Blathering
I’ve been blathering, babbling about speech, but deep down inside I wonder if I know zilch, nothing, nada about it. I guess I’ve been a blowhard about verbal pyrotechnics. But I like verbal pyrotechnics. Always do. And always will. Something about it attracts me, like a campfire to a moth at night. I like silence, too, but nobody knows about it. One day I told a friend that I practiced meditation. She laughed and said she didn’t believe I was in meditation, not a noisy, nervous guy like me.
There’s a hidden side in every one of us. Take a self-appointed expert on Buddhism I happened to know. He has a public persona of serenity and wisdom, but his private life is a mess, and his sexual life must rival that of David Carradine. I don’t care about his private and sexual life, but one day he displayed his arrogance over a trivial matter. After that incident, I lost all respect for him and I said to myself: this dude, like David Carradine, knew nothing about Buddhism. All talk and no practice. Or take an ugly, short, fat, cross-eyed, and financially strapped woman I also happened to know. You would think she would be full of inferiority complex and behaved accordingly. But no, she asserted herself constantly and demanded attention. A person needs to know his/her place in the world and behaves accordingly. Of course, we always try to better ourselves, but not at the risk of denying who we are and become strangers to ourselves. Self-alienation is pitiful. Self-improvement comes from self-acceptance, not self-alienation. A chicken can’t fly like an eagle, no matter how hard it tries. If you are short, cross-eyed, and born with an unattractive face, don’t make it worse by getting fat. Try body-building, dressing elegantly, cultivating your voice, and improving your mind. Work within the confines of your limitations. Anyway, I once thought despite all her shortcomings, at least she had a heart, but one day I discovered that she didn’t have a heart. All those talks about compassion and empathy were an act; she only cared about herself and herself only. She went through life, making a lot of noise and nothing more. That was when I realized once again I knew nothing about women. And yesterday the news came that she had just killed herself by overdosing on sleeping pills. That was what self-alienation would do to you, eventually.
I’ve been taking an incursion again through the effusion and excrescences of an explosive mind, a mind that was on the verge on losing control over itself. Many comments were made about the extraordinary lack of self-restraint N exhibited when he wrote Ecce Homo. The lack of inhibitions made the book very readable, but then a few months later N went mad. I must take guard against the same possibility. Waves upon waves of thoughts keep inundating my mind.
I like the idea of going against the grain, of swimming against the tide. That makes my existence precarious but exhilarating. I want to forgive myself again and again. The image of Sisyphus pushing the huge rock up the mountain and then seeing it rolling back down again has sustained me. As Camus put it, the face straining to push the rock up the mountain inch by inch and then yard by yard, the face so close to the rock, it became the rock itself. And the very moment when Sisyphus decided to walk down the mountain so he could push the rock back up again, he was stronger than the rock. He didn’t let the rock defeat him. He didn’t give in to the challenge despite the futility of his task. We must be stronger than the meaninglessness of our existence. And we must imagine that Sisyphus was happy. Happiness came from stoicism, not from staying up on the mountain, living among trees and clouds, and shying away from the task of pushing up a huge rock. Each man is defined by his rock.
Every challenge in life has a power and force. To meet the challenge, we must possess within ourselves a stronger power and force.
This morning upon waking up I walked over to the bedroom window and looked outside. The sky grew white with fluffy, billowy clouds as egrets took flight over a winding drainage bayou in the stillness and silence of an early morning not yet disturbed by traffic noise. And I told myself I needed to drain my mind of all the vestiges of past hurts and sorrows.
Wissai
June 11, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Emotionality and Rationality
Emotionality and Rationality and other sundry items.
Emotions and Reasons are not necessarily conflicting. They only seem to be conflicting. Emotions are usually the catalysts for actions, but that does not mean that the actions are necessarily irrational. Take the case of anger, one of the strongest and predominant emotions. Somebody infuriates me to the point I want to take him out of this world and deliver him to the next. This is the usual wish of most people. The reason they don’t act on the wish is due to the costs involved. Some people, however, are impatient; they want immediate gratification. They know the costs involved and they disregard them. They pull out a gun or a knife or use their own fists and feet on the spot. They act on the basis of their value system which is immediate gratification to the dictates of their desires. They are willing to pay for gratification. That looks pretty rational to me. To each his own. Other people have a different value system. They wait for the right moment before they strike, the moment of killing a man without incurring high costs. These people act on their emotions too, but their actions are guided by a different value system. They don’t want the here and now. They know revenge is a sweeter dish when it is served cold. Both groups act in accordance with their values and desires, so we cannot say that both kinds of people will rationalize a posteriori and come up with a reason which is contrary to their initial emotion, their sentiment.
Take the situation used by Mr. XYZ The reason a man chooses his mother over his wife or vice versa is based on the level of attachment he has for the women involved. Most men, if not all, would know before hand what they would do. And the reasons given by them after the choice was exercised are consistent and logical with the degree of attachment, and not necessarily “invented logic”.
Mr. XYZ has a very unusual approach to common concepts and common reality. He has maintained that karma only involves unintended consequences and that monks should not practice politics. Now he is of a view that lawyers “cannot work to change the government or the political system of a country”. I beg to differ on this view as I have done on the other two views of his. Laws and political system of a country are not static. If they are viewed to be detrimental to the welfare of the people, anybody can and should do to change them. Lawyers are not and should not be exempt from this undertaking. In fact, I admire those lawyers in Vietnam who are doing that. They put their lives and the welfare of their loved ones on the line. Oppression preys on the universal fear of death and suffering. When people decide to say no, say enough is enough, to oppression and are willing to rise up and demand that the laws and the political system serve everybody in the country, and not the just ruling elite, do we have changes. The dissident lawyers in Vietnam are the current heroes of the people. They serve as catalysts for change. There are two types of people in this world. One is content to live as slaves because they fear death and suffering. The other is willing to live a life with dignity. I recall reading an account of a battle between the Native Americans and the American cavalrymen. Prior to the battle, the chief of the Native Americans (I believe it was Sitting Bull) said to his fellow tribesmen: “Today is a beautiful day to die.” His words have rung true to my ears ever since I came across them. If our forebears were universally afraid of death and suffering, we would speak Chinese or French today. The time for change is now.
So, now I am viewed or rather accused quite nastily by Mr. ABC (the play on the word “Tu-hood” was noted) as being an apprentice to priesthood. Far from it, I am who I am, a person who try to be better of today than I was of yesterday. I am not entering into any training to be anything other than being who I am capable of. If you follow the sequence of exchange of emails closely, I didn’t drag Buddha and Christ and Stalin and Mao into the discussion. U2 did. And when he stated that Stalin and Mao were in morals, I disagreed with him. I said that Christ and Buddha were in morals. Then he commented that I dragged religion into discussion and since it was a scary subject he would rather not touch it and would stay in this mundane world while watching me entering into some kind of Tu-hood for training for high morals. The whole attitude of ABC smacked of sophistry of not a high order. When I said I expected high morals from everybody, I was showing respect to my fellow men. (Here again, I don’t need to be a slave to political correctness by using the clumsy phrase “men and women”. I respect the intelligence of the readers; I expect them to understand that I mean “men and women”. They know, as well, Man is meant to be Mankind. I don’t need to get into semantics whenever I write words like Man and men. I think my respect for women shows by my disinclination to engage in sexist humor or to post materials which are deemed offensive to women. Respect has more force when it shows by behavior than by words alone). By expecting high morals from them and showing them as such, hopefully they (and I, for that matter) would rise to the occasion and behave accordingly (You would not expect me to say, no, I expect nothing more than low morals from my fellow men and that they are no higher than beasts, would you?) But frankly, I have been more disappointed than not. All my life I have been looking for a few good men, men who I deem to be better and more developed and more evolved than me, but invariably they turned out to have feet of clay. When the hard rain came, the feet cracked and dissolved and the whole edifice of public persona of decency and morality came crashing down. It was then I realized sophistry was rampant in this word and that very few of us were committed to truth. Those who were, were the ones I encountered in books.
When I say Ananda is going to the village for alms, I understand these five empty, evanescent processes of body, feelings, perceptions, thought, and consciousness are going to the village, but for convenience I used the term Ananda.
Buddha
Truth is elusive. I was reminded of that fact, once again, by learning a few days ago that Nguyen Truong To was a fraud. I also learned, as I had expected all along, that the French missionary bishops in the first part of the 19th century were actively engaged in politics, in trying to get France to invade Vietnam in the name of, in the disguise of, under the pretext of, protecting the converts. Religion, admittedly, is a touchy subject. But so is philosophy, and so is politics. Any worthwhile subject is touchy. Knowledge is touchy. Truth is touchy. But that does not prevent thinking and concerned people from talking about them. In fact, by discussing religion and philosophy and politics, a person’s character and level of understanding are revealed. How else do we get to know the person? By talking about sports and weather and sex? Einstein didn’t shy away from talking about religion. He was a devotee of truth and certitude. As historian Paul Johnson recounted, Einstein insisted that the equations in his General Theory of Relativity must be verified by empirical observations and he himself devised three specific tests of this purpose. “The last test (the “red shift”) was confirmed by the Mount Wilson observatory in 1923, and thereafter empirical proof of relativity theory accumulated steadily, one of the most striking instances being the gravitational lensing system of quasars, identified in 1979-80.” (Paul Johnson, Modern Times, First HarperPerennial Edition, 1992, p. 3). Johnson cited the philosopher Karl Popper: “what impressed me most Einstein’s own clear statement that he would regard his theory as untenable if it should fail in certain tests….Here was an attitude utterly different form the dogmatism of Marx, Freud, Adler and even more so that of their followers.” (Johnson, ibid, p.3). Richard Dawkins’s book The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing (Oxford University Press, 2008) included an article written by Einstein on the subject of science and religion. Dawkins characterized Einstein’s religious views as those of atheistic pantheism. I don’t wish to paraphrase Einstein’s words. I would like you to taste the sparking clear prose of the genius. Even in translation, the clarity of thought was awesome. When you read the fragments of the article that I took the time and trouble to type below, you would understand why I hold the views that Buddha and Christ were moralistic and expected their followers to have high morals and that Stalin and Mao were amoral, if not immoral. As I stated elsewhere, I don’t take a back seat to anybody when it comes to logical thinking. I take a special pride in my ability to sort out sophistry from genuine search for truth and understanding. As I stated yesterday in my latest email, I was surprised. Today, I felt worse. I was disappointed. Actually, I should not since I had seen signs of sophistry all along, but I refused to believe them. I was naïve. I believed in the nobility of men, of certain men, anyway. But I was wrong, as usual, in this belief of mine. I also wrote in one of my posts that one of my greatest pleasures in reading books is to encounter thoughts held by men of esteem that are similar to mine. That gives me a sense of validation and self-affirmation that I was not delusional of my thinking ability, not when it comes to literature, philosophy, religion, and politics. Anyway, it is high time to hear Einstein speak.
“Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and longing are the motive force behind all human endeavor and human creation, in however exalted disguise the latter may present themselves to us….with primitive man it is above all fear that evokes religious notions—fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death. Since at this stage of existence understanding of causal connections is usually poorly developed, the human mind creates illusory beings more or less analogous to itself on whose wills and actions these fearful happenings depend. Thus one tries to secure the favor of these being s by carrying out actions and offering sacrifices which, according to the tradition handed down generation to generation, propitiate them or make them well disposed toward a mortal. In this sense I am speaking of a religion of fear….the formation of a special priestly caste which sets itself up as a mediator between the people and the beings they fear, and erects a hegemony on this basis. In many cases a leader or ruler or a privileged class whose position rests on other factors combines priestly functions with its secular authority in order to make the latter more secure; or the political rulers and the priestly class make common cause in their own interests.
The social impulses are another source of the crystallization of religion. Fathers and mothers and the leaders of larger human communities are mortal and fallible. The desire for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God. This is the God of Providence, who protects, disposes, rewards, and punishes; the god, who, according to the limits of the believer’s outlook, loves and cherishes the life of the tribe or of the human race, or even life itself; the comforter in sorrow and unsatisfied longing; he who preserves the souls of the dead. This is the social or moral conception of God.
The Jewish scriptures admirably illustrate the development from the religion of fear to moral religion, a development continued in the New Testament. The religions of all civilized peoples, especially the peoples of the Orient, are primarily moral religions….And yet, that primitive religions are based entirely on fear and the religions of civilized peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on our guard. The truth is that all religions are a varying blend of both types, with this differentiation: that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates.
Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and of exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.
The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought….
The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.
How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it…
A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
It is therefore to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees….
A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.”
Wissai
June 14, 2009
Emotions and Reasons are not necessarily conflicting. They only seem to be conflicting. Emotions are usually the catalysts for actions, but that does not mean that the actions are necessarily irrational. Take the case of anger, one of the strongest and predominant emotions. Somebody infuriates me to the point I want to take him out of this world and deliver him to the next. This is the usual wish of most people. The reason they don’t act on the wish is due to the costs involved. Some people, however, are impatient; they want immediate gratification. They know the costs involved and they disregard them. They pull out a gun or a knife or use their own fists and feet on the spot. They act on the basis of their value system which is immediate gratification to the dictates of their desires. They are willing to pay for gratification. That looks pretty rational to me. To each his own. Other people have a different value system. They wait for the right moment before they strike, the moment of killing a man without incurring high costs. These people act on their emotions too, but their actions are guided by a different value system. They don’t want the here and now. They know revenge is a sweeter dish when it is served cold. Both groups act in accordance with their values and desires, so we cannot say that both kinds of people will rationalize a posteriori and come up with a reason which is contrary to their initial emotion, their sentiment.
Take the situation used by Mr. XYZ The reason a man chooses his mother over his wife or vice versa is based on the level of attachment he has for the women involved. Most men, if not all, would know before hand what they would do. And the reasons given by them after the choice was exercised are consistent and logical with the degree of attachment, and not necessarily “invented logic”.
Mr. XYZ has a very unusual approach to common concepts and common reality. He has maintained that karma only involves unintended consequences and that monks should not practice politics. Now he is of a view that lawyers “cannot work to change the government or the political system of a country”. I beg to differ on this view as I have done on the other two views of his. Laws and political system of a country are not static. If they are viewed to be detrimental to the welfare of the people, anybody can and should do to change them. Lawyers are not and should not be exempt from this undertaking. In fact, I admire those lawyers in Vietnam who are doing that. They put their lives and the welfare of their loved ones on the line. Oppression preys on the universal fear of death and suffering. When people decide to say no, say enough is enough, to oppression and are willing to rise up and demand that the laws and the political system serve everybody in the country, and not the just ruling elite, do we have changes. The dissident lawyers in Vietnam are the current heroes of the people. They serve as catalysts for change. There are two types of people in this world. One is content to live as slaves because they fear death and suffering. The other is willing to live a life with dignity. I recall reading an account of a battle between the Native Americans and the American cavalrymen. Prior to the battle, the chief of the Native Americans (I believe it was Sitting Bull) said to his fellow tribesmen: “Today is a beautiful day to die.” His words have rung true to my ears ever since I came across them. If our forebears were universally afraid of death and suffering, we would speak Chinese or French today. The time for change is now.
So, now I am viewed or rather accused quite nastily by Mr. ABC (the play on the word “Tu-hood” was noted) as being an apprentice to priesthood. Far from it, I am who I am, a person who try to be better of today than I was of yesterday. I am not entering into any training to be anything other than being who I am capable of. If you follow the sequence of exchange of emails closely, I didn’t drag Buddha and Christ and Stalin and Mao into the discussion. U2 did. And when he stated that Stalin and Mao were in morals, I disagreed with him. I said that Christ and Buddha were in morals. Then he commented that I dragged religion into discussion and since it was a scary subject he would rather not touch it and would stay in this mundane world while watching me entering into some kind of Tu-hood for training for high morals. The whole attitude of ABC smacked of sophistry of not a high order. When I said I expected high morals from everybody, I was showing respect to my fellow men. (Here again, I don’t need to be a slave to political correctness by using the clumsy phrase “men and women”. I respect the intelligence of the readers; I expect them to understand that I mean “men and women”. They know, as well, Man is meant to be Mankind. I don’t need to get into semantics whenever I write words like Man and men. I think my respect for women shows by my disinclination to engage in sexist humor or to post materials which are deemed offensive to women. Respect has more force when it shows by behavior than by words alone). By expecting high morals from them and showing them as such, hopefully they (and I, for that matter) would rise to the occasion and behave accordingly (You would not expect me to say, no, I expect nothing more than low morals from my fellow men and that they are no higher than beasts, would you?) But frankly, I have been more disappointed than not. All my life I have been looking for a few good men, men who I deem to be better and more developed and more evolved than me, but invariably they turned out to have feet of clay. When the hard rain came, the feet cracked and dissolved and the whole edifice of public persona of decency and morality came crashing down. It was then I realized sophistry was rampant in this word and that very few of us were committed to truth. Those who were, were the ones I encountered in books.
When I say Ananda is going to the village for alms, I understand these five empty, evanescent processes of body, feelings, perceptions, thought, and consciousness are going to the village, but for convenience I used the term Ananda.
Buddha
Truth is elusive. I was reminded of that fact, once again, by learning a few days ago that Nguyen Truong To was a fraud. I also learned, as I had expected all along, that the French missionary bishops in the first part of the 19th century were actively engaged in politics, in trying to get France to invade Vietnam in the name of, in the disguise of, under the pretext of, protecting the converts. Religion, admittedly, is a touchy subject. But so is philosophy, and so is politics. Any worthwhile subject is touchy. Knowledge is touchy. Truth is touchy. But that does not prevent thinking and concerned people from talking about them. In fact, by discussing religion and philosophy and politics, a person’s character and level of understanding are revealed. How else do we get to know the person? By talking about sports and weather and sex? Einstein didn’t shy away from talking about religion. He was a devotee of truth and certitude. As historian Paul Johnson recounted, Einstein insisted that the equations in his General Theory of Relativity must be verified by empirical observations and he himself devised three specific tests of this purpose. “The last test (the “red shift”) was confirmed by the Mount Wilson observatory in 1923, and thereafter empirical proof of relativity theory accumulated steadily, one of the most striking instances being the gravitational lensing system of quasars, identified in 1979-80.” (Paul Johnson, Modern Times, First HarperPerennial Edition, 1992, p. 3). Johnson cited the philosopher Karl Popper: “what impressed me most Einstein’s own clear statement that he would regard his theory as untenable if it should fail in certain tests….Here was an attitude utterly different form the dogmatism of Marx, Freud, Adler and even more so that of their followers.” (Johnson, ibid, p.3). Richard Dawkins’s book The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing (Oxford University Press, 2008) included an article written by Einstein on the subject of science and religion. Dawkins characterized Einstein’s religious views as those of atheistic pantheism. I don’t wish to paraphrase Einstein’s words. I would like you to taste the sparking clear prose of the genius. Even in translation, the clarity of thought was awesome. When you read the fragments of the article that I took the time and trouble to type below, you would understand why I hold the views that Buddha and Christ were moralistic and expected their followers to have high morals and that Stalin and Mao were amoral, if not immoral. As I stated elsewhere, I don’t take a back seat to anybody when it comes to logical thinking. I take a special pride in my ability to sort out sophistry from genuine search for truth and understanding. As I stated yesterday in my latest email, I was surprised. Today, I felt worse. I was disappointed. Actually, I should not since I had seen signs of sophistry all along, but I refused to believe them. I was naïve. I believed in the nobility of men, of certain men, anyway. But I was wrong, as usual, in this belief of mine. I also wrote in one of my posts that one of my greatest pleasures in reading books is to encounter thoughts held by men of esteem that are similar to mine. That gives me a sense of validation and self-affirmation that I was not delusional of my thinking ability, not when it comes to literature, philosophy, religion, and politics. Anyway, it is high time to hear Einstein speak.
“Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development. Feeling and longing are the motive force behind all human endeavor and human creation, in however exalted disguise the latter may present themselves to us….with primitive man it is above all fear that evokes religious notions—fear of hunger, wild beasts, sickness, death. Since at this stage of existence understanding of causal connections is usually poorly developed, the human mind creates illusory beings more or less analogous to itself on whose wills and actions these fearful happenings depend. Thus one tries to secure the favor of these being s by carrying out actions and offering sacrifices which, according to the tradition handed down generation to generation, propitiate them or make them well disposed toward a mortal. In this sense I am speaking of a religion of fear….the formation of a special priestly caste which sets itself up as a mediator between the people and the beings they fear, and erects a hegemony on this basis. In many cases a leader or ruler or a privileged class whose position rests on other factors combines priestly functions with its secular authority in order to make the latter more secure; or the political rulers and the priestly class make common cause in their own interests.
The social impulses are another source of the crystallization of religion. Fathers and mothers and the leaders of larger human communities are mortal and fallible. The desire for guidance, love, and support prompts men to form the social or moral conception of God. This is the God of Providence, who protects, disposes, rewards, and punishes; the god, who, according to the limits of the believer’s outlook, loves and cherishes the life of the tribe or of the human race, or even life itself; the comforter in sorrow and unsatisfied longing; he who preserves the souls of the dead. This is the social or moral conception of God.
The Jewish scriptures admirably illustrate the development from the religion of fear to moral religion, a development continued in the New Testament. The religions of all civilized peoples, especially the peoples of the Orient, are primarily moral religions….And yet, that primitive religions are based entirely on fear and the religions of civilized peoples purely on morality is a prejudice against which we must be on our guard. The truth is that all religions are a varying blend of both types, with this differentiation: that on the higher levels of social life the religion of morality predominates.
Common to all these types is the anthropomorphic character of their conception of God. In general, only individuals of exceptional endowments, and of exceptionally high-minded communities, rise to any considerable extent above this level. But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.
The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought….
The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.
How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it…
A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
It is therefore to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees….
A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.”
Wissai
June 14, 2009
Intellectual Honesty
Intellectual Honesty
Dear Friend:
It is not that I cannot take criticism or disagreement. It is the intellectual dishonesty, the sophistry that I cannot stand. When I post my views in this forum--- or any forum, for that matter—I welcome dissenting views. That’s the only way for me to ensure my views can hold water. When I write, I am not looking for agreement or admiration. I am looking for and/or expressing facts and truth as I know them. I try my best not to fall into the 17 logical fallacies that any textbook on rhetoric would warn the student not to commit. Please note the word fallacy derived from the Latin fallere, meaning to ‘deceive”. I take no pleasures to deceive anybody. I would rather like people to accept me and love me the way I am. That’s why I’m committed to intellectual honesty. I don’t twist somebody’s words in the heat of argument. Above all, I am set on the path I chose for myself a long time ago and that is to learn as much about the world and the universe I live in as I can, within the confines and limitations of my intellect.
The search for knowledge led me to examine the “verities” pronounced by some religions. And I came to a conclusion that most men are motivated by power and mind control, and not by truth. Yesterday I copied the views of Einstein on religion so we all at least have a frame of reference whenever the issue of religion comes up in the discussions in this forum. His views are not different at all from those who have spent time thinking about the subject. Everything that rises will converge. More and more thinking people have come to a view that Buddhism is not a religion. The Dalai Lama himself said, Buddhist teachings are not a religion, they are a science of mind. In psychotherapy today, Buddhist psychology is one of the approaches employed. I have not heard of Christian, Islamic, or Hindu approaches; I could be wrong in this regard because I am not informed enough. When a person is mentally disturbed, a guidance based on facts and logic can help, not on a reliance on some far-fetched dogmas or wishful thinking. I maintain that one of the reasons for mental disturbance is due to the inability to accept reality for what it is. The key thing is to know what reality is and what is not. A woman who was long into delusions now is accusing me of not facing reality. I find her accusation grossly ironic because this very woman once believed that God “took care of her”. Upon hearing her assertion, I asked her a rhetorical question. “Why it has to be you? What’s so special about you? What’s about those millions who died in the Holocaust, in the killing fields of Cambodia, in Darfur? Just to cite a few examples. Why did God not listen to their prayers and entreaties?”
As I wrote once before, I believe Buddha was the only thinker among those who gave birth to “religions” advised his followers not to follow blindly what he taught, but to examine reality, to examine closely the teachings to be sure they were logical and to work out their own salvation with diligence. There is much talk of faith nowadays. To my puny mind, it is hogwash. Acceptance should be based on facts and logic, not faith. Faith is a word employed by sophists when they encounter resistance.
In the past, I have done many things I am not proud of. I have fallen prey to anger and pride. To those I have hurt, I ask for their forgiveness. I know I have been bragging about languages, but this bragging has done me some good. It forced me to go back and study some languages quite assiduously so I would not be caught to be intellectually dishonest. The truth is that I only know one language well enough to express my thoughts in it.
I would like to borrow a word from NDN and conclude my piece with the signature
Peace.
W.
Dear Friend:
It is not that I cannot take criticism or disagreement. It is the intellectual dishonesty, the sophistry that I cannot stand. When I post my views in this forum--- or any forum, for that matter—I welcome dissenting views. That’s the only way for me to ensure my views can hold water. When I write, I am not looking for agreement or admiration. I am looking for and/or expressing facts and truth as I know them. I try my best not to fall into the 17 logical fallacies that any textbook on rhetoric would warn the student not to commit. Please note the word fallacy derived from the Latin fallere, meaning to ‘deceive”. I take no pleasures to deceive anybody. I would rather like people to accept me and love me the way I am. That’s why I’m committed to intellectual honesty. I don’t twist somebody’s words in the heat of argument. Above all, I am set on the path I chose for myself a long time ago and that is to learn as much about the world and the universe I live in as I can, within the confines and limitations of my intellect.
The search for knowledge led me to examine the “verities” pronounced by some religions. And I came to a conclusion that most men are motivated by power and mind control, and not by truth. Yesterday I copied the views of Einstein on religion so we all at least have a frame of reference whenever the issue of religion comes up in the discussions in this forum. His views are not different at all from those who have spent time thinking about the subject. Everything that rises will converge. More and more thinking people have come to a view that Buddhism is not a religion. The Dalai Lama himself said, Buddhist teachings are not a religion, they are a science of mind. In psychotherapy today, Buddhist psychology is one of the approaches employed. I have not heard of Christian, Islamic, or Hindu approaches; I could be wrong in this regard because I am not informed enough. When a person is mentally disturbed, a guidance based on facts and logic can help, not on a reliance on some far-fetched dogmas or wishful thinking. I maintain that one of the reasons for mental disturbance is due to the inability to accept reality for what it is. The key thing is to know what reality is and what is not. A woman who was long into delusions now is accusing me of not facing reality. I find her accusation grossly ironic because this very woman once believed that God “took care of her”. Upon hearing her assertion, I asked her a rhetorical question. “Why it has to be you? What’s so special about you? What’s about those millions who died in the Holocaust, in the killing fields of Cambodia, in Darfur? Just to cite a few examples. Why did God not listen to their prayers and entreaties?”
As I wrote once before, I believe Buddha was the only thinker among those who gave birth to “religions” advised his followers not to follow blindly what he taught, but to examine reality, to examine closely the teachings to be sure they were logical and to work out their own salvation with diligence. There is much talk of faith nowadays. To my puny mind, it is hogwash. Acceptance should be based on facts and logic, not faith. Faith is a word employed by sophists when they encounter resistance.
In the past, I have done many things I am not proud of. I have fallen prey to anger and pride. To those I have hurt, I ask for their forgiveness. I know I have been bragging about languages, but this bragging has done me some good. It forced me to go back and study some languages quite assiduously so I would not be caught to be intellectually dishonest. The truth is that I only know one language well enough to express my thoughts in it.
I would like to borrow a word from NDN and conclude my piece with the signature
Peace.
W.
Morning Delights
Morning Delights
Dear Friend:
This morning I took my car out for a drive in the countryside. The weather was splendid. I rolled down the windows. Fresh air rushed in and I felt rejuvenated with an upsurge of oxygen. The Spanish-language radio station played one of my favorite songs. And right away, I felt alive, happy, and even a bit ecstatic. I have always been a slave of sound. Sound affects my mood. And I thought of the piece on the subject of to be or not to be in sync. After I wrote it, I was stunned. I knew I had hit on something. (I felt the same way the night I finished writing the poem Laura in French). However, I expected the members of the forum would meet my piece with their usual stunned silence. So, your kind words surprised and delighted me. And I thank you.
Like one of my 18th century heroes, Francois-Marie Arouet, my self-chosen avocation is to say what I think, but unlike him, I like to express my thoughts in a language I didn’t grow up with, just to see how far I could go with the exercise. Words are my tool. With my pen, I battle faux (sloppy) thinking, injustice, falsehood, corruption and cowardice. While doing so, I strive for clarity of expression despite my penchant for floridity and rhetorical flights.
Dear Another Friend:
With all due respect, I had a hard time to understand the thrust of your email. I would appreciate it very much if you would kindly restate your thoughts to make them more accessible to readers who don’t have the intelligence you possess.
As I have maintained all along, I like people who make music, not mere noise. I also like people who catch fire. Fire produces light and heat and thus brings vision and comfort to men. Smoke, on the other hand, produces only obscurity and irritation to the eyes, lungs, and thus is injurious to the health of the mammals which have to breathe in the unhealthy air. I am not insinuating that you are the one who has been making noise and smoke. This is just a general statement. When I write, I try my best to avoid making noise and smoke.
Wissai
June 20, 2009
Dear Friend:
This morning I took my car out for a drive in the countryside. The weather was splendid. I rolled down the windows. Fresh air rushed in and I felt rejuvenated with an upsurge of oxygen. The Spanish-language radio station played one of my favorite songs. And right away, I felt alive, happy, and even a bit ecstatic. I have always been a slave of sound. Sound affects my mood. And I thought of the piece on the subject of to be or not to be in sync. After I wrote it, I was stunned. I knew I had hit on something. (I felt the same way the night I finished writing the poem Laura in French). However, I expected the members of the forum would meet my piece with their usual stunned silence. So, your kind words surprised and delighted me. And I thank you.
Like one of my 18th century heroes, Francois-Marie Arouet, my self-chosen avocation is to say what I think, but unlike him, I like to express my thoughts in a language I didn’t grow up with, just to see how far I could go with the exercise. Words are my tool. With my pen, I battle faux (sloppy) thinking, injustice, falsehood, corruption and cowardice. While doing so, I strive for clarity of expression despite my penchant for floridity and rhetorical flights.
Dear Another Friend:
With all due respect, I had a hard time to understand the thrust of your email. I would appreciate it very much if you would kindly restate your thoughts to make them more accessible to readers who don’t have the intelligence you possess.
As I have maintained all along, I like people who make music, not mere noise. I also like people who catch fire. Fire produces light and heat and thus brings vision and comfort to men. Smoke, on the other hand, produces only obscurity and irritation to the eyes, lungs, and thus is injurious to the health of the mammals which have to breathe in the unhealthy air. I am not insinuating that you are the one who has been making noise and smoke. This is just a general statement. When I write, I try my best to avoid making noise and smoke.
Wissai
June 20, 2009
To Be or Not To Be in Sync
To be or not to be in sync
C’est a mon tour. Avec une voix trainante et bredouillante, I’m uttering these words of mine. (I was thinking of writing this piece in French, but I abandoned the idea because I have not got around learning to use the diacritic marks and I’m pressed for time. Besides, writing in French would inevitably trigger the sense of loss and longing. What would I try to prove? Laura is not in this forum and I would come across full of pretentiousness). Anyway, the phrase “to be in sync” has been thrown around lately in this forum without given a proper exposition as what exactly the user means by the phrase. Now the dissident lawyer LCD has been observed as being “out of sync” for his conduct by some distinguished members of this forum. I am distressed by this “observation”, hence this “stream-of-consciousness” of mine.
But first, let me clarify what I understand by “to be in sync”. To me, the phrase means to be in tune with a situation and act accordingly. Thus, to be in sync is to be with the tenor of the times, to be full of congruity with the circumstances. A person can be in sync externally (with other people and society at large) and internally with himself.
Internally, a person is out of sync with himself when his actions are out of character, when he is not altogether. At a more refined level of analysis, a person can be out of sync deliberately when his actions and words don’t go together. In that case, he is simply a hypocrite. When he is out of sync unintentionally, he is delusional; he is not in touch with himself. When a person SINCERELY prays (talks) to his God, he is mildly delusional (he is engaging in self-hypnosis and not aware of it), but when he asserts that God speaks to him and he clearly hears God’s commands, he is definitely delusional and needs immediate treatment. That is why we have a quip: Prayer is when you talk to God, schizophrenia is when God talks back to you. With this understanding of mine about to be or not to be in sync, I asseverate that LCD has been in sync, contrary to what some have alleged and averred.
Anybody who calls himself educated must have the intellectual honesty of recognizing reality for what it is. So, the question is: Does the situation (rampant corruption, totalitarianism, moral decay, breakdown in education system, ceding land and water to historical enemy, ineptitude and kleptocracy in governance, and so on and so forth) in Vietnam needs urgent changes? If the answer is yes, an intellectual who loves his country has a moral obligation to act in order to bring about, to effect the changes. As a patriotic intellectual, LCD has been doing precisely that.
Anybody who has traveled to Vietnam and talked with the common people would know that the people don’t like the political system they are forced to live under. They yearn for freedom, for a system that answers to their wishes and needs, and not to the wishes and needs of the ruling elite. They long for the basic human rights currently enjoyed not only by established democratic societies in the West, but also by their close by neighbors in Thailand, South Korea, and Taiwan where elections are not farcical affairs but true exercises in democracy. They hunger for true leaders who have the courage to stand up and answer to the call of the people. LCD is such a leader and he is very much in sync with the needs of the people, no matter he looks like a Viet Kieu. He articulates and fights for what the people want. When do looks have anything to do with an ability to recognize the needs of the people? And when and why does a politician have to start from ground up at the municipal level and work to higher up? Hillary Clinton’s first elected job was as a federal senator and she did well in her job. Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected a governor of the most populous state in the U.S. without holding any elected office before. The fact that there are no laws in any country that I know of, stipulating that to run for a public office requires that one has first to hold an elected job lower in rank is a testament to the recognition that talent and desire are prime ingredients, not prior elected office experience, to be a politician. Could it be a classic case of envy, and not logic, at work here? One is or is not a politician. One is either a doer or just a talker. Some are both doers and talkers, but those people are rare. Being just a talker, a shooter of the breeze in order to have one’s voice heard even if that contributes to noise pollution, is OK with me, as long as such person does not attack or disparage doers who have done good deeds. I cannot stand hypocrisy, just as I cannot tolerate sophistry. Truth is my passion.
To be a dissident politician in a totalitarian regime requires much courage. The courage could come from naked ambition, but more often, it originates from an intense, undying love for one’s country. Based on what LCD has done (please see the articles posted by Gorille about him), any reasonable and intellectually honest person would have to conclude that LCD is a true patriot who could have an easy life outside of Vietnam, but he chose to go back to help his country. In addition, he advocates a regime change in Vietnam while living inside Vietnam. In other words, LCD has been sticking his neck out, in full recognition of the risks involved. To anticipate an ‘observation” from some defeatist reader that LCD’s actions against the government are futile and that other dissident lawyers and others have done as he does and now have an involuntary stay in confinement at the courtesy of the government, my answer is that if everybody, especially potential leaders, thinks in such a defeatist, negative framework, change is impossible. Certainly, even after the failures of uprising (Can Duong movement, VNQDD, just to cite 2 examples) against the French invaders, the Vietnamese persisted in their fight against colonialism and when the right time arrived in 1945, the whole country exploded and most Vietnamese joined in the fight. Past failures don’t necessarily guarantee future failures. Where is the virtue of persistence? Imagine, if millions of people pour out in the streets in Saigon and Ha Noi, peacefully, non-violently demand changes, do you think that changes would be impossible? Don’t underestimate the power of the people, the law of large number. As I wrote before, oppression preys on fear. Once the people no longer fear, anything can be possible, including regime change. Any regime which dares to suppress such an outpouring of display of discontent would lose legitimacy intentionally and cannot last. The current regime in Vietnam never has legitimacy domestically. The people didn’t really vote for it because the elections have always been farcical affairs. A single-party system does not have true elections. Don’t think the regime does not have fear. It knows it lacks legitimacy. It knows it has been playing a game of words with the people. It knows it is out of sync. It is fearful of losing power. Oppression reflects fear. It does not tolerate dissent. It is full of insecurity, not of confidence.
To those cynics who petulantly questioned and ridiculed LCD’s motives and wisdom in his answer to the call of the people and the call of his conscience, I have several questions for them:
Have you, self-described intellectuals and self-appointed elites, done anything concrete for Vietnam, the land of your birth and of your ancestors?
Have you stuck your neck out as LCD has done? Or are you just decrepit members of the NATO (No Action Talk Only) Alliance of Stale Air, babbling and blathering platitudes in the safety and comfort of living outside Vietnam?
Whose side exactly are you on? The side of the people or the side of the corrupt, mercantilistic ruling elite? Be honest. It’s about time.
A person’s true character is usually well-hidden unless and until it is tested. To me, the variegated reactions to the arrest of the dissident lawyer LCD constitute a litmus test of one’s character. The test also reveals if one’s life is in sync with higher values, namely, truth; fairness and decency to fellow men, especially to men of courage like LCD; and love for one’s country of birth even at the expense of one’s skin. Let’s organize protests in front of the embassies and consulates of Vietnam over the arrest of LCD. Let’s write to the media and talk to concerned people about the continuing suppression of human rights in Vietnam. Let’s get politicized. Let’s point out to the world that the current regime in Vietnam lacks legitimacy. My piece today in this forum is a small step in that direction. I have stuck my neck out. I have publicly declared my affiliation. What about you? Are you in sync with the plight of LCD and many others like him currently in jail simply for holding dissident views, with our fellow men (and women) living in oppression by a regime that does not reflect the will of the people? Or are you only full of hot, stale air and slyness? Has your life been shot through with the beauty and abundance of decency, of conscience? Have you caught fire yet as LCD has or are you still full of smoke and no heat?
______________________________________________________________________
Wissai
June 19, 2009
C’est a mon tour. Avec une voix trainante et bredouillante, I’m uttering these words of mine. (I was thinking of writing this piece in French, but I abandoned the idea because I have not got around learning to use the diacritic marks and I’m pressed for time. Besides, writing in French would inevitably trigger the sense of loss and longing. What would I try to prove? Laura is not in this forum and I would come across full of pretentiousness). Anyway, the phrase “to be in sync” has been thrown around lately in this forum without given a proper exposition as what exactly the user means by the phrase. Now the dissident lawyer LCD has been observed as being “out of sync” for his conduct by some distinguished members of this forum. I am distressed by this “observation”, hence this “stream-of-consciousness” of mine.
But first, let me clarify what I understand by “to be in sync”. To me, the phrase means to be in tune with a situation and act accordingly. Thus, to be in sync is to be with the tenor of the times, to be full of congruity with the circumstances. A person can be in sync externally (with other people and society at large) and internally with himself.
Internally, a person is out of sync with himself when his actions are out of character, when he is not altogether. At a more refined level of analysis, a person can be out of sync deliberately when his actions and words don’t go together. In that case, he is simply a hypocrite. When he is out of sync unintentionally, he is delusional; he is not in touch with himself. When a person SINCERELY prays (talks) to his God, he is mildly delusional (he is engaging in self-hypnosis and not aware of it), but when he asserts that God speaks to him and he clearly hears God’s commands, he is definitely delusional and needs immediate treatment. That is why we have a quip: Prayer is when you talk to God, schizophrenia is when God talks back to you. With this understanding of mine about to be or not to be in sync, I asseverate that LCD has been in sync, contrary to what some have alleged and averred.
Anybody who calls himself educated must have the intellectual honesty of recognizing reality for what it is. So, the question is: Does the situation (rampant corruption, totalitarianism, moral decay, breakdown in education system, ceding land and water to historical enemy, ineptitude and kleptocracy in governance, and so on and so forth) in Vietnam needs urgent changes? If the answer is yes, an intellectual who loves his country has a moral obligation to act in order to bring about, to effect the changes. As a patriotic intellectual, LCD has been doing precisely that.
Anybody who has traveled to Vietnam and talked with the common people would know that the people don’t like the political system they are forced to live under. They yearn for freedom, for a system that answers to their wishes and needs, and not to the wishes and needs of the ruling elite. They long for the basic human rights currently enjoyed not only by established democratic societies in the West, but also by their close by neighbors in Thailand, South Korea, and Taiwan where elections are not farcical affairs but true exercises in democracy. They hunger for true leaders who have the courage to stand up and answer to the call of the people. LCD is such a leader and he is very much in sync with the needs of the people, no matter he looks like a Viet Kieu. He articulates and fights for what the people want. When do looks have anything to do with an ability to recognize the needs of the people? And when and why does a politician have to start from ground up at the municipal level and work to higher up? Hillary Clinton’s first elected job was as a federal senator and she did well in her job. Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected a governor of the most populous state in the U.S. without holding any elected office before. The fact that there are no laws in any country that I know of, stipulating that to run for a public office requires that one has first to hold an elected job lower in rank is a testament to the recognition that talent and desire are prime ingredients, not prior elected office experience, to be a politician. Could it be a classic case of envy, and not logic, at work here? One is or is not a politician. One is either a doer or just a talker. Some are both doers and talkers, but those people are rare. Being just a talker, a shooter of the breeze in order to have one’s voice heard even if that contributes to noise pollution, is OK with me, as long as such person does not attack or disparage doers who have done good deeds. I cannot stand hypocrisy, just as I cannot tolerate sophistry. Truth is my passion.
To be a dissident politician in a totalitarian regime requires much courage. The courage could come from naked ambition, but more often, it originates from an intense, undying love for one’s country. Based on what LCD has done (please see the articles posted by Gorille about him), any reasonable and intellectually honest person would have to conclude that LCD is a true patriot who could have an easy life outside of Vietnam, but he chose to go back to help his country. In addition, he advocates a regime change in Vietnam while living inside Vietnam. In other words, LCD has been sticking his neck out, in full recognition of the risks involved. To anticipate an ‘observation” from some defeatist reader that LCD’s actions against the government are futile and that other dissident lawyers and others have done as he does and now have an involuntary stay in confinement at the courtesy of the government, my answer is that if everybody, especially potential leaders, thinks in such a defeatist, negative framework, change is impossible. Certainly, even after the failures of uprising (Can Duong movement, VNQDD, just to cite 2 examples) against the French invaders, the Vietnamese persisted in their fight against colonialism and when the right time arrived in 1945, the whole country exploded and most Vietnamese joined in the fight. Past failures don’t necessarily guarantee future failures. Where is the virtue of persistence? Imagine, if millions of people pour out in the streets in Saigon and Ha Noi, peacefully, non-violently demand changes, do you think that changes would be impossible? Don’t underestimate the power of the people, the law of large number. As I wrote before, oppression preys on fear. Once the people no longer fear, anything can be possible, including regime change. Any regime which dares to suppress such an outpouring of display of discontent would lose legitimacy intentionally and cannot last. The current regime in Vietnam never has legitimacy domestically. The people didn’t really vote for it because the elections have always been farcical affairs. A single-party system does not have true elections. Don’t think the regime does not have fear. It knows it lacks legitimacy. It knows it has been playing a game of words with the people. It knows it is out of sync. It is fearful of losing power. Oppression reflects fear. It does not tolerate dissent. It is full of insecurity, not of confidence.
To those cynics who petulantly questioned and ridiculed LCD’s motives and wisdom in his answer to the call of the people and the call of his conscience, I have several questions for them:
Have you, self-described intellectuals and self-appointed elites, done anything concrete for Vietnam, the land of your birth and of your ancestors?
Have you stuck your neck out as LCD has done? Or are you just decrepit members of the NATO (No Action Talk Only) Alliance of Stale Air, babbling and blathering platitudes in the safety and comfort of living outside Vietnam?
Whose side exactly are you on? The side of the people or the side of the corrupt, mercantilistic ruling elite? Be honest. It’s about time.
A person’s true character is usually well-hidden unless and until it is tested. To me, the variegated reactions to the arrest of the dissident lawyer LCD constitute a litmus test of one’s character. The test also reveals if one’s life is in sync with higher values, namely, truth; fairness and decency to fellow men, especially to men of courage like LCD; and love for one’s country of birth even at the expense of one’s skin. Let’s organize protests in front of the embassies and consulates of Vietnam over the arrest of LCD. Let’s write to the media and talk to concerned people about the continuing suppression of human rights in Vietnam. Let’s get politicized. Let’s point out to the world that the current regime in Vietnam lacks legitimacy. My piece today in this forum is a small step in that direction. I have stuck my neck out. I have publicly declared my affiliation. What about you? Are you in sync with the plight of LCD and many others like him currently in jail simply for holding dissident views, with our fellow men (and women) living in oppression by a regime that does not reflect the will of the people? Or are you only full of hot, stale air and slyness? Has your life been shot through with the beauty and abundance of decency, of conscience? Have you caught fire yet as LCD has or are you still full of smoke and no heat?
______________________________________________________________________
Wissai
June 19, 2009
There comes a time when it is indecent to live longer than one should.
Thank you for your words of encouragement. I know by writing the way I do, I run a risk of incurring the wrath and enmity of some people, but I cannot live a life of a lie. I felt that I had to do something so I could sleep better at night. Death comes eventually to all of us. Sometimes one has to live life dangerously so that one earns the right to live. Sometimes one has to be a flame to light up other flames. And finally, there comes a time when it is indecent to live longer than one should.
The current situation in Vietnam brought to my mind the following words of Gabriel Marcel, a Catholic French thinker of existentialist persuasion:
“At the time of the 1956 uprising the Hungarians revolted violently because they could no longer bear the lies circulated by the official press. In other words, they found themselves in a situation where they saw the degraded condition their oppressors intended to reduce them to, and on the basis of this awareness they revolted…
Truth is truth only if it is recognized; and recognition involves a movement of attention in the direction of truth….The relationship between attention and freedom is very close…My attention is the measure of my freedom…”
(from Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, Northwestern University Press, 1973, p. xxxiii)
We need to pay more attention to Vietnam. We need to do something. The time to act is now.
Long live Vietnam! Viet Nam muon nam!
Wissai
June 30, 2009
The current situation in Vietnam brought to my mind the following words of Gabriel Marcel, a Catholic French thinker of existentialist persuasion:
“At the time of the 1956 uprising the Hungarians revolted violently because they could no longer bear the lies circulated by the official press. In other words, they found themselves in a situation where they saw the degraded condition their oppressors intended to reduce them to, and on the basis of this awareness they revolted…
Truth is truth only if it is recognized; and recognition involves a movement of attention in the direction of truth….The relationship between attention and freedom is very close…My attention is the measure of my freedom…”
(from Tragic Wisdom and Beyond, Northwestern University Press, 1973, p. xxxiii)
We need to pay more attention to Vietnam. We need to do something. The time to act is now.
Long live Vietnam! Viet Nam muon nam!
Wissai
June 30, 2009
What made me Vietnamese
What Made Me Vietnamese?
Eric Liu, Bill Clinton’s ex-speechwriter, in his book of essays, The Accidental Asian, cited a quote from another writer, a Hispanic, who wrote; “What made me Mexican? The language and the air, I guess.” Reading Liu’s citation of the quote unmoored my mind and I saw it drifting across time and space, back to the land I was growing up during my formative years, the land called Vietnam.
I recalled visiting my maternal grandmother in Vung Liem District (birthplace of Vo Van Kiet), Vinh Long Province every summer up until 1963 when the war intensified to a level that made traveling unsafe and unwise. I recalled getting up early in the morning with my Mom. We would catch a motorized pedicab to the bus depot. I was cold in the chill of early morning and I snuggled close to my Mom seeking warmth and comfort while the pedicab was racing to its destination. The commotion created by the throngs of passengers and the shouts of the bus drivers’ assistants competing for business stayed forever in my impressionable mind. Also stayed in my mind were the countless rice paddies and the ferry crossings of the Mekong River. The beige water of the life-giving river was dotted with bobbing, floating vegetation. Looking at the river coursing and the small waves the ferry left behind in its wake, I felt alive and happy and connected to the land.
The connection was intensified by the language I acquired at school. Through it, I learned about our beautiful poetry and our long history to stay alive and independent from Chinese rule. I learned about our valiant ancestors who had no fear of the more numerous Chinese and who had sacrificed their blood so that we today could speak Vietnamese and enjoy our songs and poetry and jokes in Vietnamese and not in Chinese. This enjoyment is in danger of disappearing if the current intellectuals, the supposed leaders of the society, show nothing but fear towards China. We must act in accordance with the duty entrusted in us and rise up in concert with our fellow intellectuals in Vietnam to resist China NOW before it is too late. I humbly and earnestly ask fellow Mitchongs who still care about Vietnam but who are sitting on the sidelines, please join us on board and put your name in the petition being circulated by anh Hung Cao who spearheaded this project solely from the love of his heart for our fellow fishermen, for our beloved Vietnam, not from any political ambitions.
Please join us. You will feel better because deep in your heart, you know you’ve done the right thing and all the money and the expectations spent on making who you are today were not wasted. In life there comes a moment we have to live for others than just for ourselves. Robert Ardrey, in one of his two famous books (African Genesis and Territorial Imperative, I don’t recall which one) recounted a story of a leopard waiting in ambush of a troop of baboons which returned to its hideout after a day foraging in the valley below. When the leopard attacked, instantly a group of male baboons flung themselves on it. The leopard killed several male baboons but one baboon managed to sink its long canines into the throat of the leopard and the leopard died and the troop of baboons survived. The baboons went on with their lives, the lost baboons were replaced by a new generation, and life as experienced by the baboons continues to this day in that part of Africa. After I read that story at the age of twenty five in the wee hours of a Sunday morning, I vowed to myself that I would act in a manner no less than that of the male baboons should the time come. Such time has arrived.
Long Live Vietnam.
Wissai
July 2009
Eric Liu, Bill Clinton’s ex-speechwriter, in his book of essays, The Accidental Asian, cited a quote from another writer, a Hispanic, who wrote; “What made me Mexican? The language and the air, I guess.” Reading Liu’s citation of the quote unmoored my mind and I saw it drifting across time and space, back to the land I was growing up during my formative years, the land called Vietnam.
I recalled visiting my maternal grandmother in Vung Liem District (birthplace of Vo Van Kiet), Vinh Long Province every summer up until 1963 when the war intensified to a level that made traveling unsafe and unwise. I recalled getting up early in the morning with my Mom. We would catch a motorized pedicab to the bus depot. I was cold in the chill of early morning and I snuggled close to my Mom seeking warmth and comfort while the pedicab was racing to its destination. The commotion created by the throngs of passengers and the shouts of the bus drivers’ assistants competing for business stayed forever in my impressionable mind. Also stayed in my mind were the countless rice paddies and the ferry crossings of the Mekong River. The beige water of the life-giving river was dotted with bobbing, floating vegetation. Looking at the river coursing and the small waves the ferry left behind in its wake, I felt alive and happy and connected to the land.
The connection was intensified by the language I acquired at school. Through it, I learned about our beautiful poetry and our long history to stay alive and independent from Chinese rule. I learned about our valiant ancestors who had no fear of the more numerous Chinese and who had sacrificed their blood so that we today could speak Vietnamese and enjoy our songs and poetry and jokes in Vietnamese and not in Chinese. This enjoyment is in danger of disappearing if the current intellectuals, the supposed leaders of the society, show nothing but fear towards China. We must act in accordance with the duty entrusted in us and rise up in concert with our fellow intellectuals in Vietnam to resist China NOW before it is too late. I humbly and earnestly ask fellow Mitchongs who still care about Vietnam but who are sitting on the sidelines, please join us on board and put your name in the petition being circulated by anh Hung Cao who spearheaded this project solely from the love of his heart for our fellow fishermen, for our beloved Vietnam, not from any political ambitions.
Please join us. You will feel better because deep in your heart, you know you’ve done the right thing and all the money and the expectations spent on making who you are today were not wasted. In life there comes a moment we have to live for others than just for ourselves. Robert Ardrey, in one of his two famous books (African Genesis and Territorial Imperative, I don’t recall which one) recounted a story of a leopard waiting in ambush of a troop of baboons which returned to its hideout after a day foraging in the valley below. When the leopard attacked, instantly a group of male baboons flung themselves on it. The leopard killed several male baboons but one baboon managed to sink its long canines into the throat of the leopard and the leopard died and the troop of baboons survived. The baboons went on with their lives, the lost baboons were replaced by a new generation, and life as experienced by the baboons continues to this day in that part of Africa. After I read that story at the age of twenty five in the wee hours of a Sunday morning, I vowed to myself that I would act in a manner no less than that of the male baboons should the time come. Such time has arrived.
Long Live Vietnam.
Wissai
July 2009
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