Quote:
Originally Posted by movingwiththewind
Can you expand on " I suspect your kind is just plain butt hurt..." part please? I'm a little confused.  Seriously, explain without being an azz. Can you do that?
Let me also clarify this: If they "keep getting up off their knees time and time again", does it mean they also fall on thier knees time and time again? Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to get up again and again, correct? If this is the case, why do they fall on their knees so many times? The "special breed" they are, can't they just stand upright?
Can it be that they are just messed up?  |
Yes, it means they are thrown back time and time again, and every time they have to get on their feet and to do impossible to survive and get their culture ( and beliefs) going.
And before you'll proceed with your limited understanding of the world, and questions like"can it be that they are just messed up," I'd advise you to read this, to give it a thought, and ONLY THEN to proceed with discussion.
* * *
"You see, Ivan," said Berlioz, "you have written a marvelously satirical description of the birth of Jesus, the son of God, but the whole joke lies in the fact that there had already been a whole series of sons of God before Jesus, such as the Phoenician Adonis, the Phrygian Attis, the Persian Mithras. Of course not one of these ever existed, including Jesus, and instead of the nativity or the arrival of the Magi you should have described the absurd rumors about their arrival. But according to your story the nativity really took place!"
Here Bezdomny made an effort to stop his torturing hiccups and held his breath, but it only made him hiccup more loudly and painfully. At that moment Berlioz interrupted his speech because the foreigner suddenly rose and approached the two writers. They stared at him in astonishment.
"Excuse me, please," said the stranger with a foreign accent, although in correct Russian, "for permitting myself, without an introduction... but the subject of your learned conversation was so interesting that..."
Here he politely took off his beret and the two friends had no alternative but to rise and bow.
"No, probably a Frenchman...." thought Berlioz.
"A Pole," thought Bezdomny.
I should add that the poet had found the stranger repulsive from first sight, although Berlioz had liked the look of him, or rather not exactly liked him but, well... been interested by him.
"May I join you?" enquired the foreigner politely, and as the two friends moved somewhat unwillingly aside he adroitly placed himself between them and at once joined the conversation. "If I am not mistaken, you were saying that Jesus never existed, were you not?" he asked, turning his green left eye on Berlioz.
"No, you were not mistaken," replied Berlioz courteously. "I did indeed say that."
"Ah, how interesting!" exclaimed the foreigner.
"What the hell does he want?" thought Bezdomny and frowned.
"And do you agree with your friend?" enquired the unknown man, turning to Bezdomny on his right.
"A hundred per cent!" affirmed the poet, who loved to use pretentious numerical expressions.
"Astounding!" cried their unbidden companion. Glancing furtively round and lowering his voice he said: "Forgive me for being so rude, but am I right in thinking that you do not believe in God either?" He gave a horrified look and said: "I swear not to tell anyone!"
"Yes, neither of us believes in God," answered Berlioz with a faint smile at this foreign tourist's apprehension. "But we can talk about it with absolute freedom."
The foreigner leaned against the backrest of the bench and asked, in a voice positively squeaking with curiosity:
"Are you... atheists?"
"Yes, we're atheists," replied Berlioz, smiling, and Bezdomny thought angrily: "Trying to pick an argument, damn foreigner!"
"Oh, how delightful!" exclaimed the astonishing foreigner and swiveled his head from side to side, staring at each of them in turn.
"In our country there's nothing surprising about atheism," said Berlioz with diplomatic politeness. "Most of us have long ago and quite consciously given up believing in all those fairy-tales about God."
At this the foreigner did an extraordinary thing — he stood up and shook the astonished editor by the hand, saying as he did so:
"Allow me to thank you with all my heart!"
"What are you thanking him for?" asked Bezdomny, blinking.
"For some very valuable information, which as a traveller I find extremely interesting," said the eccentric foreigner, raising his forefinger meaningfully.
This valuable piece of information had obviously made a powerful impression on the traveller, as he gave a frightened glance at the houses as though afraid of seeing an atheist at every window.
"No, he's not an Englishman," thought Berlioz. Bezdomny thought: "What I'd like to know is — where did he manage to pick up such good Russian?" and frowned again.
"But might I enquire," began the visitor from abroad after some worried reflection, "how you account for the proofs of the existence of God, of which there are, as you know, five?" ....
.....It is a pity," agreed the unknown man with a glint in his eye, and went on: "But this is the question that disturbs me — if there is no God, then who, one wonders, rules the life of man and keeps the world in order?"
"Man rules himself," said Bezdomny angrily in answer to such an obviously absurd question.
"I beg your pardon," retorted the stranger quietly, "but to rule one must have a precise plan worked out for some reasonable period ahead. Allow me to enquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term, such as, say, a thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow?"
"In fact," here the stranger turned to Berlioz, "imagine what would happen if you, for instance, were to start organizing others and yourself, and you developed a taste for it — then suddenly you got... he, he... a slight heart attack..." at this the foreigner smiled sweetly, as though the thought of a heart attack gave him pleasure..." Yes, a heart attack," he repeated the word sonorously, grinning like a cat, "and that's the end of you as an organizer! No one's fate except your own interests you any longer. Your relations start lying to you. Sensing that something is amiss you rush to a specialist, then to a charlatan, and even perhaps to a fortune-teller. Each of them is as useless as the other, as you know perfectly well. And it all ends in tragedy: the man who thought he was in charge is suddenly reduced to lying prone and motionless in a wooden box and his fellow men, realizing that there is no more sense to be had of him, incinerate him."
( "The Master and Margarita," M. Bulgakov)
Never Talk to Strangers (Fiction Extracts at Davar Web Site)
Without knowing certain things about Russia ( and life in general) you are not even qualified to talk about that particular country, really.
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