Dear People,
Thanks to Charles Buffalo, just read this downloaded book: an excellent allegory by Mark Twain. Read along with Voltaire's "Candide" (1761), Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason" (1794), and Antoine de Saint-Exupery's "The Little Prince" (1943) one can drop Philosophers, Poets, Patriarchs and Priests, plus hang most Politicians -- whereby all those underprivileged (outside America, of course) especially its children, can finally grow in real health under far less Phallic obsessed, or aggressed, fearful Parents (kudos to WC Fields' grouchy 1920s' advice).
Thereby, thanks to significantly less organized subjugation to honorific, titled and capitalized men exercising power over social nurturing, conformity and obedience, not us but possibly our children may be blessed with more honest and humane guides and friends.
Highly recommend this short read of 30,000 words, taking place, on the face of it, in a Catholic village in Austria in 1590. The main characters are three boys, two priests and a bishop, an astrologer, a comely maiden and timid beau, all watched over by a kindly old gypsy spirit, called Satan. Supported by a lively cast of typical middle Western citizens: the innocent, guilty and malicious - all afraid and, so, morally just.
richard...
Following is an iconoclast's terse addition, reversing time on three Americans for a history lesson:
# 1
"Even in the midst of this tragedy, the eternal lights of America's goodness and greatness have shown through,"
….written for Mr. Bush (by ????) as he mouthed the words last weekend to the American Society of Anesthesiologists in a speech taped earlier.
PLUS # 2
"The highest possible form of treason is to say that Americans aren't loved wherever they go, whatever they do."
….by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., written nearly four decades ago, as he portrayed the problem of ignorance by putting the above words into the mouth of a fictitious American ambassador who had been fired for pessimism.
EQUALS 100 - - % PERCEPTION :
" I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves. Think of it!"
….BY Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger, 1916, Ch. 9
Some further quotes from Mark Twain's attached book, The Mysterious Stranger, also in Ch. 9:
"Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race -- the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities."
"It is a remarkable progress. In five or six thousand years five or six high civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world, then faded out and disappeared; and not one of them except the latest ever invented any sweeping and adequate way to kill people. They all did their best -- to kill being the chiefest ambition of the human race and the earliest incident in its history -- but only the Christian civilization has scored a triumph to be proud of. Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that all the competent killers are Christians; then the pagan world will go to school to the Christian -- not to acquire his religion, but his guns. The Turk and the Chinaman will buy those to kill missionaries and converts with."