One friend caught me reading Nietzsche in the bus, upon which he inquired if I were reading 'philosophy' because I felt too old?
After a small pause I replied, "I think philosophy helps me stay young."
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Schweitzer's views
This is from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Schweitzer
Schweitzer's views
Schweitzer considered his work as a medical missionary in Africa to be his response to Jesus' call to become "fishers of men" but also as a small recompense for the historic guilt of European colonizers:[32]
"Who can describe the injustice and cruelties that in the course of centuries they [the coloured peoples] have suffered at the hands of Europeans? … If a record could be compiled of all that has happened between the white and the coloured races, it would make a book containing numbers of pages which the reader would have to turn over unread because their contents would be too horrible.
Rather than being a supporter of colonialism, Schweitzer was one of its harshest critics. In a sermon that he preached on 6 January 1905, before he had told anyone of his plans to dedicate the rest of his life to work as a doctor in Africa, he said:[33]
"Our culture divides people into two classes: civilized men, a title bestowed on the persons who do the classifying; and others, who have only the human form, who may perish or go to the dogs for all the "civilized men" care.
"Oh, this "noble" culture of ours! It speaks so piously of human dignity and human rights and then disregards this dignity and these rights of countless millions and treads them underfoot, only because they live overseas or because their skins are of different color or because they cannot help themselves. This culture does not know how hollow and miserable and full of glib talk it is, how common it looks to those who follow it across the seas and see what it has done there, and this culture has no right to speak of personal dignity and human rights…
"I will not enumerate all the crimes that have been committed under the pretext of justice. People robbed native inhabitants of their land, made slaves of them, let loose the scum of mankind upon them. Think of the atrocities that were perpetrated upon people made subservient to us, how systematically we have ruined them with our alcoholic "gifts", and everything else we have done…We decimate them, and then, by the stroke of a pen, we take their land so they have nothing left at all…
"If all this oppression and all this sin and shame are perpetrated under the eye of the German God, or the American God, or the British God, and if our states do not feel obliged first to lay aside their claim to be "Christian" — then the name of Jesus is blasphemed and made a mockery. And the Christianity of our states is blasphemed and made a mockery before those poor people. The name of Jesus has become a curse, and our Christianity — yours and mine — has become a falsehood and a disgrace, if the crimes are not atoned for in the very place where they were instigated. For every person who committed an atrocity in Jesus' name, someone must step in to help in Jesus' name; for every person who robbed, someone must bring a replacement; for everyone who cursed, someone must bless.
"And now, when you speak about missions, let this be your message: We must make atonement for all the terrible crimes we read of in the newspapers. We must make atonement for the still worse ones, which we do not read about in the papers, crimes that are shrouded in the silence of the jungle night…"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Schweitzer
Schweitzer's views
Schweitzer considered his work as a medical missionary in Africa to be his response to Jesus' call to become "fishers of men" but also as a small recompense for the historic guilt of European colonizers:[32]
"Who can describe the injustice and cruelties that in the course of centuries they [the coloured peoples] have suffered at the hands of Europeans? … If a record could be compiled of all that has happened between the white and the coloured races, it would make a book containing numbers of pages which the reader would have to turn over unread because their contents would be too horrible.
Rather than being a supporter of colonialism, Schweitzer was one of its harshest critics. In a sermon that he preached on 6 January 1905, before he had told anyone of his plans to dedicate the rest of his life to work as a doctor in Africa, he said:[33]
"Our culture divides people into two classes: civilized men, a title bestowed on the persons who do the classifying; and others, who have only the human form, who may perish or go to the dogs for all the "civilized men" care.
"Oh, this "noble" culture of ours! It speaks so piously of human dignity and human rights and then disregards this dignity and these rights of countless millions and treads them underfoot, only because they live overseas or because their skins are of different color or because they cannot help themselves. This culture does not know how hollow and miserable and full of glib talk it is, how common it looks to those who follow it across the seas and see what it has done there, and this culture has no right to speak of personal dignity and human rights…
"I will not enumerate all the crimes that have been committed under the pretext of justice. People robbed native inhabitants of their land, made slaves of them, let loose the scum of mankind upon them. Think of the atrocities that were perpetrated upon people made subservient to us, how systematically we have ruined them with our alcoholic "gifts", and everything else we have done…We decimate them, and then, by the stroke of a pen, we take their land so they have nothing left at all…
"If all this oppression and all this sin and shame are perpetrated under the eye of the German God, or the American God, or the British God, and if our states do not feel obliged first to lay aside their claim to be "Christian" — then the name of Jesus is blasphemed and made a mockery. And the Christianity of our states is blasphemed and made a mockery before those poor people. The name of Jesus has become a curse, and our Christianity — yours and mine — has become a falsehood and a disgrace, if the crimes are not atoned for in the very place where they were instigated. For every person who committed an atrocity in Jesus' name, someone must step in to help in Jesus' name; for every person who robbed, someone must bring a replacement; for everyone who cursed, someone must bless.
"And now, when you speak about missions, let this be your message: We must make atonement for all the terrible crimes we read of in the newspapers. We must make atonement for the still worse ones, which we do not read about in the papers, crimes that are shrouded in the silence of the jungle night…"
Friday, July 09, 2010
On fighting
I have always felt (still feel) some sort of uneasiness when I hear people talking of fighting ("for" or "against"). And I would then remind myself about how Kundera's insight had helped me identify the reason for my mysterious uneasiness. Recently I held in my hands a library copy of "Immortality" Lalitha had left on the desk, and was casually flipping the pages when I came across this convincing passage again..
“…As if it were an ostinato providing the bass accompaniment to a musical composition, she kept silently repeating to the rhythm of her motion: I will fight, I will fight, I will fight, and she was sure that she would win.
Just open any dictionary. To fight means to set one’s will against the will of another, with the aim of defeating the opponent, to bring him to his knees, possibly to kill him. “Life is a battle” is a proposition that must at first have expressed melancholy and resignation. But our century of optimism and massacres has succeeded in making this terrible sentence sound like a joyous refrain. You will say that to fight against somebody may be terrible, but to fight for something is noble and beautiful. Yes, it is beautiful to strive for happiness (or love, or justice and so on), but if you are in the habit of designating your striving with the word “fight”, it means that your noble striving conceals the longing to knock someone on the ground. The fight for is always connected with the fight against, and the preposition “for” is always forgotten in the course of the fight in favor of the preposition “against” ”
--- "Immortality",(1990), Milan Kundera,
“…As if it were an ostinato providing the bass accompaniment to a musical composition, she kept silently repeating to the rhythm of her motion: I will fight, I will fight, I will fight, and she was sure that she would win.
Just open any dictionary. To fight means to set one’s will against the will of another, with the aim of defeating the opponent, to bring him to his knees, possibly to kill him. “Life is a battle” is a proposition that must at first have expressed melancholy and resignation. But our century of optimism and massacres has succeeded in making this terrible sentence sound like a joyous refrain. You will say that to fight against somebody may be terrible, but to fight for something is noble and beautiful. Yes, it is beautiful to strive for happiness (or love, or justice and so on), but if you are in the habit of designating your striving with the word “fight”, it means that your noble striving conceals the longing to knock someone on the ground. The fight for is always connected with the fight against, and the preposition “for” is always forgotten in the course of the fight in favor of the preposition “against” ”
--- "Immortality",(1990), Milan Kundera,
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Is 'Existentialism' just about pessimism, hopelessness and despair?
"Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw conclusions from a consistently atheistic position. Its intention is not in the least that of plunging men into despair. And if by despair one means--as the Christians do--any attitude of unbelief, the despair of the existentialists is something very different. Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense existentialism is optimistic, it is a doctrine of action and it is only by self-deception, by confusing their own despair with ours that Christians can describe us as without hope."
--“Existentialism and humanism” (1948), Jean-Paul Sartre
--“Existentialism and humanism” (1948), Jean-Paul Sartre
Sunday, February 07, 2010
On roads and highways
Someone asked me what I think about, while driving long distances (across the highways)…
For eight days I had been scrapping my shoes on the stones of the roads…writes Rimbaud.
Road: a strip of ground over which one walks. A highway differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A highway has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A highway is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and waste of time.
Before roads and paths disappeared from the landscape, they had disappeared from the human soul: Man stopped wanting to walk, to walk on his own feet and to enjoy it. What’s more, he no longer saw his own life as a road but as a highway: a line that led from one point to another, from the rank of captain to the rank of general, from the role of wife to the role of widow. Time became a mere obstacle to life, an obstacle that has to be overcome by ever greater speed.
Road and highway; these are also two different conceptions of beauty. When Paul says that at a particular place the landscape is beautiful, that means: if you stopped the car at that place, you might see a beautiful fifteenth century castle surrounded by a park; or a lake reaching far into the distance, with swans floating on its brilliant surface.
In the world of highways, a beautiful landscape means: an island of beauty, connected by a long line with other islands of beauty.
In the world of roads and paths, beauty is continuous and constantly changing; it tells us at every step: “Stop!”
The world of roads was the world of fathers. The world of highways was the world of husbands. And Agnes’s story closes like a circle: from the world of road to that of highways, and now back again. For Agnes is moving to Switzerland. That decision has already been made, and this is the reason that throughout the last two weeks she has been feeling so continuously and madly happy.
---‘Immortality’ (1990), Milan Kundera
For eight days I had been scrapping my shoes on the stones of the roads…writes Rimbaud.
Road: a strip of ground over which one walks. A highway differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A highway has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A highway is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and waste of time.
Before roads and paths disappeared from the landscape, they had disappeared from the human soul: Man stopped wanting to walk, to walk on his own feet and to enjoy it. What’s more, he no longer saw his own life as a road but as a highway: a line that led from one point to another, from the rank of captain to the rank of general, from the role of wife to the role of widow. Time became a mere obstacle to life, an obstacle that has to be overcome by ever greater speed.
Road and highway; these are also two different conceptions of beauty. When Paul says that at a particular place the landscape is beautiful, that means: if you stopped the car at that place, you might see a beautiful fifteenth century castle surrounded by a park; or a lake reaching far into the distance, with swans floating on its brilliant surface.
In the world of highways, a beautiful landscape means: an island of beauty, connected by a long line with other islands of beauty.
In the world of roads and paths, beauty is continuous and constantly changing; it tells us at every step: “Stop!”
The world of roads was the world of fathers. The world of highways was the world of husbands. And Agnes’s story closes like a circle: from the world of road to that of highways, and now back again. For Agnes is moving to Switzerland. That decision has already been made, and this is the reason that throughout the last two weeks she has been feeling so continuously and madly happy.
---‘Immortality’ (1990), Milan Kundera
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