1. No category

Yiannis:
Hernán do you know how to handle facebook? If yes please ask in Spanish the composer Joaquin
Carbonnel who wrote that song about the old pensioner pharmacist Dimitris who committed
suicide, where can a Greek who loves both him and his songs and what he did for us Greeks send
him an attachment to thank him for what he did and to dedicate to him tomorrow's staging of
Canto General in Herodeion and to also express his solidarity for what is happening in Spain
exactly now in front of the eyes all of us. I wish i were a poet or composer myself to make a
response song for them but I am not, so I borrow the solidarity move that Theodorakis made to
South America to say in Spanish all I want to say
Hernán Joaquin's facebook is:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/.......
Hernán:
Señor Carbonnell, me imagino que esta traducción es innecesaria, pero como me lo solicita un
buen amigo de Atenas Gracia y francamente no se si me aceptara como amigo en facebook, le
escribo esta nota por correo electrónico con la esperanza que su direccion a facebook sirva para
hacersela llegar ahora mismo.
Brevemente lo que Ioannis me pide se traduciria así: él quiere felicitarle y agradecerle en su
nombre y el de Grecia por su canciones sobre el señor Dimmitris y avisarle que le dedicará
la presentacion del evento que mañana se llevará a cabo en Herodeion Grecia, sobre los
poemas de Pablo Neruda, Canto General a los que el gran compositor
Michael Theodorakis los ha compuesto en una cantata musical maravillosa.
Yiannis:
Mihali please send the above to
http://www.facebook.com/pages/.......
Mihalis:
The answer was:
Hola, no soy Joaquín, debí crear esta página hace tiempo cuando Joaquín aun no tenía Facebook;
no obstante es amigo mío y en seguida le hago llegar tu mensaje.
Un saludo.
Yiannis:
Thanks, I’ll send it to Hernán. But in the meantime please send to the facebook address the
following thanks.
Muchos gracias hermanito /Yiannis Alevizos
Mihali, thanks for all your help:
Hernán:
The translation of Joaquín’s friend says more or less: Hello, I am not Joaquín, I must have
created this page page when Joaquín had not an account in Facebook, nevertheless he is a friend
of mine and right away I shall send the message to him. A salute (hello) to you.
...............................................
1
Canción para Dimitris,
Joaquín Carbonell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0upnAY0D4I
(the video does have subtitles in English, so we don’t translate the song here)
Refugio de palomas
Luz violeta de pincel
La mañana griega se sintió volar
Serena la cigarra
Se aturdió bajo el mantel
Que guardaba un desayuno tan vulgar
La higuera vio la fuente
Y brotó luz de la miel
Son las ocho y los dioses ya no están
Dimitris es agudo
Un anciano de papel
Una voz que clama al mundo sin gritar
A veces el destino nos empuja hacia el final
Rompiendo las señales de aparcar
Un tiro no es un ruido es como una catedral
Que se esfuma entre la niebla de cristal
Dimitris busca el árbol
Y Sintagma es el lugar
Al frente el Parlamento Nacional
Empuña una pistola
En un gesto tan vulgar
Que no llama la atención del personal
“No quiero su limosna
Hoy me rindo sin luchar
No buscaré comida en un corral”.
Los cielos se cerraron
Y la tierra fue a llorar
Era abril en cada punto cardinal
A veces el destino nos empuja hacia el final
Rompiendo las señales de aparcar
Un tiro no es un ruido es como una catedral
Que se esfuma entre la niebla de cristal
A veces el destino nos empuja hacia el final
Rompiendo las señales de aparcar
El portavoz del Fondo Monetario Gerry Rice
Confesó que estuvo a punto de llorar
2
http://24gr.blogspot.com/2012/07/blog-post_7875.html
http://www.zougla.gr/blog/article/572076
Gratitud Griega to Joaquín Carbonell
(sung in the melody of his own Canción…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0upnAY0D4I
I wish I were a poet
and send you one of my poems
but I’m not so I will have to borrow one
I wish I could write music
and dress what I’m saying right now
but I’m not so I’m humming back your own song
Joaquín, yesterday was a serene summer night, as sweet as most Greek summer nights.
Mikis Theodorakis, supported by friends and with a walking cane, walked from his house at the
feet of Acropolis to the open Roman theater Herodeion, two blocks over his house. The distance
of Herodeion both from Acropolis and from Mikis’ home, was so small that the audience of what
was to be played, felt as if invited for dinner under the summer sky in the veranda of a still living
ancient demigod. The performance of what he had named “Gospel of Freedom”, the famous
“Canto General” of the South American demigod Pablo Neruda, would be by the same
performers, Maria Farantouri and Petros Pandis, who would also perform in the presence of
Allende and Neruda, 39 years ago in Chile, with Mikis conducting, all of them, then, exiles from
Greece’s junta, but never performed, because some weeks before this première, took place the
coup against Allende by Pinochet’s junta. The age of the performers, and their appearance too,
among the young generation constituting the choir, added to the feeling that something mystical
and uncanny was going to take place…At the end Mikis approached the stage and the singers on
it bowed to kiss him. Among loud standing ovation he kissed them and also kissed the next
generation’s actor, Tasos Nousias, who was translating and transfusing from the demigods’
eternal and universal language to the present’s and the here’s language of our country too. When
Mikis turned to also face the audience, the standing ovation became so loud that it reminded an
apotheosis. Immortalization would be a poor word because this work was already immortal upon
birth. Apotheosis was also a poor word but only because of the simplicity and directness of
Mikis’ response.His smile broadened from ear to ear and made his face light up even more and he
said “You made me very happy. Thank you”. He waved, and, again, supported he left for home.
I wish I spoke your language
and have sung myself to Spain
in your language that is so close to my Greek
but we both speak rockers’ language
Lingua Franca of our days
so we still exchange what we borrow from those gods
...Our appeal to Hernán to translate the above to Spanish resulted from our need to make a tribute to a
beautiful language of beautiful souls who wrote such a beautiful song for as beautiful a Greek as Dimitris…
3
Gratitud Griega a Joaquín Carbonell:
Quisiera ser poeta y mandarles uno de mis poemas,
pero como no lo soy, entonces tendre que tomar prestado uno
Quisiera poder escribir música
y adornar lo que estoy diciendo ahora,
pero como no sé, entonces estoy tarareando su propia canción.
Joaquín, ayer una noche serena de verano, como la mayoria de las noches dulces del
verano Griegas, Mikis Theodorakis, ayudado por amigos y apoyado en su baston, caminó de su
casa al pie de la Acrópolis hasta Herodeion un teatro Romano al aire libre. Las distancias de la
Acrópolis y de la casa de Mikis al teatro son tan cortas que la audiencia se sentia como invitada a
cenar bajo ese cielo de verano, en el corredor de la casa del aun viviente demigod. La actuacion
de lo que él mismo a nombrado "Evangelio de Libertad", el famoso "Canto General" del tambien
semidios de la America del Sur, Pablo Neruda, estuvo a cargo de los actores Maria Farantouri y
Petros Pandi, quienes debieron cantar en Chile en presencia del Presidente Salvador Allende y el
poeta Pablo Neruda hace 39 años, mientras Mikis conduciria la orquesta. Todos ellos estaban
exiliados en esos entonces por La Junta de Gobierno de Grecia. La actuacion nunca se llevo a
cabo por el Golpe de Estado organizado por Augusto Pinochet y su Junta unas pocas semanas
antes del Premier. La edad de los actores y su presencia entre los jovenes del coro, le dieron al
acto un sentido místico inusual. Al final, Mikis se acerco al escenario y los cantantes le hicieron
reverencias y lo besaron en medio de estruendosos aplausos, asi mismo él también besó a
los actores de la nueva generación. Tasos Nousias, traducía y transfundió a los presentes, la
lengua eterna y universal de los semidioses y al Griego. Cuando Mikis se volteo hacia la
audiencia, los aplausos se hicieron apoteosicos. Inmortalización no seria un adjetivo correcto,
pues el trabajo de estos musico/poetas ya era inmortal al nacer. Apoteosis no es suficiente
tampoco por la simplicidad y sentido directo de la respuesta de Mikis: su sonrisa se abrio de oreja
a oreja y su cara se ilumino mucho cuando con toda sencillez dijo: "Me hacen felices, muchas
gracias". Saludó ajitando sus manos y de nuevo fué ayudado para regresar a su casa.
Quisiera hablar en Español
y poder cantar a España en su lengua
que se asemeja tanto al Griego.
Pero ya que ambos hablamos el lenguaje del Rock
Lengua Franca de hoy
Todavia podemos entre cambiar
Lo que tomemos prestado de esos dioses.
We also send all our Gratitud Griega to our friend Hernán Espinoza for this translation, one
more sample of his help and support during every single day of the three years of our friendship.
Before we go to the more detailed and specific letter we wrote to Hernán right after the night at
Herodeion, let’s see a few of the words and melodies we can borrow from those gods to dedicate
to the Indignados and Occupys everywhere in the world today too…
4
Vuela una montana marina, hacia las islas, una luna de aves que van hacia el Sur, sobre las islas fermentadas del Peru
Es un rio vivo de sombra, es un cometa de pequenos corazones innumerable que oscurecen el sol del mundo como un
astro de cola espesa palpitando hacia el archipelago…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzY27oWPI-4
Vienen los pajaros
............
Vuela una montana marina
hacia las islas,
una luna de aves que van hacia el Sur,
sobre las islas fermentadas del Peru.
Es un rio vivo de sombra,
es un cometa de pequenos
corazones innumerables
que oscurecen el sol del mundo
como un astro de cola espesa
palpitando hacia el archipelago.
que oscurecen el sol del mundo
como un astro de cola espesa
palpitando hacia el archipelago.
A marine mountain flies
toward the islands
a moon of birds winging South
over the fermented islands of Peru
It’s a living river of shade,
it’s a comet of tiny
hearts countless in number
that eclipse the world’s sun
like a thick-tailed meteor
pulsing toward the archipelago.
that eclipse the world’s sun
like a thick-tailed meteor
pulsing toward the archipelago.
Y en el final del iracundo mar,
en la lluvia del oceano,
surgen las alas del albatros,
como dos sistemas de sal.
Todo era vuelo en nuestra tierra.
Todo era vuelo en nuestra tierra.
estableciendo en el silencio
como gotas de sangre y plumas
entre las rachas torrenciales,
los cardenales desangraban
con su espaciosa jerarquia
el orden de las soledades
el amanecer de Anahuac,
con su espaciosa jerarquia
el orden de las soledades
el amanecer de Anahuac,
And at the end of the enraged sea,
in the ocean rain
the wings of the albatros rise up
like two systems of salt.
All was flight in our land.
All was flight in our land.
establishing in the silence
like drops of blood and feathers
amid the torrential squalls
the cardinals bled
with their spacious hierarchy
the order of the wilds
the dawn of Anahuac,
with their spacious hierarchy
the order of the wilds
the dawn of Anahuac.
5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWzZ8v2KWcc&feature=related
LA UNITED FRUIT CO.
When the trumpet blared, everything on earth was prepared and Jehova distributed the world
to Coca Cola Inc., Anaconda, Ford Motors and the other entities. United Fruit Inc. reserved for itself the
juiciest, the central seaboard of my country, America’s sweet waist. It rebaptized its lands the “Banana
Republics”, and upon the slumbering corpses, upon the restless heroes who conquered renown, freedom
and flags, it established the buffoons’ opera, it alienated self-destiny, gave as gifts Caesar’s crowns,
unsheathed envy, attracted the dictatorship of flies, fly Truhillo, fly Tahos, fly Garias, fly Martinez, fly
Ubico, flies soaked in humble blood and jam, drunk flies that drone over the common graves, circus flies,
clever flies versed in tyranny. Among the blood thirsty flies, the Fruit Co. disembarks, ravaging coffee and
fruits for its ships that make disappear like ghosts on serving trays, the treasures of our lands that are
submerged. Meanwhile in the sugary abysses of the seaports collapsed Indians, are buried in the mist of the
morning: a body rolls down, a thing without name, a fallen number, a bunch of lifeless fruit dumped in the
rubbish heap.
…como gotas de sangre y plumas
los cardenales desangraban
el amanecer de Anahuac…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw-Sho4sxuQ&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjnlcs-3xDM&feature=related
The road is dark, and so is life, until again I meet you/come down your door and hold my hand to feel how
much I need you.
Make up your bedsheets now for two/for you and me, for me and you/hold me as I hold you right from start
to feel that love and life are back.
I took you in my arms, you took me in yours, we both were taken and given/I lost myself into your eyes
and into your fate I am driven.
Make up your bedsheets now for two/for you and me, for me and you/hold me as I hold you right from start
to feel that love and life are back.
6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJYbUb_NFEw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0upnAY0D4I
7
Hernán, the best way to describe to you feelings that consciously or unconsciously we all had last
night, until as I hope that whole event will be posted in youtube, is the following:
1) I will show you the one of the singers (the man) when he was young and singing it with
young Theodorakis the song “United fruit Co.” that you already know and have
commented then I’ll show you his photo as he is now (but his singing it will be postponed
until they post it on youtube)
2) I will show you the lady but although she is as old as he, she looks as almost equally old
as she was in middle age as in the links you had seen her. But when performing they
seem as equally young as when they were exiles 40 years ago.
3) I still not have a photo to show you Theodorakis with a cane and as very happy as he
said today in the news he was, but I will do the following: I will write you some links
with him in several ages to give you the family atmosphere he has with the people and
some of the links will also be following his presence in the Herodeion Amphitheater as
he grows older…
4) Then I will write you several links about Canto General that you of course already know
but it’s good to have them somewhere concentrated…
OK, we start:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWzZ8v2KWcc&feature=related
The way Petros Pandis looks now is here
Herodeion theater does not show clearly here but you will see it in videos in a while
Maria Farantouri in the “Algunas Bestias” but in Belgium
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDPi11XhcG8&feature=related
Theodorakis young in East Berlin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjnlcs-3xDM&feature=related
The song he is singing himself says the following lyrics (and the instrumental song he continues
in the same link is Zorbas)
The road is dark, and so is life, until again I meet you,
come down your door and hold my hand to feel how much I need you.
Make up your bedsheets now for two,
for you and me, for me and you,
hold me as I hold you right from start
to feel that love and life are back.
I took you in my arms, you took me in yours, we both were taken and given,
I lost myself into your eyes and into your fate I am driven.
8
Make up your bedsheets now for two,
for you and me, for me and you,
hold me as I hold you right from start
to feel that love and life are back.
Hernán although this is a reunion song for lovers I think it is also (at least now should be) a
union- for-the-first time song for people who postpone too much and also a solidarity song even
for people whose union is not erotic
Now Hernán hear the same two in Herodeion some years ago
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw-Sho4sxuQ&feature=relmfu
The fact that he lives near Herodeion (5 minutes walk) makes the night also have a feeling like
he hosts everybody in his house’s yard.
The Zorba part too in other forms and ages
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wArnejQcGno&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeNsr_nQEfE&feature=fvwrel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjHhegWyIwI&feature=related
(here in the epoch of
tourism)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asnxIGDsMfM&feature=related , (Herodeion again)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TorYVReym-8 (the same in soccer fields)
(A surprise : The person who sings in the soccer field , Grigoris Bithikotsis, a lifelong coworker,
was a very human guard (plumber, who was serving his military service) in the torture island
where Theodorakis was a detainee. In the photos below the plumber is the tall in the middle,
Theodorakis is the tall in front of the tent, then the tall in the hospital)
9
10
(The lyrics of the song in Herodeion and in the soccer field:)
Sun of Justice living, living in and above our mind
and you myrtle glorious leaf of praise and prize
please don’t turn your eyes away from my
please don’t turn your eyes away from my
please don’t turn your eyes away from my,
my country
Her volcanoes have rows of vines with blood-red wine
her high mountains are proud and eagle-like
and her houses when painted white
and her houses when painted white
and her houses when painted white shine,
when her sky is blue and bright.
11
I reach with my two bitter hands behind old Time
Holding in their strength the Thunderbolt of Right
and I call my old friends and pals
and I call my old friends and pals
and I call my old friends and pals,
shouting threats and splashed with blood.
Sun of Justice living, living in and above our mind
and you myrtle glorious leaf of praise and prize
please don’t turn your eyes away from my
please don’t turn your eyes away from my
please don’t turn your eyes away from my,
my country
See another performance of this, in German music hall…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUVEqh83rjI&feature=relmfu
and one more in Herodeion, with Theodorakis himself still conducting a few (7 or 8) years ago
(this one showing most clearly with what passion he tries to transfuse his vision to the young
generation of singers):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00UTQkZ76ts&feature
I also include a link with the whole of this oratorio (“Axion Esti”, Nobel laureated) in Herodeion
(lasts 1:12) but what I tell you not to miss is a least the finale (I write you, in red, at what time it
starts and also the lyrics)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HZlK-Uidbk&feature=related (1:06:40)
PRAISED BE the hand returning from terrible murder knowing now
which the world that is really superior
which the world’s “now” and which its “forever”
which the world that is really superior which the world’s “now” and which its “forever”
NΟW the myrtle’s wild animal Now the cry of May
FOREVER the utmost conscience Forever the full light
Now now the hallucination and the mimicry of sleep
Forever forever the world and forever the astral Keel
Now the moving cloud of lepidoptera
Forever the circumgyrating light of mysteries
Now the crust of the Earth and the Dominion
Forever the food of the Soul and the quintessence
Now the Moon’s incurable swarthiness
Forever the Galaxy’s golden blue scintillation
Now the amalgam of peoples and the black Number
Forever the statue of Justice and the great Eye
Now the humiliation of the Gods Now the ashes of Man
Now Now the zero
Now Now the zero
Now Now the zero
and Forever this small world, and Forever this small world, and Forever this small world
the Great!
12
But let’s finish with a summer night very magic again but serene with a family-like song again and
without (!) Theodorakis
For more Theodorakis-Neruda see the PS, but save it for another day, don’t get an overdose, the event at
Herodeion for lasted 3 hours…Well do what you want, you’ll be hearing it at home, I was on a tier; you,
being a doctor, and knowing of my waist problem,…OK, a bloggers’ disease…Note: Since you are from
Nicaragua I will write last the song on Sandino.(But of course before Theodorakis’ Requiem for Neruda)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDNQN8gJpbU
The summer cinemas
Lyrics: Loukianos Kilaidonis Music: Loukianos Kilaidonis Performance: Loukianos Kilaidonis
Years that feel our best are always passing
passing on a hurrying clock’s hourhand
youth that’s left behind
years never to re-find
and what I feel real stays
in our hearts and our mind
is just nights serene and filled with moonlight
in cinemas playing under night sky
sweetly passing by
nights never to re-find
in walls of jasmine and woodbine
Years that feel our best are always passing
stolen from us by a secret hand
years left behind
years never to re-find
and what I feel real stays
in our hearts and our mind
is just nights serene and filled with moonlight
in cinemas playing under night sky
sweetly passing by
nights never to re-find
in walls of jasmine and woodbine
Bye Hernán, thank you for your interest and for your help. I wish you all happy and serene summer nights
PS:
ΑLGUNAS BESTIAS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI9Xk8ZgaTw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Pp2cz1DPY
VIENEN LOS PAJAROS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzY27oWPI-4
AMOR AMERICA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJH86InnND4
VEGETACIONES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7w5RUAb3jg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBB8Nsmjd2E
LOS LIBERTADORES VOY A VIVIR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA_mzUzOLUw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9o51Mzy5Jk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_egjXRGoxCQ&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHvK2RyHNqQ
VOY A VIVIR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_GUgwhkQTI
LAUTARO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWtBpHgQW6I
SANDINO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PsHp4r3-xY
NERUDA REQUIEM AETERNAM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0C6Du3AKmw&feature=related
13
Final PS: Finally I managed to forget one song. Here it is:
AMERICA INSURRECTA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpM2g-qYtpk&feature=related
Hernán, I’ve just remembered an amusing little detail about the meeting of Mikis and Neruda in
Paris. He liked Canto General so much that he finally had to tell Neruda “Please make some
selection of songs for me because the way I have started composing, the concert will be fifteen
hours long….”
PS of almost two months later, when Clint Eastwood made that show with the empty chair
representing Obama and Michael Moore answered as in ….google with e.g.
Michael Moore on Clint Eastwood’s Delusional Speech at the Republican National Convention
(by Michael Moore Aug 31, 2012 6:34 AM EDT
The Hollywood legend growling at an empty chair will live on in infamy as the moment when a crazy old man
hijacked a national party’s most important gathering to tell off the president.)
Hernán I hate to be repetitive but since I noticed they posted the finish of the night of Canto
General that you helped me with, when you translated for us that letter to Joaquín Carbonell, I
could not resist sending you that 3 minutes ending where Theodoraksi does all the things you
were translating . I hope my letter finds all of you in health and happiness. THANK YOU
AGAIN FOR ALL YOUR HELP AND SUPPORT. Kisses to Natalie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhpIMVnb7FE
Part of Hernán’s answer:
…Thanks indeed I you have to say all of those grandpas are still very attractive and not as how
Clint Eastwoods shows at Tampa TX.
Here is something I was working in just now:
Dear Ioannis:
For whom is it that I write these thoughts? For you, for my soul or for no one?
……………………………………..
14
We had mentioned many pages ago (in page 79 of the pdf on “Correspondence…. etc” of the
present site) that the “Rehearsal…etc” was a response to an invitation for texts that could
constitute a discussion about the relation of religion and politics. Before we go on, it would be
good to see how Zephyros Kafkalides, the friend who originally had the idea of the dialog,
himself conducted it. Right now we include it, in Greek, in the next pdf which is, thus, wider
than the present pdf but is only for readers who speak both English and Greek, and maybe, later
on, he and all the perticipants will translate their contributions …
So here we only include a contribution to this discussion written in Engish by the present writer,
its title was “Weber”….:
15
Let’s see the ending of Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”
…..The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism was
carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its
part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound
to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which to-day determine the lives
of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with
economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton
of fossilized coal is burnt. In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the
shoulders of the “saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment”. But fate
decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.
Since asceticism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its ideals in the world,
material goods have gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power over the lives of men
as at no previous period in history. To-day the spirit of religious asceticism—whether finally,
who knows?—has escaped from the cage. But victorious capitalism, since it rests on mechanical
foundations, needs its support no longer. The rosy blush of its laughing heir, the Enlightenment,
seems also to be irretrievably fading, and the idea of duty in one’s calling prowls about in our
lives like the ghost of dead religious beliefs. Where the fulfilment of the calling cannot directly be
related to the highest spiritual and cultural values, or when, on the other hand, it need not be felt
simply as economic compulsion, the individual generally abandons the attempt to justify it at all.
In the field of its highest development, in the United States, the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its
religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions, which
often actually give it the character of sport.
No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous
development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and
ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive selfimportance. For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said:
“Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a
level of civilization never before achieved.”
But this brings us to the world of judgments of value and of faith, with which this purely
historical discussion need not be burdened. The next task would be rather to show the
significance of ascetic rationalism, which has only been touched in the foregoing sketch, for the
content of practical social ethics, thus for the types of organization and the functions of social
groups from the conventicle to the State. Then its relations to humanistic rationalism, its ideals of
life and cultural influence; further to the development of philosophical and scientific empiricism,
to technical development and to spiritual ideals would have to be analysed. Then its historical
development from the medieval beginnings of worldly asceticism to its dissolution into pure
utilitarianism would have to be traced out through all the areas of ascetic religion. Only then
could the quantitative cultural significance of ascetic Protestantism in its relation to the other
plastic elements of modern culture be estimated.
Here we have only attempted to trace the fact and the direction of its influence to their motives
in one, though a very important point. But it would also further be necessary to investigate how
Protestant Asceticism was in turn influenced in its development and its character by the totality of
social conditions, especially economic. The modern man is in general, even with the best will,
unable to give religious ideas a significance for culture and national character which they deserve.
But it is, of course, not my aim to substitute for a one-sided materialistic an equally one-sided
spiritualistic causal interpretation of culture and of history. Each is equally possible, but each, if it
does not serve as the preparation, but as the conclusion of an investigation, accomplishes equally
little in the interest of historical truth.
16
“Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a
level of civilization never before achieved” is just about the most one will hear of Weber making
a value judgment, and he will immediately add: “But this brings us to the world of judgments of
value and of faith, with which this purely historical discussion need not be burdened”; so we will
not burden what we want to say with this unproved, or even unrpovable, opinion of his more than
he burdened his book when he did not completelry remove what he did not want as a burden*.
Actually we will burden it even less, or rather not at all , since we will accompany what we will
say with things completely independent from Weber’s book and will only use his book to prove
how very deeply relevant in how very numerous contexts these subjects really are. We will say
something more, however, regarding his similarly sounding last two sentences of his book “But it
is, of course, not my aim to substitute for a one-sided materialistic an equally one-sided
spiritualistic causal interpretation of culture and of history. Each is equally possible, but each, if it
does not serve as the preparation, but as the conclusion of an investigation, accomplishes equally
little in the interest of historical truth”: As we will see, (and as the bibliography we have already
presented has shown) the progress of sciences, especially of biology, in the more than one
century since the appearance of his book, has already allowed the existence of not just two
equally one-sided, and equally implausible, causal interpretations of his object, but already some
less implausible syntheses (associated with thinkers like the…Monod…Edelman…Kandel…
chain)
Before going to the real point we want to make, let’s finish with some things of his book’s so
wise and admirable ending that can be dealt with rather more concisely: He writes: “But it would
also further be necessary to investigate how Protestant Asceticism was in turn influenced in its
development and its character by the totality of social conditions, especially economic”. Maybe it
still is equally not-widely known as in his days “…how Protestant Asceticism was in turn
influenced…” all the way up to then, but it has become amply evident to most, not even through
library research but through 8 o’clock news of even mainstream media, if received with some
detachment from the conclusions they want to have us draw, that the nullities he mentioned
(“specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart”) after adapting better and better to some of
the inhuman traits favored both by biological and cultural selection in envrinoments sufficiently
influenced by Calvinist predestination, lost also the inhibitions they had at least in front of some
God, if not towards humans, and now treat everybody, even their “Calvinist older cousins”, in the
well known mechanized way we everyday hear “markets” are treating human societies**.
Also Weber’s other phrase “The modern man is in general, even with the best will, unable to give
religious ideas a significance for culture and national character which they deserve” is much more
widely and immediately recognizable in our days when the quick reductio ad absurdum of the
fall of borders showed how the hasty globalization we have witnessed was planned like…
For better understanding, through examples from days much later than his, of his references to
things like e.g. “mechanized petrification” see again **.
*Equally passingly he mentioned, in relation to the doctrine of predestination «“Though I may be sent to
Hell for it, such a God will never command my respect”, was Milton’s well-known opinion of the doctrine.
But we are here concerned not with the evaluation, but the historical significance of the dogma. We can
only briefly sketch the question of how the doctrine originated and how it fitted into the framework of
Calvinistic theology. Two paths leading to it were possible….».
**Mechanized in the sense “unevolving and thus lifelessly frozen at the data and knowledge of when a
machine was programmed, and was autonomized to the state of ghost in the machine since its handling of
numberss of data that humans can’t handle was enough to be taken as sign of superiority of machine or
program or model compared to life” (more usually explained through the example of the supercomputer
Hal in Clark&Cubrick’s Space Odyssey which, having been programmed to confront threats to the mission
that the astronauts might not have seen (like e.g. meteorites) started killing them if some things they said, in
a number of moves might endanger the mission) Of course even this is an idealization, of people having
good intentions and still failing by not predicting everything, obviously a wishful and euphemistic
idealization of many of the usual common assholes running many gears of the whole process…
17
Finally, concerning his paragraphs “No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or
whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will
be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with
a sort of convulsive self-importance…” and “The next task would be rather to show the
significance of ascetic rationalism, which has only been touched in the foregoing sketch…Then
its relations to humanistic rationalism, its ideals of life and cultural influence; further to the
development of philosophical and scientific empiricism, to technical development and to spiritual
ideals would have to be analysed….” , let’s just say that the century that intervened since they
were written, gave, as we explain below, enough examples, both of social activism/thinking and
of science/art, for seeing what can take the place of prophets for meaningful changes to be striven
for and what shape humanistc rationalism can take in order for modern man not to remain “unable
to give religious ideas a significance for culture and national character which they deserve” as
Weber was disappointed to diagnose in his last paragraph even for the case of best willing
modern man. Of course the detailed outline and justification of the herein not detailedly outlined,
let alone justified, optimism of the present writer can only be the goal of a whole site, if of
anything at all, so we won’t, here, try to add anything in this direction. The reader will reach his
conclusions about what is outlined and justified only if he goes through the site itself, not through
some correspondence&bibliography about it (otherwise we would not post a site but just the
present correspondence&bibliography about it!)
Rather than implying that Weber’s book is any help to our claim just made, let’s make our task
more difficult (at least at first sight) by appending as ending here some excerpts from a speech
Weber gave some years after he wrote it (in 1919, one year before he died and after one world
war had intervened) that sure caused, at least upon first hearing, some pessimism to many in his
audience, and to many among its readers when published, and to the writer of the speech himself
most probably (but not necessarily without causing some optimism too at second thought*). The
speech was titled “Science as a vocation”** Here we excerpt and rearrange parts of its ending
(but the last paragraph presented is exactly the one his speech ends with):
.
“...The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the
“disenchantment of the world.” Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public
life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal
human relations. It is not accidental that our greatest art is intimate and not monumental, nor is it
accidental that today only within the smallest and intimate circles, in personal human situations, in
pianissimo, that something is pulsating that corresponds to the prophetic pneuma, which in former times
swept through the great communities like a firebrand, welding them together. If we attempt to force and to
“invent” a monumental style in art, such miserable monstrosities are produced as the many monuments of
the last twenty years. If one tries intellectually to construe new religions without a new and genuine
prophecy, then, in an inner sense, something similar will result, but with still worse effects. And academic
prophecy, finally, will create only fanatical sects but never a genuine community…It is, however, no
humbug but rather something very sincere and genuine if some of the youth groups who during recent
years have quietly grown together give their human community the interpretation of a religious, cosmic, or
mystical relation, although occasionally perhaps such interpretation rests on misunderstanding of self.
True as it is that every act of genuine brotherliness may be linked with the awareness that it contributes
something imperishable to a super-personal realm, it seems to me dubious whether the dignity of purely
human and communal relations is enhanced by these religious interpretations. But that is no longer our
.
*We will clarify what we mean after we read it, explaining at the same time what we meant above by “enough
examples of social activism/thinking….” and by “justified optimism…”
**Also, one year earlier than that, in 1918, he had given another speech titled “Politics as a vocation” which, even if
read today is absolutely relevant e.g. in, as if by experience, by thought, by hindsight, by foresight etc, speaking not
only about all details of then but also of today, even the content of the present’s TV windows arguments (but he just
mentions them once, to further, not in infinite repetitions to get stuck like in TV) Of course one very relevant detail
(besides the (war) debt of Germany, the humbling, the incompetence, the responsibilities, the economic and cultural
crisis etc) is also in the discussion of why ever expect, socialists, even Spartacists, as able to carry out any promise to
improvement or change, a pessimism which is the more relevant the more SYRIZA is far from being like Spartacists.
18
theme…To the person who cannot bear the fate of the times like a man, one must say: may he rather return
silently, without the usual publicity build-up of renegades, but simply and plainly. The arms of the old
churches are opened widely and compassionately for him. After all, they do not make it hard for him. One
way or another he has to bring his “intellectual sacrifice” –that is inevitable. If he can really do it, we
shall not rebuke him…The tension between the value-spheres of “science” and the sphere of “the holy” is
unbridgeable. Legitimately, only the disciple offers the “intellectual sacrifice” to the prophet, the believer
to the church. Never as yet has a new prophecy emerged (and I repeat here deliberately this image which
has offended some) by way of the need of some modern intellectuals to furnish their souls with, so to speak,
guaranteed genuine antiques. In doing so, they happen to remember that religion has belonged among
such antiques, and of all things religion is what they do not possess. By way of substitute, however, they
play at decorating a sort of domestic chapel with small sacred images from all over the world, or they
produce surrogates through all sorts of psychic experiences to which they ascribe the dignity of mystic
holiness, which they peddle in the book market. This is plain humbug or selfdeception…An intellectual
sacrifice in favor of an unconditional religious devotion is ethically quite a different matter than the
evasion of the plain duty of intellectual integrity, which sets in if one lacks the courage to clarify one’s own
ultimate standpoint and rather facilitates this duty by feeble relative judgments. In my eyes, such religious
return stands higher than the academic prophecy, which does not clearly realize that in the lecture-rooms
of the university no other virtue holds but plain intellectual integrity. Integrity, however, compels us to state
that for the many who today tarry for new prophets and saviors, the situation is the same as resounds in the
beautiful Edomite watchman's song of the period of exile that has been included among Isaiah’s oracles:
.
He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning cometh, and
also the night: if ye will enquire, enquire ye: return, come.
.
The people to whom this was said has enquired and tarried for more than two millennia, and we are shaken
when we realize its fate. From this we want to draw the lesson that nothing is gained by yearning and
tarrying alone, and we shall act differently. We shall set to work and meet the “demands of the day,” in
human relations as well as in our vocation. This, however, is plain and simple, if each finds and obeys the
demon who holds the fibers of his very life.
.
Clearly Weber’s view of pseudoculture, pseudoreligion, pseudoacademicity, … is more
pessimistic and more lucid and literal than Adorno’s later image of European culture as Ulysses
listening to Sirens’ song in the alienated way of someone tied on a ship’s mast (while the
proletarians at the oars have had their ears plugged with waxballs). And his simulating both of
Germany and of all Europe, with Israel in order to find a way to draw lessons, is clearly very
fruitful despite being so much ahead of time (if “better late than never”, “it’s never too late” etc
etc are still applicable now for all that is at stake). But what we meant by finding reasons for
optimism (and along directions he wanted to do more than yearning and tarrying for) in “enough
examples, both of social activism/thinking and of science/art” in “the century that intervened
since his days”, was not, of course, referring to just the present movements that are still in the
birth process (indignados, occupys, squares’ Springs, ….) both repeating and correcting the errors
of the Spartacists of his days; we meant them too but in the company of the lessons drawn from
activism like the 1917 revolution and the later resistance of USSR dissidents, the resistance
against Nazis, the Civil wars, in Spain before the war and in Greece and other places after the
war, the Vietnam war and the movement against it, the juntas of South America and Greece and
the resistance against them*…Because , clearly, only an irresponsible through idiocy, laziness,
fear, or just identification with his own interest, can possibly consider as arguments things like
“the reason I find wrong the efforts of early Christians is that among them , later, will rise
Inquisitors and Conquistadores, and already from the beginning will rise revengeful poordevils
whose idea of bliss in paradise will be their watching from there the torturing in hell of their extorturers in Roman arenas”, “the reason I find wrong the struggles of people against juntas is that
from their ranks will rise demagogues who will take on corruption, treason etc…”; and only an
*Nothing chauvinistic in favor of anybody has intruded here: The lessons drawn from Greece, Spain,
Vietnam etc concern the struggle potential in the DNA of all humans (Germans, Americans, included of
course!)
19
idiot, who is also completely devoid of both talent and of the pleasure of enjoying it in others,
will ever conceive of feeling as an avant-garde creator by espousing deconstructionist views that
do away with the art that intervened and is still insurpassably relevant, and of only extracting
pleasure from his ignorance rediscovering the crudest of wheels or from snubbing the works of
masters. Of course this is done to at least the arts and humanities, since the same can’t be done
to sciences, but unfortunately to the former, and damaged, also belongs the transmission of
lessons drawn from all the above activism, and thus this self-complacent “immaturity by
conviction” does find a way to really matter in the end result…
And now let’s go to see what we were postponing, i.e. how sciences would join the discourse on
Calvinism’s effects, starting from what a scientist of even the days before the advent of quantum
mechanics (that, dying in 1920, Weber missed) could have available to drop in discussions of
free will, predestination etc :
Suppose we ask the familiar question: If physics can, from knowing the present state of the world
completely, predict completely the future of the universe in complete detail, then in principle I
can be told what actions I will do tomorrow. But I also have a feeling I can avoid doing them. So
what is wrong? 1.Determinism itself? 2.Is my free will and illusion? 3.Is the objection just stated
an argument which shows that there are no solutions for the trajectories of the molecules in the
world which macroscopically would mean that somebody has produced a computer and gathered
enough initial data at an instant to feed the computer and run it at a quick time scale so as to learn
ahead of time of his future? All three of these answers to the objection above suffer equally from
implausibility. Fortunately there is an immediate way out. If it was destined in the universe that
somebody would gather sufficient initial data and also put together this computer and that also
somebody among the people whose future would be predicted would look at the computer’s
predictions so as to know what to disobey, then part of the sufficient initial data gathered would
concern the content of the screen of the computer itself, since the closed system which would
evolve deterministically could not exclude the computer since its disobedient beholder would be
interacting with it (by looking at the prediction since if he did not look he would not know what
to disobey and he would not cause any paradoxes through not fulfilling the computer’s
prophesies); but an adequate description of the computer which on its screen has a drawn
computer (for easy visualization let’s imagine the data drawn on a screen rather than written on
computer paper) would entail the little drawn computer to have a drawn drawn computer etc. etc.
(like a painting of a landscape which wants to include all landscape including the canvas on
which it is being painted). So one would need infinite electron dots or infinite ink and computer
paper to even just write down the initial data on computer within computer within computer…So
there is no danger of learning our future and disobeying it thus challenging determinism. Either
we look at the computer and can’t program it to learn of our future or we don’t look at it and it
learns of our future but we don’t learn it and so are not able to disobey it… By the way, we can
mention here Carnap’s (see his “Philosophical Foundations of Physics”) very pertinent remark
that shows that the paradox of free will versus determinism, in some other aspects, is based on
semantic ambiguity. The word “freedom” is used differently on different occasions. A lover of
Bach is really predictable in his decision to attend a concert of Bach visiting his town. He is
predictable , thus “unfree”. Yet he would feel unfree if anything unpredictable prevented him
from going to the concert. Equally ambiguous is the meaning of kismet, predestination through
God’s omniscience (including knowledge of the future). It leads to fatalistic resignation and to
weakness of will in the vulgar interpretation, or to the surrendering to God’s wills unknown to
man, personal will-lessness and paradoxical strengthening of will for actions that are supposed to
be God’s will…Let us not forget to mention the similar yielding of the Taoist to the path, to the
Tao; his freedom is his obeying the deepest urge within himself, his following the Way….
20
Of course even a high-school student with enough interest in the sciences to complete the reading
of her/his textbooks (with orbitals, with macromolecules like proteins etc) by reading some
popularized science (with e.g. Schroedinger’s cat etc or with Penrose’s views on microtubules
versus quantum gravity or Edelman’s abridged presentations of “Neural Darwinism”) would
demand completions from post Weberian days: “OK, free will needs room for indeterminacy and
probability, but I’m not naïve, randomness is also unlike a free will feeling; besides, even if
quantum mechnanical wavepackets in place of molecules moved like Newtonian particles (and in
case of course only their positions mattered in consciousness, and also in case where these
positions would not refer to the ones in Bohm’s version of quantum mechanics) and even if it’s
one thing to have an observer in front of the screen watching wavefunctions evolve and another
thing for him to be part of the wavefunction of the universe containing him in many parallel
worlds, can you please tell me at least if the picture of man as a set of biological macromolecules
with beads resembling orbitals, as I imagine are what electron-microscopes see, is better or worse
than an image of life, and of human brain, than the electron beam dot-beings we saw above? And
are the two pictures compatible or incompatible? For a moment I nearly thought that even ink
on paper digit-beings were supposed to be living. Are we neo-fetishists or something? We
wouldn’t fight Calvinism with animis, let alone fetishism, OK, I grant that the Newton-Laplace
inspired argument is a blow against Calvinism but can you please update it somewhat?”
OK, updating it along the directions of what Sperry as a neurophysiologist has in mind when he
answered Popper’s Platonism/Hegelianism (in “The Self an its Brain” by Popper & Eccles) by
his “Science and Moral Priority” might be the best from the point of view of his discussion on
free will (to even have morality) but besides one’s objections to both books the center of gravity
of the student’s question makes something else* much preferable: Let’s answer how closely or
how remotely the picture of molecular biology for man is to the body&soul picture Platonists and
theologians espouse. And also let’s ask ourselves (along with the reader) as we give the student
these explanations whether we ask of him to make any “intellectual sacrifice” (like the the one
Weber saw with understandning but with no compromise etc) And if we don’t find ourselves
guilty of any intellecrual sacrifice let’s also see if our picture will really “disenchant” our world
of so very much that we considered enchanting and if it only leaves in its place the enchantment
of scientific world-pictures but not of poetry, of oratorios, of love songs etc etc…
To go to issues about soul, usually means to e.g ask whether an evolved computer can display
properties like the ones we consider as our soul’s or spirit’s or mind’s properties (to the extent we
at all consider those as different from our body’s or matter’s or brain’s ones) and whether this
would render us such robots, or whether groups of macromolecules like ours make us look like an
advanced computer or whether groups of macromolecules like ours can display properties like
those of souls etc. Also it means to ask whether the old answer of Plato’s Socrates –– that the
way soul dwells or does not dwell in our body is like the way melody dwells or does not dwell in
the chords of a guitar, I mean harp––helps or does not help at all in answering the above question
either in the context of computers made of microchips etc or in the context of living matter made
of macromolecules. The following way exists to start this question to an adolescent even before
*Similarly we do not choose the aspect of the issue related to the neuronal base of the spatial sense as “a gauging of our
alternative paths to objects making space an arena like a chess board filled (in our mind) with potential moves”, of
course quite related to free will but still too much for a student until he/she hits on the question unaided, nor the
dispute between Edelman and Penrose….OK, the long experiences of all these thinkers in their fields gives inspired
proposals and conjectures, sometimes meaningful sometimes merely speculative, but they’re still monologs whose
dialog has begun and is growing but is very short. The issue, in particular, of whether quantum geometry plays a role
in functions for spatial sense related directly to our issue** by e.g. making undoable the thought experiment we
mentioned because time in the sense used does not exist anyway, we do not consider at all both because we think there
are many other scales that clarify the issue before some problems are left for that scale, and because we (personally)
have no knowledge of that field.
**besides the speculation by Penrose that quantum gravity may play a role in the functioning of the neuron or of
microtublules
21
he/she starts any course of philosophy whatsoever…Much of what we have not yet mentioned is
very nicely treated in, again, John Casti’s books “Paradigms Lost” and “Paradigms Regained”,
but nobody has treated it as nicely as Monod in his “Chance and Necessity” ( written more than
40 years ago) in the chapters going from “Maxwell demons” to “Molecular ontogenesis” ,
especially this last one. It’s a pity that Casti does not lay out excerpts from Monod’s book too,
they would greatly help the very similar point he is making, here we’ll be saying things the way
we would say them to kids in late high school. Two or three years later they can go read them in
Monod, or in Casti, or in both. To see our subject in relief , it would help us more if we used an
image involving strings of a tennis racket rather than a harp’s, because we will treat a more
narrowly focused issue that looks neither into what auditory sense is*, nor into what melody is,
but only into a more general aspect of the nature of our subject. Well, what is our subject finally
if we’ve just removed the issue of melody that we had mentioned from Plato? Answer: It
continues to be the problem of the relation of mind to matter to which harp and melody was just
a metaphor and analogy. So let’s do start:
If some molecules of chords and wood have been grouped so as to constitute a tennis racket and
some other molecules of rubber, or whatever, have been grouped so as to constitute a tennis ball,
then is there anyone who, in order to see by what angle the ball will change its path, would
analyze the system molecule-by-molecule, instead of just using the law that, for a fixed racket,
angle of incidence =angle of reflection? No, all would solve it in this second way. And is there
anyone who would doubt that even if one solved it in the detailed way one would get identical
results? Presumably no; thus, is there anyone who would say that for systems of few molecules
the laws of usual physics are valid but for systems of very many molecules we have to introduce
to the usual laws of physics new terms that refer to the mathematical expressions for the shapes
these big systems can form? Presumably the answer is again no**. The systems biology studies
do contain very many molecules, and these molecules themselves already contain very many
atoms. Regarding the additional properties that such big systems display in comparison to their
constituents , are they like the, in a sense additional, properties of the racket? Or are they new
laws that have not yet been discovered? When molecular biology was still being born many of its
founders were physicists aspiring to be led from biology’s experimental data to new laws like the
Columbus-like founders of quantum mechanics who found that a only a new physics could
accommodate the experimental data of chemistry. Little by little they found what we said they did
about the shapes of DNA, RNA and of proteins and about their functioning. Were these new
laws? A new continent? Or instead of a new America the Columbuses this time found themselves
again in India but in parts of it that were very exotic and that had not been visited by anybody
who had moved by land and not by sea like all had done until that time? Monod, and most
biologists, consider that the latter is the truth. Some, called “holists” in contradistinction to the socalled “reductionists”, consider that the former is the truth, and say that in the big systems the
whole surpasses the sum of its parts and maybe even does it through new laws that can manifest
themselves only in the context of new sizes and new levels of complexity, thus they constitute a
kind of creation that depends on what forms the course of complexity has already traversed. The
reductionists of the type of Monod consider these differences as inessential wordplays and just
prefer to call the new properties by names like “new manifestation” or even “revelation” but not
call it “creation” (a good precaution, though mainly by coincidence, against the, unpredictably,
extremely absurd meanings that “creationist biology” was bound to take later on).
*If we wanted to look into that too then we would be opening a chapter on Edelman and on Kandel
**Of course, using the expression “presumably no” in rhetorical questions like the ones above is no
substitute for proof of opinion but the analysis of the opposite opinion (starting with “presumably yes”)
needs another context since what we here need the present analysis for, as we’ll soon see (*of next page),
is criticism against some views on human values that stop making sense well before their adherents think
any of this.
22
Well, here we were only interested in understanding some aspects of the nature of the body-soul
dualism. We see that even such a simple and quite everyday example, involving just the
properties of a tennis racket and a tennis ball, displays a quite familiar function that sounds like
an additional property of matter in relation of dualism to the usual ones, once matter starts
creating some wealth of shapes. “Besides” the matter of the racket and the ball we see their
“nature” start playing a role, we see “racketness” and “ballness” play a role in the sense of the
properties afforded by their shape. Even more like properties additional, new, or even in
contradiction to the usual and gross properties of matter in systems of few bodies, will be the
properties of groups of proteins and other macromolecules when they do not remind only rackets
and balls but also screwdrivers, factories, telephone networks, etc etc. displaying some “matter
versus function dualism” like the racket and ball that are a system of shape rather useless in a cell.
Irrespective of whether either holists or reductionists can prove 1) that they differ from their
opponents not just in semantics and 2) that not only do they differ but also they are right and their
opponents are wrong, should we consider that calling “soul” something like the above removes
something from the awe, the poetry, the mystery that we attribute to it, and from the inspiration
given to us when we say about it expressions like “it animates” us”? The answer to this question
depends more on the kind of implications these things have in everyday life and behavior,
especially in relation to the morality or immorality of specific decisions of ours*…
Well, let’s rather see one of the related paragraphs by Monod: “Order, structural differentiation,
acquisition of functions—all these appear out of a random mixture of molecules individually
devoid of any activity, any intrinsic functional capacity other than that of recognizing the partners
with which they will build the structure. And while in connection with ribosomes and
bacteriophages we can no longer speak of crystallization, since these particles are of a degree of
complexity, that is to say of an order, much higher than that of a crystal, in the last analysis it is
nonetheless true that the chemical interactions involved are basically of the same nature as those
that construct a molecular crystal. As in a crystal, the structure of the assembled molecules itself
constitutes the source of “information” for the construction of the whole. These epigenetic
processes therefore consist essentially in this: the overall scheme of a complex multimolecular
edifice is contained in posse in the structure of its constituent parts, but only comes into actual
existence through their assembly. This analysis plainly reduces the old dispute between
preformationists and epigeneticists to a quibbling over words. No preformed and complete
structure pre-existed anywhere; but the architectural plan for it was present in its very
constituents. It can therefore come into being spontaneously and autonomously without outside
help and without the injection of additional information. The necessary information was present,
but unexpressed, in the constituents. The epigenetic building of a structure is not a creation; it is a
revelation.” (Note: The italics were used by Monod himself, not by the presenter citing his paragraph!)
…..Let’s omit the application of the above (and of the footnote of the previous page) to the infantile
dispute of some years ago between Dawkins and a Russian tycoon in which Dawkins had found a sponsor
who paid to post a sign in London’s buses writing “There is no God, so enjoy life freely” while the
Russian was answering with the sign “There is God, so enjoy life freely”. If there arises a serious reason
for us to write something or post it here or somewhere else or somebody asks us to do it , we will. Either
in English or in Greek. By serious reason we mean, e.g. if somebody tells us that in England there are
aunties so miserably terrorized by hell that they can’t live happily (on account of that and not on account
of so many other reasons today) or if, conversely, there are aunties who so much can impose religious
terrorizing on young kids that the kids can’t live happily… Instead let’s remind ourselves another issue in
*And obviously, according to the above analysis, it’s pure bullshit to argue like e.g. “Well, groups of
macromolecules are automatons hollow of souls so its an unscientific illusion to have moral hesitations
about....etc etc”. Equally bullshit is arguing like e.g. “Since soul does exist in a sense, even according to
materialism, therefore people who were saying it all along were better souls or stronger or gifted or
chosen or more live or whatever and should have privileges or rights or ....(or whatever is additional to the
right to be proud for having good thinkers in one’s country or town or tribe or whatever...)
23
a related vein: In the most literal and vivid way the way preSocratic theories viewed “Universal Mind” was
not a naïve anthropomorphic projection of a feature of ours onto the cosmic firmament, since, quite
inversely, their way viewed the ability of anthropos, of man, to have reasoning powers as a natural result of
the presence of that cosmic feature in man too*. Of course philosophy itself , unlike science, never lost
track of that. E.g. already Feuerbach (if not earlier thinkers) started the necessary (re)inversion and it was
completed by Buber in his chapter “The Eternal Thou” of his well-known book “I and Thou” into
explaining in what analogous, non anthropomorphic, sense Jewish thought had considered God “a person”.
Returning to Weber let’s mention something that, OK, I had somewhat inferred it from the “infantile”
reaction of as reasonable a man as Dawkins , but if I did not have a paragraph as definite as the following
paragraph from Weber’s “Protestant ethic…” I would not only avoid writing about what I had inferred but I
would even hesitate to myself believe it (I even read it twice to make sure I had read it correctly)
“The genuine Puritan even rejected all signs of religious ceremony at the grave and buried his nearest and
dearest without song or ritual in order that no superstition, no trust in the effects of magical and
sacramanetal forces on salvation, should creep in.” OK, now I can well imagine why Dawkins acted the
way he did (and why Russell’s “Why I’m not a Christian” is written as passionately as it is.…And I’m sure
that if the Russian tycoon had read something like that he would have understood too: the funerals he has
seen, like the funerals I have seen are something completely different; whoever has read the first pdf of the
present site already knows it. But instead of giving references to things that might sound not chauvinistic
but even predestination-like (e.g. … “one is either born a Greek or not” etc) let’s mention a Greek kind of
stupidity (that just happens to be in the atheist camp**) , by mentioning an absurd dialog I have witnessed
myself: “I wonder what kind of atheist Kazantzakis was if he baptized so many infants of friends and
neighbors” “And what kind of atheist he was if when he saw his brotherly friend Sikelianos deeply moved
by the question of a fisherman on a boat just returning from the front “Do you know why they brought us
back? Before leaving we had taken communion” , and instead of telling him “Why are you impressed by
someone who either is a Jesus freak himself or doesn’t dare to go against his mother or wife who want him
to take communion before going to war” Kazantzakis answered him “Didn’t you know that simple people
are not to be taught but to teach, in such things?”…
Probable and very justified objection by some reader: But aren’t places where they do say such bullshit
exactly where these analyses with Monod, Dawkins etc are needed?”. Answer: “You didn’t understand.
These type of leftist or anti-authority illiterates don’t call you for discussions (let alone lessons!) Whether
they are 15 years old, or 25, or 35, they call you to give a lesson to you” The maxim “Simple people are
not to be taught but to teach, in such things” they apply it in exactly this sense and none other” .
OK, some pages ago we considered most of deconstruction a farce by ignorant and complexic persons,
and in the present page we spoke with genuine respect, even admiration, for illiterate persons of the
previous generations, but these kinds of illiterates we are talking about now are a farce upon even what
was a farce to begin with, i.e. a farce upon deconstruction (“ farce upon” not meaning “farce against” but
“feeding upon” , I mean mutual feeding of the two. Most of both would be unable to create, or to enjoy,
anything enchanting in the highest belle époque season of any constructionism and any filling of world
with enchanting gods and they now have an alibi to say that the reason they feel moronic is that God is
dead or that science has disenchanted the world and they are the ones who are clever and sensitive enough
to have caught up with the news…)
OK, let’s also see that paragraph about funerals in the context Weber has it: “That great historic
process in the development of religions, the elimination of magic from the world which had begun with the
old Hebrew prophets and, in conjunction with the Hellenistic scientific thought, had repudiated all magical
.
*An analog of this philosophy in poetic imagery was Apollo going around the earth on a sun chariot.
**I could speak for the opposite camp too for hours***
***Besides, as Zeph, the friend I am writing to right now, knows, when we met (around 40 years ago) I
was not at all a “predestined to be outgoing-and-spontaneous-Greek” but one of the Greeks who at some
period were really considering entering a monastery through Kierkegaard’s “Fear and trembling” that sent
to Heidegger and from there to a great unknown of history who had synthesized neoPlatonism with
Christianity (and had been translated by…was it Eriugena? Or Scotus? I don’t remember. But Russell’s
“History of Western philosophy” would clarify that if I had it available) OK, is that why I am so
passionate? No, on the contrary, I thought Kierkegaard and his admirers like me were just aberrations, I
never thought that there was a means to make massive spreading of fear and trembling; that Calvinism had
really managed to bring this about was news. OK, we’ll soon find lighter aspects of it to close the issue.
24
means of salvation as superstition and sin, came here to its logical conclusion. The genuine Puritan even
rejected all signs of religious ceremony at the grave and buried his nearest and dearest without song or
ritual in order that no superstition, no trust in the effects of magical and sacarmanetal forces on salvation,
should creep in.” . I think it’s good to also see this wider context itself in the context of what we were
saying at the top of the previous page about God in the Presocratic and in the Jewish philosophy…
OK, let’s find lighter aspects of it to close the issue (as we said we would do in the last line of the last
footnote of the previous page) :
“Lighter aspects” means Franklin; I mean the particular line of his which, if it was not part of his
confession of faith (as Weber calls it) would be a killer joke. Here it is:
“He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labour, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though
he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has
really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides.”*, **.
There are some other things one would never believe if he didn’ see written with his own eyes, like “wealth
is not a sin, enjoying it is is a sin” , or that “wealth is made not to be enjoyed but for the glory of God, and
even if one is predestined for hell God allows him the joy of working for His glory while he lives” but
these are by memory, I don’t remember where to look for them , but two ot them , OK, I will look them up
verbatim:
. “…Baxter (Saints’ Everlasting Rest, chap. xii) explains God’s invisibility with the remark that just as one
can carry on profitable trade with an invisible foreigner through correspondence, so is it possible by means
of holy commerce with an invisible God to get possession of the one priceless pearl. These commercial
similes rather than the forensic ones customary with the older moralists and the Lutherans are thoroughly
characteristic of Puritanism, which in effect makes man buy his own salvation. Compare further the
following passage from a sermon: “We reckon the value of a thing by that which a wise man will give for
it, who is not ignorant of it nor under necessity. Christ, the Wisdom of God, gave Himself, His own
precious blood, to redeem souls, and He knew what they were and had no need of them” (Matthew Henry,
The Worth of the Soul,…”.
The last, with or without the presence of today’s ambience of markets, is just IN-CRE-DI-BLE:.
The Reformed Christian, however, felt his own pulse with its aid. It is mentioned by all the moralists and
theologians, while Benjamin Franklin’s tabulated statistical book-keeping on his progress in the different
virtues is a classic example.On the other hand, the old medieval (even ancient) idea of God’s book-keeping
is carried by Bunyan to the characteristically tasteless extreme of comparing the relation of a sinner to his
God with that of customer and shopkeeper. One who has once got into debt may well, by the product of all
his virtuous acts, succeed in paying off the accumulated interest but never the principal .
(E.g. one of the incredible things about it is that the demons of coincidences, of Jungian synchronicities and of
conspiracy theories collaborated to make, for the beholder of this, possible the following piece of sarcasm:)
Some people think that the inhuman traits of some European trends (like slavetrade, inquisition,
conquistadore type of christianizers,piracy,…) are remnants of barbaric nonChristian past, but the existence
of paragraphs like the above makes possible, if not plausible too, the conjecture that the the brave new
civilization that the brave new civilizers considered worthy enough of their names to
advertise/export/impose was to reduce the new civilizees to the state of the predestined-for-hell state that
their version of Christianity made thinkable to them for themselves and this renders the new American
dream or European dream or Western dream, not tragic but hilariously pathetic and lamentable… .
To come back from our sarcastic mood for more relevant remarks let’s take a more common sarcasm of science to
predestination and see it in the ambience of Weber: To some Calvinists who say that the reason to do good deeds even
if predestination says we can’t alter our fate by that, is that the ones bound for paradise do do good deeds naturally
anyway, and doing them ourselves may help in hoping that we too do them naturally, scientists answer that this is
witchcraft’s way to affect one’s past (and thus not an earnest enough effort to “eliminate magical means and
supestition”). But Weber would note that such efforts did end up in selection (both by genes and memes) of the traits
advertised by Calvinism (the sequel we saw when we spoke of the thus selected who also evolved to atheists …)
*Notes: 1) I hope he would at least retract it in times during job scarcity. 2) Imagine what he would say about the
present site of mine: a) I sin since to write it I work fewer hours for a paid job, and the only way I can excuse myself in
front of God is to find a sponsor paying me for the hours I spend writing what I write(Salvation tips welcome!Hahaha!)
**It’s almost like the joke where a stingy man says to his stingy wife “Today I gained as much money as a bus ticket
by running after the bus instead of getting on it”. His wife answers “You could have gained more if you had run after a
taxi for the same distance”
25
Let’s get serious again:
Zeph, I will return to the serious part of our subject, e.g. the one represented by e.g. the last thing
I quoted from Weber, namely, “We shall set to work and meet the “demands of the day,” in
human relations as well as in our vocation. This, however, is plain and simple, if each finds and
obeys the demon who holds the fibers of his very life” , but I think it will be both clearer and
more pleasant if we make a break in which I will show you an excerpt from a letter I recently
wrote to the author of that book on Anaximander* that you already hav…
*(about almost exactly these same things by a strange coincidence, which I wouldn’t consider
coincidence if I had already read Weber when I wrote him, but I had not…
Dearest professor Rovelli, …
…What I did not know when I started reading [“Anaximandre de Milet” ], was that postponing
this [as third] I was saving your best for last: Best, of course, not only on account of comparing
notes on multiculturalism with someone living in France (as I had done, especially as a teacher,
when I had read Natacha Polony’s Nos Enfants gâchés) nor only for meeting again the views of
Marcel Gauchet that you bring into play, and whose views also on secondary school’s education
in general I had considered very inspired in some contexts overlapping education through theater
and had analyzed in a context where Chomsky was speaking about such kind of live education
taking place in streets of Mexico and Latin America and in contexts where Papaioannnou, who
lived in France (like Castoriadis, the outcome of whose collaboration with Gauchet*, we all
know) analyzed if this, free of charge education for all, so effective for cultivating and keeping
democracy in ancient Greece, had or had not the defects Plato accused it of, and could or could
not be repeated now to save the democracy that it so much helped be born in the eras you say and
through the factors you so superbly and with such clarity present; nor only because , personally, if
I am given by you the license to borrow excerpts from the English version of your book, so as
“converse with them” so-to-speak, in a posting, we can clarify many extremely interesting and
crucial current issues (I offer my postings free of charge if that plays a role with your editors’
license. But right now I'm speaking of something closer to the things you so much help be spelled
out about what helped thought become much more widely accessible. I am speaking about the
next most important help to democracy after the phonetic alphabet you pinpoint: The availability
of free education through universal spirits analyzing political-historical-cultural-psychologicalreligious aspects of current events by rewriting myths known to all in ways adapted to the events
of the day, in tragedies or comedies . Ancient formats so similar to the e.g. recent gathering of
scores of poets in soccer fields in Colombia , and watched by thousands of people. Poets
affording to criticize governments since this format doesn’t take any funding...Processes still
happening in South America and processes started in Europe by Theodorakis’ “cultural
revolution” in Greece many decades ago (its symbol Z still lives in things like “ZNet”. It referred
to the assassination described in the well known film “Z” but also to Zeus’ thunderbolt stolen for
the mortals by Prometheus since that movement considered itself the Prometheus of education,
“stealing” it from lecture halls to take it to soccer fields and empty lots); nor only because your
first concern is not to see what the historical context of Anaximander really was but whether there
is anything in any as great step of our days, be it quantum gravity, or one of the previous and
already established steps, through which one can meaningfully teach in a live way the paradigm
of respectful and creative disagreement so as to contribute something meaningful to the painfully
tangible contemporary polarization between defending identity (of persons? of nations? Of
Europe or West? Of values like free and open dialog?) and dissolving borders and boundaries of
*PS**: And with Claude Lefort I should have said if I was not writing in a hurry, but anyway it’s
not easy for this to be mistaken for sticking with Greek names since Castoriadis is proverbial for
not wanting to have much, or anything, to do with modern Greeks (see also pages 120-121 of the
pdf “Correspondence. Bibliography…etc”)
**Red PSs were added after the e-mail left…
26
identity (personal? National? Religious? etc etc) , between becoming “other” and confronting
“other” etc etc. None of all of those, by itself or as a whole, is the reason why I consider this book
of yours as a whole that is fantastic. All those are fantastic intentions, pinpointings and
spellouts OK. The most fantastic thing of all however is that it can function very efficiently in a
way that it can also realize already its ultimate intention. It can do it by what it stresses and
restresses: DIALOG. Well, in a short letter one can only be schematic when trying to be
exemplifying: Allow me, as a small schematic step in that direction, to “assign” you a small
“project” that will help us fix ideas. Please consider it as the analogue of the “Eratoshenes versus
Chinese astronomers” example through which you helped a discussion not be vague , abstract,
and falsely agreeing or falsely disagreeing.
Step 1: Take the verses of the Babylonian “Enuma Elish” of your page 24 and compare them to a
very recent, atheist, poet, Neruda, who obviously has them in mind as he is striving for his goal of
re-membering the face and body of his people and country dis-membered by the conquistadores
Before the wig and the dress coat
there were rivers, arterial rivers:
there were cordilleras, jagged waves where the condor and the snow seemed
immutable:
there was dampness and dense growth
as yet unnamed,
the planetary pampas.
Man
was dust, earthen
vase, an eyelid, of tremulous loam the shape of clay
he was Carib jug
Chibcha stone,
imperial cup or Araucaniann silica Tender and bloody was he,
but on the grip
of his weapon of moist flint,
the initials of the earth were written .
No one could remember them afterwards: the wind forgot them ,
the language of water was buried, the keys were lost
or flooded with silence or blood
Life was not lost , pastoral brothers.
But like a wild rose
a red drop fell into the dense growth and a lamp of earth was extinguished.
27
I am here to tell the story. From the peace of the buffalo
to the pummeled sands of the land’s end,
in the accumulated spray of the antarctic light,
and through....
Anyway, we got the idea. I don’t continue, the poem’s title is “Amor America” and is one of the poems of
“Canto General”
Step 2: Listen to one performance (in Germany) of the the “Mass-like” music it was put to by
another atheist (Theodorakis) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJH86InnND4
Step 3: Compare the title of the book “Le desenchantement du monde” by Gauchet to the title of
the book with the lyrics of the poems written by the above composer himself going like “to be
enchanted and to be drunk”
Step 4: Compare the version about early Christians this atheist composer, among scores of
thousands of others, had when they simulated themselves to them because after fighting Nazis in
company with communist guerrillas refused to fight against communists in a civil war and, as
such objectors (PS: Christians and atheists together) they were transported to torture islands along
with the communists . The other version of early Christians is equally well known of course
(lynchers and skinners of Ypatias, people who aspired to a paradise where the highest bliss
would be to watch from, its seats above, the gentile torturers of Christians being tortured in hell,
just like in de Sade’s visions of sexual bliss conceived in the environment of professional
torturers practicing their craft on him or others.
Step 5: Leaf a little the attachment that I add on a performance of Canto General in a Roman
theater of Athens last week (on July 17, today it’s 26) (=Two letters about Canto General at Herodeion.pdf ) as
narrated to a Nicaraguan friend in US while he helps a Greek, me, connect to a Spanish song
writer who some time ago wrote a song for a Greek indignado who committed suicide (Note: I
do not include that as a show of cosmopolitan internationalism to remind Miletus of the times of
Anaximander and Thales (on the contrary, the mixture of civilizations through meeting of free
thinkers and free merchants differs rather crucially from the mixture of civilizations of people
made refugees and nomadic helots by globalization and free market) I include it to show uses of
the words “gods” and “demigods” quite non contradicting the enchanted atheism of the
artists/activists mentioned).
Step 6: Answer me with as much agreement/disagreement as you feel/think like. As the only
limitation to your questions consider your interest or your criteria of what you consider relevant
(e.g. don't hesitate to ask things like “what does Neruda think was better before the
Conquistadores? Not only Indiana Jones movies but also courses in anthropology know what
fascists the Incas etc were...”, “why don't you yourself do something related to the money
invested in you by the scholarships you received to study physics? Don’t Greeks think they
should help amortize such things?”)
Step 7, 8,...n: You suggest as many projects , assignments etc to me as you think are relevant or
necessary
Step n+1:...Of that let’s think together (if it exists at all, and if it helps anyone else too)
Saying goodbye for a second time, let me express to you my deep esteem for your admirable
book whose wonderful potential, I am sure, will take long to be exhausted.../Yiannis Alevizos
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OK, Zeph where were we?...Oh: As you realized one reason Gauchet fits so much here was his
famous conclusion which was so often called surprising, namely: “The Christian religion has
been the religion of exit from religion, since it remains the only possible religion of society
without religion” (in a while we’ll see again plenty of examples of it; I mean of the meanings of
it additional to what merely refers to its somewhat increased tolerance compared to some other
religions). OK, where were we?...In Weber’s ending phrases to scientists:
“We shall set to work and meet the “demands of the day,” in human relations as well as in our
vocation. This, however, is plain and simple, if each finds and obeys the demon who holds the
fibers of his very life”
As far as obeying the demon “who holds the fibers of the very life” of exceptional natures, is
concerned, I don’t think he would find the one obeyed by people like Theodorakis as more naïve
or less sophisticated that the one holding his own or Nietzsche’s : same goes with demons like
Neruda’s, Elytis’,…Allende’s, Che Guevara’s, ….
As far as less sophisticated, “demon-free”, people are concerned who would massively participate
in all those historical moments, he just stated that he would not rebuke them and that he esteems
them more than he steems some academics who do not, at least, afford the complete academic
integrity expected from them; but let’s prefer the way of esteem, for his companions, of
Theodorakis condensed in his phrase “More than I am proud for being an artist whose art could
speak of the people who are the raw matter of art, I am proud of having been, myself too, one of
them”.
How much more enchantement would Weber—let alone the, later than his phrase, dwellers of a
world disenchanted by science—expect in an earlier, still enchanted era, than witnessing a
Chilean atheist poet write after the Babylonian Genesis a song aiming at re-membering the body
and face of his country and people after its dismemberment by the religious conquistadores, and
its being made into an oratorio after “Catholic Mass” by a Greek atheist composer who, along
with atheists and Christians took on martyrdom in the early Christians’ style for not killing
communists along with whom a while ago were risking their lives trying to kill Nazis, and then
his oratorio played in the open in front of a German church? The mind or heart, or both, of
someone can only be completely stuck if he manages to delete all the above from his attention
and then say to himself and to others “…but now the world is disenchanted, except for
non-scientist aborigines….”
And how much more insistent was that demon than Blake’s, and how much more mechanized
was the Einsteinian physics of Weber’s time—let alone of the the later than his time quantum
mechanics that the present disenchanted have heard of — than the Newtonian, if Blake, who
about the change brought about by Newton had witten the famous verses “The Visions of
Eternity, by reason of narrowed perceptions, are become weak Visions of Space and Time fixed
into furrows of death, till Deep dissimulation is the only defense left to an honest man” while he
also made the painting “The river of life”, an archetype of enchantment? (we’ll see it in a while,
next to the photo of a grandpa serenely smiling now, hardly remembering the deeply engraved
tribulations he had faced both in the war against Nazis and during the wounds and cripplings
received in civil war)
How much more alertness and non-compromising integrity against naivete and against
oversimplification would have either the deconstructionist morons , or even a really brilliant mind
and sensitivity as Weber’s, than the poet and composer of the famous oratorio Axion Esti, if they
would call it too “mere fallback to religion”? Lets hear its ending: “…Now the moving cloud of
Lepidoptera/Forever the circumgyrating light of mysteries/Now the crust of the Earth and the Dominion/
Forever the food of the Soul and the quintessence/Now the Moon’s incurable swarthiness/Forever the
Galaxy’s golden blue scintillation/Now the amalgam of peoples and the black Number/Forever the statue of
Justice and the great Eye/Now the humiliation of the Gods Now the ashes of Man/Now Now the zero/Now
Now the zero/Now Now the zero/and Forever this small world, and Forever this small world, and Forever
this small world/the Great!” (sung at the end of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HZlK-Uidbk&feature=related )
29
…and Forever this small world the Great!
30
Zeph, when I had sent you the diary of kyr Vangelis, whom I feel I see every time I see the smile
of his fellow grandpa from some other island in the previous page, you sent me, right after you
had read it, Sikelianos’ “Proteus” , reminded to you by kyr Vangelis’ continuous back and forth
in the Aegean during German occupation. Something in that, in turn, reminded me the famous
smile of statues of Greek adolescents after struggle with sea monsters epitomizing the effect on
common feeling after the removal of the Asian threat with te victorious result of the Persian
wars. There are many famous serene and almost imperceptible smiles of people who feel they did
their duty to life, and with success. E.g. the smile of Che Guevara dead and half naked in a
coffin on a table. Also the momentary smile of Theodorakis at the end of the last link before the
photos. Needless to say that I prefer the smile of the grandpa and needless to say that I consider
that Che and Mikis would say the same too. But serene and modest smiles should be saved for
really great deeds. Maybe the deed that today would be analogous to the removal of the Asian
threat in antiquity is not possible. Maybe it is, and anyway we’ll all work as if it is…But whether
or not it will ever become possible again to smile in the way we just said, the other kind of
laughter, the one sarcastic to clowns is possible. The underlined one, 5 or 6 pages ago on the page
before the one starting with “Let’s get serious again…”
While our friends are translating their already existing material(p.15)or possibly,as we gladly hope
adding new, let’s try to, hopefully only provisionally, create ourselves some context to say some
things, that would be be said more naturally if three or four objections we might have heard
from them led to quite helpful clarifications if discussed publicly: 1) The first (and main with
respect to functioning helpfully) pdf of this site, “Rehearsal...etc” is too nationalistic with respect
to Greece. Answer: Even if this impression can momentarily arise even in someone who is not
only looking at the title containing the word “Greek”, to insist on second sight that the content is
nationalistic is like reading a book on Euclidean geometry and saying one found claims or
insinuations that Greeks can understand it more easily than French, Germans or Chinese if they
read it or that its help to Greeks is more substantial than its help to other nationalities or that
Greeks can be more easily convinced of its relevance than other people. An author’s or
geometer’s love for Greece may be obvious and even conspicuous and spilling, but if this doesn’t
not lead to any such weirdo-like notions then calling it nationalistic would be not understanding
what one reads. 2) If Greeks are not more attuned than others to be influenced by it, especially
during crises that underline other priorities, then if they are helped by things like it will be
through reimporting its content from foreigners who were more attuned, just like was the case
with heritage of Greek antiquity. Then will it not be redundant or even disorienting, if foreigners
in better shape and more cool than us can formulate its content in better terms and on their own
accord? Answer: Of course not. Have we seen anybody, Greek or foreign, absorb Neruda like
Theodorakis and anybody Greek or foreign absorbing Theodorakis and transmitting him to
foreigners like that here? So why would it be redundant to help foreigners and through them
Greeks too, eventually? 3) The goal and the viewpoint of that pdf are so out of direct touch with
the type of things that reach public discussion and have real effects that one wonders: isn’t it an
irresponsible waste of time to read it, and, even more so, to write it? Answer: Is it an irresponsible
waste of time to learn geometry because it studies ideal figures and not shapes of actual bodies?
Isn’t it an excellent training of mind especially at 15, the age of the protagonists of that pdf?
Should kids not do their geometry homework because crisis induces other priorities? Also, if an
argument helps understanding what’s going on, shouldn’t one write it, or even think of it, if it
isn’t sellable widely enough?* (PS: The present pdf continues (p. 33) into the one after next)
*(And if we want to become not just surreal but also hillbillybaroque into such directions we might ask objections (far
from implying any friends asked them though!!!) like “Isn’t it it racist or colonialist or…etc etc to only study GreekFrench-German-English geometry and not Babylonian, Indian, Chinese etc too?)
OK, let’s show how much we wish this whole page were redundant by adding one more page that
takes us back to the real ending this excerption/DJing of Weber deserved:
The ending before the present page:
31
…and Forever this small world the Great!
(plus hear/see it sung at the very end of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HZlK-Uidbk&feature=related)
32