Catch - up

To all my fans, I apologize for the long time in which I posted nothing.

I'm currently reading China * Inc. by Ted C. Fishman

Before that I read The Mole Diaries which was clearly teenagery audience, but entertaining still. My wife had it, she brought it over, and I grabbed it having nothing else to read, since I'd finished...

Can't remember what book it was. I got it from the library, I'm pretty sure. I think it was

Count Zero by William Gibson. I was glad to have read Neuromancer already, since a lot fo the world that was imagined/created in that book was borrowed and used for Count Zero. My review in three words: unlikely heroes abound.

I was explaining my book to my sister, and it felt good to talk it out. I think I'll be doing more talk out with my wife, since she's stuck with me, and well we can't always talk about what she saw on TV at the gym, she might start to think conversations are hers, not shared.

Fyo D 2

I have heard your cries, yesterday's post was not enough.

Here are some more paragraphs taken from The Brothers Karamazov.
This also is from Father Zosima, only now he is preaching on his deathbed. He starts by asking, 'what is a monk?' and I'm going to jump in part way, to the part that piqued my interest. Zosima is speaking.

In this that I think of the monk untrue and presumptuous? Look at the worldly, at those who set themselves above the people of God--have they not distorted the image of God and His truth? They have science, but science contains nothing that does not come through the sense. The spiritual world, the nobler side of man's being, has been rejected altogether, banned as it were triumphantly, perhaps even with hatred. The world has proclaimed freedom, now more loudly than ever; but what do we find in that freedom of theirs? Nothing but enslavement and suicide! The world says: "You have needs--satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrin of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder; for while the poor have been handed all these rights, they have not been given the means to enjoy them. Some claim that the world is gradually becoming united, that it will grow into a brotherly community as distances shrink and ideas are transmited through the air. Alas you must not believe that men can be united in this way. To consider freedom as directly dependent on the number of man's requirements and the extent of their immediate satisfaction shows a twisted understanding of human nature, for such an interpretation only breeds in men a multitude of senseless, stupid desires and habits and endless preposterous inventions. People are more and more moved by envy now, by the desire to satisfy their material greed, and by vanity. giving dinners, riding in private carriages, occupying high social positions, and having myriads of servants--these are considered so important by some that they devote their whole lives to acquiring them and sacrifice for their sake their love of their fellow men, and sometimes even kill themselves if they cannot obtain what they believe they must have. It is the same with those who are not rich. And, as to the poor, who cannot satisfy their needs at all, they just drown their envy of others in alcohol. But the way they are being aroused now, it will soon be blood rather than liquor on which they will get drunk. Now let me ask you: Do you really think that such men are free? One "champion of freedom" told me himself that when he was arrested and deprived of tobacco, the privation was so painful to him that he was on the verge of betraying his "cause," just to get something to smoke. And this was a man who said: "I am fighting for mankind!" What can such a man do, though--what is he good for, unless he acts on some sudden impulse? He will never be able to endure pain for the sake of his "cause." So it is not surprising that, instead of freedom, they lapse into slavery, that, instead of promoting unity and brotherhood, they encourage division and isolation, as my mysterious guest and teacher explained to me in my youth. That is why the idea of service to mankind and brotherly love has been dying out in the world; indeed, now it is often sneered at, for what can a man do who has become the slave of the innumerable nees and habits he has invented for himself? He lives in his separate little world and does not care about the great world outside. The result of all this is that, today, when more mateiral goods have been accumulated than ever, there is less joy.

As in the last post, some of the views in the passage sound rather sweeping and extreme to someone like myself, who realizes one can't make statements about all of mankind and safely say that this is the way people are now. On the other hand, it does offer an interesting point of view regarding freedom, the way it is understood today, and I think many of the points made, such as the misconception of what freedom means, the accumulation of wealth and power, which drives people to be actually less free more isolated, and inevitably more desperate.

I find in this passage just one more example of the way in which Dostoevsky's ideas and concepts are truly timeless. This concept applies to mankind in any age.

From the pen of Fyo D.

I should probably do these in order... there are several quotes I'd like to put in as examples of why I enjoyed reading The Brothers Karamazov. In order of appearance as opposed to order of size, alphabetical order, or even in order of preference, since I haven't read the quotes all together recently and couldn't be bothered to rank them.

And by appearance I don't mean the way they look on the page, mean the order in which they appear in the book, my having read from page one onwards.

Alexei is speaking with his mentor, Father Zosima, who is recounting some of his experiences as a younger man. He has recently resigned his commission in the military over a duel. After news of the resignation and why, a wealthy but distant man who lives in the same town starts to visit him, and they have some deep discussions. The visitor says that he agrees with the younger Zosima that everyone is responsible for everyone else. That if people do not think in that way, heaven can never come to be. I liked particularly the comments on isolation. Father Zosima is telling the story to Alyosha.

As he spoke he looked at me and smiled, and I thought he was about to revel something to me.

"Heaven is within reach of every one of us, and now it is within me reach too; if I chose I could have it tomorrow, real heaven, for all my life."

He spoke with fervor and looked at me mysteriously, as if asking something of me.

"As to every man being answerable for everybody and everything, not just for his own sins," he went on, "you are absolutely right about it, and the way you succeeded in grasping that idea so fully, all at once, is really remarkable. It is true that when men understand that idea, the kingdom of God will no longer be a dream but a reality."

"But when do you expect that to happen?" I cried bitterly. "When will it come about, if ever? Perhaps it's just a dream and nothing more."

"So you don't believe yourself, " he answered, "in the things you preach to others. Let me tell you, then, that this dream, as you call it, will most certainly come true. You may rest assured of that, but it will not happen immediately, because everything that happens in the world is controlled by its own set of laws. In this case, it is a psychological matter, a state of mind. In order to change the world, man's way of thinking must be changed. Thus, there can be no brotherhood of men before all men become each other's brothers. There is no science, no order based on the pursuit of material gain, that will enable men to share their goods fairly and to respect each other's rights. There will never be enough to satisfy everyone; men will always be envious of their neighbors and will always destroy one another. So to your question when heaven on earth will come about, I can only promise you that it will come without fail, but first the period of man's isolation must come to an end."

"What isolation?" I asked him.

"The isolation that you find everywhere, particularly in your age. But it won't come to an end right now, because the time has not yet come. Today everyone asserts his own personality and strives to live a full life as an individual. But these efforts lead not to a full life, but to suicide, because, instead of realizing his personality, man only slips into total isolation. For in our age mankind has been broken up into self-contained individuals, each of whom retreats into his lair, trying to stay away from the rest, hiding himself and his belongings from the rest of mankind, and finally isolating himself from people and the people from him. And, while he accumulates material wealth in his isolation, he thinks with satisfaction how mighty and secure he has become, because he is mad and cannot see that the more goods he accumulates, the deeper he sinks into suicidal impotence. The reason fo rthis is that hshas become accustomed to relying only on himself; he has split off from the whole and become an isolated unit; he has trained his soul not to rely on human help, not to believe in men and mankind, and only to worry that the wealth and privileges he has accumulated may get lost. Everywhere men today are turning scornfully away from the ttruth that the security of the individual cannot be achieved by his isolated efforts but only by mankind as a whole.

"But an end to this fearful isolation is bound to come and all men will understand how unnatural it was for them to have isolated themselves from one another. This will be the spirit of the new era and people will look back in amazement at the past, when they sat in darkness and refused to see the light. And it is then that the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the heavens... But until that day we must keep hope alive, and now and then a man must set an example, if only an isolated one, by trying to lift his soul out of its isolation and offering it up in an act of brotherly communion, to keep the great idea alive.

I can tell you there is a huge amount of isolation in the community where I live. People shun one another, not even necessarily out of fear, but out of habit, not questioning their own actions, assuming it's for good reason, vaguely reminding themselves on occasion that the world is getting worse.

The world is getting worse, it is a result of thinking that 'everything is permitted' which by the way is a recurring theme in the book. People these days seem to have seriously adopted that mentality, that everything is permitted, and the isolation and unfriendliness is really distrust and suspicion; they feel justified in acting however they want though it may encroach on others, and they fear reproach. Because everything is permitted, who are you to reproach me?

Feet in shoes

I have some more quotes from the Karamazov brothers, but I'll have to fill those in later, as well as my thoughts on those quotes.

On the way here, I realized in a more conscious way the fact that I don't like to see shoes that cover the tips of a woman's toe and don't cover the whole toe. The result is a series of small lines created by the seam between each toe. I'm not sure what's exactly irritating but I think it's something to do with the visual flow: a smooth shoe and a smooth foot and even a smooth line transitioning colored shoe to skin-colored foot all interrupted and crosscut by these small creases.
Edit: I added a visual aid. Let me add something else, in the example shown here we also have squish-outyness, which are also distasteful in their own way. Note: I stole the photo without permission. I have low morals in that regard--if I get caught I will only be sorry I got caught and not sorry I did it.

I was thinking a rather deep thought while entering my building this morning, and now I can't remember what it was. Oh yes.. I remember it had to do with my reading, about God and the devil, in the book. I was thinking about the erosion of my testimony (this is the term Mormons use for their faith in God) and I wondered whether and pretty much believed that it was possible that I might come full circle in my old age. Ah I remember now, I was thinking about my possibly racist comment yesterday to two black women that the 'abos' filled in for black people with the rap and the hopped up cars (I didn't say the graffiti and the hairdos). Immediately felt like moving on to another topic.. Anyway I was reviewing the incident in my mind this morning, and I thought about how cultured and proper I had learned to be in college and here I am reverting. It was at that point I wondered whether I would come full circle in time and become religious conservative again.

Ivan Karamazov

Ivan made me cry today, while talking with his brother Alexei. He gives several examples of cruelty to children, to make a point. I hate reading about cruelty to children, or hearing about it, or seeing it.

Ivan first addresses suffering and who is to blame:

All that my puny Euclidean, earthling's mind can grasp is that there is such a thing as suffering, that no one can be blamed for it, that quite uncomplicatedly cause precedes effect, that everything that flows finds its proper level--but then all that is just Euclidean gibberish, and, being aware of that fact, I cannot agree to live by it! What good does it do me to know that no one is to blame, that every effect is determined by a cause, which itself is an effect of some other cause and so on, and that, therefore, no one should ever be blamed for anything? For, even though I may know it, I still need retribution.

The next point Ivan makes is that there's no way to atone for the suffering of an innocent child. There's no way that by children suffering some imbalance is corrected. It is not just. A mother couldn't forgive her son's torturer on his behalf.

He then asks his brother Alexei if he would build an edifice of human destiny so that men would finally be happy and would find peace and tranquility, only the edifice is built on the torture of just one of these innocent children.

At that point, Alexei brings up the one person who could do the forgiving required. This is the segue into the famous story of the Grand Inquisitor. I actually have the story as a pamphlet, probably for school study, but I understand it better now, having the conversation that leads up to Ivan's point about Christ's relationship to the people. It has more meaning for me now.

Voting

I have decided that if I did vote (were it not pointless to do so), I would vote for the candidate with the most money. Sad, though, that the choice is taken from me in the primaries, i.e. suppose the richest Dem didn't win the primary and would have beat out the richest GOP.