Adonis Diaries

Posts Tagged ‘Montaigne

Funny Bliss (1998)

      Twain is a funny guy.

He was frustrated, at fourteen, with his father’s ignorance.

At twenty, how dumb struck he felt

That his father could be such a quick learner.

 

I was thirteen and I wrote in my essay:

“What do I know?” (Que sais-je?”

My old French Jesuit teacher loved it.

He said the French essayist Montaigne used it.

 

At fifty, I said:

I feel I know nothing”.

My thirteen year old niece skewered her eyes and mumbled:

“I am embarrassed, what a loser!”

Funny comprehension of authors: French students of 10 to 14 of age. Part 3

Excerpts from “Hardi! Les cancres” of Jean-Charles

Que savez-vous de Romeo et Juliette? “J’ai lu Romeo, mais Juliette pas encore”

Tolstoi: Auteur de “Guerre et Epee'”

Zola: Ecrivit l’histoire de la famille des Rouquins Macabre

Racine: Etudia l’impuissance de l’homme

La Fontaine: Il ecrivit la fable de “La laitiere potelee'”

Esope: Il copia les fables de La Fontaine

Corneile: Inventeur du cidre. Il ecrivit une tragedie qui se passe en Corneline

Boileau: Satyre qui suivait les enterrement en marmonnant des oraisons

Dantes: Dieu de l’ Enfer

Titre de quelques classiques musicales:

La Cinquieme Cacophonie, Le Beau velo (de Ravel), La Symphonie  Pasterisee’, La Sonnette Pathetique

Puccini: Une petite puce en Italie

Chopin etait l’enfant unique d’une famille nombreuse

La maison etait d’une salete’ impeccable

Les affairs du commercant allaient a reculons

Le corbeau mangeait son fromage a plein dents

Le superlatif de far est le Far West

L’ enseignement de L’empire Greque etait superieur a l’ enseignement Romaine: Ils n’ obligaient pas les etudiants  a apprendre le Latin

“Les petits enfants sont si gentil mais trompe l’esperance. Aucune excellence quand ils deviennent adultes: les colleges les abrutissent” (Montaigne, 400 years ago)

Je souhaite que les etudiants viennent aux examens avec des livres et des documents: ils doivent etre preparer a s’en servir.

Mon cher Ado/Jean. Part 16

Quand j’ai appris le décès de Jean d’Ormesson je fus bouleversé: les derniers temps il me rendait la joie de vivre lors de ses interventions à la télé avec son charmant sourire et ses beaux yeux malicieux !

(He enjoyed a great life of comfort and all the privileges of the elite class)

Aujourd’hui quand j’y pense , je suis triste malgré un petit sourire qui s’affiche sur mes lèvres . Je souris en me remémorant sa fougue quand il se faisait le chantre de l’un de ces écrivains préférés et particulièrement quand il parlait de Chateaubriand , l’auteur des Mémoires d’outre-tombe !

Alors tout son corps semblait jouir de plaisir pendant que ses yeux lubriques devançaient ses mots pour nous dire son amour de l’écrivain , de la vie … N’oublions pas que l’un de ses derniers romans s’intitulait : ” Je dirai malgré tout que cette vie fut belle ” .

J’espère mon cher Ado qu’il a retrouvé aux cieux ses copains et qu’ensemble il échangent leur traits d’humour … (J’ai lu plusieurs de ses ouvrages et plusieurs sections de Mémoires d’outre-tombe) 

Mais Jean d’Ormesson n’était pas du tout pressé de s’en aller! Ce qui le chagrinait, c’est qu’un jour il s’en irait ” sans avoir tout dit “” Qui suis-je? ” . Mais que dire ?

Si Montaigne avait conclu ses Essais par un ” Que sais-je?” , d’Ormesson qui n’avait jamais cessé de scruter la vie pour chercher à comprendre l’existence aurait pu conclure par un ” Qui suis-je? ”

C’est si difficile de savoir qui nous sommes ! Sa donne le vertige ! C’est évanouissant !

Écrivain, journaliste , critique , mais surtout homme de bonne compagnie , scandant avec bonheur sur les plateaux de télévision la poésie de ses aînés …

Avec toujours ce sourire un peu narquois au bout des lèvres …

Oui , mais il savait bien que ” rien n’est jamais acquis à l’homme.. ” sur cette terre !
Il avait , de ce fait, préféré souvent la malice à la tragédie , car plus divertissante , plus distrayante , excellente thérapie pour échapper à “l’Ennui “…

Enfin le “petit “Jean aux yeux bleus se mit très tôt à écrire pour exorciser le mal existentialiste qui nous torture , qui nous supplicie … (On ecrit toujours quand on est dans un etat neutre, apres avoir subit des rages de passions et d’anxiete’ existentielle)

Écrire , aimer et se divertir , tel était sa devise ! (Sans un sense de l’humour, rien n’ ai acquit)

Voilà déjà trente ans que je me suis exilé en France , l’un des plus beaux pays de cette planète , ce pays que j’ai appris à aimer pour l’avoir appris dans les livres au Liban et maintenant à l’avoir parcouru du Nord au Sud et d’Ouest en Est.

Et pourtant ,ce matin je suis nostalgique du pays de mes ancêtres qui dorment tranquillement à l’ombre de nos cèdres millénaires. (Et que les Libanais essaient de reveiller les Cedre pour qu’ils les eveillent?)

Note: En 5ieme, le Frere jouflu qui enseignait le Francais a Notre Dame de Furn el Chabak m’avait dit “ton style avec ce “Que sais-je” ressemble a Montaigne“. Et pourtant je n’ avais jamais entendu ou lis Montaigne.

 

 

Montaigne on “Curation,” 

 llusion of OriginIality, and How We Form Our Opinions

by

I have gathered a posy of other men’s flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.”

I often think of reading not as the acquisition of static knowledge but as the active springboard for thinking and dynamic contemplation — hence the combinatorial, LEGO-like nature of creativity, wherein we assemble building blocks of existing knowledge into new formations of understanding that we consider our original ideas.

But long before our contemporary conceptions of how creativity works, French Renaissance polymath and proto-blogger Michel de Montaigne (February 28, 1533–September 13, 1592) articulated this magpielike quality of the mind, so very central to ideation.

In Michel de Montaigne: The Complete Essays (public domain; public library) — the same indispensable volume that gave us the great philosopher’s ideas on death and the art of living — he writes:

A competent reader often discovers in other men’s writings other perfections than the author himself either intended or perceived, a richer sense and more quaint expression.

Portrait of Michel de Montaigne by Salvador Dalí, 1947. Click image for details.

Half a millennium before Mark Twain proclaimed that substantially all ideas are second-hand and long before we drained the term “curation” of meaning by compulsive and indiscriminate application, Montaigne observed:

I have gathered a posy of other men’s flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.

But what makes Montaigne’s meditation so incisive — and such an urgently necessary fine-tuning of how we think of “curation” today — is precisely the emphasis on the thread.

This assemblage of existing ideas, he argues, is nothing without the critical thinking of the assembler — the essential faculty examining those ideas to sieve the meaningful from the meaningless, assimilating them into one’s existing system of knowledge, and metabolizing them to nurture a richer understanding of the world. Montaigne writes:

We take other men’s knowledge and opinions upon trust; which is an idle and superficial learning. We must make it our own.

We are in this very like him, who having need of fire, went to a neighbor’s house to fetch it, and finding a very good one there, sat down to warm himself without remembering to carry any with him home…

What good does it do us to have the stomach full of meat, if it do not digest, if it be not incorporated with us, if it does not nourish and support us?

Three centuries later, Thoreau — another of humanity’s most quotable and overquoted minds — made a similar point about the perils of mindlessly parroting the ideas of those who came before us, which produces only simulacra of truth.

The mindful reflection and expansion upon existing ideas and views, on the other hand, is a wholly different matter — it is the path via which we arrive at more considered opinions of our own, cultivate our critical faculties, and inch closer to truth itself.

Montaigne writes:

Aristotle ordinarily heaps up a great number of other men’s opinions and beliefs, to compare them with his own, and to let us see how much he has gone beyond them, and how much nearer he approaches to the likelihood of truth;

for truth is not to be judged by the authority and testimony of others; which made Epicurus religiously avoid quoting them in his writings. This is the prince of all dogmatists, and yet we are told by him that the more we know the more we have room for doubt.

Complement Montaigne’s Complete Essays — a timeless trove of wisdom on such diverse facets of existence as happiness, education, fear, and the imagination — with his enduring wisdom on how to live and Salvador Dalí’s rare and whimsical illustrations for his essays.

FB comments: part 3

Jean-Christophe Rufin, member de l’Academie Francaise, accuillit Amin Maaluf en Juin 14, 2012 par ces mots: “Entrez ici avec vos noms, vos langues, vos croyances, vos fureurs, vos egarements, votre encre, votre sang, votre exil… mais surtout, restez vous-meme…” Est-ce que Amin a dernierement oublier ses racines?

Quoi de plus objective que de se rappeler ses origins a un moment ou Israel fait fi de toutes les pressions et continue a humilier les Palestiniens quotidiennement?

Puisque la plupart de l’humanite est devenu des “companion de voyages“, racontons plus souvent les histoires personnelles de chaque émigré et immigrant: ce sont ces histoires individuelles qui peuvent eclaircir ce que l’humanite souffre

“Les homme font ce qu’ils peuvent, le destin fait le reste” (Renauld). Le destin intervient quand la generation future n’a pas étée prise serieusement pour valable de continuer la bataille des ideaux de liberte, de transparence dans le processus democratique, de l’ égalte des droits et des opportunites

Le silence est le dernier refuge de la liberte des vaincus. Continuez de parler et de crier et tu ne sera jamais considerer comme vaincu,

Every morning, I find that somebody has just discovered some general and eternal law that I never heard of. General ideas that pack a lot into a small volume. And the “professionals” who are researching details and facts on the ground are rare because Not paid to do these dirty fundamental jobs. What irks me most is that scientific papers fail to extend additional hypotheses and conjectures to what they have researched in order for the rest of us to follow up and demonstrate them

Dans la vie, on n’est jamais a un calvaire pres

A quel instant “pas maintenant” se transforme en “jamais”? Martin Luther King

With equal opportunity to learning and training, people in each profession will focus more on examining the details and fact sheets and steer away from the laziness of basing decisions on general ideas

“The exaggerated social system based on general causes is a source of consolation for mediocre historians ( and current reporters). It invariably provides them with a few grand explanations, useful for quickly extricate themselves from any difficulties they encounter in their work. And it favors weak and lazy minds to garner a reputation of profundity (Tocqueville in the 18th century). How fitting for current times.

If we have to rely on the Torah, many times the Syrians allowed the Jews to take refuge in Palestine. Once during Abraham immigration from Ur in Iraq, another time for Moses and his successors, next after their return from Babylon, next after the Romans expulsed them from Jerusalem… and lately after the Europeans expulsed them from Europe in order to create Israel. During all this history, The jews basically lived in Jerusalem and the desert southern part of Palestine. Israel can resume digging for artefacts for another century and dig deeper under the Dome, they will Never find any artefacts related to their culture or any State: They had none. All their stories are manufactured history. The Jews were a minority fraction of the Syrian culture and civilization. Jesus was Not a Jew or recognized as such by the Sanhedrin. Jesus was born and lived in Upper Galilee, administered and under the jurisdiction of the province of Tyr, throughout the various foreign dominion of this land.

Petition de principe: Tous les hommes doivent jouir des meme opportunites pour s’egaliser dans chaque communaute.

The US can provide Israel with all the latest weapons of destructions. Germany, England and France can extend to Israel all the pieces of intelligence and trade facilities. The monarchs in the Arab world can link up with Israel any which way they like. The tide has turned: The people in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine have crossed the barrier of fear for continuing the existential fight. No weapons can subjugate a resisting people again occupation and an existential enemy.

In “The Disoriented”, Amine Maaluf let Nidal (a Moslem) says to Adam (a Christian, and represented by Amine Maaluf opinions: “You says that the historians must remain neutral? Giving equal weight to the butcher and victim, the occupier and the subjugated, the predator and the prey…? You should Not appear as the defender of your own people and your roots? Is that what you consider as intellectual honesty?”  

Traditions of classes, professions, family and social structure, and religious beliefs… have been initially drawn from observations of human nature and establishing general notions, before the politicians (men of actions) in each sphere of influence in life organized them to self-serve the interests of the elites. If we seek reforms by bringing up human nature then we are following the wrong direction.

What is needed is to develop a belief system based on that all born people have the rights to enjoy equal opportunities to learning, getting training, health and due processes with a fair justice system. This new belief system or petition principle is feasible because in transparent democratic processes people rely on the majority opinion to extend any rational excuses for their attitudes. Equal practical opportunities circumvent the wrong implication that opinions are reached independently of their surrounding. The effects of community sanctions to deviation attitudes from the belief system can then formalize the equal opportunities rights to everyone.

Every belief system is Not to arrive at the “truth”, but to guide action. Daily routine actions form the basis of our decisions in major matters.

“In the rare centuries of doubt (rational trends dominate), people cling stubbornly to his belief systems. People are Not ready to die for their opinions, but they do Not change them. And you find both fewer martyrs and fewer apostates” Alexis de Tocqueville.  The problem in this period of doubt, certain categories of communities are transforming it into a century of horror stories of faith.

Beware of the tyranny of the majority in “democratic republics“:  “The Master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free Not to think as I do. You may keep your life, properties, retain your civic privileges… but the majority in your community will ostracize you and refuse to esteem you, or to demand your vote. Those who believe in your innocence will steer away from you lest they are shunned in turn” A de T.  Isn’t what happens to Whistler blowers? At the doors of Abortion clinics, or gay marriages…? In France they even deny him the citizenship.

“It may be plausibly asserted that there is an infant-school ignorance which precedes knowledge and another doctoral ignorance which comes after it” (Montaigne). This is the state of education affairs in the Arabic speaking Islamic countries: coranic schools and doctors in fikh and other religious degrees… Ignorance lies at the ends of knowledge

Adelard de Bath (1080-1160) translated into Latin the scientific works written in Arabic (it was the scientific language at that period). Adelard is the first English scientist, a Benedictine moine and an arabophile. He wrote: “J’ai appris quelque chose aupres des Maîtres Arabes, qui m’ont guide par la raison. Toi, tu est mene par la bride de l’autorite”

In Lebanon, we have common conditions of daily strife to survive in any dignified level. What we need is to spread a unified common pragmatic reform model that share common rights for education, health, opportunities and transparent democratic processes

“When an opinion takes hold in a “democratic” nation and establishes itself in a majority of minds, it becomes self-sustaining and can perpetuate itself without effort: Nobody will attack it. No one combat the doomed belief openly. This hollow ghost of public opinion is enough to chill the blood of would-be innovators (in political sphere) and reduces them to respectful silence” A de T in Democracy in America

China is #1 exporter with 13% of world market share. Next the USA with 9% and then Germany with 8%. If we discount the weapon sales, Germany becomes #2.  France, England and Canada barely hold 2%: No wonder why these countries are kissing the asses of Saudi Kingdom and the Gulf Emirates to them weapons.

Replace Arabic scientific works” by “scientific works” written in Arabic (the scientific language in the period of Arabic caliphate empire) and the expression is set right.  In the first century of the empire, Syrians were the foundations of scientific work, all the way to the Tigers River. During the Abbasid dynasty, the Persian took over the scientific works and dominated the culture from the Tigers to Afghanistan, India and central Asia. During the strong centralized administration periods, the hundred of religious sects wrote in their own slang language (except in science) and few revolts emerged to launch any military campaigns. The Romans were frequently on the march to squash relentless revolts, though all the peoples adored the same idols under different names. No wonder that the Syrian and Persian civilizations were well routed in the region and were Not considered cultural occupations.

Le Christianism est tombé entre les mains masculines, devenue sanglantes. Alors que Jesus avait parle d’une voix feminine: les valeurs de tendresse et de compassion. C’est ce que nous essayons de vivre, meme si on l’a rate (Romain Gary)

The American life-style is to taking short-cuts by adopting general, all-purpose ideas: They are bombarded with so many individualistic responsibilities that they lack the necessary leisure time to indulge in reflective time-consuming periods (A de T in the 18th century) An observation that was valid 2 centuries ago and worsening. Worse, spreading like wild fire all over the world and in Asia.

The Americans seldom admit that they give in to selfless altruistic endeavors: They are pleased to explain all their actions in terms of self-interest properly understood. They will obligingly demonstrate how enlightened their behaviors regularly lead them to help out one another and makes them ready and willing to sacrifice a portion of their time and wealth for the good of the State.

The norms make a difference and they cannot be switched at will: either your norms are of the “honor kinds” or of the “material interests”

“Politicians have this capacity to manage the creation of ephemeral convictions in accordance with the feelings and interests of the moments: They can, with a tolerable good conscience, do things that are far from honest” A de T

Individualism is a recent expression, a reflective and tranquil sentiment achieved by creating a small community (modern tribe) for his use. he gladly leaves the larger society to take care of itself” A de T

Prisoner’s Dilemma” of two persons involved in the same crime:

1. If you inform on the other, and the other refuses to inform on you, you are set free

2. If both inform on one another, both get 5-year prison term

3. If both refuse to inform, both get a year prison term.

The rationale of this Dilemma is used to explain:

1.The weakness of public institutions: people want strong institutions but refuse to pay the necessary taxes

2. The case of lobbying interest. Ironically, the more the number of lobbies, the more the central power imperceptibly expand, which the lobbies don’t want

3. The more frequent the number of private bankruptcies (risk takers) the more the State/casino win.

“In order to reap the priceless good that derive from the freedom of the press, one must learn to accept the inevitable evils that it breeds.”

“Americans want the Union, but reduced to a shadow: they want it strong in few case and weak in most case, particularly in period of peace” Is that why the US government launch frequent pre-emptive wars outside its boundaries?

“”The aristocratic families would willingly preserve the democratic habits of the (political system) if only they could reject its social state and laws” Actually, the elite classes always succeed in circumventing the few laws that theoretically could have been applied to them.

“Ce qui rend la religion forte, ce n’est pas sa verite reelle, mais bien l’ historique (the stories retold, embellished, re-edited according to different periods, le retour du refoule, les reminiscences de processus archaique disparus et hautement effectifs” Freud in a letter to Lou Andreas-Salome, 1935)

Moise n’avait jamais entendu parler de Jehova (an idol of war adored by tribes living in the desert region between Palestine and the western part of Arabic Peninsula, the Midian), les Juifs n’ont jamais traverse la mer rouge, jamais ete jusqu’au Sinai. La religion de Moise, un Egyptian qui adore le monotheism d’Anon d’Egypt, avait fini par s’imposer sous forme d’une tradition a demi-eteinte”  (Freud in a letter of 1935)

Les femmes, survivantes de l’inceste, regnaient le monde, et le régnent encore. La mobilite dynamique dans certain pays n’a fait qu’augmenter the rate of les survivantes. Ils one maintenant de facilities modernes pour fuir leur isolement. Cette fois-ci, les survivantes ont tendance a se vanger de n’impote quelle maniere avec les opportunites et les lois en applications

Je prefere qu’une femme belle et intelligente m’admire et ne m’aime pas. La compassion m’etouffe et je renacle devant une tendress mal meritee.

Si je dois publier un receuille de poem, le titre serait: “Pas d’amour. Mais tout le reste

“La guerre n’est qu’une rechute temporaire dans un etat primitive”? Ca ne veut rien dire. Un état primitif est une bonne connotation. Les armes modernes et les guerres trop frequentes  (pre-emptive wars and civil wars…) doivent avoir un term trop fort revelant de “the Evil state of affairs” in human conditions

La ou Freud passe, l’herbe tender de l’innocence ne repousse pas? Many of Freud’s disciples quit his teaching, or mostly were discarded by him, because they had problems with their sexuality and couldn’t bare a psychanalysis disciplines mainly based on sexual fundamentals. Adler had to say: “Une broutille, la sexualite” Women can get rid of sexual passions et problems in mid-age, but it is the males who suffer from these difficulties most of their lives.

Have you read or seen Lolita of Nabokov? I read sections of this book, standing in one of Barnes and Noble bookstore in Montgomery County (Maryland), because there were no facilities to sit. The book sounded more erotic than the chaste movie, and I was glad in was directed that way. I saw the movie twice. I saw it again last night and was happily surprised to notice that it was Lolita who was running the show from beginning to end. The times she got angry was calculated: She was seeing Clare (Peter Sellers) from the start before meeting James Mason (who played a difficult and convincing part of a middle-aged man, total in love with Lolita but managing to retain  his responsibly as a father-in-law.) Lolita (with all her instinctive smartness as an enticing girl) was duped by Clare who intended to use her in porno movies and she refused and was kicked out to survive on her own. They overcrowded funny Sellers in his role, even when he knew that he was about to die. How could Mason be duped by Sellers in so many occasions if he didn’t care that much about Lolita?

Have you seen Basic Instinct? I saw it at least twice. Last night was wonderful because I saw it again before they showed Lolita. I loved this film that was packed with plenty of erotic scenes and a smart content. Who do you think was the killer? Until the last second, showing the ice pick under the bed of Sharon Stone, you would side with everybody that it was the psych professional woman who was the killer (another great body). Apparently, after finishing a book about a targeted killer, Sharon made sure to kill the real life character of her story.  Douglas is to be ultimately murdered by Stone since she had finished the new book about him: she was totally clear about it when she told him so: he refused to believe her because he started to believe in her innocence.

Do you think that every belief system pre-suppose that there is a fact of the matter in the mind of the community? That people gravitate toward the position they would like it to be true? And attach any supposed facts to it in order to satisfy any rational process? Belief systems such as an afterlife, causal link between minimum wage legislation on unemployment, affirmative action elevate the civilized culture, human rights legislation is typical of our species…?

Laziness of the mind adopts conformist dispositions and accepting the authority of others. For example,

1. Heuristics and cognitive short cut biases

2. Reflecting and perpetuating the economic and political system under which they live, by following what is dangled to them as a majority opinion

Tout cela, les mals d’amour, la honte de sa faiblesse, les letters non repondues, les echeques… continueraient a la devorer, de la consumer jusqu’a la fin de sa vie.

Tout cela, c’etait l’experience. Elle pourrait ecrire un livre. Elle pourrait ecrire une chanson. Se metre a la musique. Faute de se tuer (Rosamond Lehmann)

“The authority that rests on instinctive respect is absolute, as long as nobody contests its right. It is reduced to almost nothing, the day it becomes an object of discussion” A de T

The spirit that guided the French Revolution was the books and pamphlets written in the abstract. The same fondness for general theories, complete systems of legislation, and exact symmetry in the laws. The same taste for the original, ingenious, and novel in institutions. The same urge to remake the entire constitution in accordance with the rules of logic and a uniform plan… What is meritorious in a writer is more often than Not a flaw in a statesman.” A de T. Isn’t the same path that Lenin undertook in the soviet revolution? Isn’t what happened in 1848 when the republicans failed to deliver what the people demanded after ousting Louis Phillip from power? Is the EU Constitution  based also on abstract notions?

Botros Maaluf, grandfather of Amine Maaluf, an enlightened man throughout his life, wrote in 1923, a year before his death: “I am tired, tired of decrying the sate of affairs in our countries of the Orient. Replace country by calamity. Replace Orient by malediction. You’ll have an accurate idea of what I’ am talking about”

Botros opened schools where the students in higher levels taught student in lower levels because of shortage in adequate teachers after the years of famine and mass immigration.

Another proposed Senate institution in Lebanon (Majless Shouyoukh)?  Why, have we started generating oil revenue to sustain more of these redundant characters? These militia leaders have gone way beyond showing their despising behaviors toward the citizens

This parliament is Not going to elect a president to the Republic, until the system is ripe to fall. The Parliament will then elect any symbolic President to fool the people that the system has been repaired. Even a reformed election law will Not save this system: Lebanon is surviving on a daily basis and the citizens can long forgotten what public planning means. What the youth movement should be doing is to accelerate  its investigative reporting on all the institutions, gathering facts on the ground for pragmatic reforms and laws.

You are bored when in good health. When you become senile, you stop feeling bored, but people observing you feel bored for you. Accumulated feeling of boredom. The innovating person is the one who can break a breach (une fente de perspective) in the fort of boredom. An alternative is to carry a light backpack and start walking: hoping that one of the media will discover you dying of hunger of totally dehydrated. Better yet, just dead: Let them investigate on you for 15 minutes.

Bacteries sans odeur: ils repoussent les bacteries puantes.
Wa dawini billatti kanat hiya al da2ou.
It works almost all the time if you know the taxonomy and experiment with the opposing functions of the same entities

Le nerf vague, la plus importante voie de communication entre l’intestin et le cerveau, raconte tout un tas de nouvelles au cerveau: les molecules des repas, les hormones dans le sang, les status des cellules immunitaires et les types de bacteries.
Une frequente stimulation de ce nerf ameliore le bien-etre et bloque l’angoisse.
Manger toujours

Le muscle le plus puissant (80 kilos de pression) est fait pour le broyage et le concassage: la langue est le coach qui distribue et guide les particules et puis attrape une bouchee de 20 ml et la propulse vers le palais mou.
Sans ces passe temps, l’homme mourrait d’ennui

It does Not matter what is your religion, gender, race, color… If you don’t carry a colonial passport, your death in any assassination attempt will go invisible

Free access to tools that permit private and individual power to tailor-made education, find inspiration, model our environment and share our adventure with all who need them…”(Stewart Brand in his Whole Earth catalogue, 1968)  Sound that the less fortunate can make good use of these opportunities. That was half a century ago, many are applying this opportunity when available, though only the elite class is mainly profiting from any of these facilities.

La formation durait 6 mois chez LF Rothschild (the richest family ever and dominating all the other financial multinationals). J’etais un connector: J’avais a place 500 coups de fil par jour pour essayer de franchir le barrage des secretaries. Quand je reusssis a en avoir un “client” au bout du fil, j’avais a dire: “Boujour Mr, Machin, Ne quittez pas. Je vous passé Scott, mon patron” Wall Street c’est fait pour les tueurs, les mercenaires. C’est la meme procedure pour commencer en Real Estates: J’avais a placer 50 coups de telephones par jour et dire “Do you want to buy or sell your property?”

In Canaan mythology, the body (basar) was the domicile of 2 kinds of souls: The vegetative nephesh (nafess) and the spiritual rouah (rou7).

Betyle (Beth El), the stone of God, les obelisques. Byblos, book, gebel, Gobel, Giblet. Reschef: Maritime God of war.

My greatest pride and achievement in my life so far is when I publicly dared to condemn the Saudi Kingdom in its savage pre-emptive war on the Yemenis (Hassan Nasr Allah)

Women who were engaged in the emancipation of women in Lebanon and their human rights since 1947: Ibtihaj Kaddoura, Laure Tabet, Eveline Bustros, Julia Tohme Dimachkiyeh, May Ziadeh, Najla Sa3b, Emilie Fares Ibrahim, Myrna Bustani, Laure Moghaizel, Alia Berti Zein, Leila B3albaki…

Regret: There was a French girl student in my class of Physics/Chemistry at the university. We spent 2 years in that program and I don’t recall I have ever talked to her. She was slim, slightly red-headed, hair cut  a la garcon, rather flat-chested and elegant in her sober attire and wore the same flat shoes. I think she was pretty. It would have taken a forceful determination from any girl to take the initiative and lead me to utter a few sentences.

Don’ try to make me scale any piece of art from 1 to 10. It is either I like or I better Not offer an opinion. Artistic talents and knowledge are acquired in your early years and I was Not educated on these matters.

This parliament is Not going to elect a president to the Republic, until the system is ripe to fall. The Parliament will then elect any symbolic President to fool the people that the system has been repaired.
Even a reformed election law will Not save this system: Lebanon is surviving on a daily basis and the citizens can long forgotten what public planning means.
What the youth movement should be doing is to accelerate its investigative reporting on all the institutions, gathering facts on the ground for pragmatic reforms and laws.

Lebanese Women who were engaged in the emancipation of women in Lebanon and their human rights since 1947: Ibtihaj Kaddoura, Laure Tabet, Eveline Bustros, Julia Tohme Dimachkiyeh, May Ziadeh, Najla Sa3b, Emilie Fares Ibrahim, Myrna Bustani, Laure Moghaizel, Alia Berti Zein, Leila B3albaki

In Canaan mythology, the body (basar) was the domicile of 2 kinds of souls: The vegetative nephesh (nafess) and the spiritual rouah (rou7).

Ni heros, ni bourreaux. Un peu de douleur, un peu de plaisir. Je ne lui aurait donne que cela (Colette)

Another regret. She occasionally paid her grandmother visits, from the other part of the continent. I occasionally wrote her letters in the name of her mentally handicapped grand mother. One of the letter included a convoluted sentence that she picked up as a confession of love. And it was. A couple of weeks later she showed up. She went jogging and rubbed her feet with lotion. She then asked me to go for a walk. She wanted a verbal confirmation. I was in a rot with my PhD dissertation and lacked the spirit for such kinds of conversation. I couldn’t master enough craziness to blurt out: ” I find you lovely, natural and compassionate woman…”  I didn’t see her again: I moved out to another old lady house whose son wanted someone to live with.

Qui repondrait en ce monde a la terrible obstination du crime, si ce n’est l’obstination du temoignage? (Abert Camus)

Mind you that we live in a world of appearances amid symbolic unassimilated meaning. We are sleepless creatures howling in our night dreams

Most probably, we are linked to the invisible: everything that our senses captured but failed to interpret it for our survival sake.

مدير عام الامن العام اللواء عباس ابراهيم صاحب الرؤية الوطنية والثاقبة والاستباقية في قوله ان توطين النازحين “يساوي مباشرة الحرب”، وان المطلوب هو الكف عن الرهانات الخارجية واستجداء الحلول المستوردة.

The Global Footprint Network also encourages people to eat vegetarian meals, shrink their energy use, and reduce their paper waste

Australia and the U.S., use a lot of resources in a year.
Others, like Brazil and India, use far less.
Many factors contribute to a country’s ecological footprint, including population size, standard of living and eating habits

The exact date of Earth Overshoot Day is determined by a simple formula.
Global Footprint Network takes the planet’s biocapacity (pdf), or the amount of natural resources available, divides it by humanity’s ecological footprint, or how much of the planet’s resources we use up, and then multiplies it by the days in a year

Enjoy the game. We are born to be suckered, and more times than we cared. This is the attribute of an addictive normal person: The harder we resist, the harsher we succumb.

360,000 foreign fighters were engaged in Syria since 2012. Currently, 90,000 are still on the ground, mostly fresh central Asians.
And more than 90,000 of them were killed and disappeared in thin air, never to be recognized.
Over $45 bn were spent with the objective of destabilizing the Syrian society.
Turkey, Saudi Kingdom and Europe contributed each 25,000 extremist fighters

Anyone can provide me with a link to a taxonomy for pains? A table, a graphics, an article that include a table of various pains and aches…names of the various pains, scale levels, sources of the pain… I have a day dream project of constructing a machine that delivers all sort of pains and to physically initiate the youth of what to expect as they grow up in life. I read that every contraction when delivery a baby, the mother feels like suffering from heart attack. Maybe by being subjected to pains, youth will desist from their absurd behaviors in inflicting pain, and decrease in number of wars, and pre-emptive wars.

Recently, there is a flurry of articles trying to give the connotation that the Near-East and the Middle -East is a Jewish region by its civilization or culture. For example, whenever there is a tribe anywhere else in the world, like “the Cherokees of North Carolina Mountains spoke an ancient Jewish language that was nearly unintelligible to Jews from England and Holland” or a “savage” tribe in New Guiney, or Ethiopia… researchers try to attach a DNA originating from a “Lost” Israeli tribe with unknown language related to an archaic Hebrew. If there were ever any Jewish tribes outside the Tora, whatever lost tribe was lost in our melting pot. After more than a century of excavation, Israel couldn’t find any proof of Jewish civilization, Not even a tablet written in Hebrew. The Jews were located around Jerusalem and the southern desert. They never took to the sea to spread any of their DNA

If there is a single stable theory of the spread of homo sapiens in the Mediterranean Sea Basin or the Black Sea, like in Europe, North Africa, Turkey and the Caucasus regions… is that the varieties of homo sapiens in the regions flocked to Egypt and the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine) and constituted a melting pot for thousands of years before immigrating every which way.

70 Republican leaders are demanding to stop funding Trumpcampaign.
I am sensing that the Zionist lobby in the USA is scared shit of the political positions of Trump on many critical matters that hurt their interests financially and politically.

 

As if Racism awakened with the influx of Syrian refugees

In the last 3 years, Syrians have been fleeing to Lebanon and currently constitute over 25% of the population.
The slowness of aids arriving from international community and this unstable political system in Lebanon aggravated the conditions of both the Syrian refugees and the Lebanese citizens, where they live close to the regions of  refugees concentrations such as the town of Ersal, Akkar district, city of Tripoli, the Bekaa Valley and the Arkoub in the south.
The Campaign in Support of Syrians facing Racism (Arabic: الحملة الداعمة للسوريين بوجه العنصريّة) was launched on March 21, 2014.
This campaign coincides with the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, “in rejection of all violence towards Syrians [in Lebanon], racist political rhetoric and the associated media hype.”

Lebanese Launch Campaign in Support of Syrians Facing Racism

 This campaign aims to tackle what is perceived as growing discrimination against Syrian refugees living in Lebanon.

Lebanese politicians are being accused by activists of using rising tensions between Syrians refugees and Lebanese inhabitants of some areas of Lebanon for politically-motivated purposes.

After the “I am not a Martyr” campaign in honor of Mohammad Chaar and the “I am not naked” campaign first in support of Olympic skier Jackie Chamoun and then against Domestic Violence, the anti-racism campaign is using the same (and now-familiar) method of online protest featuring average citizens posting selfies and carrying a message.

Speaking to leading French language Lebanese newspaper “L’Orient-le Jour”, one of the activists participating in the campaign said:

Politicians can’t even resolve basic problems such supplying gas and electricity, facilitating affordable public transportation, stopping violence in Tripoli and Hermel, passing laws related to domestic violence, lowering the expensive telecommunication… These problems existed before the arrival of Syrian refugees and our politicians did not solve them. They never want to solve anything, they never did.

Here are a few examples of those participating:

“If you accept us, you are welcomed in Lebanon”

"And our house is your house if you're willing to accept us parents to parents, brothers to brothers

Once, a Syrian made us proud

I once met a Syrian who made us both proud

Above: The Humanist. Below: The Racist

He didn't escape death [in his country] to die of humiliation [in your country]

He fled from sure death, and Not to die from indignity

Not every Syrian is a criminal and not every Lebanese is innocent

The Syrian refugee is like us: he can't live. Direct your anger towards the corrupt ruling class.

Re-direct your anger at the ruling class, this bloated and corrupt class

I'm a human before being a Syrian.

I am a person before being a Syrian. (A reminder of the saying of the French essayist Montaigne)

Say no to racism. Lebanon is a small country, but with a big heart.

90% of our houses are built by Syrians. Stay a racist and leave your house.

90% of our homes were built by Syrian workers. Be consistent with your racist attitude and leave your house.

Some even went further to criticize colonial legacy.

Whoever divided these grounds for 'immigrants' to cross borders to another country... I won't say 'welcome' because this is not just my country.

And they even hanged a sign over a highway:

Dear Syrian, welcome! welcome to Lebanon

The all-time freest spirit: Humanist Montaigne

The French essayist Michel Eyquem, known as Montaigne (1533-1592), died a century after the Americas were “discovered”:  He read and heard eye-witness accounts of what pains, suffering, and crimes against humanity the America Indians have been submitted to.

He wrote in his Essays (Book 3):

“Everyone labels barbarian behaviors, customs not of his own usage or habit observed in other tribes or new people.”  This is pretty relevant in all generations, in all ethnic people, and in all religions.  This is valid for the European, the Americans, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the French, the German, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Russians, the Catholics, the Moslems… in every decade and century, all the way to our “modern time”.

Every colonial power imposed their own customs and system of beliefs on “barbarians” they invaded and then exploited to replenish empty crown treasuries.

Montaigne was the eldest of five boys and three girls and inherited the estate of Montaigne. In this 16th century, smack in Europe Renaissance and religious wars between the Protestants (Calvinists, Anabaptists, and Huguenots of France) and the Catholics of papal Rome, the French humanist Montaigne wrote:

”I try to get moving.  Life is movement of matters and bodies; it is an imperfect action of its essence and deregulated.  I work at serving life.  I brag to meticulously embracing the commodities of life and I find but wind.  But are we not partners of the wind?  The wind howls, is agitated, does not desire stability or solidity.  Vanity is the wisdom of the wind and mankind.”

In 1571, Montaigne decided to retreat from politics, the court, and social responsibilities but the isolation was short-lived:  In 1572, the regent of France, Catherine of Medici, fomented the religious massacre of St. Barthelemy against the Huguenots all over France.

Bordeaux in the Perigor province was the bastion of the Huguenots Protestants.  Catholic Paris clamped down on the Huguenots several times.  Montaigne wrote:

I am Christian in the same title as I am from Perigor.”

Montaigne didn’t give religious belief any weight surpassing the reality of existence and communication among people and daily trade.  King Henry IV, the contemporary and friend of Montaigne converted to Catholicism in order to be crowned King of France. Historians coined this phrase to Henry IV: “Paris is worth convertin.”, but it is not true that he said it

Montaigne tours Europe for a year in 1580.  He travelled in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy and had to cut his trip short as he was elected mayor of Bordeaux for two years.  Montaigne said in the introduction of his Essays:

I do not teach; I tell stories.”

What follows are a few quotations from Montaigne that demostrate his humanistic tendencies:

Mankind has no communication whatsoever with his entity

“Human eyes perceive things only through the forms of their knowledge

“I like my friend La Boetie (Montaigne’s colleague in the Bordeaux city parliament) because he is what he is; because I am what I am…”

“He may be as wise as he wishes to be; but finally, he is a man:  That he is more archaic, more miserable, and more of the void.”

Wise principles cannot impress upon our natural conditions

Note:  Leonor was the only daughter of nine who survived to beget Montaigne’s grandchild named Francoise de la Tour Montaigne in 1591, a year before he died.

Famous Manuscripts Banned by the Vatican: (Part 2, April 19, 2009)

Thousands of literary works were indexed by the Vatican from around 1200 to 1966.

Virtually no author was spared indexing. Pascal, Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Diderot, Stendhal, Lamartine, Hugo, Flaubert, Balzac, Saint-Simon, Proudhon, Zola, Sartre, and even Gide were indexed for part of their work. 

Voltaire was the most indexed: each of his manuscripts was automatically indexed before reading it. Voltaire would occasionally sign Ecralinf meaning (Let us crush the despicable infamous Church of Rome)

Ironically, Darwin, Karl Marx, and Hitler were spared INDEXING.

The Defender of Peace” by Marsile of Padua (Rector of the University of Paris) is published in 1324 and banned by the Church. The manuscript said that the function of governance does not suit the Bishop of Rome (the Pope) because this urge for domination of the Church is the bane of all discords.  Communities should be governed by their own councils.

Baruch Spinoza published “Treaty on Theological-Politics” in 1670.  He is excommunicated (herem) by the Jewish Wise Men of the synagogue of Amsterdam and later indexed by the Vatican. Spinoza claimed that the Torah is false, that soul dies with the body, and that God exist only philosophically.  Religions instituted a God with 7 main characteristics so that their logical scaffold can hold: God should be One, Unique, Omnipresent, has absolute authority and rights over everything, that obeisance to God consist in justice and charity, that Heaven and Hell are the consequences of our behaviors, and finally that God is forgiving because everyone is a sinner. Faith does not dwell on whether God is fire, spirit, light, or thought.

Pierre-Augustin de Beaumarchais published “The Wedding of Figaro” in 1781. This manuscript said of the aristocrats “You were given the pain of being born, and nothing else”; and thus was blamed for disturbing the social construct.  Beaumarchais published also “The Barber of Seville”

“Praise of Folly” (L’Eloge de la Folie) by Erasmus of Rotterdam was indexed in 1511.  Under the mask of irony, Erasmus creates a Foul dominating the World and supported by ignorant idiots with humongous Ego; he attacks the theologians and scholastic specialties whom thrive in adding subtlety over subtlety in order to obscure any kind of comprehension.  In just the same century, the manuscript is re-edited 600 times.

“The Prince” of Nicolas Machiavelli is published in 1513 in Florence.  The book explains how a Prince should behave to acquire and then retain power and would be one of the founders of modern political thinking.

“The Third Book” of Francois Rabelais was published in 1532.  The previous publications “Pantagruel” and “Gargantua” were not spared indexing too.  The art of mockery far exceed that of Erasmus and his farces scorch all the princes.  Moliere would rely on Rabelais’ works for his comedies.

The Essays” of about 107 of essays by Michel Montaigne are published as of 1580 and was censured by the Church Inquisition.  The Church didn’t like the offhandedness of mixing sacred topics with profane subjects and the manuscript was judged morally too permissive.

“The new Stories” succeeds the famous fables of Jean de la Fontaine and are published as of 1674 and mocks the clerics and was indexed for “corrupting the moral and inspiring libertine behaviors”.  Before he dies, his confessor forced him to recant, and he did so that he may die in peace of that pest of cleric.

“The Spirit of Laws” by Charles-Louis of Montesquieu was published in Switzerland in 1748 to avoid censuring.  The author demanded that the three branches of executive, legislative, and justice enjoy independent powers for check and balance in governance.

“Therese the Philosopher” by Jean-Baptiste Boyer was published in 1748, in the same year that “Fanny Hill” of John Cleland was published.  This manuscript described in details the bacchant sacrilegious ceremonies that a Pope relished. The Marquis of Sade would imitate that genre of pornography.  It is rumored that these kinds of books influenced the French Revolution more than any other manuscripts.  The French National Library cataloged this book under “Hell” section.

“Emile” by Jean-Jacques Rousseau was published in 1762.  Rousseau offered a new educational system for kids so that the natural kindness of humankind is preserved; that kids enjoy their lives as kids and refrain from reading before the age of 12; that they wear loose garments to play leisurely.  The manuscript was indexed and publicly burned in Paris for inciting man to follow his instincts.  Rousseau will publish “The Social Contract” in 1766 and Geneva Council banished it.  In reaction, Rousseau abandoned his Switzerland nationality.

Funny Bliss (Written in 1998)

      Twain is a funny guy.

He was frustrated, at fourteen, with his father’s ignorance.

At twenty, how dumb struck he felt

That his father could be such a quick learner.

I was thirteen and I wrote:

What do I know?”

My old French teacher loved it.

He said the French essayist Montaigne used it.

At fifty, I said:

“I feel I know nothing”.

My thirteen year old niece skewered her eyes and mumbled:

I am embarrassed, what a loser!”


adonis49

adonis49

adonis49

June 2023
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