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To: Amerigomag
I always find something of value in LBDSM's threads and comments, and I find this "one"-person thread quite educational. I am smart enough not to feel threatened by a smart woman.
35 posted on 03/01/2003 5:50:01 AM PST by wildandcrazyrussian
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To: wildandcrazyrussian
I am smart enough not to feel threatened by a smart woman.

Me thinks your agenda is showing.

37 posted on 03/01/2003 6:49:52 AM PST by Amerigomag
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To: wildandcrazyrussian
Why, thank you for putting in an appearance. I know that a wake is considered a distasteful remnant from a sensual, barbaric past by many progressive souls. Your countryman, Solzhenitsyn, has already passed through. He's getting frail and could not stay long, but his cassandra-warning will always haunt us:

".....But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Even those characteristics of your life which I have just mentioned are extremely saddening.

A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. Life's complexity and mortal weight have produced stronger, deeper and more interesting characters than those produced by standardized Western well-being. Therefore if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant scores. It is true, no doubt, that a society cannot remain in an abyss of lawlessness, as is the case in our country. But it is also demeaning for it to elect such mechanical legalistic smoothness as you have. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor and by intolerable music.

All this is visible to observers from all the worlds of our planet. The Western way of life is less and less likely to become the leading model.

There are meaningful warnings that history gives a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen. There are open and evident warnings, too. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy.

But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive, you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?..."

40 posted on 03/01/2003 9:18:41 AM PST by LaBelleDameSansMerci
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