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"Power Over Virtue" ... "Something for Nothing" ...
The Muslim immigration to the West provokes angry reactions in the media and from personalities while the general population displays some patience. The Muslims, both newcomers and older immigrants, put forward their requirements for more and more influence in society. There’s a great difference with the Jews who for two thousand years in Europe kept a low profile. It didn’t stop various accusations against them of conspiracies that were never proved and about their economic power which may have concerned individuals, not society. In your articles you put the accent on the assumption that we live in a Darwinian Universe where power is appreciated over virtue. In conclusion, the Jews were attacked more for their weakness than for their strength. Being aggressive like Muslims or submissive like Jews, both sides show that differences create conflicts.
N. Manning
From early times Europe passed periods of mass emigration from country to country as, for instance, to Old Poland. We can take this particular country as an example of coexistence and conflict. The Germans came en masse and, after a short revolt, were defeated by local power and then quickly assimilated with the local population. The main reason was that they didn’t differ in religion from the locals. It shows us the cementing power of religion. The non Catholic minorities, like the Ukrainians, Armenians, some Tartars, Czechs and, later on, Lutheran Germans, were harmoniously integrated because they created their own villages. A propos Lutheran Germans, I heard a story of prosperous German village in the west of Poland. When the German army entered, they ordered the Minister to ring the church bells. The Minister refused, saying that he was a Polish citizen, thus a Pole, and he was shot for treason by the invaders. I sometimes think about this probably largely unknown or forgotten heroic Pole. Only Jews and Gypsies dispersed themselves throughout the country. The Gypsies, being nomadic, were less numerous and less remarked while the Jews, being practically everywhere, put their economic and ethnic stamp wherever they were. And THIS became the source of the rift. Had the Jews created their own villages, like those other non Catholic minorities, they would have been visited by those who were interested; people would have visited their markets, consulted their specialists –- because the Jews brought many curiosities from the West -- and all this would have provoked festivities, drinking parties . . . Maintenance of order would be local, thus Jewish, and nobody would protest. Anti-Semitism would never have been born, neither in Poland nor in other countries if the Jews had not formed urban ghettoes or dispersed to wherever they had permission. The Jews and the Gypsies made this monumental mistake: they ignored xenophobias and competition and were totally deprived of self defense. WM
In your Howling to the Moon you quoted Gurdjieff saying that nobody should give something for nothing because one becomes a beggar pleading for attention. Do you apply this to yourself? After all, like everybody else, I am reading you for free.
Greetings!
Jena Crain
I don’t consider myself somebody who gives something for nothing. Rather, I consider myself as somebody who puts notes in bottle and throws it into the ocean. This is how a desert island castaway tries to find a rescue. That isn’t my case either. So why am I doing this? Perhaps because I have a "note, bottle, and ocean" at my disposal...WM
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William Markiewicz