America After America (3) . . . . . . . TOWARD NEW YORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . New York . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In the plane again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . At Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Instead of a cosmogony When thinking of micro-cosmos, we have in view tiny lifeless particles having certain characteristic physical features. In macro-cosmos, the only difference is that the tiny particles become very large cosmic bodies. We wonder ourselves if life exists on other planets but any planet strictly speaking is conceived as something without life. Into this inanimate and simple medium, between micro and macro cosmos, life does exist at least on our planet on which we live with all of our faiths and fights. Odd, isn't it? The culprit is our imagination, or more specifically, our lack of imagination. We understand what occurs around us but our knowledge decreases substantially as our thinking moves farther away. In both micro-cosmos as well as macro-cosmos, our mind imagines simple particles whirling unceasingly around each other. Really? Is the world senseless? Unlikely! What would be the sense of a world without sense? We will never be able to provide answers to these questions but this does not prevent us from imagining other cosmogonies. But why? The reason for any cosmogony ever conceived was to make sense of our life and to serve as support of morality. Any religion does offer some moral norms based upon a particular cosmogony. The science, on the other hand, destroys any cosmogony, and implicitly the moral norms that had used that cosmogony as support, offering nothing as a replacement. If you are not a religious person at all, consider the following proposition. As science accepts the infinite as mathematical notion, then we may accept that Earth is a particle in the micro-cosmos of another superior system which, in turn, is a particle in other systems and so on. Perhaps we are somewhere in an infinite flight of stairs. Can Earth be a particle of the liver of an upper being? It seems we must accept that life could exist both in small and large infinite. There is a god for us and we are gods for our some smaller ones. But how could I speak something to those smaller beings from my body what I want they to do. How could I address to them? They do not know Romanian language, not even English. It must be another way, not to make them to understand me, but to oblige them to work properly. If don't, the inflicting punishment will be drastic and then... what, for example, a section of the liver becomes out of the body? A decaying material! Of course, it would be naive to think that God looks like us and he watches our individual existence. Is there a moral? From an individual point of view the answer is NO, but - from a collective one - it is YES. For example to keep Earth alive; otherwise the vital functions of the upper being will surely remove us as a decayed corpuscle! In which way? This would be the topic of the religion. This is not just a cosmogony but it deserves to think on it. (It looks like such of pantheism. What a trump of a fellow this Spinoza was! He knew nothing about he structure of the atom, but thought better than many contemporaries. As we understand him now, I wonder when we will understand the ancient Greeks, although Hindu tradition is nearer by the pantheism.) �. If God made us, he did it for himself. Let's suppose that we, you or I, to make a machinery, let's say a "bio-machine". We do not want that machine to raise prayers to us, or to glorify our name every day and every hour, unless we are just some stupid people. What we want is that machine to work according to our project. God wants the same from us. Prayers are priests' inventions. The question is what God wants us to do? Maybe to preserve the planet entirely! Do not forget that he made the earth firstly, and only afterwards the man. How could we possibly hope to discover something of the mind of God? How God views our life, and what he thinks? (If God made us like him, he is like us, so he has the same troubles. I would like to know when it is the better time for asking him about my problems, because I do not want to disturb him while in the bathroom. Fortunately, be sure that he is not like us.) As a beginning is proved - both biblical and archaeological - an end must be as well. The idea of an imminent end gives birth to the salvation idea, evidently for those who will be alive then. How to save themselves? With prayers it is unlikely. Anyway, the solution is not to be found in a book written several thousands years ago. But, till then, it would be good for us to keep the planet entirely. At the beginning, it is the word that was. The Bible says that. Of course, the God's word! "Word" has a deeper meaning here. It says that God had a plan, a project, before starting to make the world. He didn't play making earth, plants, animals and finally some little men, at random. First, he had had a project. All the nature was conceived as a whole. That's why we ought to preserve the nature as it is, with the mankind in it, if possible. This is our first duty. If we have too many "original" eccentric ideas, there is the risk of becoming non-functional inside of the upper-system and, consequently, the system will eliminate us, just because it was conceived as a whole. Man is in his essence bad. Any object or being in nature is in a permanent interaction with the objects and beings around him. The struggle for existence is indispensable for life, is life itself. Man, as part of nature, cannot make exception. Thanks to the education, he learns how to live decently, as the medium will impose its limits anyway. The intelligence should improve his existence, but it did not happen so far. On the contrary, man used it destructively. In whole, our situation looks like that of pre-historical dinosaurs, which used to dominate the medium, but were the first to disappear. If you do not like my comparison, think to brontosaurs! As for the education, it is an individual process. The society does not change itself in the same rhythm. As a result, educated people are victims of the less educated ones. And this is the smallest effect. More grave is that we firstly propose to educate man to be good, and then we think that men really are good. It is a non-realist premise to imagine man better than he is. This is why we conceive all kinds of utopias. People should be considered as they are, and conceive a society in according to their characteristic features. �. Do we are free? Without the pressure of the atmosphere our body would burst. (Schopenhauer said it.) The absolute liberty is not possible. In society, Antoine de Saint-Exup�ry said that it is the enemy who borders us, gives form and found us. Let us not say just enemy, but it is clear that our liberty come up against the others' liberty, so that we must not disregard them. Civilisation recommends norms of living together. Liberty exists inside of norms. State imposes laws for those who do not understand the utility of the civilisation. Sometimes they think their liberty would be diminished, which could be real if some laws were abusive. Religion suggests moral norms for all the others. Religious man is not preoccupied by liberty. The notion is strange for him. His single duty is preaching, and has not time for anything else. �. I have just read the leaflet from a CD with music of American Indians, where the author insisted on the idea that, in Indian spiritualist faith, man is considered to be part of nature. It is here from his attachment to the nature arises. I am thinking the morale issued from the Christian faith is opposite. In Christianity, people are taught that their existence on the Earth is temporary; the eternity is in the Eden, likely in the Hell. From here the scorn to the earth and everything is on it, the neglecting of the medium. Even in Extreme Oriental faiths, although mankind's existence on the Earth is considered to be temporary too, caring plants and animals is extremely important. Only the Christians are inimical to the medium. This comparison deserves a deeper analyse. Maybe I will do it one day. For the moment, I keep in mind that native-Americans spiritualist faith seems to be better that ours. Their god has less political ambitions. �. With or without beard, alike us or, on the contrary, very different, a being or spontaneous nature, God surely exists, and we are his children, in the figurative sense, of course. The question is what he claims from us? Hosannas and glorifying hymns surely not! They are tricks invented by priests. Maybe God only wants us to behave on a normal way, as he made us. Consequently, any exaggeration is opposite to his will. �. In time, common people have understood better and better Christian philosophy. It is not true the atheism is generalised, but the profound Christian message is not to be found in most churches, and people see this. Consequently, they do not go to church, but they believe, everyone in his way. Now, it is surprisingly, at least for me, why neo-Protestant preachers insist on those anachronic ideas of Apocalypse and the Second Coming of Jesus, who will massacre all the people except those few adepts of exactly their church. Probably my wife is right saying that everybody believes in God according to his soul. �. In Romania, not even fifty years of communist propaganda changed the faith. On the contrary, this is just more obvious now, when the poverty reached unbearable limits; people thank to God as the only rescuer. We must not forget that Christianity is first the faith of poor people. �. Paradise has not representations in our world; we cannot imagine it. As for the hell, Dante imagined it as earthly as possible. I am afraid the modern times exceeded his fantasy. �. Now I know where we come from: from love. A late autobiography As I have just read Marcus Aurelius, I am tending to see what would happen if I would apply the same algorithm. It is true, he had famous ancestors and was himself a celebrity, while my ancestors were much more modest ones, as myself too. Yet, one can do a suitable motion of translation so that the logic of the method will not be affected. He begins by saying �From my grandfather Verus I have learnt the good manners and self-control�. This Verus was consul and prefect of Rome. I had two grandparents, the both businessmen in a town from Romania. I learnt nothing from them, as they had died before my birth. As a matter of fact, if they had not died, I should not have born, because they were being so grim rivals that they did not accept the marriage of their children, even if these ones used to love each other with a passion greater than their parents� stubbornness. But the inevitable occurred, the children got married, and I came into being. I was not their first experience. From a previous attempt, my elder sister resulted. I had to accept her as my parent�s first experiment before �the great achievement�. (It is true that God made the man first and afterwards the woman, but nobody demonstrated that this would have been the best solution, and . . . he was alone.) It was expected that, after a success like this, they did not try anything else. I would be ungrateful to keep on the idea that I would not have learnt anything from my grandfathers. Indirectly, they have taught my very many things. My mother�s father was a poor fellow, but clever and ambitious. He got married with my grandmother, a woman very timid and lonely, but descending from a family with deep roots and assuring her an important dowry. This dowry was the base of a prosperous business, which the grandfather built alone. He has taught me by this example what a resolute man can do in his life. About the other grandfather I know very little. Probably, he was the cause of the dispute with his post-mortem father of his daughter-in-law. He had inherited the profession of businessman - usual in his family from several generations - and considered to be from this reason �of a more noble race�. Sure is that all his children until my father, had followed some universities, while the other�s only two from five. As I said, after the grandfathers� died, the children were free to marry, so my father � over ears in love with my mother � followed the shortest way possible: the school of officers. In this way, after two or three years � I do not know exactly � he became a professional in a field for which he used to have not the least vocation or attraction, but free to marry, what he just done. After Marcus Aurelius� algorithm, I am to say now what I have learnt from my father. Well, he died when I was of four years, so that there was not much to learn from him on a direct way, but I leaned indirectly that in the life you must assume the events of the epoch in which you live, even if they did not depend on yourself, and to go with dignity through them. He died in the war, in a heroic gesture, though � as I already said � he had not any passion for military career. He has left to me as legacy the title of �Knight of Mihai Viteazul Order� the highest military award of Romania of that time. I may rejoice now of it, if I would not be too old, but it was a blemish in my biography during the communist years, as he fought against the former USSR. As for my mother, in face of her self-abnegation, resistance and love for the family, I feel myself overwhelmed. I will never cease to admire her, and I am conscious that I would never have been able of her performances. I feel myself so insignificant that I do not dare to speak much on this topic. Still, some things must be mentioned. She remained widow with two children of 8 and 4 years in full war. Three years later, when the front came close to us, in 1944, we had to leave our house and take refuge in the other end of the country, in Oltenia. All officers� families had to do it. All things were loaded in several railway-trucks, and we, the children, together we our grandmother, leaved the first. She remained a day more to supervise the loading the other trucks, and came up with us just at the destination, after several hours of waiting for us. As for the other trucks, her efforts were mostly vainly, as few of them were retrieved. In the mess and agitation of those days she was content for our regrouping. After refuge, we came back at home, where the ordeal of communist epoch began for a stigmatized family, too shy, inexperienced and unable for squeezing through the welters of real society. But, let us start with the beginning. Like most famous people, after they are born, I yelled, ate and wet myself. Later on, we went on different ways. Some of us have studied philosophy; others devoted themselves to mathematics, medicine, physics, and even political sciences. One can never know what crosses people's mind. I am sure that I studied something but I do not remember exactly what it was. (Sometimes I forget the uninteresting things.) Still I remember that, when someone were asking me what I would want to be as adult, I answered: cab man. That was so, because I liked the smell of horses, or their harness, during my parents took me with them for shopping. Before to fulfil my ideal, cars had spread, so that, for the beginning I followed a technical university. Bad luck! In this way, I awaken philosopher among the engineers and painter among the philosophers. Yet I have palliating circumstances: in those years, in Romania, engineering used to be apolitical and a well-paid profession, so that any clever child went this way. The inclination to engineering was evident since a child in the accurateness of my expressions. For example, when my sponsor asked me "what is going on with your belly", just when my stomach was being disturbed, I answered: "Belly is good, rump is bad". Still, engineering was a good school, as it moulded my thought, giving to it clarity and rigorously. Generally, most children cry. I laughed! I was said that, whatever someone entered my room, I would laugh. I would point a finger at them and just laugh. If the person was unknown to me, the more resounding was the laughter. Thus, fewer and fewer people would enter my abode. It was said that I was a nice child. I do not believe it. The most outrageous fibs that I ever heard were about children "the little one looks like his mother or his grandmother, possibly he looks a bit like his father, and so on". The truth is that all children look like each other. A later photograph (4-5 years) shows me as almost a cute little boy. What times and what a pity that beauty is of no use. People do not want to accept the idea that somebody can have more qualities than just beauty. Having only one quality is quite enough and rather too much at times. Consequently, I shall write on my defects and how they have increased with time, making me the think they are worthy to be mentioned. To be sincere, I must confess that there was a spark of hope somewhere: maybe I was not very cute. Maybe I was not cute at all. Consequently, I should have the right to some qualities. It is true, they are not confirmed by the history yet, but I am an optimist. People often write and re-write histories. There are as many histories as many great interests are! And not only the good examples are worthy to be mentioned; the bad ones are much more instructive. I remember my grandmother, who was a great admirer of carrots, advising me to eat carrots to help my cheeks turn rosy red. Otherwise, I would look like brand "X" which was really not recommended at all. I did not look like brand "X" even though I did not eat carrots. Somehow I have avoided all the extremes that impacted my childhood. As I already said, my second activity as a newborn was eating. In respect to the historical truth, I did not eat but drunk. Here is how the lie inoculates us early in our babyhood. And it is not the worse. It is true that at the beginning the word was (the Bible says), but the first word might not always the right one. It seems nobody understood my first word even though I said it very strongly. Later on, although I insisted, people persisted in their lack of interest for basic philosophical ideas. As for drinks, this has remained a matter that I am still studding and considering its depths. Some things are as uplifting as they are deep. That's why they have to be done thoroughly. Later, I learnt that I was born under the sign of Taurus (2 May 1937), together with other good men like Lenin and Marx. Recently I have learnt that Saddam Hussein is only four days older than I. Hitler himself aspired to the same sign and a single day missed him. (Maybe this sentiment of dissatisfaction made him so ambitious.) It could have been Machiavelli's as well, but he was a clever fellow, despite to those who - more Machiavellian than him - defamed him. The happiest year of my sign is going to be 2037. We will live to see it, though my sight is becoming weaker and weaker. At the beginning, I was very disappointed with my sign because Taurus is a bull and a bull is however an ox: idiot and horned. But I was told that my sign is still a good one. As a matter of fact, in antiquity, Taurus used to be considered a symbol of masculine force and intelligence just thanks to its horns. Zeus himself, in his best days, used to disguise himself into a Taurus. (I think that women invented zodiac, because only they could idealise an ox in such a great measure.) I have heard that, according to other zodiacs, I should get rid of this obsession, but I do not know other ones and I am not eager to learn about them either. Why should I find out other flaws? I have enough with those already known. There is about the same with the horoscope. Learning that I am to benefit by a good day, for example, I will be able to make mistakes due to rather much trust in my abilities. Instead, learning that I was going to have a bad day, I would be embarrassed and would make mistakes just because the lake of my usual horned enthusiasm. Learning about my horoscope at the end of a bad day would be the best. In this way I would receive an explanation for my failures during that day, and it would be a tonic for the following day when, surely, the horoscope will be more favourable, in virtue of statistic laws: after rain, bad weather! (I think it is a little different but it does not matter.) I tried with biorhythms too. It seems more scientific but it gives me the sensation of a machine. I have the feeling that a rod-crank mechanism acts upon me in an obsessing and everlasting rhythm. Or, what a pity, some day it will stop to the disappointment of my biography's readers. (Every good thing has an end... But let's do not rush. I have only started writing it. As the zodiac, horoscope, and even the biorhythms did not help me much, I have learnt to take things as they are. Nevertheless, honestly, on every 13th, I usually inform my acquaintances that they will probably have a bad day. I do not know when I grow up. About what happened later on I have to write, but I am very busy now. Before I retired, I used to have much more free time. Wishing to hear good news, and do not forget: my glorious year will be 2037! Byyyee!!!
Copyright © 2004 Cristache Gheorghiu |