No such thing as a free dove?

[~greg]

The Pope and The Smoking Gun


I admire direct expression. I admire people who get right to the point.
("Cohen never writes a spare word", Dave Fanning said.)
They are right-on with me.

(With the exception of Donald Henry Rumsfeld.
Like Joe said I think, Rumsfeld is a whole ignorant-army
all by himself. And directly so.)

I try to be like them (- the straight people).
I always get right to the point, eventually.
But the paragraphs get out of order every time I
re-pack them. Which I have had to do several times this time.
And I apologize for this.

What I liked about this thread, the way it was originally going,
was that it had nothing to do with me. Or with anybody,
other then Leonard Cohen.

But it has taken a detour.

Which is fine, as long as it gets back on track.

Fortunately I believe I can deal with the things that
I am obliged to deal with here, and still tie them all in
with the original topics. It won't seem to be going that way at first,
but I promise it ends up there.

I will have to say a few things about myself along the way.
Which I don't like doing. But this will be the last time I have to do it,
because I will "settle all family business" here, so to speak.

Barzini's dead. So is Phillip Tattaglia -- Moe Greene -- Strachi -- Cuneo --
Today I settle all Family business, so don't tell me you're innocent, Carlo.
Admit what you did.
-The Godfather.

==================================

There's a scene near the beginning of Hitchcock's 1936 movie "Sabotage".

Mr. Verloc has somehow sabotaged the electric power plant with sand,
and the lights in the city have all gone out.

He has returned home, washed his hands of clinging sand, and climbed
up the stairs to his bedroom, where he will pretend to have been asleep
the whole time.

And as he enters his room and flips up the light switch, he fully
expects the lights to come on. And of course they don't.
And after a moment confused he realizes why.
And a smile plays across his lips.

And I feel that same way,
just before the smile.

==================

Ding, ding, ding. You win,
you've conquered by your sign (the tilde, not the cross);
and now, to explain, dear Lizzy, I deserved this
for something I did to Greg many years ago
in the archives of the newsgroup. I won't repeat it here-

That was a gratuitous personal attack on me.

So I have to deal with it.

First Joe ridicules everything I've written by characterizing it
as adolescent gamesmanship, -i.e., something that can be "won"
or "lost" in a child's mind, apparently like mine.
(But if it could be "won", then obviously Joe wins with this ploy.)

It was a tit for tat, but it hurt anyway.
I did, after all, characterize Joe's way of distancing himself from
his comment about over-analysis (with his "whatever that is")
as a gamesmanship ploy (in view of the rest of his post,
which, by the way, was analysis, if of a somewhat mystical sort.)

Second, the sign I obviously meant by " :) In hoc signum vinces"
wasn't the cross or tilde. It was the immediately adjacent smiley.
(However, I might have meant it as a hook. And I admit that the similarities
between the cross and sword, minaret and club, and star and shuriken,
have been on my mind.)

Thirdly, allow me to confess that I am offended, since I'm presumably
supposed to be, to find everything I've written being characterized
as unworthy of anyone's consideration, since it's all so easily explained-away
as being due to a grudge I am apparently carrying, without knowing it,
against Joe, for something he did to me, years ago!
Which he won't repeat here!!

That's just amazing.

And I am considering being tiffed about it
for a few years.

=========================

I have no idea what Joe won't repeat.
I have no recollection whatsoever of ever having been
pissed off by Joe. Or at Joe.

I have been pissed off by things he's said.
But that is an entirely different category of irkdom.

Everything everyone says always pisses me off.
The whole world is one interminable tooth-ache,
to my way of thinking. And it's pissing on me.

But things piss me off, not people.
Things people say, not things people are. Sins, not sinners.
I kick the tire when the car is stupid.
Not the tire-man.

Some people such as YdF and Jeffrey Dalhmer are exceptions,
because they need to be exceptions. And for them I do sometimes
pretend to be angry at them, rather than with them,
because this makes their day. And maybe I never knew Jeffrey Dalhmer
or YdF personally. But I can say definitively anyhow that Joe is no YdF
or Jeffrey Dalhmer, as far as I know.


===================

I remember one thing though. (Well,
I remember mamma, but that's a different story.)

It was a thoughtless catty remark I made, about two years ago,
that I have been meaning to apologize to Joe and Squidgy for
ever since. I just never got around to it.

Joe never mentioned it, and he's never seemed to hold a grudge
against me on account of it, or on account of anything.
So I have always assumed that he either didn't see it back then,
or he wasn't bothered by it. Now I'm not so sure.

(Squidgy of course is an altogether harder nut to crack.)

I hope this is what Joe means. Because that post of mine
wasn't angry at Joe at all. Or even at anything he said.
It was something he quoted. And I had already changed my mind
about that, immediately after I posted the comment.

But Joe doesn't honestly believe that I am capable of carrying
a grudge against him, or anybody, about this, or anything,
for two minutes, let alone two years. And about a quote?

As a matter of fact it was a cute little quote about angels and smoke.
(And if you don't believe in angels, just substitute 'Bambie'.)

Now what kind of a monster do you people take me for
to think that I could hold a grudge against Bambie for two years?

But see, when Joe then makes this smoke-and-mirrors grudge
out to be the complete explanation for everything I've written,
then it becomes pretty obvious that what he is really doing
is using it as a smoke-screen for getting away with murder.
(The Pope's murder of a nun, according to Joe, that is.)

Nevertheless I tell ya-all what.
Obviously I had to say something about that.
But now that I've said something about that,
that's all I'm going to say about it. From here to eternity.
Or until I can think of something.

But I know that Joe only did it because he "didn't want to go there".
He never expected anyone to pick apart his first post the way I did.
And he didn't write it so it could stand up to being picked apart that way.
And I'm not going to be responsible for making anyone feel inhibited
from writing however they happen to feel like writing. As long
as they're honest about it. And Joe was being honest.

I know that I make people nervous. Give me a saint, and I'll show you
the fascist racist foot-sucker he really. And so people naturally
tend to forget how to act around me.

A good writer like Snow can get away with it. He can drawing attention
to the fads and fallacies and hypocrisies in people's unguarded thoughts
and talk, and because of the high density of high quality metaphors in his
writing, nobody petitions for his lynching. It's entertaining stuff, and people
think that that's the whole point of it. His criticisms seem incidental.
Whereas mine are all I've got.

I can't write like Snow.
The best I can do is shut up and not say anything.
Which is what I'll do next, after I post this post or two,
and get it out of me.

~~~

All of us sometimes feel we are living in that movie -
that definite statement about alienation - The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

And I always do.

The way people talk about the big things, always strikes me as computer-generated.
Media-generated. Comic-book originated.

Thus we find Joe - a "practicing Catholic" - aiding and abetting the
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
with this:

...our good Pope Benedict ...made the awful faux pas
that's cost some Nun her life already and will probably cause many more deaths
over time. I'm not defending the Pope - as one of the Priest's that I used to hang around
was not a big fan, but it clearly evokes how religion (read Faith) colors our world

Alright.

Joe didn't actually say that the Pope killed the nun.
He said that the Pope's faux pas "cost some Nun her life."

(But note that in the same sentence he says it "will probably cause
many more deaths over time". So no amount of semantic quibbling
over any possible distinction between "cost a nun her life,"
and "caused her death", can save him.).

In other words, the Pope's words were a loaded gat,
and he was fooling around with it, and it went off, and it killed the nun.
(Just the way it happened to Phil Spector.)

So it was the faux pas that killed the nun. Not the Pope himself.
It was third degree murder -- negligent homicide --
not first degree murder --premeditated.

Or ... -- was it premeditated, after all?

To blame it on the faux pas, and not the Pope,
- on the quote, and not on the quoter, -- is about as lame
and convoluted as me saying that it wasn't Joe
that pissed me off two years ago, -- just something
Joe quoted.

Anyway.
To say that it was the faux pas and not the Pope is the thesis
that the Pope didn't intentionally insult the Muslims.
It was an accident. Because he's clumsy and stupid.

Which immediately creates the antithetical conspiracy theory
that the Pope did in fact insult the Muslims on purpose,
---in order to achieve some inscrutably nefarious goal of his.
Which was obviously to start a world war, and finish
the good work of the crusaders.

The problem with this thesis and antithesis
is that they both take as fact that the Pope actually
said anything that was insulting to Muslims in the first place.
To Muslims, - and not just miscreants, - that is.

Because in fact he did not.
There is no way his lecture can be read as insulting to anybody.
Not anybody who's read it.

The real problem is that nobody feels much of a moral obligation
to seek out and read what the Pope actually did say, in its context,
---while everybody feels completely righteous in saying whatever
they so feel like saying about it anyway, in response to anything
anybody else has said about it, and depending only on how
they happen to feel about each other at the time.

Joe says he is a "practicing Catholic", and yet he characterizes
what the Pope said as a faux pas, implying that the Pope
did something wrong. Which then implicates the Pope in murder,
if only by accident.

Thus Joe repeats and spreads around the accusation as if it was a fact.

But what is very much worse than that is that
even Joe - a "practicing Catholic" - doesn't
see the slighest need to investigate it on his own
and come to his own conclusions about it.

And why not?
Because someone Joe "used to hang around with was not a big fan" of this Pope.

Which means that Joe's "religion" is just tribalism.
Gang banging. Mechanical habit.

He talks a lot about his religion.

And I have observed many different reasons why people
seem to have a need to talk about their religion.
And I don't fault them for it.

But I just hope that they are aware that every time they do it,
they are excluding people, dividing people, rubbing in
differences between people, and thus contributing to conflicts.
Although that is probably not a conscious motive.
Usually their 'colors' are just a bragging about belonging
to a tribe. Flushed with the pride and power of belonging
to the higher cast.

=======================

As I dawdle here in my skivvies, in front of my hopeless little screen,
the Pope is being attacked by Muslims, the BBC,and Rosie McDonald.
And "practicing Christians" are egging on the lions.

So I feel obliged to quote from the actual speech that got the Pope
in this hot water.

His lecture isn't long, and it is interesting, and it is relevant to many things,
so I recommend that it be read in full. Just follow the link to it given below.

And in particular anyone interested in the subject of free-will
might get something out of it.

And I want to draw especial attention to this:

But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent.
His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.
{...}
Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound
even by his own word,
and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us.

Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.

because this tells me that Mr Ratzinger, the Pope, has a much better
grasp of Islam than most people do. So of course he didn't want
a nun to be murdered just to prove a point, - but maybe he does
want to help start that dialogue with the Muslims that no one else
has any idea how to start. And that everyone else believes will
and can never happen.

~~

The parts that I quote below are the parts that
seem to me to be the most relevant to the recent controversy.
And I've reparagraphed them for clarity.

But first, here is the infamous quote itself:

Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new,
and there you will find things only evil and inhuman,
such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

Presumably it's from a "dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391".

And Pope Benedict himself makes it perfectly clear in what way it was biased.

It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue,
during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402;
and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail
than those of his Persian interlocutor.

But it explains more than that.

Thus Pope took great care to emphasize the circumstance under which
the emperor wrote down the comment. A comment which the emperor
presumably made many years earlier to an "educated Persian,"
-- under peaceful circumstances. In other words, the emperor
probably didn't actually say it, -back then!.

It is infinitely more likely that the emperor just wished he had
"expressed himself so forcefully", - back then.

It was not poetry he was writing while under siege.
It was not "emotion recollected in tranquility."
Rather, it was tranquility recollected in extreme emotion.
The emperor wasn't entertaining an educated Persian in peace time this time.
He was being besieged by the Muslims.
So he wished he had expressed himself more forcefully,
that way, all those years earlier. Because it might have made
some difference.

Most importantly, the Pope makes it perfectly clear what is own
personal reaction is to the words of the emperor,
---by referring to their "startling brusqueness, a brusqueness
which leaves us astounded, ".

But you have to see it in context.
Because it such a small part of the context.

(I am breaking up my post here, just after the following quote.
More will follow later.)

from Faith, Reason and the University
- Pope Benedict XVI

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/bened ... rg_en.html

------------------------------------------------

{...}
I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition
by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue
carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara
- by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus
and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam,
and the truth of both.

It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue,
during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402;
and this would explain why his arguments are given
in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor.

{...}


In the seventh conversation ({greek script} - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury,
the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war.

The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads:
"There is no compulsion in religion".

But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions,
developed later and recorded in the Qur'an,
concerning holy war.

According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period,
when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally
the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded
in the Qur'an, concerning holy war.

Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment
accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels",
he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness,
a brusqueness which leaves us astounded, on the central question
about the relationship between religion and violence in general,
saying:

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new,
and there you will find things only evil and inhuman,
such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".

The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully,
goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence
is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God
and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood
- and not acting reasonably ({greek script}) is contrary to God's nature.
Faith is born of the soul, not the body.
Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well
and to reason properly, without violence and threats...
To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm,
or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this:
not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature.
The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine
shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident.

But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent.
His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.

Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez,
who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that
God is not bound even by his own word,
and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us.
Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.

At this point, as far as understanding of God
and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned,
we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma.

Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature
merely a Greek idea,
or is it always and intrinsically true?
{...}

[~greg]

SARTRE, AND SMOKING ANGELS

2 years ago a troll named "Johnny Oh" started a thread on
alt.music.leonard-cohen with the foreboding title: "What a long strange trip".

It was a devastating critique of the newsgroup,
Leonard Cohen fans generally, and even Leonard Cohen himself.

And sure enough a lot of bad things happened in the world right after that.
But probably no more than usual.

Meanwhile the thread meandered off in different directions,
as all good threads are wont to do.

(As they put it in the 18th-century expression: "no better than she ought to be.")

And one of those directions was an essentially private exchange
between Joe and Squidgy. Which I read in the same way
I read everything in the thread. In my peripheral vision.
Which is to say, not very carefully. Because I was imagining
myself as defending everyone against the attack,
and I have noticed that people are better at defending
things the less they actually know what's really going on.

So, I was squinting, grasping at the broad outlines of
the condemned buildings of the newsgroup, and at
the narrow pointing middle finger of the dirty rotten dog
who was attacking them, and trying to avoid the devils
in the details. When a certain detail got caught in my
peripheral eye.

In other words I read the thing out of context.
Even though it was in context.

And it combined and combusted with dirty old socks
and shirts and sundry other associations in me going way back.

And I flew off the handle.
And I posted a gratuitously catty comment that I immediately regretted.

The whole thing took place in one clean continuous motion,
in the time interval it normally takes for a head to fly off a handle.
And it felt good for that reason, for about a minute,
the way punching a brick wall seems to relieve tension,
for about half a second.

Anyway, here are the nitty devilish details, as I remember them:

~~~~~

Squidgy had mentioned Fania Fenelon's "Playing For Time",
although that is actually Aurthur Miller's title of his TV adaptation
of Fania Fenelon's autobiography: "The Musicians of Auschwitz."

from: http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/arts/litResis.htm
The Musicians of Auschwitz by Fania Fenelon

This is a celebrated memoir describing the healing power of music
as it was a part of Fania Fenelon's life.

Her story has also been made into a television show, "Playing for Time,"
written by Arthur Miller and starring Vanessa Redgrave.

Fania was one of the Jewish musicians who played in the orchestra
at Birkenau-Auschwitz. Her specialty was "Madame Butterfly," and
occasionally she would write music for the other players.

She claims that her absorption in the creating of music cleared her mind,
lifted her soul and gave her hope. Fania and the other musicians played
for the SS, but their songs were secretly jubilant and hopeful without the
German soldiers' knowledge. The players transformed traditional Jewish
music and even dared to perform pieces that were banned by the Nazis.

Recommended for high school students.

(The relevance to "Dance Me To The End Of Love" is palpable,
and I'll have more to say about it later.)

Hi St. Squidgy,
{...}
your post about the denizens of Auschwitz and the orchestra
has been reverberating in my soul. Do you remember the line,
where a citizen of the camp, says something to the effect-
"Angels, Can you see the angels rising with smoke"
meaning that there is something detectable near the furnaces.
{...}
Hope all is well.
Joe

{...}
Yes, I do indeed remember that line. And in typical
stream-of-consciousness, it leads me to another thought...about
Doubting Thomas. You know Doubting Thomas, who refused to believe in
the risen Christ unless he saw with his own eyes? I was a doubting
thomas meself when it came to the subject of Saints and Angels and
resurrection and all that mystical stuff, until I saw an angel with my
own eyes. No kidding.
{...}
--Squidgy

pardon me.
i'm always interested in the nature of associative recall.

is the conceit being proffered here that the Jews,
incinerated at Auschwitz
- doubting Thomases all, undoubtedly
- rose in the smoke, as, finally converted Christian angels?

(beautiful. not to justify of course,
but a glimpse of the "Divine" none the less.)

~greg.

==========================================

As I have said repeatedly, I regret that little contribution
of mine there.

And now I will tell why,
as I should have 2 years ago.

First of all,
(---well,... first of all I don't even know what I meant by it,
particularly by the last two lines. I could figure it out,
but it's not worth it. So...)

First of all, I had read Squidgy's post only up to what I quote from it above,
which wasn't the whole of it by far. And if I'd just read few more lines in it
before over-reacting and posting then I would never have replied
the way I did. I would have seen that Squidgy was writing in a personal
way about a personal experience of hers. And it is categorical
with me to exempt from logical criticism statements and attitudes
and opinions when they have clearly originated in personal experience.
(I'll have more to say about this later.)

Second, I was obviously under the illusion that there is no place for angels
in modern Judaism.

But immediately after I posted the remark I searched the web to find out
if I was right about that or not.
And I found out that I was not right about that.
Or not entirely. But wrong enough that I owed an apology.


Thirdly, I was ticked off by the cleverness of the lines.
"Angels in the smoke".
And by the title itself, "Playing for Time".

I could not believe that those were Fenelon's.
They had to be Arthur Miller's embellishments.

He was Jewish. But he was not a survivor of the death camps.

And the idea of prisoners taking solace in hallucinations
about other prisoners becoming angels in the smoke
- just infuriated me. Although it took me a long time
to fully realize why.

I thought it was a poetic fancy, an artistic embellishment,
and I associated it with the foley and background music
added to so many documentaries about the holocaust.
These things infuriate me as being pointlessly manipulative.
Millions of people suffered many years in those places,
and millions died there. And yet we can't sit-still through
a few minutes of documentary about it without the added
entertainment of pleasant background music?
(It's different, of course, when it's the actual
music played by prisoners at the "Arbeit Macht Frei" gates).

(It will strike some people as weird, and maybe even as
sacrilegious, somehow, to characterize the music and poetic
embellishments in holocaust documentaries as sacrilegious.
But let me remind you that every religion originates with stores
of suffering. The Tanakh is full of them. Christ was crucified.
Muhammad was driven out of Mecca. And the Buddha,
through empathy, suffered everything. The "idea of the holy"
or sacred, (Rudolf Otto,) isn't a religious idea at all,
- it is the pre-rational experience of the numinous,
and it naturally attaches to suffering. To ridicule
other people's suffering is, well, proto-sacrilegious,
if it isn't sacrilegious.)

(This is of course just my gut reaction,
and I have a reason to change it, which I may talk about later.)

At first I thought my reaction was due to something I had read
decades earlier in Viktor E. Frankl's "Man's Search For Meaning".

The first part of Frankl's book is about his experiences as a prisoner
at Auschwitz. And the second part is about "logotherapy", - the style
of therapy he developed based on his experiences at Auschwitz.

Logotherapy places the greatest emphasis on the importance
of securing meaning and purpose in one's life. And it seemed to me
that the taking of comfort in hallucinations about the others,
and potentially oneself, turning into angels in the smoke,
was simply contrary to that stricture. In other words,
it was a cop-out.

Now, I was aware of the incredible absurdity of
that reaction of mine.
I was like a kid saying that my dad can beat up your dad,
only in this case it was my holocaust survivor can
beat up your holocaust survivor - in the sense of
having the more morally rigorous survival-attitude
(- assuming that angels in the smoke was actually
Fania Fenelon's line. I still don't know if it was.)

In other words, Frankl's book had given me my notion
of the proper way to survive the death camps.
And I had to defend it against all improper ways
of surviving them.

But please remember, I had that attitude only
for the duration of flying off the handle.
And then I wasn't sure anymore. So I ordered
and re-read "Man's Search For Meaning".
And I discovered that Viktor Frankl's actual attitude
wasn't quite what I remembered it to be.
He himself was atheistic, but it's also clear that he
was much more encouraging and accepting of whatever
meaning and purpose other people found in life,
--even religious and poetic fancies like as angels in the smoke,
--than I was .

And it slowly dawned on me that what I had actually done
was to confuse my Viktor E. Frankl with my Jean Paul Sartre.
I drank from too many different bottles of existentialism,
and it made me sick in the morning.

Sartre was the one who might have condemned the taking
of solace in fantasies of people turning into angels in the smoke,
- as being "bad faith". Or whatever. However Sartre
was only imprisoned for a few months. And not
in a death camp. So his opinion (if it would have
been what i say it might have been, which it
probably wouldn't have been) would be irrelevant.

============================
The reason I didn't apologize to Joe and Squidgy immediately
is that I didn't want my apology to be just a formality.

I wanted to explain the conniption that had make me
make the remark in the first place. And I needed to find
that out for myself first. And I didn't know what it was
until after I had re-read "Man's Search For Meaning."
And by that time the newsgroup was gone.

(And if anybody is actually reading this,
remember that I am only talking about this
because Joe had said to Lizzy (-or Joe had agreed
with Lizzy - Lizzy having given him the out) --
that he deserved the bad treatment I was giving him
(as he saw it) because of something he had done to me years ago
which he wouldn't repeat. And all I could think of was that comment
of mine that I've been talking about here, since it was nasty.
However, if nothing else, it should at least be obvious by now
that I wasn't pissed at Joe at all. )

========================================

Just one more thing.

It happened when I was about 8 or 9.
My mother was a registered nurse working the night-shift.
And she came home early in the morning, crying.
And about half an hour later my siblings and I were dragged
out of our warm little beds and given a lecture by mom and dad.

Apparently a pregnant woman had, by several drastic
methods, tried very hard to force the timing of her delivery
in order to give the kid somebody's idea of the perfect
astrological chart. But what the kid got was permanent
brain damage. Which is what had upset my mother.

So the lecture, - which merged in my brain at the
dream-level since I was essentially sound asleep,
and therefore become part of my gut-level reactions
in later years, -- concerned the evils of belief in astrology,
and in superstitions generally, and, in particular, it included
a few disparaging remarks about belief in angels and saints
and all the rest of it, at least in so far as such beliefs are
responsible for irrational behavior. The kind of irrational
behavior that I was to see a little of first hand a few years later,
in several small towns in Italy. (--On the other hand my mother
was born in Italy because her parents, although they had
already immigrated to the US, considered the medical
facilities here too primitive and unsanitary, and the people
here too superstitious.) My mother's whole family was
thoroughly Roman Catholic, and my mother's attitudes
about these things was not at all an effete intellectual
prejudice against religion. It the hard consequences
of her personal experiences.

In short my catty little comment two years ago,
which Joe seems to think means I've been carrying
a grudge against him for years, and that I have said
wasn't against him at all, but against his quote about
angels in the smoke, wasn't either of these things.
It was about Squidgy's belief in angels.

But it was just a gut reaction.

In the final analysis, it was a kid
defending his mother.



=============================================

And now I'll take up one of the points that I said earlier
I'd be taking up later.
The personal-experience exemption.


Even when people's opinions are abhorrent to me
and egregiously in error, as is so often the case,
--when they are due, somehow, to personal experience,
then they are not ordinary language-generated concept-opinions.
They are something else.
And they are exempt from criticism.

Opinions resulting from experience are of a very different kind
than opinions received passively from parents and teachers and play-mates,
(--which are tribal mind-tattoos representing the craving to belong.)

They are instead more the expressions of frustration and impotence
in this "sea so deep and blind" , --this impassive world,
-- than they are actual symptoms of brain damage or intellectual lassitude,
like received prejudices are. .

Although they aren't any easier to challenge and change by logical means.
And they may in fact they may be harder to challenge with logic.

But they do change, readily and radically, of their own accord,
in response to new experiences which contradict them.

Whereas received prejudices tend rather to prevent
new experiences from being had at all.

There is an excellent 4 star movie about this ---
"Crash" - directed by Paul Haggis - 2004.

Ebert's review is here:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbc ... 02001/1023
and I quote from it:

CRASH tells interlocking stories of whites, blacks, Latinos, Koreans, Iranians,
cops and criminals, the rich and the poor, the powerful and powerless,
all defined in one way or another by racism. All are victims of it, and all
are guilty it. Sometimes, yes, they rise above it, although it is never that simple.
Their negative impulses may be instinctive, their positive impulses may be dangerous,
and who knows what the other person is thinking?
The result is a movie of intense fascination;
{...}
You see how it goes. Along the way, these people say exactly what they are thinking,
without the filters of political correctness.
{...}
For me, the strongest performance is by Matt Dillon, as the racist cop
in anguish over his father. He makes an unnecessary traffic stop when
he thinks he sees the black TV director and his light-skinned wife doing
something they really shouldn't be doing at the same time they're driving.
True enough, but he wouldn't have stopped a black couple or a white couple.
He humiliates the woman with an invasive body search, while her husband
is forced to stand by powerless, because the cops have the guns
-- Dillon, and also an unseasoned rookie (Ryan Phillippe), who hates
what he's seeing but has to back up his partner.

{That last sentence of Roger Ebert's isn't immediately clear.
He just means that "the cops" are "Dillon, and ...Ryan Phillippe".
But the clause might also refer back to Ebert's first sentence,
if he means that "the strongest performance is by Matt Dillon
... --- Dillon, and also ...Phillippe" }

That traffic stop shows Dillon's cop as vile and hateful.
But later we see him trying to care for his sick father,
and we understand why he explodes at the HMO worker
(whose race is only an excuse for his anger).
He victimizes others by exercising his power, and is impotent
when it comes to helping his father. Then the plot turns ironically
on itself, and both of the cops find themselves, in very different ways,
saving the lives of the very same TV director and his wife.
Is this just manipulative storytelling? It didn't feel that way to me,
because it serves a deeper purpose than mere irony:
Haggis is telling parables, in which the characters learn
the lessons they have earned by their behavior.
{...}
Not many films have the possibility of making their audiences better people.
I don't expect "Crash" to work any miracles, but I believe anyone seeing it
is likely to be moved to have a little more sympathy for people not like themselves.
The movie contains hurt, coldness and cruelty, but is it without hope? Not at all.
Stand back and consider. All of these people, superficially so different,
share the city and learn that they share similar fears and hopes.
Until several hundred years ago, most people everywhere on earth
never saw anybody who didn't look like them. They were not racist because,
as far as they knew, there was only one race. You may have to look hard to see it,
but "Crash" is a film about progress.

So.

The audience finds out things about the characters, like Dillon's
cop caring for his sick father, that change the context of how we
understand their earlier behaviors.

And events happen that change the way we, and their earlier
victims, have to feel about the characters themselves.
(-The most dramatic case being Dillon's readiness to give
his own life in order to save the woman he had previously humiliated.)

I found myself wishing that all the characters would somehow
wind up talking with each other afterwards, so they could
all tell each other how much they changed, and so that
they could all see that they had. But this doesn't happen.

Yet they all did change.
Although it's likely that they will all have to go through
at least a few more episodes of attitude altering experience
before they all actually become saints. Still, they are all
a little bit better people.

What the movie makes clear is that their "prejudice" was not
received. Received prejudice hardly exists anymore in the
USA. And yet there is an enormous amount of prejudice
here nonetheless. The difference is that what it is now
is just the result of the experiences of frustration and impotence.
And, as such, it can change instantly in response to different
experiences. Whereas received prejudices would never allow
new experiences to happen.
~~~

Until several hundred years ago, most people everywhere on earth
never saw anybody who didn't look like them. They were not racist because,
as far as they knew, there was only one race. You may have to look hard to see it,
but "Crash" is a film about progress.

The reason I've been talking about all this is that
it makes it a lot clearer exactly what Leonard Cohen meant
by his song "Democracy" on his album "The Future".

I know this is what he meant, because he says so.
Check out the interview that Maarten put up:
LC documentary - with Dave Fanning (Sept 25, 2006 - RTÉ Radio 1, Drivetime with Dave Fanning) - 58'10''.MPE
at ftp://homedev.org/pub/incoming/interviews/

Dave Fanning >
In another song you have which is Democracy,
you say 'Democracy is coming to American',
--which is --ironically you hear it, like say once or twice,
--but after that,...
Is it because you're saying that because of the sort of ethnic
and cultural differences in America, that it is actually real
Democracy, and it is actually trying to get itself together...?

Leonard Cohen >
Well I think that the song, you know, transcends the
obvious irony of the hook, "Democracy is coming to the USA",
- what do you mean? - there isn't any democracy there?
Well, there isn't any democracy anywhere. American is
as good an experiment in democracy as there is anyplace.
And you know Europeans used to look, or until very recently,
look very skeptically to America, you know,
very ironic take on America, -a very superior take
I might say, you know? - But I think America has been dealing
over the past century with problems that northern Europe,
- the northern European industrial democracies
are just starting to confront the conflict of races,
the conflict of cultures. In America the confrontation of men
and woman is there, the confrontation of sexual orientation
is there, gay against straight is there, you know there's all
kinds of intense and urgent confrontations that are being
faced up to in America that are just at the start of being
recognized in Europe. So the laboratory of democracy that
America really is, I think, deserves our good will and our
affirmation and our blessings, and I think the song gets
to that place. But it gets to that place in the style of a big city,
you know. I mean a big city is not a Sunday school.
People are not continually going around to that place
affirming the divinity of man and the divine spark
in all of human beings and the sanctity of the individual.
I mean it's a little more cynical than that. So it has the style
of big city speech. But it says it: --it's not coming from above,
it's not being imposed, it's not the domain of a particular
administration or ideology, --that this faith we call 'democracy',
that this new faith that we call 'democracy',
--has a chance in American, and it's coming from
unexpected places, "through a crack in the wall, through
a hole in the air, --imperial, mysterious, an amorous array".

Dave Fanning >
Well, do you therefore think that it is the religion of the West,
and is that a bit of a sort of serious put-down, because we don't
actually consider democracy to be what in reality it really is,
--in other words it's not necessarily as wonderful as we sometimes
try and define it?

Leonard Cohen >
Well I, I, ya know I don't, I don't presume,
-Imthisisjust a shot at it, I don't presume to have got a handle
on the whole thing, I don't think anybody can. But I think it
probably is the religion of the West, and probably a great
religion, because it affirms other religions, which religions
don't tend to do. And ...
and a great culture because it affirms other cultures.
I think it's just beginning, I think it's based on, .. on faith,
on a real appetite for fraternity and equality and justice,
and, ... I think we're just on the edge of it, I think we're just
working it out. I mean until recently we thought democracy
was, you know, the masses were going to like Shakespeare
and Mozart, or something like that, and that was our idea of
democracy, you know? Well it's not going to be that way.
It's going to be somethin' we don't know, but it, it has its
own, - as I say, --"their imperial, mysterious, and amorous
array", -- it's something that nobody can resist. I say like,
"it's like the sermon on the mount, which I don't pretend
to understand at all", you know, it's got implications;
"blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,
blessed are the poor in heart, for they shall see God"
-- I mean it's come through a crack in the wall,
it's coming from our failures, it's coming from the
recognition that human beings fail, -- that we have been
expelled from paradise, that we've got to put this scene
together, that it implies imperfections, that it implies failures,
you know. And that somehow democracy is a space,
a mental space, were we've got the energy,
where energy is released, sufficient energy
to confront the imperfection of the human predicament....

~~
So Squidgy believes in angels.
And I don't. And we both trace our feelings
back to personal experiences.
So it's not really an intellectual difference of opinion.
For all intents and purposes, it's a cultural difference.

And "Democracy" is the energy of different cultures
trying to get along together. And I like that energy. I crave it.
Which is why it bothered me the way Squidgy left alt.music.leonard-cohen.
Which I'll get back to.

------------------------------------------

My attitude about all this goes back to when I was very young.

Someone was talking about how the French hate the Americans.
How ungrateful they are about our sacrifices to liberating them in WWII.

But then someone else (--probably my father)
--pointed out how much of their property we happened to destroy
in doing it. And pointed out that when it's your own house that was
bombed, you can't very well be expected to differentiate a good
moral bombing from an evil bombing.

I've often thought about that. Most recently while
watching an Al'Quida film which starts off with a cartoon
of missiles being shot at a map of the USA.

Which of course infuriated me.

But then it occurs to me that this really just an inversion,
and a very mild one, of exactly what we have been entertaining
the world with on continuous loop for decades;
-- our thrilling documentaries, with great music, about
Americans smart bombing everything in sight,
--"shock and awe", -- "the beauty of our weapons"
as Cohen puts it. Every kid, whether he admits it or not,
loves seeing that stuff.
Every American kid that is.

Because completely apart from the matter of "collateral damage",
doesn't it ever once occur to the people who are showing these things
how they look and feel to those who aren't us? Particularly those
who's maps happen to be the targets of our bombing.

It is humiliating to them.
And we don't understand!

It's racism too.
Because if they were countries more like our own, --even if it
was France,-- that we bomb, accidentally on purpose, for some reason or other,
then, if nothing else, and however we happen to feel about the French,
we would at the very least be thinking of them as people, not targets,
and we could not watch the re-runs as if they were nothing but fireworks.

We are truly a nation of ostriches.

But so are they all.
======================================

more to come....

[sulis]

I loved reading your post Greg, you write with honesty which is the hallmark of Leonard Cohen, almost unique in the music world. That line about the beauty of our weapons resonated with me when Warren Buffet described financial derivatives as weapons of mass destruction and Bob Prechter brought out a book called beautiful patterns, about the Fibonacci patterns in the stock market.......not to confine Leonard's meaning just to that, it made me thing of an autistic person only able to read the Fibonacci patterns.....like in the film "Pi".

But sorry to interupt with my odd thoughts, I look forward to reading your next part.

[Tony]

This thread is far too long for me to read, could someone summarise it for me please?

[tomsakic]

Tony;-)

my try:
- Sue writes associative text about freedom
- Greg says she cannot count the "things"
- Lizzytysh asks why Greg doesnt' like Joe
- Joe says that Greg didn't say that, but they had, he thinks, a thing way back then
- Greg says he didn't say that, and that he didn't have a thing with Joe way back then, he thinks
- Greg apologies for something what could be the thing way back then (or he thinks so)
... we still wait to hear from Joe is that the thing from back way then
... and also, "Squidgy of course is an altogether harder nut to crack." - I am not sure do I want to hear this from Greg

But back to truth, I enjoy endlessly Greg's writing, and his stream of association, whether it was or wasn't caused by original post:-) Your choice is whether do you like or not to follow his long but always impressing essays.

[Diane]

Yes, Greg, you are often compelling to read (even though I don't always know what you are talking about). Thanks for your posts. Entertaining thread, this.

Diane

[Tony]

Thank you, Tom. Very succinct.

[Young dr. Freud]

Greg's ramblings remind me of Lionel Trillings' character Tertan in "Of This Time, of That Place."


YdF

[Joe Way]

OK, I feel like I'm interrupting here...the beauty of this medium is that we all get our say, but now I'm posting here in the middle of Greg's response which I'm sure is not complete.

I really don't want to be rude. My mother tried to teach me that one doesn't interrupt.

I seriously thought that Greg's original reply to me was intended to be comic, but now I'm not so sure. I noticed the little smiley next to the Latin phrase and assumed that it indicated..."all the above is meant as a friendly send-up...a little joshing among friends-the sign that 'there's this "thing" we got going' and you and I know, and we include the personal as a way of including everyone..'come on'-join us here.

Now I'm not so sure.

I'm determined not to be defensive.

So, instead, I want to tell you a couple of things...I'm not sure how many so we won't number them.

The Pope

I like him now a lot better than I did when my priest friend used to refer to him simply, as "Ratzinger" and indicated that he was just some guy giving bad advice to JP II. He still doesn't have the warmth the JP II has...and by the way, have you seen the list of "things" that JP II apologized for? http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/17092006/2/w ... -paul.html

I mentioned him and the whole incident because of the group that he was speaking to in Germany. They are the same group that was mentioned in the Wikipedia reference that you provided for the Dover Beach poem-"German higher criticism"-he knew that part of his audience. I don't think that Benedict realized that as the "Vicar of Christ on Earth" the microphones and notepads would be capable of taking his words-out of context, of course-and putting them into the heads of those less thoughtful than the group he was addressing and like leaving a gun loaded in the reach of children-terrible consequences might occur. And might occur again-and probably will-though this is a long stretch from any type of attributal homicide. Nice though, I enjoyed your defense of the Pope! (I had read his speech previously and considered linking it here, but decided against it).

So let's talk about some of the conclusions that you've come to.

I am completely baffled by the logic of the references that you've given to the event that I alluded to in my post:

But see, when Joe then makes this smoke-and-mirrors grudge
out to be the complete explanation for everything I've written,
then it becomes pretty obvious that what he is really doing
is using it as a smoke-screen for getting away with murder.

You then go on to address some old incident that you think that might have made me mad. Greg, as said before to you and Lizzy...I was afraid that I had angered you.

In re-reading the post that I made, I can't see how you drew the conclusions you did.

It seems to me it was sparked by something I said that
got your goat. And I don't know what that was, for sure,
because you fall shy of stating your motive explicitly.
But my guess is it was my conclusion that "The Faith"
is essentially negative about those three particular
"organized religions".
And that bothered you "as a practicing Catholic".
And your counter argument was that "Leonard
has been pretty generous to organized religion in interviews"

What is even more puzzling is how you then associatied this with some "catty remark" that you made, as you characterized it, that may have set me off?

I was referring to a time toward the beginning of the demise of alt.music.leonard-cohen when you said you were going to quit posting. I, then, made some smart-alecky profane remarks to try and get you to see how much you mattered to those of us still there.

When I was young and beginning to make my way into management positions, I had a young woman who did everything (in the hotel business that is) well. I admired her from a distance and kept this warm feeling about how well she was doing her job. One day, she suddenly quit-and it became apparent that the reason was that she didn't feel any appreciation for the things she'd been doing. I learned that lesson hard. Now when ever I have a good feeling about something that someone has done, I try to voice it right away-and that's what I was doing in my original post in this thread. I'm still quite puzzled by the leap of logic that you've made to turn that into some hostile feelings-a slur that that sticks like napalm-I think you said.

Then, I remembered that the post I'd made about you leaving the ng seemed have the opposite effect that I'd intended and you said something to the effect that (and I'm paraphrasing here) I saw clearly, but could I turn that high-powered microscope on myself. And it seemed as if you were turning the microscope on me, and I'm sure I deserved it-and that's what I meant by my remarks about winning.

But you are wrong.

I'm not irritated, or angry, or my goat hasn't been got about your analysis of organized religion. In fact, I generally agree with your premises. All I was doing was pointing out that in the case of "The Faith"-the organized religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, operate as "states" in their misanthropic political realms and cause terrible suffering through this. As Leonard stated in his interview with John MacKenna, the role that organized religion plays generally in the private lives of individuals is more theraputic, kindly and merciful. Obviously, this is not always the case as any number of our friends here can tell us of the tortured roles that religion has played in their lives.

As a "practising Catholic" I can say only that like Leonard, when people questioned why he was becoming a Buddhist-he would say, "I'm not changing my religion-I've got a perfectly good religion already," and so have I. I doubt that changing my religion would help resolve the myriad questions and mystical uncertainty that surround my "beliefs" and my "faith." I have some disagreements with the organized structure-the "church" if you will as does my wife who is on the ethics committee at her Catholic hospital and my daughter who is an employee of the Madison diocese. So you are right that it is a type of tribalism...but and, here you go, a few little details...

I just saw a reference to Elias Canneti's, Crowds and Power. It is an analysis of the world in terms of crowds. There are many crowd symbols in nature, he says and the sea is a distinct one.

"The sea is multiple, it moves, and it is dense and cohesive"-like a crowd-"Its multiplicity lies in its waves." Its waves are like men. "Its sublimity is enhanced by what it contains, the multitudes of plants and animals hidden within it." But it cannot see. "It is an image of stilled humanity; all life flows into it and it contains all life."

I still say that the "Love" that the narrator addresses in "The Faith" is a deity figure and probably more like the watch-maker G-d, as "time itself unwinds."

I still really enjoy your posts.

Peace.

Joe

P. S. Although "The Faith" is a great poem and song, it doesn't provide the succinct question (and answer) that Parliament/Funkadelic did with:

"Why must I be like that?
Why must I chase the cat?
Nothing but the dog in me.
Woof."

[~greg]

<I wrote this before Joe posted,
and I'll reply to Joe right after it.>


Well ya-all certainly are encouraging!

Sulis says: 'like in the film "Pi"', (--which is about madness.)

Tony says: "This thread is far too long..."

Tom says: "I am not sure do I want to hear this"

Diane says: "I don't always know what you are talking about"

Tony says: "Thank you, Tom. Very succinct" --- ignoring me completely.

And YdF says that I remind him of Lionel Trillings' character Tertan
(- who was insane.)

-------------------------------------------

Tom,
Your analysis of my last two posts made me furious because
I am quite certain that I never said that Sue didn't count.

Sue counts very much, whether I say so or not.
It is implicit.

And it made me sad, Tom, because otherwise your analysis
was exhaustive, and, except for that single blatant disregard for the facts,
-it was correct.

~~~

However, since then, I have re-read your analysis again, by the light of a new day,
more carefully, --and I can see now that you never did actually say that I said
that Sue didn't count.

Which makes me glad, Tom, because it means that your analysis
is exhaustive, and completely correct!

~greg

(except that I never said that Squidgy took crack!
Where'd you get that?)


==========================================

Sulis,
I am amazed that you mentioned the movie "Pi"!

"A Beautiful Mind" and "Proof" are good too, but "Pi" shows
it raw -- how patterns are as seductive and destructive as cocaine.

I can't rattle on about it right now, like I'd like to, (maybe later)
but if you think of me as the main character (Maximillian Cohen,)
and everybody else as the Hasidic cabal, then you're real close
to what I'm on about in my recent rants.

Incidentally I'm not anti Joe, or anti- Squidgy, or anti anybody.

However, it is probably more of a protestant thing to challenge
the congregation in the way I'm doing.

Yes, that's probably what I'm doing.
Preaching.


~greg

more ...

[~greg]

(Preaching, Joe. Is what I'm doing. I guess.
And I hope the energy flows both ways.
It seems it is. That is, you are becoming clearer.
Which is the whole point.
And I am trying to too.)

But damn it Joe,
I see!

But no!

Then, I remembered that the post I'd made about you leaving the ng
seemed have the opposite effect that I'd intended and you said something
to the effect that (and I'm paraphrasing here) I saw clearly, but could I turn
that high-powered microscope on myself. And it seemed as if you were
turning the microscope on me, and I'm sure I deserved it-and that's
what I meant by my remarks about winning.

Jesus, Joe. No!

I found the thread you're talking about
here:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.musi ... dfdc18ef95

(or here:
http://lcngarc.twoshakesofalambstail.com/200410.html
thread 63: Leonard's voice - alvintchase
(i am "remove"))


You had replied to my saying:
"> what I am going to miss most about the ng."
with:
"What is this shit?...."

Now (with due allowance for your Tourette's)
I didn't have the slightest problem back then seeing
that you were saying nothing but lovely things
about me in that thread.

(And thank you, by the way!
I honestly don't remember what the deal was with me back then,
but reading now what you wrote then cheers me up now.
So it certainly did then too.)

I only started quoting from Silence of the Lambs back then
because - well - because I always quoted from Silence of the Lambs back then.

So when you said "What is this shit?"
- I just finished the quote
from the flick:

SGT. TATE:
What is this shit?
Did somebody go up on five?

OFFICER JACOBS:
No. Nobody went up.

etc.

But the following is apparently what you remember
as the " high-powered microscope" bit:

You wrote:

> then, fuck you!
> All of us get tired and want to quit sometime
> -not just our tawdry, shabby jobs, or our demanding families,
> but the words that reach toward oblivion.
> Who gave you permission to just end it right here
> after some soft-shoe, ass-ended, clarrisa-clouded, lamb putrid observations.

And I replied:

"CLARICE", Joe, - not "clarrisa":

CLARICE:
You see a lot, Joe, But are
you strong enough to point that high-powered perception
at yourself? How about it...? Look at yourself and
write down the truth.
Or maybe you're afraid to.

"A census taker once tried to test me."

- true story. Came to my door and began asking questions.
...

etc.

(The real quote was only slightly different:
CLARICE: "You see a lot, Doctor. But are you strong enough
to point that high-powered perception at yourself?
What about it? Why don't you look at yourself
and write down what you see? Maybe you're afraid to." )

But that's exactly what you were doing, Joe!
You were looking at yourself and writing down the truth!
I was only encouraging you to continue!


I never thought the ng would die.
Not until long after it did. But in its 10 years there were always dry-spells.
And there were always people announcing their departure.
It was a standing joke.

And I don't remember what I was thinking when I wrote
"> what I am going to miss most about the ng."

but I think it's probable that I was not announcing my departure at all.
I was simply noting that there weren't very many posts at the time.
And so the ng was in danger of disappearing! (Out from under us.
Not me out from it.)

Or maybe I did mean it as a hook. The way that Geoffrey
would start to do every week or two. But just to start something
going.

But whether I meant it as a hook, or not, you interpreted it that way.
And I played along.


But as for "pointing that high-powered perception at yourself"
- that was simply what you were doing!

You said: "All of us get tired and want to quit sometime" ....
and so on.

And so my quoting what Clarice said to Hannibal Lector
was simply my pseudo-clever way of trying to encourage
you to continue. -continue talking about your true feelings.

Because I hadn't stated my reasons for leaving.
I hadn't even suggested any reasons why
anybody would even want to leave.
Or to quit anything. You did!

Methinks you were projecting, Joe,
at the time.

---------

I won't respond right now to anything else you just wrote,
because I still have 2 or 3 more long posts that I have to get out of me.

And you don't know where I am going with this yet.
So please be patient with me.

It's not what you think!

~greg


more ...

[tomsakic]

Tom says: "I am not sure do I want to hear this"

Full sentence was "I am not sure do I want to hear this from Greg", this = about Squidgy. My error: I didn't think (not even close!) that I don't want to hear from Greg (oh yes, I do), but I actually am not sure do I want to hear about any of this from Squidgy, whoever that is. Because I am afraid of possibe exchange of posts between her and Lizzytyysh

(But that's probably my personal prejudice, because when she first came to this board, the first thing was to insult me (because I didn't know *what* Squidgy was, ans asked why there's endless therad about New Orleans titled "I want my Squidgy back"... But otherwise, maybe she's nice person. I don't know. I did not read Lizzytysh's diary from New Orleans ).


Well, my summary was intended to be funny. I can't read nothing in serious light anymore on Forum, after I met many people live in Berlin, and aftre my enstranged experiences with Tchocolatl on board. In Berlin, Joe didn't seem like Catholic to me Particularly because I am from orthodoxly Catholic country, "the closest to John Paul's heart after Poland" But I recall that Tony from Taiwan got long speech against Catholic Church from me, there in Cafe Stresemann in Berlin. Oh boy.

[tomsakic]

PS. I don't like any Popes. But that' s maybe my age? I don't like organised religion. I don't like Churches and states. I was shocked yesterday to learn that Patti Smith, who's against Bush all the time, wrote poem for John Paul Two.

There are no saints. My religion is my private bussiness. But alas, the secular state come so far in US, Canada and Scandinavian country that I maybe, being from country sunked in Communism, and then in church-influenced state, can't see it differently than as private matter. What's going on between my heart and universe is my heart's matter, not Pope's or anybody elses. It's only sad to see educated people (Poes etc) to be driven by power, will for domination, and politics.
What brings me to conclusion that one Leonard Cohen is closer to a prophet or priest than anyone of those people who thinks it's their job to be, so called "Popes", and "moral authorities".

[linmag]

Like you, Tom, I rejected organised religion some time ago, and was with you all the way until 'moral authorities'. Then I began to wonder, if you don't have organised religion, what could be set up instead as some sort of moral authority. Is mankind safe to be left without any sort of moral guidance? The evidence to date would suggest not. At least religion offers something for people to aspire to in terms of moral excellence.

[Diane]

I can't read nothing in serious light anymore on Forum, after I met many people live in Berlin,

I know what you mean, Tom. I too had expected people to be more dead than live. None of us was gloomy and pious, as LC fans are surely meant to be. Even you, who I expected to be quite studious-looking and serious, looked extremely happy for the entire event. What has happened to standards? Everything's going to hell in a handcart .

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I don't like any Popes.

Is there anything less holy than an organisation that allows priests to blight the lives of innocent children? A recent BBC documentary attacking the pope for instructing child abuse allegations to be covered up whilst he was cardinal was slammed by the church as being misleading. But there have been numerous terrible stories and it is deeply scandalous that the church does not take clear and swift action against abusing priests. I know this is not what the catholic church is "about", but it makes my blood boil.

Linda you said:

Is mankind safe to be left without any sort of moral guidance? The evidence to date would suggest not. At least religion offers something for people to aspire to in terms of moral excellence.

I think enlightened child-rearing, in the sense of children being given love and respect, is far more important than religion, for people to grow into responsible adults.

Diane