘Being and Time,’ may take on the meaning of a discriminatory term with anti-Semitic intent.” While his first point probes the depths of Heidegger’s anti-Semitism, the second is an amateurish trick, endeavoring to taint a fecund idea by means of nothing but free association.

Well before the publication of “Black Notebooks,” Heidegger’s organicist metaphors for spiritual life that is rooted, plantlike, in the native soil (for instance in “Discourse on Thinking”) could be read as denying genuine talent and creativity to those who did not enjoy a strong connection to the “home ground,” including, in the first instance, the Jewish people. But such racist nearsightedness does not at all follow from the content of his philosophy. In fact, one could say that the Jewish mode of rootedness was temporal, rather than spatial; before the Zionist project undertook to change this state of affairs, the Jews were grounded only in the tradition, instead of a national territory. 

Such grounding is anathema to the uprooted condition of modernity, with which Heidegger hurriedly identified Jewish life and thought and which is expressed, precisely, in the destruction of tradition. From the perspective of the author of “Being and Time,” the temporal nature of Jewish rootedness should have been viewed as more desirable than spatial ties to the soil. After all, didn’t Heidegger want to make (finite) time, rather than space, fundamental to human existence?

There is, then, a profound disconnect between Heidegger’s anti-Semitic prejudice and his philosophy, which influenced a number of prominent Jewish thinkers, from Hannah Arendt to Jacques Derrida, and from Leo Strauss to Emmanuel Levinas. Yet, more and more, one is forced to justify the very act of reading his works for purposes other than denunciation and censure. As my colleague Marcia Cavalcante Schuback (who translated “Being and Time” into Portuguese) and I write in our forthcoming commentary on Heidegger’s 1934-5 seminar analyzing Hegel’s political philosophy: “ ‘The case of Heidegger,’ or ‘l’affaire Heidegger,’ as the French call it, is the case of philosophy facing the loss of its right. And what are all the controversies surrounding Heidegger’s Nazism about if not the right of and to his thought, not to mention the right to think further on his path, despite, against, or with his past?”

More broadly formulated, the question is about who has the right to pursue philosophy, to call herself or himself a philosopher, and to deny this appellation to others. In his book, “Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy,” when referring to Heidegger, Faye often renders the word philosopher in quotation marks. The current fight for the possibility of reading certain philosophical works is, therefore, a fight over the very meaning of philosophy, with or without quotation marks.

Michael Marder is a philosophy professor in the at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz. His most recent book is “Phenomena — Critique — Logos: The Project of Critical Phenomenology.” 

Mysteries of the Present, Dreams of the Future

Mysteries of the Present, Dreams of the Future

By David Biespiel

David Biespiel's most recent book of poems is "Charming Gardeners." His anthology "Poems of the American South" is due out next month in the Everyman's Library series. 

I write this by campfire light in the back country of British Columbia, cut off from the digital world and miles from the nearest town. 

 

Every society we’ve ever known has had poetry, and should the day come that poetry suddenly disappears in the morning, someone, somewhere, will reinvent it by evening. 

 

Since ancient times, as long as we’ve had language, poetry has ritualized human life. It has dramatized and informed us with metaphors and figures of feeling and thought, mysteries and politics, birth and death, and all the occasions we experience between womb and tomb.

Poetic utterance ritualizes how we come to knowledge. In the same way that poems illuminate our individual lives, poems also help us understand ourselves as a culture. Or at least they spur us to ask the questions. Poetic utterance mythologizes our journey of being. Poetic utterance tells and interprets our stories. Poetic utterance shapes our perspective of the mysteries of the present moment and helps us imagine the next one. 

 

Walt Whitman hails us to join the communion between poet and human aspiration when he writes, “And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” 

 

In this way poetry connects us to our past, and poets unmask both private and civic memories, dreams, and urgencies. By harmonizing the body with the mind, serving both young and old, poetry is a guide to deliver us into a fresh engagement with our inner lives and with modernity. 

 

If we care about order and disorder, then poetry matters because it is the art of the utterance of beauty and the grotesque. 

 

If we care about the deepest aspirations of men and women across every community and culture, language and race, then poetry is always relevant because it is the art of the utterance of what we share in our innermost psyches. 

 

Since culture and society existed both before we live and after we die, poetry is a link to our passage through our own time and a record of poets’ perspectives throughout time. 

 

We know that human beings are intrinsically connected to one another in how we assert our being. When we read a poem, we are in the presence of this link. We are open to the metaphors of our shared natures. 

 

Because poets have the highest faith that every word in a poem has value and implication and suggestion, a poem orients us in both our inner and outer existence. No matter what language we speak, we follow the guidance of poetry to better perceive sorrow and radiance, love and hatred, violence and wonder. No matter what continent we call home, we read poetry to restrict us in time and to aspire toward timelessness — whether we are in our most vibrant cities or in the remote woods. 

 

Does poetry matter? Yes. Can poetry be more relevant? No. It is the song of song, the language of language, the utterance of utterance and the spirit of spirit.

Faith-Based Fanatics byTimothy Egan

He’s had a busy summer. As God only knows, he was summoned to slaughter in the Holy Land, asked to end the killings of Muslims by Buddhist monks in Myanmar, and played both sides again in the 1,400-year-old dispute over the rightful successor to the Prophet Muhammad. 

In between, not much down time. Yes, the World Cup was fun, and God chose to mess with His Holinesses, pitting the team from Pope Francis’s Argentina against Germany, home of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Well played, even if the better pope lost.

At least Rick Perry was not his usual time-suck. The governor proclaimed three days of prayer to end the Texas drought in 2011, saying, “I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God, and say, ‘God: You’re going to have to fix this.’ ” The drought got worse. Two years ago, Perry said that God had not “changed his mind” about same-sex marriage. But the states have. Since Perry became a spokesman for the deity, the map of legalized gay marriage in America has expanded by 50 percent. 

Still, these are pillow feathers in a world weighted down with misery. God is on a rampage in 2014, a bit like the Old Testament scourge who gave direct instructions to people to kill one another. 

It’s not true that all wars are fought in the name of religion, as some atheists assert. Of 1,723 armed conflicts documented in the three-volume “Encyclopedia of Wars,” only 123, or less than 7 percent, involved a religious cause. Hitler’s genocide, Stalin’s bloody purges and Pol Pot’s mass murders certainly make the case that state-sanctioned killings do not need the invocation of a higher power to succeed.

But this year, the ancient struggle of My God versus Your God is at the root of dozens of atrocities, giving pause to the optimists among us (myself included) who believe that while the arc of enlightenment is long, it still bends toward the better. 

In the name of God and hate, Sunnis are killing Shiites in Iraq, and vice versa. A jihadist militia, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, boasts of beheading other Muslims while ordering women to essentially live in caves, faces covered, minds closed. The two sides of a single faith have been sorting it out in that blood-caked land, with long periods of peace, since the year 632. Don’t expect it to end soon. A majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are peaceful, but a Pew Survey found that 40 percent of Sunnis do not think Shiites are proper Muslims.

Elsewhere, a handful of failed states are seeing carnage over some variant of the seventh-century dispute. And the rage that moved Hamas to lob rockets on birthday parties in Tel Aviv, and Israelis to kill children playing soccer on the beach in Gaza, has its roots in the spiritual superiority of extremists on both sides. 

The most horrific of the religion-inspired zealots may be Boko Haram in Nigeria. As is well known thanks to a feel-good and largely useless Twitter campaign, 250 girls were kidnapped by these gangsters for the crime of attending school. Boko Haram’s God tells them to sell the girls into slavery. 

The current intra-religious fights are not to be confused with people who fly airplanes into buildings, or shoot up innocents while shouting “God is great.” But those killers most assuredly believed that their reward for murder is heaven. 

Of late, God has taken a long break from Ireland, such a small country for such a big fight between worshipers under the same cross. There, the animus is not so much theological as it is historical. If the curious Muslim is wondering why Protestants and Catholics can’t just get along on that lovely island, take a look at the Thirty Years’ War of the 17th century, when about 20 percent of the population of present-day Germany fell to clashes between the two branches of Christianity.

Violent Buddhist mobs (yes, it sounds oxymoronic) are responsible for a spate of recent attacks against Muslims in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, leaving more than 200 dead and close to 150,000 homeless. The clashes prompted the Dalai Lama to make an urgent appeal to end the bloodshed. “Buddha preaches love and compassion,” he said.

And so do Christianity, Islam and Judaism. The problem is that people of faith often become fanatics of faith. Reason and force are useless against aspiring martyrs. 

In the United States, God is on the currency. By brilliant design, though, he is not mentioned in the Constitution. The founders were explicit: This country would never formally align God with one political party, or allow someone to use religion to ignore civil laws. At least that was the intent. In this summer of the violent God, five justices on the Supreme Court seem to feel otherwise. 

Staring at the Flame

I reckon I spent five hours at most in Philip Seymour Hoffman’s close company, six at a pinch. Otherwise it was standing around with other people on the set of “A Most Wanted Man,” watching him on the monitor and afterward telling him he was great, or deciding better to keep your thoughts to yourself. I didn’t even do a lot of that: a couple of visits to the set, one silly walk-on part that required me to grow a disgusting beard, took all day and delivered a smudgy picture of somebody I was grateful not to recognize. There’s probably nobody more redundant in the film world than a writer of origin hanging around the set of his movie, as I’ve learned to my cost. Alec Guinness actually did me the favor of having me shown off the set of the BBC’s TV adaptation of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” All I was wanting to do was radiate my admiration, but Alec said my glare was too intense. 

Come to think of it, Philip did the same favor for a woman friend of ours one afternoon on the shoot of “A Most Wanted Man” in Hamburg that winter of 2012. She was standing in a group 30-odd yards away from him, just watching and getting cold like everybody else. But something about her bothered him, and he had her removed. It was a little eerie, a little psychic, but he was bang on target because the woman in the case is a novelist, too, and she can do intensity with the best of us. Philip didn’t know that. He just sniffed it. 

In retrospect, nothing of that kind surprised me about Philip, because his intuition was luminous from the instant you met him. So was his intelligence. A lot of actors act intelligent, but Philip was the real thing: a shining, artistic polymath with an intelligence that came at you like a pair of headlights and enveloped you from the moment he grabbed your hand, put a huge arm round your neck and shoved a cheek against yours; or if the mood took him, hugged you to him like a big, pudgy schoolboy, then stood and beamed at you while he took stock of the effect. 

Philip took vivid stock of everything, all the time. It was painful and exhausting work, and probably in the end his undoing. The world was too bright for him to handle. He had to screw up his eyes or be dazzled to death. Like Chatterton, he went seven times round the moon to your one, and every time he set off, you were never sure he’d come back, which is what I believe somebody said about the German poet Hölderlin: Whenever he left the room, you were afraid you’d seen the last of him. And if that sounds like wisdom after the event, it isn’t. Philip was burning himself out before your eyes. Nobody could live at his pace and stay the course, and in bursts of startling intimacy he needed you to know it. 

No actor had ever made quite the impact on me that Philip did at that first encounter: not Richard Burton, not Burt Lancaster or even Alec Guinness. Philip greeted me as if he’d been waiting to meet me all his life, which I suspect was how he greeted everyone. But I’d been waiting to meet Philip for a long time. I reckoned his “Capote” the best single performance I’d seen on screen. But I didn’t dare tell him that, because there’s always a danger with actors, when you tell them how great they were nine years ago, that they demand to know what’s been wrong with their performances ever since.

But I did tell him that he was the only American actor I knew who could play my character George Smiley, a role first graced by Guinness in the BBC “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” and more recently by Gary Oldman in the big-screen adaptation — but then, as a loyal Brit, I was claiming Gary Oldman for our own. 

Perhaps I was also remembering that, like Guinness, Philip wasn’t much of a lover on screen, but mercifully, we didn’t have to bother about that in our movie. If Philip had to take a girl in his arms, you didn’t actually blush and look away as you did with Guinness, but you couldn’t help feeling that somehow he was doing it for you rather than himself.

Our filmmakers had a lot of discussion about whether they could get Philip into bed with somebody, and it’s an interesting thought that when they did finally come up with a proposal, both partners ran a mile. It was only when the magnificent actress Nina Hoss appeared beside him that the makers realized they were looking at a small miracle of romantic failure. In her role, which was hastily bulked out, she is Philip’s adoring work mate, acolyte and steadying hand, and he breaks her heart. 

That suited Philip just fine. His role of Günther Bachmann, middle-aged German intelligence officer on the skids, did not allow for enduring love or any other kind. Philip had made that decision from Day 1 and to rub it in, carried a well-thumbed paperback copy of my novel around with him — and what author of origin could ask more? — to brandish in the face of anyone who wanted to sex the story up. 

The movie of “A Most Wanted Man” also features Rachel McAdams and Willem Dafoe, and opens in a cinema near you, I hope, so start saving now. It was shot almost entirely in Hamburg and Berlin, and numbers in its cast some of Germany’s most distinguished actors in relatively humble roles, not only the sublime Nina Hoss (the film “Barbara”), but also Daniel Brühl (“Rush”). 

In the novel, Bachmann is a secret agent on his uppers. Well, Philip can relate to that. The character’s been whisked home from Beirut after losing his precious spy network to the clumsiness or worse of the C.I.A. He has been put out to grass in Hamburg, the city that played host to the 9/11 conspirators. Its regional intelligence arm, and many of its citizens, are still living with that embarrassment. 

Bachmann’s self-devised mission is to put the score straight: not by way of snatch teams, waterboards and extrajudicial killings, but by the artful penetration of spies, by espousal, by using the enemy’s own weight to bring him down, and the consequent disarming of jihadism from within.

Over a fancy dinner with the filmmakers and the high end of the cast, I don’t remember either Philip or myself talking much about the actual role of Bachmann; just more generally, about such things as the care and maintenance of secret agents and the pastoral role incumbent on their agent runners. Forget blackmail, I said. Forget the macho. Forget sleep deprivation, locking people in boxes, simulated executions and other enhancements. The best agents, snitches, joes, informants or whatever you want to call them, I pontificated, needed patience, understanding and loving care. I like to think he took my homily to heart, but more likely he was wondering whether he could use a bit of that soupy expression I put on when I’m trying to impress. 

It’s hard now to write with detachment about Philip’s performance as a desperate middle-aged man going amok, or the way he fashioned the arc of his character’s self-destruction. He was directed, of course. And the director, Anton Corbijn, a cultural polymath in Philip’s class, is many wonderful things: photographer of world renown, pillar of the contemporary music scene and himself the subject of a documentary film. His first feature, “Control” in black and white, is iconic. He is currently making a movie about James Dean. Yet for all that, his creative talents, where I have seen them at work, strike me as inward and sovereign to himself. He would be the last person, I suspect, to describe himself as a theoretical dramatist, or articulate communicator about the inner life of a character. Philip had to have that dialogue with himself, and it must have been a pretty morbid one, filled with questions like: At which point exactly do I lose all sense of moderation? Or, why do I insist on going through with this whole thing when deep down I know it can only end in tragedy? But tragedy lured Bachmann like a wrecker’s lamp, and it lured Philip, too. 

There was a problem about accents. We had really good German actors who spoke English with a German accent. Collective wisdom dictated, not necessarily wisely, that Philip should do the same. For the first few minutes of listening to him, I thought, “Crikey.” No German I knew spoke English like this. He did a mouth thing, a kind of pout. He seemed to kiss his lines rather than speak them. Then gradually he did what only the greatest actors can do. He made his voice the only authentic one, the lonely one, the odd one out, the one you depended on amid all the others. And every time it left the stage, like the great man himself, you waited for its return with impatience and mounting unease. 

We shall wait a long time for another Philip. 

John le Carré is the author of “A Most Wanted Man” and, most recently, “A Delicate Truth.” “A Most Wanted Man” will be in theaters on Friday. Copyright © David Cornwell 2014

More about the phrase "illegal immigrants"

More about the phrase : "Illegal Immigrants"

Introduction:

The below is part of a dialogue I have been having with a friend concerning the phrase "illegal immigrants". He is of the opinion that the phrase is loaded with racist and "dehumanizing" overtones. He cites the injunction against its usage issued by the Associated Press Stylebook in 2013 and some surveys of the Latino community to back up his distaste for the phrase. I, on the contrary, think there is nothing with the phrase at all. To me, the phrase describes the facts and the situation as they are. Moreover, I think there are elements of sophistry in the arguments used by the people against the phrase. 

1. Let's be logical here for a change, and that may require more than a second. The reason why people like you and the AP Stylebook folks and the general populace think the construction "illegal immigrants" refers to the "undocumented immigrants" from south of the border is simply because there are tens of millions of them. But that does not preclude the construction from applying to a white European person if that person enters the U.S. illegally. 

2. Of course, the Latinos feel offended by the phrase 'illegal immigrants" because they have a guilt complex. They either violated immigration laws themselves or their kinsfolks did. No surprise there at all for me. Please, think and apply logic while thinking. 

3. I have touched on this point before. So either you overlooked it or it didn't penetrate your consciousness and that of those who thought they cleverly and ingeniously deconstructed the word "illegal" and wondered out loud why it is not combined with other offended activities other than "immigration". The reason is, my dear Mr. Watson, simply that illegal entry to another country amounts to encroachment on the territory of the existing inhabitants. It is not much different from trespassing and peaceful invasion by sheer numbers. So it should not be a surprise to you or to anybody who is intellectually honest to realize that the current inhabitants of the land get very emotional about the issue and cry that the unlawful act of the migrants and long-to-be immigrants is illegal. Granted, the adjective "illegal " is grave, but the potential loss of control of one's own country from relentless intrusion and incursion from millions of unwanted migrants who speak a different language and possess a different culture is a grave matter indeed. You have a lot of empathy and sympathy for the Latinos, but apparently none for those Americans who feel threatened and overwhelmed by waves of migrants from the south, with no respite in sight.

4. Unlike you, I have no ambition none whatsoever "to be in the forefront of history and make history than be swept by the historical tide of inevitable changes." That sounds too lofty, grandiose, and ego-stroking to me. I just have a simple desire to be free of thought and speech police, and to speak a language---any language---clearly, truthfully and logically, free of sophistical elements, and with no double talks and standards. 

A Schizophrenic Nation

A Schizophrenic Nation

What's happening to the America that I love so much, the land I spent an impressionable year as a high school exchange student, and where I came back to settle for good eight years later? She's becoming schizophrenic, that's what's happening. And no cure seems to be on the horizon. 

A few days ago, some quarters called for an outright firing of a host of Fox News Network talk show for using the word "Chinamen" once instead of "Chinese" although he quickly corrected himself a second later and used "the Chinese" in the  same sentence. Naturally, the Chinks in China are now adding fire to the "furor" and clamoring for his dismissal. There are a few cooler commentators in China, though. They slyly are voicing an observation that media personalities in China routinely talk about the Japanese and the Koreans in disparaging terms, but nobody in China is championing for the dismissal of these indelicate users of language. 

Superficial political correctness is taking over America by storm and threatening to debase American English. Euphemism is running rampant while the obscenity of the vast and increasing disparity in income between the CEO and the front line worker is allowed to flourish; racial disharmony ignored; problems in education, infrastructures, social safety nets, and immigration barely addressed. America is sinking while the people in charge seem to enjoy in being polite and politically correct. We are told not to use "Negro" because it is "antiquated" and sounds too close to "Nigger" even though blacks address one another as "niggers" all day long. Now, I just learned the top people of Associated Press Stylebook in April of 2013 issued an injunction against using "illegal immigrants" because they "argued" that human beings can't be illegal! These people seem to forget a basic rule in the English language and that is adjectives add extra meanings to, but do not replace, nouns. So in the case of "illegal immigrants", the presence of the adjective "illegal" only calls attention to the fact that these immigrants have entered the land by using unlawful means. Nothing in the word construction of "illegal immigrant" suggests that there are elements of racism and dehumanization, as a well-meaning but over-refined and hyper-sensitive friend of mine recently argued with me. He, as well as the people in charge of the AP Stylebook, seemed to forget that words must be understood within their context and the tone of their delivery. 

Yes, I do realize that words are powerful and do matter. But I strongly believe in freedom of speech and expression. Censure should come from self, social interactions, clarity of thoughts, and the law, not from a tyrannical few who are over-polite and bloodless. In language usage, majority rules. I intend to live until the ripe old age of 100 and want to see the confirmation of my hypothesis that as long as the illegal immigration problem unaddressed frontally in America, the word construction "illegal immigrants" continues receiving widespread currency. 

July 16, 2014

Words to live by

Words to live by, from a strange man of letters, Samuel Beckett

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

If you do not love me I shall not be loved.

If I do not love you I shall not love.

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

You're on earth. There's no cure for that.

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world.

Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.

To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.

There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet.

Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence.

The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.

No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.

What do I know of man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.

Words are all we have.

They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.

I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.

In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.

I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.

Birth was the death of him.

Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.

Silence and Wisdom

 

.The more I live, the more I appreciate the wisdom of the adage "Silence is Wisdom". Silence is foreign to me as I was born to talk, to shoot from the hip, to blabber my day away. But I suppose Ego begins to catch up with me as I'm getting more sensitive and touchy, so I'm filled with feelings of anger and fantasies of vengeance when I find myself a target of vicious slanders or insults. The result is that I am getting acquainted with taciturnity and fully see the stupidity of those who have intemperate speech. The Japanese have a saying that one should count 7 breaths before saying anything nasty. Likewise, the folk wisdom of the Vietnamese suggests that one roll the tongue 7 times before saying anything. The American mothers are known to advise their children to keep their mouths shut if they have nothing nice to say to or about another person. But people think they have a liberty to say unpleasant things about me straight to my face. They say I am cheap, childish or even stupid. They tell me "to fuck off" in a public setting and think they can away with that. Things recently got very interesting when two vertically, financially, and intellectually challenged women self-projected and dissed me in inaccurate and venomous terms after I had let them know that at long last I no longer found their company tolerable. "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned" (William Congreve). I found their behavior predictable and yet amusing. I then learned one profound truth: true love is silence. suffering, and sacrifice as Saul said in his first epistle to the Corinthians. In my salad days, when I was dumped left and right by women, I sulked and was suffused with self-pity and silence, and I turned to philosophy and books for solace; I didn't lash out and issue thunderous denunciations. I suppose I had true love within me. I didn't want to hurt the feelings of those to whom my heart once vibrated. I moved on and learned from my painful experiences and finally recognized Love for what it is: a challenging game full of mysteries, not unlike Life itself. To win at the game of Love, one must have a big heart and a sharp mind to know one's place in the world in order to come to terms with a simple but profound fact: if a person does not love you, the fault lies more in you than in him/her because nobody, unless he/she is a fool, walks away from persons and things of value. So if a guy does not love you, that means he finds you, rightly or wrongly, undesirable and of no use or interest to him. That means you must accept that stark, simple fact and move on with your life. The more you denounce him and call him names, the more you lower yourself in the gutter in his eyes and you confirm to him that you are just a low-class, loud-mouthed, and stupid woman. Silence is Wisdom. 

 

Also, you may contemplate on the following:

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

I did that over and over again. And take a close look at me now: a stunning drop-dead gorgeous, sexy, virile man of letters and recovering wealth and allure, at the age of 65. "For me, second adolescence begins at 65", ainsi parlait Wissai.

Love, Trust, Kindness, and Money

Love, Trust, Kindness, and Money

-Like some wise guy recently remarked, after food and shelter, what matters in life are the relationships, not money, power, fame, or success. At the end of the day, we all want to be respected and loved. Roberto, I don't think you are really loved by a woman if she put her needs and money above yours, if she says and does things that hurt you. Romantic love is, deep down, no different from parent-child relationship.  We either want a living and caring parent back in our life or we have a child on our hand to protect and care for. Love between two emotionally independent grown-ups is rarely intense. The emotional needs are not there.

--Omar, thanks for telling me about love and all that shit, but right now all I feel is sadness and loneliness after watching a video posted by the ISIS. Human depravity seems to have no bounds. But then I wonder if given the right circumstances, I probably would do no less, as the ISIS dudes did, to the ones I hate and despise. Like Love, Hate is a very strong energizer. I often think about the dynamics of Hate? Do I hate certain assholes and scumbags because they did me wrong or there is another process at work? One thing for sure, at least to me, is that those assholes and scumbags I hate are different and inferior to me, morally or intellectually, and they are all fearful of facts and truths. Yes, I'm sounding petty and unenlightened, but the human mind, mine in particular, is a minefield of conflicting desires and feelings. 

"After the farewell is the heavy silence 

That's hanging in my heart and on my mind

I truly have no wish to see or talk to thee ever again.

My contempt is immense; my disappointment profound.

We must be at least honest to ourselves 

And smart enough to know our ground:

Where we stand in relation to others.

Frankly, thou art too dumb even to know that.

Thou fancy that thou art fine and not a miser...

And have a nasty and childish bent to self- project thy thoughts 

On me. As I said above, thou art dumb and foolish

And brazenly unaware of that. I regard thee a big naught.

But how did I know how thou think and what kind of a creature that thou art?"

The answer lies in a contrast between behaviorism and Descartes's view about Mind. 

Descartes thought belief was a private matter. This thinking had two consequences. First, that you know for sure what you believe. Second, that only you know for sure what you believe. The trouble with Descartes' view of the mind is that it makes very difficult to see how we can know about other minds. 

For the behaviorist, on the other hand, belief is a disposition to act in response to your environment. If you respond in the way that is appropriate for somebody with a certain belief, that!s evidence that you have it. Since your response is public---visible and audible---others can find out what you believe. Indeed, as the English philosopher Gilbert Ryle argued in his book The Concept of Mind, we sometimes find out what we believe by noticing our own behavior. But all this talk about mind and behavior would not mean shit to dumb asses anyway. They all think they are okay and their existence does have a meaning. That's the irony about them. Meanwhile normal folks (non-assholes but non-accomplished either) are getting sick and dropping dead like flies. Life is like that for most humans: eat, shit, sleep, believe in fairy takes, get sick, and then die, while fancying that they are okay and will go to heaven in an afterlife! 

(To be continued)

Musings

Language Acquisition, Poetry, and  the Human Brain

Omar, mi amigo, as I reflect on the absurdly obscene characterization of me as a dense loser by a hideously ugly and ignorant female kike, I think of the wonders of language acquisition, poetry, love, math, and madness, and their connections to the human brain. Reading about consciousness and the human brain has calmed me down and kept my homicidal urges at bay. 

I'm not saying that anything I'm going to say is original or refreshing. Rather, any human possessing an iota of self-honesty would know all about it. However, the issue whether they're willing to confront dark and not so secret truths about themselves and others is subject to debate and speculation. I'm of the camp which maintains that most humans are at heart cowardly and fond of playing a mental game with themselves. In other words they tend to gloss over their shortcomings while magnifying their virtues. They tend to have a higher opinion of themselves than they deserve. Almost everybody I run into has this deplorable and despicable trait. Let me enumerate and count specific examples to back up my observation and my point.

My first and favorite example involves two female midgets. They are losers in life. There is a halo on their foreheads which has the shape of five letters IMAFU (I am a fucked-up), but ironically and comically they both outwardly evince a high opinion of themselves. I suppose even a fucked-up and mediocre monkey would have an illusion that it is a big and mighty 800-pound gorilla so it can strut around and feel good about itself although it mostly spends its time scratching itself and licking its wounds.

Other monkeys are more astute in the game of pretense because they are simply smarter and a bit more accomplished than the aforementioned midgets. They pretend to be noble and generous while I know from first hand interactions with them that they are cheap, fame-seeking, and power-hungry assholes. 

At a much higher level than the midgets and monkeys are rare individuals who fooled me completely when I first met them. They talked and acted in true noble fashion. Only in some rare moments do they let their guards down and reveal that they are cold, self-oriented, and unreliable. 

I have yet personally met modern-day Gautama, Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, Father Damien, or another reincarnation of Nelson Mandela who eschewed revenge and embraced reconciliation. Instead, day in and day out I have heard about justice, punishment, and extermination. As I have written elsewhere, Love, by its very definition, is all-encompassing and non-discriminatory. It is, as a wise friend of mine put it, "People that are difficult to love, need it the most. Love is when you sacrifice your own needs for the needs of others." I think I know what Love truly is. Sadly  for me, however, Love is conditional. I am not loving enough to practice an all-encompassing and r fttbtnon-discriminatoryff love. I only love those who are lovable although I do recognize that I am hardly lovable myself, not outwardly anyway. But I often wonder why women have flocked to me like bees to honey. Is it because I possess good looks and animal magnetisrfmf in abundance? Ever since I turned nineteen years of age, I have always had a woman in my life in some form of romantic relationship. 

But my sisters contend that all the women, except perhaps one, that have gone through my life are not nice or noble, so I should stop bragging about my amorous "accomplishments". Actually, I am not bragging. Not anymore. Rather, I am re-examining my life and my mind so I would not undertake any violent fateful steps to act out my fantasies. Words are the window into one's soul. My words have been lately very fascinating to me. Through them I've been learning about my mind which itself is a smorgasbord of conflicting traits. Ever since I first learned French and then English I've been aware of how my mind functions. Then I gingerly stepped into the world of poetry. That was when I learned some more about associations, obsessions, and the unconscious. I started speculating about the nature and role of math in connection with madness, the dichotomy of order and disorder, rationality and irrationality, construction and destruction. In other words, I think about the nature of dualism and whether dualism is the truth or just a manifestation of monism. The more I think about this, the calmer I get and the weaker the urge to kill, to smash the skulls of certain assholes into pieces. 

-Roberto, I told you before and I'm telling you again. You must not indulge in thinking about killing. You must not fancy yourself that you are a killer. Leave that heavy lifting to professionals like me. I don't think you can handle the aftermath. Generally speaking, you've  had a very lucky life. Don't mess it up any further. Find ways to deal with feelings and thoughts of violence inside. Do more exercise. Meditate more religiously. Have a project that consumes your time. Stay away from animals that set you off. Be cruel emotionally, if necessary. But don't be a killer. You were not made for being one. Trust me. Yes, the urge and the desire is strong in you, but your life would be much more complicated once you cross over the line. The animals are not worth the price. In your case, staying away from them is the best policy. Life is a very long race. You must pace yourself. Don't misplace your compassion or your anger. Be realistic. Control your temper. Keep your mouth shut when angry. I know you know that you are supremely rational in your thinking as evidenced by your not believing in a Personal God, in miracles, in life after death and all other bullshits that weak-minded and stupid folks do. Your only weakness is emotionality. You must learn to curb it. Once you do, you are untouchable. As simple as that. Learn to deal with your weakness. With practice you will be OK. I repeat, stop being sentimental. Learn to be cynical and cold-hearted. The life you save must be your own. I repeat once more, stop misplacing compassion. Nobody loves you. Nobody cares about you. Everybody just pretends. So you must learn to love yourself. Remember that and you will be OK. Do you know who currently are my role models? Barack Obama and boxers. 

I admire Obama for his skills to ingratiate himself with those who could help and for saying what people want to hear. The only two areas I disagree with him completely are his support of abortion and of contraceptives. It is my opinion that those who fuck around without bearing the responsibility of their having fun in the hay are lower than barnyard and wild animals. These animals, with very rare exceptions, don't murder their young. Regarding contraceptives, there are ways to avoid pregnancy, but requiring insurance companies to cover the contraceptive pills is just very low. If you want to fuck just for the fun of it, you must buy contraceptive pills or condoms out of your pockets. To ask somebody else to incur expenses because you want to fuck is way despicable. 

I hold boxers in high esteem because anytime you step into a ring, you literally risk your life for a few dollars. Only fools or brave or desperate people would do that. To survive a boxing match, a fighter must come to terms with bravery, tenacity, and hard work. Life is a boxing match. Don't get into a fight if you can't win. Know yourself and your opponents. Yes, Roberto, we all need love and understanding from the right person, but very often such a person is hard to come by. So the issue is whether you want to settle for the second or third best. The choice is up to you. Just remember, true love is rare. You must work for it and you must be lucky, too. In the process you must respect and love yourself. That is the job number one in your life. Until you do that, nobody respects and loves you. Remember, respect precedes love, especially in a romantic context. Don't get bent out of shape because of the snide comments and cheap slanders from bitches and assholes. Those comments and slanders say more about them than about you. Your reactions to them reveal who you are and the level of emotional and social development. Remember, the clearest expression of contempt is silence and avoidance, not anger. Just ignore bitches and assholes. Pay them no mind. Don't go near them. Treat them as if they were stinking piles of shit and garbage. Yes, you are welcome to exterminate them if given a chance, but be sure you can get away with that. Just don't behave in such a way that people hate you as much as you hate certain bitches and assholes. When angry, bite your tongue and walk away. Bide your time until the right moment to strike,  if and when it comes. If it does not come, it's okay, too. You cannot get everything you want in life. Learn to live with unfulfillment. But I'm going to leave you with three stories. I hope they make an impact on you and change your character. 

1. A 73-year-old high school teacher who has no desire to retire was sitting in a McDonald's restaurant with a 31-year-old colleague when a homeless guy approached them. His colleague gave $10; the older man gave $100. When asked why he gave that large amount, the older man said, "I'm 73 years of age. I have lived a full life. I may die at any time. And I have enough money to live. So if some person needs the money and asks me for help, I will do it."

2. The 31-year-old man was voted the "Teacher of the Year" for the 2013-2014 school year. The voting was done by the students and the colleagues. The young teacher refused to be interviewed by the media. He didn't want publicity. I know the man personally. 

3. A young (under 30) professional poker player won $15 million in a tournament refused to be interviewed by the media. He was pressed for the explanation. He said that although he made good money from the game, the game is evil and should not be given wide publicity because he didn't want to attract weak players who would lose money and sanity to the game! The below is the piece written by Daniel Negreanu who came in second in the tournament and received $8 million for his efforts. There were 42 participants in the event. Each was required to put in $1 milluon. 

"DANIEL - POKER JOURNAL

My Two Cents On Daniel Colman "Controversy"

03 Jul 2014

I wanted to take this time to address the whole Daniel Colman controversy that occurred upon him winning the One Drop after beating me in a fun, exciting, heads up match. The banter between him and I has always been friendly. I personally never had a bad interaction with him and really enjoyed the match. I have heard from other players that he has had some “run ins” with people, but this blog isn't about gossip, it's about what I can speak to personally about what happened.

At the end of the match Daniel came to me and said that he didn't want to do any of the interviews and he didn't want to promote poker. I told him I absolutely respect that and you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. I meant it. I asked him why, and he said that most people lose at poker and he doesn't want to promote something that has a negative effect on peoples lives. There is some nobility in that.

Truth is, most of you reading this, will be lifetime losers at poker. You are unlikely to become successful professional poker players. It is available to all of you, and some of you will find success at the tables, but the truth is clear: most of you will fail. Sucks huh? It's the truth and he is right about that. Not everybody can be successful at poker, but for me, I see things a very different way. You know how much I would love to be good enough at golf to play on the PGA tour and win big prize money at the majors? You know how many people play golf, striving to be a top pro, but fail? The vast majority.

I also would have loved to have the talent and physical ability to be a pro hockey player, or rub elbows with Lebron James in the NBA. That wasn't in the cards for me. Lots of young people devote their lives to a sport, but the truth is, the majority fail to succeed. Only the best of the best will make it.

Many NFL prospects, in high school even, bulk up to 350+ pounds in the hopes of being drafted and making a career out of it. The vast majority will not make it, and often will deal with life threatening health issues as a result of that. Dreams don't always come true, and sometimes there are real life consequences associated with those failures.

So, I respect Daniel Colman for having empathy for those people that may be jaded into thinking they can easily become a poker superstar and make millions. I wish, in the moment, I could have talked to him more about his decision to decline interviews. Questions I would have asked him:

What are you standing for?

What is the message you want people to hear?

Why not use this platform as an opportunity to educate those very people you are concerned for and make a difference for them?

I have read his statement, and he makes some valid points in it. I think (and he acknowledges this) that it's difficult to take the position he does, and actually still profit from the game, and the weaker players he exploits. I'm assuming when he plays heads up sit n' gos online, he doesn't inform his opponent that he is a professional and they are likely to lose the match.

Lebron James makes more money playing basketball than other players because he is better than them. Colman is a successful player and makes millions because he is an exceptional talent. An accomplishment I would hope he is proud of when he looks back on his life and the opportunities poker has now given him to be financially free and make a difference in the world however he chooses to.

He also mentioned the seedy underbelly of poker. Make no mistake, this world he is talking about exists. However, that's not all poker is. At least not from the lenses I look through. One Drop collected a group of wealthy men for a fun poker tournament, but the bigger picture? $4.6 million raised for a cause. MAKING A DIFFERENCE! All through a game we all love to play. 

I have seen the other side of poker. I don't deny the dangers for those with addictive personalities, those that put their well being in jeopardy because they overextend themselves. Having said that, studies show that typically people with gambling addictions are drawn to more instant gratification games like slot machines rather than a game of wits like poker. 

The other side of poker that I see, and have for 20+ years in the game, is one maybe Daniel hasn't experienced yet in his life. One where old folks get together to play penny ante poker and socialize. Bingo, Bridge, poker, things that get them out of the house, socializing, being connected with others, and having fun. I'm not advocating seniors blowing their pension playing poker, but if they want to spend $200 playing a game that most lose at, but they enjoy the experience, I see that as a very positive thing. Again, studies show that playing games and using your mind on a regular basis is excellent exercise for the elderly. 

Poker, and more specifically poker tournaments are a competition no different than any other competition. The cream rise to the top, make the most money, and the vast majority whether its pool, tennis, basketball, golf, the restaurant business, etc. fail. Capitalism as a system allows people to strive for big success in whatever career they choose. 

Daniel opened his statement with “I don't owe poker anything.” No, I guess not, but I would look at it differently Daniel: GRATITUDE! Being thankful that you found a game you both love to play and are also good enough so that you can make a life for yourself. You don't owe poker anything, sure, but poker has given you a lot. The camera crew filming the event, the dealers, floor staff, Caesars, the WSOP, ESPN, PokerStars.com for giving you an opportunity to support yourself, the players that came before you and did spend time promoting a game you would have likely never heard about. You don't owe poker, or me personally anything, much like when a waitress brings your order, you don't owe her a tip or even a thank you. It's just a gracious custom, much like doing a winners interview...

I applaud Daniel for wanting to live his life with a higher consciousness and looking more deeply at the bigger picture. I support that, and his right to decline interviews 100%. I also think people are being too harsh on him. He is young, and I'm not saying that in a condescending manner, just at the age of 24 life is just beginning, your views on the world, the questions you have, are just starting to form. I'm not the same person I was when I was 24, and I certainly don't hold the same views I did when I was 24. 

I'll leave this blog with one personal (not so personal) message for Daniel:

Whatever it is you choose to do in your life, make sure INTEGRITY is at the core of it. If you are genuinely having an issue with the morality of playing poker for a living, make a choice. Don't compromise your own moral code for money. If you truly believe in your heart that what you are doing hurts people, and you don't want to hurt people, you need to make a choice. 

If I may make a suggestion, why not continue to do what you love, empower others, educate others about the dangers of this lifestyle, and use the money your talents allow you to earn, to make a difference in the world? Not by staking people btw! Lol. You have the potential at a very young age to make a positive impact on the world, both with your money and intelligence. Don't waste the gifts you've been given, and be grateful for the kind of life you are able to create as a result of those gifts."

  

(To be continued)