T E N C Y N I C A L E S S A Y S — excerpts !(POPULAR WORLDVIEW)Chris MYRSKI, Sofia, Bulgaria, 2000— — — — —
— — — — — CONTENTSForeword About the Creation and the created About the woman and the man About the mankind About the intellect About the religion About the democracy About the violence About the justice About the population About the future Addendum: Constitution of Cynicland — — — — — PART ONEFOREWORDThis is philosophical book, what means that it is serious reading, not for to fall asleep, though, surely, some of you may use it also for that purpose, because to many readers it may really have somnolent effect. But here you will find no citations and critiques of existing philosophical trends, no unknown to the general public terminology, what means that it is also popular book. It is maximally unprejudiced, in contrast to many philosophical books, which, in spite of their pretensions to be universal and all-embracing are at least tendentious, because their authors feel obliged to defend someone′s interests. In addition to this, in their desire to be exact and non contradictory, they are forced, either to exclude the contradictions from the books starting with some basic assumptions, but in this way they unavoidably delimit the subject of investigation and show the things unilaterally, or else risk to be exposed to attacks for inexactness and metaphysics. In other words, the philosophy, more than the other sciences, suffers from the problem of decomposition of the infinitely complex and interrelated real world (and here the word "infinitely" can′t be substituted with "very", because it is something more than "the most"), but if one natural process is not decomposed it can′t be observed precisely enough, so that this is one unavoidable suffering (something like the birth pangs, without which, at least till the moment, the continuation of life is impossible). Because of the partiality of philosophical currents it happens that they are very many and exclude one another, similarly to the religions, something that is not characteristic for the private sciences, because there are not many mathematics, or physics, or medicines, and so on. Though there are various subdivisions or branches of these sciences they, as a rule, don′t dispute one with the other, for they have different spheres of activity or object areas, and even when their areas overlap, how is with the classical, eastern, and folk medicines, then neither of them questions basic principles, like this that the heart of the humans is in the left part of the chest, that he has two hands with five fingers, etc., but just give alternative approaches. In the same time in the philosophy they argue for centuries whether the matter comes before the idea about it, what for one cyclical process is meaningless, and is paraphrasing of the question about the egg and the hen, about which I doubt that even a child already attending school will begin to argue (but the philosophers do this). Your author avoids these intricate situations in one obvious way, not building his whole philosophy but observing only some "spots" or topics of life, which are relatively non-contradictory, and how the reader will link them in his head is, as they say, his own business. Besides, in the title stays the word "essays", what means tries, experiments, so that when the author is pushed in the corner he can always use the phrase, which sometimes use circus clowns, after choosing one person (as if) from the public, take his tie, cut it with scissors in small pieces, put them in a hat-cylinder, stir them good with a "magic" wand, and promise to take out the tie intact, and when can′t do this they say: "Well, there′s nothing to do, the experiment is not always successful". Now let us come to the cynicism, but let us first cite one assertion of the Englishmen about the difference between the optimist and the pessimist when they see before them a bottle (presumably with some pleasing the soul drink) filled to the half. Then the pessimist used to say: "Ah, but the bottle is already half empty!", while the optimist exclaimed: "Oh, the bottle is still full to the half!". In this case the cynic just establishes the fact, no matter whether there is seven-years old whiskey or potassium cyanide, because he is interested only about the truth, independently of the emotions which it can bring. The cynicism can be opposed also to the euphemism, which is the desire to say only nice things, and can be defined (according to the author) in this way: euphemism is to call somebody "person", when he is merely — I beg to be excused — an ass. The "ass" here is just antipode of the face signifying the person, and it isn′t right to suppose that this book is full with "asses", this word even can′t be found anywhere in the text (but this does not hinder some of the readers to read it till the end, in order to check the truthfulness of this statement). In other words, the cynicism of the author consists in this, to pronounce various, even shocking, statements, not making any efforts for applying of the necessary anti-shock therapy, when these statement are true in many life situations, because of primary value for him is the truthfulness of the said, not its aesthetical, moral, ideological, and so on sides. By the way, according to the attitude of the people to the truth is useful to make the following classification in three groups, namely: a) such, who look for the truth (exceptionally small minority, usually deprived of other pleasures in life, or forced to look for it because have chosen inappropriate area, in which to make career); b) such, who look for the lie (greater group but also minority, who receive enough privileges from this work of them, although is not excluded the variant to be on sufficiently high intellectual level for to have understood that the lie is more attractive than the truth and, hence, more desired by the people); and c) such, who search what they like, no matter is it truth or lie, i.e. they are not at all interested in the truth (the vast majority of the people, who are not worried to deny something if they don′t like it, where, of course, what they like is not necessary to be something good according to the accepted in the moment belief, so that if someone likes, say, to stick a finger in his nose, then this is good for him, though not commonly accepted; or to watch sadistic films, when are speaking about tastes). In order to be cynic one must be intelligent, but the reverse statement is not necessary. There is, however, one important moment with the cynicism: it may be shocking, but it is interesting, because each society strives to establish some euphemistic norms and in this way it denies the cynical truths, and also the forbidden fruit is almost always sweeter. So that, maybe, these cynical essays would appeal to some of the readers? In any case, the cynicism is not contagious disease, neither leads to addiction, and is healed very easy with ... watching the media for three months or so, after which there are no recidives. If you, still, have been misled to buy this book without reading the foreword (or have been deceived because have read it), there is also nothing disastrous in this — you just give the book as present to some unpleasant your colleague or acquaintance, for whom you only think how to get rid of him. The book is the best and cheaper present, and the bad book is exactly the ideal present in such cases. So that: why not to buy it? I, personally, would have done this — had I not written it myself. February 1999, Sofia, Bulgaria, Chris MYRSKI — — — — — ABOUT THE CREATION AND THE CREATEDI. The Creation The creation of our world states one of the eternal questions, to which the humans have tried to find the answer during all historical times, and which are impossible to be answered until they are properly formulated. The whole mess here comes because of our efforts to get sensible answer to such questions like: who, when, how, and why has created the Universe, where the mere presence of these particles presupposes some kind of answer, which could have satisfied us, and refuses the right answer. When we ask "who", this supposes that such being exists, and when we ask "why" — that the Creation has its reasons. But if there is "nobody", and if no special cause for this exists, and all has happened as a result of some processes? When the question begins with "when" or "how", this is more reasonable, but very difficult to be answered, because we are finite beings, as in the time, so also in the space, and can′t comprehend the whole truth about gone away times. Besides, the question "when" means that we expect to be some beginning (and, maybe, also an end), what leads us to the association for "the egg and the hen", but in one cyclical process is meaningless to ask ourselves where is its beginning, and the only thing that we can do then is to choose some starting point, according to which to orient the time axis. Then the answer to the question "how" may be reduced to description of some regularities of the process, what might have been of importance for us if the Creation is not a single act but process continuing forever in the time, while by the single Creation (according to the Christianity) this should have only, as is said, "academical" meaning. So that instead of falling in such logical traps we shall start from the reality as end goal and will ask ourselves, which characteristics it has and what we may get as cause for these characteristics, i.e. will move deductively discovering the basic rules of our world, which produce the observed in it phenomena. This is more correct setting of the things, which avoids the above mentioned questions as meaningless, but may give satisfying explanation of the reality. Nobody hinders us, however, to suppose that there is Somebody, who has made all this, if it is more comfortable for us so, wherein we shall try at least to make the things more interesting. And now, imagine one omnipotent Being, living forever in the time and encompassing the whole space, Who just wonders what to do in order to spend more interesting His unending life. In other words, imagine that our "dear God" is engaged with the difficult task to invent something interesting for Himself, ... And now this is all, that can be said about the Creation and created, if we don′t want to enter into great details, because if we begin to look more profound then there will be no end in this. It is better to live our lives, till we can do this, and, if possible, without hindering especially the others and without speeding up the coming of the chaos. In other words, let us leave the game named life to continue according to its rules and not to invent new ones. — — — — — |
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