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Thoughts, reflections, impressions

I don't want to write to newspapers, maybe I've done it too much. I am not a journalist, not a columnist, but a writer. A writer who wants to be a sovereign ruler of its little homeland, of his territory, not to be a serf, servant or vassal of somebody else. Thus I have little else to do than to make my own paper, reorganize my web site to include a periodical. I began with it roughly a year ago, writing about my thoughts, reflections and impressions under the heading "The Newest". These pages here are a continuation of it, as the Estonian pages MMM are grown out from the previous "Kõige uuemat". Of course, my ambitions are greater than my resources, I lack both time and energy to edit my own web periodical, but I think even these short notices are worth to be published in this way, some of my impressions and thoughts are worth to be made public. This one-man journal is also a kind of a personal diary, although neither a very intimate nor a very orderly one: I am not the type of a person who writes down his/her thoughts and happenings every evening. I admire such persons, but I am old enough not to imitate them. I have always had an admiration for such pedantic people. Perhaps I must admit that I have always fought, tried to suppress the bohemian, the artist in myself, tried to study mathematics, do some research work in ecology and anthropology, be in politics. In this way, I have remained somehow between two worlds, being neither an artist nor a scientist, a person who is sometimes accepted, but sometimes rejected by both. I've always had trouble when I had to define myself, to explain who I was. As a kid I discovered that I wasn't an Estonian as my comrades, my father was Polish, and later, when I got my first passport (a Soviet one, of course) I had to decide what to write in the form under the heading "nationality". It is something that is still difficult to explain to foreigners. "Nationality" in the USSR couldn't be "Soviet", the Soviet Union was presumed to be a "multi-national" state, thus every Soviet citizen had besides his/her Soviet citizenship also a nationality - it could be Russian, Estonian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Finnish, etc. It gave us no special privileges or rights, but sometimes caused us some trouble, especially when you had the words "Jewish", "German" or "Chechen" written in your passport. I was told I could choose to be either Polish or Estonian, I thought about it, and choosed to be "Estonian": I didn't even know much Polish at that time. But still it had been a problem for me. Later there were other problems. I had to define my "profession", "speciality"and certain other things. Never was it easy, I always felt there was no proper denomination, no proper pigeonhole for me in the questionnaires and forms, I was not included, was an outsider (could we say "both-sider" in English?). It has remained so, after some desperate attempts to be somebody, to denominate myself, I have resigned, accepting my personal fuzziness. I have been fortunate enought to discover the Chinese Taoist-Buddhist philosophy and literature, Zhuangzi and others who have even cultivated such a fuzziness, refused to define, to denominate themselves. I agree to be somebody (sometimes I am not sure whether it's true and whether it makes sense), but feel no need to be somebody in a pigeon-hole. Later, after discovering my well-hidden Jewish roots, I have often thought about the Unnameable who also refuses to tell his/her name, declaring paradoxically and pleonastically only "I am who I am" (ahye asher ahye). Well, if we presume he/she has really modelled us upon his own personality or face, couldn't this paradoxical namelessness or undefinability be the feature that we share with him/her?

Now I see that I have a similar problem with this web site too. What is it? How to define it? What is the genre of my present favourite literary acitivity? Am I an "essayist"? A "journalist"? For these and other reasons I prefer the word "writer", it is the most general and vague of them all. To be a writer you have only to write and to be published. In the past it meant that the writer was dependant of his/her publisher. Now as we can publish ourselves, the publisher isn't necessary any more. And probably the literary rituals, the rules you consciously and unconsciously had to observe when you wrote articles, poems, stories and books, are vanishing, the borders of what is literature and what is not become more vague. I must say I like such a situation. I am accustomed to fuzzyness, to the fog and mist that is such an important background element in classical Chinese poetry. I am a bit like the recluse whom the poet (maybe himself) visited, but didn't find at home. I haven't found myself at home, I'm wandering around in my own little homeland that is nowhere and everywhere. The first chapter of Zhuangzi, translated by Burton Watson as "Free and easy wandering". Writing, making literature is becoming for me such a free and easy wandering too. From idea to idea, from image to image, from philosophy to philosophy, religion to religion, language to language.

Dolce vita. What could be a better example of it than the life of a small beetle, Phyllopertha horticola who spends part of its life inside rose blossoms, eats rose petals,sleeps and makes love inside the blossom.

I am dumbfounded and disgusted of what has happened to Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who is now serving his ten to twenty five years prison term in Michigan for helping people who wanted that somebody help them to end their intolerable suffering if there was no other way to do it than euthanasia. In the last issue of the New York Review of Books (Vol. XLVIII, Number 11 - July 5, 2001)we can read his letter to the Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and a two notes by Mike Wallace. Enough to make clear the tragic abusurdity of what has happened. Mike Wallace doesn' miss the chance given by the recent execution of the mass murderer Timothy McVeigh. In contrast to the press star McVeigh, Dr. Kevorkian is not allowed to make any statements to the press, and spends his time in a small penitentiary isolated from people. I have always considered the right to die to be one of the very basic human rights and helping those who are willing - and have serious reasons to be willing - to die one of our obligations. I think life in itself is not a value, life is like a vessel, a vase where we can keep valuable things. If this becomes impossible, and as we are unable to change the vessel, to choose for ourselves another body, another life, sometimes death, breaking the vessel is the only way to preserve our dignity and self-respect, the only way to save a person from needless and endless suffering that would deprave him of both. I hope that if I will not have to endure such a suffering as some of my relatives and ancestors, but if it happens, I hope that my friends and relatives will have the will and means to help me to leave this life and this body without too much tragedy. Euthanasia is an age-old practice, common to many peoples and cultures, in some of them assisting their old and decrepit parents to die was a sacred obligation of younger people. Yes, I know perfectly well the arguments of the opponents of euthanasia. We know too well what happened to tens of thousands of handicapped people in Europe under the Nazi rule. But the fact that murdering helpless people was called by their executioners 'euthanasia' isn't a sufficient reason to criminalize real euthanasia, i.e. helping to die in peace those who really want to die. This real euthanasia is as far from murder than having sex with somebody who really wants it is from rape. I think the irrational fear of death, the tendency to isolate the death and the dying from life and the living, criminalization of suicide and euthanasia are a shame of the Western culture, a sign of what is sometimes called its masochistic tendencies. With all my deep respect and admiration for the present Pope John Paul II I still cannot agree with his vehement opposition to what he calls 'the Culture of death'. I humbly presume that death is an avoidable part of every culture, a part of our life. Death and life are both parts of our human condition, and necessarily we must find ways to cope with them in our cultures. And euthanasia has always been and will always be one such way. I find some features in American legislation and juridical practice inhuman and irrational. How can people who refuse to abolish the death penalty criminalize euthanasia? How can people who consider the right to have a weapon and to use it even against intruders consider Dr. Kevorkian a criminal?

According to the NYRB, Dr. Kevorkian's present address is

Egeler Correctional Facility

Jackson, Michigan, USA

*

I am not afraid of death, I am afraid of dying. I would agree with the ancient Greek writers and thinkers who wrote that the best of destinies for a man was not to be born. By the way, the Jewish great Talmudist Shammai was of the same opinion. What I am the most afraid of, what is disgusting to me is to witness the great dying that is going on all around the world. I have taken refuge in my country home, but this is an illusory refuge. Many of my friends and companions whom I am accustomed to meet every summer, do not come back: they have perished, they have been killed somewhere in Africa or Southern Europe. Dying out, extinction is such a terrible thing that I would really prefer to be dead in order not to see it, not to read every day some news about vanishing or menaced species. I sincerely hope that us, humans are not the last on the list of doomed species, that there will be birds singing, grasshoppers chirping and butterflies fluttering around after the human race has vanished from this planet.

*

Do animals have rights? As far as I know, most lawyers think they have not. However, the legislation of many countries criminalizes torturing and killing of certain animals, unless it is done by specialist in specialized institutions (slaughterhouses) or in special occasions like hunting or euthanasia. In our legislation, animals are not considered equal to us humans, and among animals themselves, some are definitely more equal than others. In practice, although not in theory, our pets often enjoy many privileges, and are treated as quasi-human beings, they have access to medical care, they have proper names, and, as a rule, share rooms with us. I would say that our pets also share some rights with us according to what could be called custom law, although this is not explicitly recognized in official legislation. Compared with pets, our domestic animals have very few rights, they are mercilessly exploited, kept in small cages and stalls, and basically treated not as living beings similar to us, but as resource that must be well managed. They don't have proper names and are kept in special rooms apart from us, and most of us are not even informed of how they live and die. Wild animals are often better treated: hunters in civilized countries have to observe many rules, both ethical and ecological. We may say that wild animals enjoy of a significant autonomy. Some of them are killed, but some are protected and taken care of as are the songbirds. There is a custom law that gives to many wild animals some collective rights, the right to exist as a species or a population. This custom law is often not observed, but in civilized countries it is more and more often taken into account. Powerful NGOs are working hard to put it into practice, and several governments and international bodies have taken steps to save endangered species, populations and ecosystems from extinction. However, here too, we humans are very selective. While we are making quite an effort to save the grey whale, the panda, the tiger and several other stars of animal kingdom, very little is done in favour of less spectacular and famous creatures, bugs, frogs, spiders and other small animals who have lived alongside us for millions of years, but whose habitats we are now destroying.
Our attitude to animals seems to be deeply influenced by many ancient preconceptions, sympathies, antipathies and beliefs. More unconsciously than consciously we divide the animals into nice and ugly, sympathetic and unsympathetic, we love some animals (e.g. pandas and koalas), and we loathe some, (e.g. worms and millipeds). We carry with us relics of archaic semiotics, oppositions we have inherited from our distant, perhaps even non-human ancestors. Is this attitude changing little by little? Perhaps, as there are less and less wild animals around, and most Europeans have no more reason to be afraid of bears and wolfes as people in my country were less than two hundred years ago, the last remaining big carnivores become something valuable, something worth tracking and photographing. But our sentimental attitudes to some big, furry and funny creatures living in national parks cannot make good the unethical handling of animals we eat, skin and exploit in many other ways. Even less can it make good our extermination of ecosystems where perhaps tens of thousands of species become extinct. But most of these species belong to the ones our archaic thinking considers marginal, unimportant or even loathsome. There are many politicians and businessmen who ridiculise ecologists who try to put brakes on their activities, don't recognize their right to exploit and develop all natural resources for the sake of a bug, a frog or an owl.
I think I prefer to live in the company of bugs, frogs and even mosquitoes and gadflies to living in the company of this kind of people. I prefer a bear living in my forest to G. W. Bush living there. Fortunately he lives far away from me, and I have a much greater chance to meet a bear here than president Bush.

July 29, 2001

It's Tisha b'Av today, the day the first and second Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed, the former by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. and the later in 70 C.E. In Jewish theology, especially in the Kabbalist thinking, these events were not simply national, but cosmic tragedies. Not only the Jewish people, but the God's Presence - Shekhina was forced into exile, the God was separated from the world, the esoteric from the exoteric, this from that, we can say that the world puzzle was shattered, its parts thrown apart. Everything is separated from its source, its deeper roots, its very soul. Everything is imprisoned into its self, into its faulty identity. This is something that has to be repaired, something only God and men together can repair. This is one way of interpreting the meaning of this day. But the Jews are not unique in their grief for the destroyed Temple and exiled Shekhina. So many peoples have lost their sacred places, so many temples have been destroyed, desecrated, so many sacred groves and trees chopped down, so many people killed or imprisoned for refusing to abandon the religion of their ancestors, of their kin. Here, in Estonia, the missionaries, priests and pastors have chopped down sacred trees for centuries, although some have still been preserved. There are legends about gods or spirits the Christian clerics forced to leave their trees, groves or places in homes where they had lived for generations. Thus the Christians have exiled our gods, our 'gods of the Earth'. They behaved as Romans who ploughed the site where the Temple once stood, built a temple of Jupiter on its ruins, and forbade to Jews entrance to the holy city. The missionaries have in this way separated earthly and godly, spiritual and material, mind and bofy, split the reality into two mutually alien, often conflicting halves. The real religion of the XXI century must try to overcome this fatal division, bring the gods of the earth back to the earth, gods of the forest back to the forest, spirit back to the matter, soul back to the body. Our land, our earth cannot last much longer without its gods, our bodies cannot last much longer without the soul, we cannot live for much longer this life of zombies. We have lost our gods and our souls, we must summon them back, shamans, poets, priests must call them back from their exile. Their exile has been, is our exile too.

Berlusconi's challenge and answers to it

But what does the Devil's advocate think?

But if the Taliban and Usama bin Ladin are right from the ecological and futurological perspective? They don't probably think this way, but the attack against the WTC has had two positive environmental effects: the consumers in the US consume less, there is less waste and less pollution, there is also much less air traffic that is a terrible source of pollution and a terrible waste of non-renewable fossil fuel. For an instant, people are living in a more frugal, more sparing way, the production and consumption orgy that has been such an important part of the American way of life, has got a blow, has lost its self-confidence. Isn't it just something we all badly need? Aren't the islamic fanatics, after all, really messengers of God, bearers of a warning message to the powerful and wasteful of the Earth that they must change their way of life, come to reason? Isn't the way of life of the poor peasants of Afghanistan a better way of life from the environmental point of view? It is sustainable and stable, it can endure decades of war, destruction, banditry while the American way of life is seriously shaken by the destruction of a couple of buildings and the death of several thousand people. Isn't Afghanistan under the Taliban rule an example we should follow if we really do want to have a future? Isn't the lure of the American way of life leading the planet toward a disaster thousands of times worse than the disaster caused by the terrorists? Isn't entertainment, especially the TV abolished and prohibited by the Taliban one of the most dangerous things in the present world just because it propagates the most wasteful way of life?
There are many more such questions the Devil's advocate can (and has to) ask. But the Devil has his or her own Devil and this Devil has his or her advocate too. And this another Devil's advocate has some questions too. Haven't millions of people been killed, tortured, starved and forced to flee in the name of a better, a radiant future? Have these mass murders achieved anything? Has the struggle of the Communists against Capitalism and the Western way of life had any long-term success? The destruction of the WTC certainly has a short-term effect on the Western economy and consumerism, but does it have any long-term effect? Won't the scared people sooner or later return to their consumption orgy, to buying and wasting more, to destroying the environment in the name of 'development' and 'creating new jobs'? Isn't the only way to change our mad world, to cure it from its madness to let it continue its orgy to the bitter end? Talking reason doesn't help much, can we then hope that we can cure madness with madness? Aren't the islamic terrorists really reinforcing America they are fighting, consolidating its hegemony as the only superpower and the policeman of the world with the willing or unwilling approval of all major powers including the ones that before the attacks in the US were very critical of its policies? Haven't bin Ladin and his disciples made a big gift to the conservatives in the US, silencing the critics of its way of life and its policies both at home and abroad?
This dialogue between the Devil's and Devil's Devil's advocates can go on, there is no lack of arguments for both sides. But we cannot follow them much longer.

Being on a short visit in Finland I saw from the local TV an anti-war demonstration in Helsinki. On one of the slogans I read 'Bush's war. I thought I have never been a war activist, but this time I can't be a peace activist either. Whether we will it or not, Bush's war is our war too, and Bush's enemy is our enemy too. I have no sympathy for Bush, but I know that if he is defeated, or rather if bin Ladin and his supporter win it, it will be a disaster for us all. Thus I feel sorry for many of my friends who are pacifists and peace activists, but I must say that America must win this war...

A BLACK SCENARIO that possibly and partly becomes more probable as the American-British war against the Taliban seems to become bogged down and the irritation and rage amongst the population in Pakistan and other Muslim nations is in the increase. What can happen? First of all, a revolt in Pakistan toppling the present military regime. In the following chaos the pro-Taliban forces succeed in gaining power in many regions and getting in their hands the Pakistani nuclear facilities. India declares that it cannot stay idle by, and sends its military to try to neutralize, seize or destroy these facilities. A major war breaks out. India crushes the resistance of the Pakistani regular army, but has a lot of trouble with armed resistance groups and guerillas both in conquered areas and at home in regions inhabited by Muslims. The Muslims all over the world are upset and demand that their governments interfere. The Islamic countries declare their support to the Islamic resistance in Pakistan and demand resolute action from the West. The tensions between India and China increase, but don't lead to an armed conflict. China uses strong expressions, but in fact remains neutral. The West cannot persuade India to retire its forces. Some influential Muslim organizations supported by some governments call all Muslims to a djihad against India, but also against Israel and the West. Some dirty bombs are exploded in Calcutta, Bombay and Tel Aviv. Israel responds by attacking military installations in Iraq and occupying some Palestinian towns. The Islamic countries issue an ultimatum to the West to stop Israeli aggression or face an oil embargo. After some more bombings in Israel and Israeli retaliatory air raids Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait and Iran stop oil shipments to the West, Egypt closes the Suez canal to American and European shipping. Some big oil tankers are sabotaged leading to damage and huge pollution in the English Channel and in the New York area. The traces of the terrorists lead to Saudi Arabia that refuses to collaborate with the West. Another dirty bomb is exploded in Haifa. Israel sends its troops to Lebanon and occupies the Bekaa valley. The Arab and several Muslim countries call for a general mobilization against Israel. Some missiles with radioactive warheads fall on Israeli towns. Israel attacks and destroys Syrian frontline positions, airfields and missile batteries. Saudi Arabia and Iran send their forces to combat what they call Israeli aggression. America and the EU demand immediate cessation of hostilities, this call is ignored by both sides. An American base in Saudi Arabia is attacked and destroyed by Al-Qaida fighters. CNN shows pictures of naked corpses and cut-off heads of some American military. The Americans land in Arabia and take over some oil fields. St.Peter's cathedral in Rome is destroyed by a powerful blast, many people are killed, the Pope is seriously wounded. Russia begins an airlift of military equipment to India. Both Russia and America negotiate with China asking it not to interfere. Several thousand ethnic Chinese, most of them Christians are killed in Indonesia. The British and French join the American forces in Arabia taking over more oilfields and refineries, many of them have been destroyed by Saudis. Iraq and Kuwait send their troops to help the Saudis. A dirty bomb is exploded in Paris killing many people and seriously contaminating the whole city centre. An unidentified plane drops a powerful bomb on the holiest place of the Muslims, the Kaaba, killing many people and totally destroying the monument. Pogroms and clashes between Muslims and Christians erupt nearly everywhere. Most of the Arab peninsula is occupied by the Allied forces who meet fierce but not well organized resistance in many places. Small units of Indonesian irregulars invade Papua New Guinea and land in some places in Australia sabotaging installations and attacking people. The permanent members of the Security council agree in the necessity of sending United Nations troops to zones of major conflict. As there are few neutral nations, these troops consist mostly of Chinese, Japanese, Tai and some African and Latin American forces. The West sees the forces as an instrument of assuring the Chinese domination in Asia but overstretched and met with increasing criticism at home have little else to do than to agree. The war in Afghanistan continues, bin Ladin and his faithful are still at large pursuing their war against America. The world tourist industry and all airlines are virtually bankrupt, but the BBC as well as the major news agencies do very well. The Sony new game console is a huge success, and the demand for whisky, vodka and other strong drinks is on steady increase. Etc.

A major confrontation between what is called the West and the what is called the Islamic world seems more and more possible. If it becomes a reality, the West needs allies. It has a an enormous edge in technology, but lacks manpower, lacks fighters. Accordingly, the Americans and Europeans must try to get support from populous friendly countries. In practice, it can mean only India and/or China. Both of them have some motivation to support this effort, because both are fearful of the rising Islamic extremism in the Middle East and Central Asia. Even the support of Russia in such a war of civilizations is possible, although Russia is no more a big power nor a populous country. This means that instead of desperately courting the Saudis and Pakistanis, the West should try to establish an alliance with India, China and Russia. And get rid of the Pakistani nuclear capabilities before it's too late.

Freely translated, the Buddha is The One who Understood or the Man of Understanding. A bodhisattva is a Person of Understanding.

I feel I become more and more alienated from religions that want us to become supermen, saints, ascetics or heroes. I feel more and more sympathy for religions that want us simply to be human beings, to live our life in a human way and enjoy it. There are saints, heroes and ascetics, but it would be a big mistake to put pressure on people to imitate them. In this stupid and inhuman world of ours even being human is sometimes very difficult, needs a big, even a heroic effort. Sometimes being a man is more difficult, more demanding than being a superman.

Isn't it strange that in our culture the declared aim of many people is fighting and abolishing taboos and borders. Taboos are an absolutely essential part of any culture, and borders are an essential part of life on earth, be it human or non-human. The division of mankind into nations, cultures, tribes, states is analogous to the division of living beings into species, families, populations. Without it the life on Earth would not have survived. I wrote a longer essay based on these thoughts intending to read it on the forum of the Universal Academy of Cultures. Unfortunately our meeting ran short of time, and I couldn't read it nor summarize it into something brief, but still intelligible. I put my paper on my website: thus it is accessible to those interested.

Globalization: for Nature or against Nature ?

There is something in the present anti-americanism and anti-war movement that disturbs me. Perhaps it is the idea that it's possible to make politics with clean hands, that politics can be a humane undertaking, that one can be successful in politics without being sometimes clearly unethical, without lying, making war, suppressing discontent, etc. Politics is a power game, and in power games unethical behaviour can often give you some advantage. Politics that is not a power game is an impossibility, a contradictio in adjecto. If we do not accept power games, we should be against any power, we should renounce the world, become monks, hermits, ascetics. But even then we cannot be sure that politics, the power games of our dirty world won't touch us. As we know, monasteries become important players in the power games of the past. There is another way: to work inside the power games, inside politics, trying to make it a bit more humane, more ethical. The same is true about the war too. After all, there are worse things than 'classical' war: life in some totalitarian countries (Cambodia under the Khmer rouge regime, North Korea, Soviet Union during the worst period of Stalinist terror) was worse than war, and people in these countries were sometimes waiting for a war that would liberate them from the horrors of a totalitarian peace. And although it may sound cynical, even a war can be more humane due to the efforts of many politicians, lawyers and even military. In the past, the winners, as a rule, looted the conquered towns and often murdered and turned to slaves all its inhabitants. Nowadays this is no more accepted by the international community, and sometimes, although still very rarely, the perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity are punished. The bombardment of Serbia and Afghanistan by the Americans and Europeans was much less murderous than the bombardment of German cities during the Second World War. This is a modest achievement, but nevertheless it is an achievement, a sign of progress. However, progress, especially in things ethical, is very fragile, it can easily be destroyed, as happened in Germany between 1934 and 1944, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, or forced to retrograde, as happened in the McCarthyist America. Thus, all people of good intentions whould always be on their guard. Nowadays, their is a danger, that under the pretext of combatting terrorism, some states, first of all, the current conservative administration in the US, will clamp down on all opposition to their policies. The introduction of the military tribunals reminds me strongly of the infamous 'troikas' in the Stalinist USSR, and can become a grave danger to civil liberties. As to the war in Afghanistan, there seems to be a danger that the US air force can make use of terrorist tactics, bombarding civilian objects, forcing the local leaders to take action against the Taliban. This is something that must be vehemently criticized and opposed, here is a job for war correspondents.
We can't say that the world cannot be improved, but it can be improved only by small steps. To demand the world to change instantly or to try to force it to change abruptly is foolishness, sometimes criminal foolishness.

Suddenly I realized that we white people are somehow like these blind and whitish fish or salamanders living in deep and dark caves who have lost their pigmentation. We too are a population living in extreme conditions and have had to sacrifice our complexion and several other features.

I am not a good man of literature, a literary person. But I could have become a good folklorist: folk lore has interested me always more than literature, belles-lettres. I even read literature as folk-lore. If it really interests me, I read it, otherwise I just read it enough to understand the fabric, the way it has been put together. Then I may use it, borrow from it some patterns to write something myself. It's not surprising that I love so much the Chinese traditional poetry. It has never severed its links with folk lore, has preserved some basic patterns of oral poetry. Li Bo was called an immortal fallen on earth. Sometimes I feel I am a traditional Chinese intellectual fallen here, in this time and place where I don't feel myself at home.

The older I grow the more I appreciate the aurea mediocritas that has corresponding ideas in East Asia too. There is no good or bad per se, extremes are bad. Too little water is drought, too much water is inundation. Too little money is misery, too much money is affluence, and both are bad for us human beings. I am glad I am neither poor nor rich, I can have everything I and my family needs, but not everything we wish. The modern capitalist ideology has abolished the distinction between needs and desires, the advertizing machine is drumming to us that we need what we want. This wrong idea is destroying both our psychological balance and the ecological balance of Nature.

The Story of Jesus

I am not a theologian, nor a specialist in the history or culture of the ancient Near East. Thus I am not well qualified to write about Jesus. There are, however, some reasons why I still decided to write. I am a writer, this means I may have some talent for understanding other people and a feeling for what a good story is. And a good story is always a true story, has a truth to tell. This truth is not propagandistic, a true story is not propagating or advertizing something. The story of Jesus, as it is told in the Gospels and in churches, is not a true story, not good literature, but a propagandistic, apologetic story.

What is worse: to have the news that your brother had been murdered or that your brother has murdered somebody? I don't know. I often ask myself this question after having heard the latest news from Israel/Palestine.

We all live in Auschwitz. What we human beings are doing with Nature, with other living beings is not much better than Auschwitz. We exterminate some species and populations, and exploit the others mercilessly. Farm animals are for us no more living things capable of joy and suffering, but just moving reservoirs of meat and other resurces. We subject animals to all kinds of tortures, we behave as if only us, the Western variety of the species Homo sapiens had full human rights. What must we, the critically minded representatives of this privileged race do if we cannot accept this devastating way of life? Can we stop the ongoing Holocaust of Nature, the sixth great extinction? How could we stop it? Can we stop it at all? Does it make sense to do something for the Nature, for other living beings? What we can perhaps do is to protect some species, introduce some ligislation that could hinder some people from exxterminating some species, some populations, alleviate the sufferings of some exploited animals? But does it help? Is the slow extinction better than a rapid one? It could create an illusion that sustainable growth and progress is possible, that we can save both our way of life and Nature. This is impossible. To save Nature, and finally to save us, we need a radical change. Perhaps such a change can arrive only as the reaction to real disasters and tragedies, can come through acute suffering and despair... In medicine it is a known fact that chronic diseases are more difficult to cure than acute diseases, e.g. inflammations. Our way of life is a chronic disease, a chronic malfunction of the biosphere. To cure it, it must possible become acute, only then can't anybody avoid becoming conscious of it. The medecine to cure the disease is known, but so far we think it's too bitter for us to take. We agree to take it only when we feel the pain and can no more live with it, forget it, alleviate it with placeboes.

To resist

I am not a pacifist. The story of the East European Jews is a warning. They were pacifists, a people without a state, without an army, a people willing to follow all the rules imposed on them by the authorities. A people accustomed to obey. They obeyed also the Nazis without much resistance. With some exceptions, of course, as the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. They were exterminated.
Thus, sometimes we have to make war, we really have to defend ourselves. But then we must have absolutely serious reasons to do that, we must have a big security risk, a direct threat to our existence, to our freedom. Making war for personal, psychological reasons, for prestige is wrong.
Saddam Hussein probably is in possession of quite nasty weapons. He is a ruthless dictator. But he is not a suicidal madman. Attacking any other country in the region or outside it, would mean suicide for him and his regime. It's highly improbable that he will do that. His existence for the last ten years has been a desperate attempt to preserve his power and prestige, to survive, to perpetuate his regime, his dynasty. Even president Bush, according to some estimates, the least intelligent American president, or his more intelligent advisors must understand this. Then it's hard to believe that they believe their own militant rhetoric, that they are serious when they talk about Saddam's plans to use some nuclear bombs against some European or American cities. And they must know and understand that Saddam has no good relations with Al-Qa'ida. He is not a religious ruler, his regime is nationalistic and secular, precisely a regime the islamic fundamentalists oppose. I don't think that not even the US pressure on both can unite them in their opposition to the Western domination of the world. Although the Americans have a wonderful gift of creating enemies for themselves and then fighting them. Usama bin Laden was a CIA creature, and Saddam was propped up and armed by both the West and the Soviets.
Thus the Bush camarilla must have another reason to make war. Is it personal? Has it something to do with the interests of energy business? However, it's hard to believe that this reason is serious enough to wage war in one of the hottest and most unstable regions of the world.
But there is something that disturbs me even more than the imminent American war with Iraq. It's Washington's demand that the US GI's be exempt from the international jurisprudence, that they would be immune to prosecution by the International Court of Justice, that no government would extradite any American military to this court. This reminds me of the exterritoriality the Westerners enjoyed a hundred years ago in China. Now, for Bush and his court, Americans are like Westerners at that time, and we all, all other people, are like Chinese who cannot prosecute them. The pressure put on many countries by the US is an insult to us all, an insult to decent people in America too. As the Americans want my country, Estonia, to sign a non-extradition and non-prosecution treaty with them too, I cannot but draw some parallels with the treaty Estonia had to sign with the Soviet Union in 1939. This was a treaty giving the Soviets the right to establish on our soil some military bases and to bring in some troops. Signing of this treaty was in fact an act of capitulation, and opened the door to the following occupation and annexation of Estonia by the USSR. Some historians and politicians think Estonia should have resisted the Soviet blackmail. Maybe they are right. In any case, I believe Estonia as any other small country should nowadays resist the US blackmail. Until there will be a more intelligent, cooperative and open-minded administration in Washington.

CHRISTMAS IS DEAD

There was one thing in our life at the Soviet times I really regret: the quiet Christmas. The party tried to abolish it, to replace Christmas with New Year, even Santa Claus with a New Year Santa with nearly the same attributes. But the people stubbornly followed the old customs, and perhaps even revived some more archaic ones. Some went to Church, but for most of us visiting the graves of our parents and lighting a candle there became a more important ritual than the Lutheran service with its dull hymns and boring sermon. With thousands of flickering candlelights the cemeteries became our holy places where people stood in silence at the graves of their loved ones or spoke in a low voice. Christmas connected us with our ancestors, with our past the authorities wanted to take from us, reinvigorated our silent resistance to the ideology of the Communist rulers.
What the Communists never succeeded in doing, the capitalists did: they killed our Christmas, desacralised and commercialised it. Instead of the little Jesus, a big fat pig is laying in the manger, and nilly-willy we all worship it.
Do we really need oppression, hardship, unhappiness to preserve our sense of the sacred?

Reading a book on topology I wonder whether true science, science that demands a huge intellectual effort, isn't becoming a kind of esoteric activity. The scientific texts are similar to what once were the esoteric texts, impossible to understand and interpret without the guidance of a teacher, a guru, a priest. E.g. the mathematical texts are coded texts, they represent in a very conventional way the result of the mathematical thinking, the mathematical process, not the process itself. Thus simply reading books it is very hard to understand what mathematics really is, to be in, an insider. This is what the word esoteric really means.
There is something irreducible in exact sciences. In our era of banality and vulgarisation, the textbooks of mathematics and physics remain what they were, they are as esoteric as before, and the attempts to explain to lay people, "without any equations" what the physicists have discovered, is sometimes quite ridiculous.
Science is esoteric, and the critical attitudes and incredulity toward it can partly be explained by analogy: the esoteric teachings and esoteric groups have rarely been popular, rarely understood, often mistrusted and sometimes even persecuted. If the present trends continue, will our grandchildren witness execution of scientists and burning of textbooks of mathematics? The paradox is that what is nowadays called esotericism is most often very banal and cheap, a mess of antiquated explanations of the world that the science seemed to have won, but which are now coming back en force. Astrology, numerology, clairvoyance, occultism, witchcraft - these all have become very exoteric, very popular in both senses of the word. The only real esoteric teaching is science, science based on mathematics. This is the esotericism that was in vogue for some time, but now has lost its appeal for the masses who are returning to their former lore.

ETONIANS AGAINST THE WAR/a>

TICKET TO THE USSR

Sometimes I think that I would like to buy a ticket back to the USSR for a year or a couple of months to have a rest from all the fuss of capitalism, market economy, advertizing and showbiz. Yes now we have the freedom, but this freedom is so heavily polluted that I'm not sure whether it can be called freedom any more. In the former USSR many of us had more inner freedom, more space, more time, and could sometimes really have a rest.

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Religion is coming back, but it is still not the prevailing force, the main holder of power in the modern world, even in America. The role religion played in the medieval Europe or still plays in the islamic countries, has been overtaken by the market forces. The churches of our world are the super- and hypermarkets, shopping malls, the monasteries that often had more power and influence in the past, are the banks where some mysterious rituals are going on, where special people are working hard to our benefit. And there are lots of preachers, lots of statues and portraits of the saint, pictures of the pleasures waiting for us if we follow the precepts the preachers, advertizers give us. Their preaching os most often accompanied, even done in visual language similar to the images admonishing and exhorting the medieval Christians who were mostly illiterate. The declared goal of the market economy as the declared goal of the Church is to save our souls or bodies, to give us bliss, to help us. The difference is that between instant gratification and gratification after death, in the other world. But for a simple believer both in the past and in our days the Church offers a lot of instant gratification, peace of forgivening the sins, and quite often a promise of help, positive intervention of God or his saints in your life, healing your illness, giving your luck in love or business affairs, giving your victory over your enemy (in hoc signo vinces, etc. Thus the difference in practice is not as big as it seems from theoretical or theological point of view. The main difference between the preaching of modern advertizing and the preaching of the Church seems to be the near-absence of the negative preaching in the ads. For the Church, Hell was as important as Heaven, but for the advertizers, it seems to be practically absent. But if we look at the shoqbiz, the entertainment industry, the Hell is there. Both industries are closely connected, overlapping, and crime and horror is one of the main themes in the movies we are shown. Thus there seems to be a division of labour between the advertizing industry and entertainment industry. The former specializes in giving us images of bliss, the latter is giving us images of serial murder, rape, cannibalism, demonic forces attacking our planet. But there is always a reassuring message present too: there are among us brave men and women capable of fighting the forces of evil, despite the woes and ordeals, the Good finally triumphs over Evil. We can be reassured, our way of life is OK, the consumer society we live in is the best of possible worlds despite some threats and defects that can and will be countered and mended. Thus the messages of the advertizers and entertainers are part of the same propaganda, the same preaching that gives us both consolation, warning and pastime.

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