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Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,379 |
911 threads have been quiet, lately, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to move things here to Miscellany. I put forward the following out as a suggestion and solicit your response: In the interest of house keeping and as a courtesy to those of us who may not wish participate in these threads, I wonder what the board would think about restricting posts concerning the 911 conflict to a single thread. When and if the thread reaches say 90 posts, a continuation thread will be started, and no more posts will be made to the old thread. If we keep the thread short of 100 posts, we won't be stuck having to open two pages. Yes, Anna, with the server busy as it seems to be, all of us are native narrow band-widthers, now.  . end of the house keeping It is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Eric Hoffer's topical "The True Believer," and the Wall Street Journal published some excerpts from it, today. The book presents the opportunity, as John McDonough writes, for a timely look at fanatacism: The revulsion from an unwanted self and the impulse to forget it produce both a readiness to sacrifice the self and a willingness to dissolve individual distinctness in a compact collective whole. Those who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. There is less risk in being discredited when trying the impossible than when trying the possible. To ripen a person for self-sacrifice, he must be stripped of his individual identity. When asked who he is, his automatic response is … "a German," "a Russian," "a Christian," "a Moslem," a member of a certain tribe or family. He has no purpose, worth and destiny apart from his collective body; and as long as that body lives, he cannot really die. Dying and killing are easy when they are part of a ritual, ceremonial, dramatic performance or game. There is the need for make-believe in order to face death. It is one of the main tasks of a real leader to mask the grim reality of dying by evoking in his followers the illusion that they are participating in a grandiose spectacle, a solemn dramatic performance. Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience-or contemporaries or "of those who are to be." All mass movements deprecate the present by depicting it as a mean preliminary to a glorious future. We can be absolutely certain only about the things we do not understand. [Thus], the devout are always asked to seek truth with their hears and not their minds. Self-sacrifice is an unreasonable act. The facts on which the true believer basis his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ. To be in possession of an absolute truth is to have a net of familiarity spread over the whole of eternity. All questions have already been answered, all decisions made, all eventualities foreseen. Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet. In time of peace, a democratic nation is an institutionalized association of more or less free individuals. On the other hand, in time of crisis, it almost always assumes in some degree the character of a mass movement.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
:More excerpts from Eric Hoffer's The True Believer. I had not heard before that President Eisenhower admired it enough to have his staff members read it. A self-educated man, Eric Hoffer was truly remarkable. http://www.superslow.com/es24f.html
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
I am nothing more than star dust.
Long, I held myself to be,
Just collected, scattered bits of dust
from some past eternity.
How random and how beautiful
Majesty, in such a simple form
humbled and at the same time, blessed
From such stuff, to be born.
But these days the dust I breathe
The dust I have become,
Is the dust of five thousand souls
and more, now in me,again as one
My city is a charnel house.
It sears me to the core
Now I am the dust of human souls
Of stardust, I am no more.
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Helen, did you write this? It is beautiful---and horrible, in its truth. Thank you for posting it.
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Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 2,605 |
Jackie, it reminded me of Rupert Brooke's "Dust", and the perspective there. So very ... I don't have any adequate word.
Thank you, Helen.
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Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
loggin fromthe road--NJ turnpikefreeinternet connection.it terribe, but free! yes jackie. it been sittine there for a while,and i was feeling a bit hurt that no one notice it. being upset make me more creative, but also hyper sensitive
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Well, actually, Dear Heart, I did notice it--but I was too overwhelmed to be able to think of anything to say. I mean, what CAN one say, in the face of such unimaginable horror. You can't think how it has heartened me, reading your post about New Yorkers getting back to complaining about normal things like traffic. I found myself wishing yet again this very afternoon that it had all been a bad dream. Even my 15-yr.-old son commented a couple of days ago that he can't see even a small plane now without thinking of the attack--and he's not an introspective person, at all.
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 872 |
Helen,
Your poem of poignant wording summarizes the transfiguration of the american soul brought about by the unspeakable events of September eleven two thousand one.
I just read the poem yesterday. Today I plan to send it to two friends in New York, one who was working one block away when the first plane hit, the other had just moved to the city three months ago.
Here in Birmingham your poem will be read by my family and my friends. Yesterday I gave a copy to my granddaughter to read to her class today.
Helen, your poem needs wide currency. It explains a feeling that could not be put into words by the rest of us. Change the title to, simply, "Ashes" and get it published now. The future needs to know the depth of what we felt.
Milo
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