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dr. j. g. says
To illustrate a point about knowing and being and the difference - if you know about bears it scarcely implies you are one; I love penguins but do not live in Antarctica; and know about Europe and US more than about Australia. If, say, I were a specialist in neutron stars it would hardly imply that is where I am at. It might only mean I know a bit - little more than common - and can correct some misconceptions.
The mistake about Gandhi is very common and it was not just you. As for equality, women can do what men do in that women are capable - in fact it is only recent, post industrial, when banks and so forth made it possible, that a great deal of problems arose, with sequestration and inequality. Think about a rural life in a pre industrial society, women did and do labour equally, and wealth is cattle and other such stuff of needs of life - women are needed to manage much of it and also to reproduce for human power, for management and labour. In fact medicine was mostly initially province of home carers along with other provisions and nursing. When one reads a good book it is at once a specific and a representative. And I did tell you as I tell others that in Indian mainstream culture it is family level where decisions are made. In fact many women were able to correct mistakes of pupils who were at their homes for study, since working behind doors they still heard the teaching and learned themselves while doing housework. And just because I happen to know something does not mean that is my boxhole - the thing is you accept my thinking or knowledge only in as much as it does not challenge your faith in Rome, but that does not mean Galileo was wrong and his persecutors (church of course) right, or church was right in not condemning holocaust or burning of blacks, or that Elizabeth I was less than great. Your discomfort makes you stop from not only admitting - less important - but seeing things and thinking straight. It is a fear of letting go of what you have perceived all your life as an invisible lifeline, and if you are suddenly told it is no good you don't want to know that. As for feminism - in west there was need of much, from what I saw and read. Besides, the other way of women's life did not seem anything but full of quite unnatural, ridiculous constraints. I don't know what feminism is doing wrong or how it is hurting men there, but it seems to be your (general you, not particular) daughters of the nation that are dying of starvation. I think that people need to be together, to go together, to work together, and have respect and caring. When that fails it is no good, and if there are reactions it needs time before corrections are in place and then they subside. French resistance is sometimes in whispers accused of being harsh - but then they had fought a desperate war during occupation years. Women of west have had much to throw off and fight back. You have not read Holy Blood, Holy Grail, I gather. It is a common mistake again for people who are of certain nations to assume that they know generically more of everything and others can only know of where they are from and what they are. Completely wrong, in fact both ways. Generally men think they know better what women are about, and are upset when disturbed in this, and insist on pigeonholing - are you comfortable when in a social setting you get a put down on that basis or a pigeon holing? In short my correcting you about Braahman society or India does not mean it would be correct to make an assumptions about me about where I am at.
lord m says
Hi Elisa! Thanks for dropping by, hope the weather stretches fine in your place... :) Am lugging on with Frank Herbert's Dune. I see you've finished the Indian book, what are you on to now?
I forgot - why worry about separating feelings and opinions and thoughts? Be as genuine as you are. Those that are able to separate or claim so are often deluding themselves, sometimes even in physics. Not in mathematics, it is hardly possible there, but even there they would have you believe only they can do it. Don't be taken in for a minute. And if you wish for intellectual growth it is never too late to begin or continue. In any direction. You may not get to be a professional - that is, to be able or allowed to earn - in some disciplines if you begin late, but you certainly can learn. But there are great qualities - honesty, sincerity, loving, caring - that are not only great but necessary.
Dear Elisa, Gandhi, NOT Ghandi. The latter sounds horrible and is a common mistake, like many others routinely made in west. No reason to feel small - everyone begins as a fresh soul as infant and is given opportunity to grow to any height or depth or greatness by the maker above. If there are difficulties, they are opportunities too, of becoming stronger. Women having to strive to achieve equality is all hogwash sold for sake of superiority over them to be established - some women are smart enough to ignore it and some are naive enough to take pains to prove they can do anything men can. In fact women are capable of all that but have to do motherhood for their own children, and men try to make up for their deficiency and uncertainty and complexes by asserting superiority. What you learn about India through your own sources is more likely than not to misrepresent a great deal for ulterior motives. As for widows, how about Scarlett O'Hara chafing with the requirement of several years of carefully conducted widowhood which Rhett points our is really burning alive though not literally, and then her being increasingly ostracized for neither following the rules nor being apologetic? She was a heroine and not recognized even by women in US. So was Melanie in a quieter way. Braahmans were often made a target by outsiders not because they were bad but because they were intellectual and spiritual leaders and treasure keepers of traditional wealth of knowledge. Any subjugation of a conquered people is incomplete, when the conquerors intend to make them into slaves, without breaking their spirit. So they broke much in India as in South America and stigmatised Braahmans for the same reasons and motive. They used other ways for other professions - weavers starved en masse, for example, with cheap cloth from UK flooding in. As for Bengaal starvation that was due to reasons similar to that of Ireland - food was taken away and people were left to starve. It was called famine but really was robbery. Millions died. As for Braahman or any other widows mostly things depend on families - no centralised prescriptions or persecutions - but fact is the major suffering was inability to marry again, and that amounted to a celebate life. Other than that they were in fact considered not out caste but clean and even called so - the connotation being clear - and they participated in the innermost sanctum activities, those of kitchen and of temple worship at home. They often ruled the household, depending on circumstance. What is certainly true is women are as much authorities and carriers of tradition and knowledge in society in India as men in their own right, and are dealth with respect and have authority growing with age and experience and knowledge. That would be in a typical traditional setting, especially in any Braahman household. A happy couple is seen in some ways as the way things should be as auspicious and those occasions widows were not invited guests of honour but nor were they ostracized to the extent they would have you believe. They were not ritually worshipped the way a married woman or a virgin sometimes were - but nor were men very often. We do have a strong tradition of Mother Goddess even apart from other major Goddesses that personify Wealth, Learning. and Victory, Power, and men worship them ritually too, so we do not - in fact rarely - think father when we think Divine but do think Mother often, although there are Gods and Goddesses usually in pairs; the concept of the Mother is the closest one gets to the ultimate Divine, which is seen as with no attributes of human sort. So calling for Mother is an extension of calling for one's own mother as you would when a child in need, crying, tired, whatever. On the other hand a new baby is seen as a new fresh soul straight from above, and often women would see Divine as a child and vice versa. We do not think Divine is not in any place - that is badly put, cut out the two negatives. Please do not feel uncomfortable. As for children, yours or others, you have as much right and opportunity to form them as anyone else, and while great people past or present provide examples like distant great peaks you are the intimate caring nurturing one - with every right to teach them. If you think they do not learn don't lose heart, you might not know but years later they will know how much difference you made. I wish I could thank my mother enough.
Dear Elisa, I love something about your post this time - the way you speak about quiet heroism, it is yourself of course, fragile and courageous while you probably do feel battered in the winds of today's. It is not my intention to uproot you or batter you, nor is it that of any of the knowledge now made available. Let us talk about some other subjects than those that make you uncomfortable.
I find no fault in what you wrote, and as for disagreement it must be about the DVC. That is not surprising. I am guessing your faith makes you distance your mind from anything officially given out - though there have been numerous discoveries of various scrolls and documents during last half century or so. If and when you are able to separate holding on to official authorities you grew up with from intellectual queries, and yet not suffer spiritually, you will take steps further in your growth. For example most US people are upset about the divide between seven day creation and evolution because it disturbs their literal faith in those words. So similarly you feel a need of a quiet fortitude in face of any new information to the effect that someone you think spiritually high might not have been a virgin but married and parent after all. When you are able to see that parents are in fact representative of Divine for a baby - and a new soul in form of a baby is in fact a little drop of the ocean that is Divine, less veiled than the drop in your own soul, the former hypothesis about required virginity might not hinder you. After all even in your faith not all branches require celebacy of priests. And surely you do not think Divine is male or has a gender? There is no reason for the shunning or downcasting of women. If motherhood is not sacred, a whole lot more than half is missing in culture. Even in church isn't the vow to the effect of "with my body I thee worship" spoken by the groom to the bride? I do understand the point about quiet heroism, but all sorts of heroism did come out into play as late as half a century ago in your history with the wwII - if you look at the European part, and do not think that the victims of holocaust deserved it for being who they were. For that matter there were Martin Luther King jr and others who made it possible for southern states in US to be freer, and some gave lives in that. That heroism is universally appreciated. As for the powers that are not worrying you - take your points 1 and 2, and reflect about turning the two positions you have assigned to us around, and really it fits better that way. No one proclaims one believes in DVC, it is more a thriller for most. Question belief in another - the most sold, it is said - book and you stand to be thrown out of your community. So you need not worry about the powers because you go along with them and do not think you do.
light says
i like freedom, beaty, truth, and love. :) the greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
History of Europe, and of West Asia, closely interlinked and much guarded by the powers - that has been the topic. The powers are interested in keeping subjects loyal, and therefore used all sorts of means, including inquisition and persecution of dissenters, and hiding of certain parts of history, and employing sevices of those who could successfully use lies and obfuscations for the purposes. Since not believing was punishable with death, often by being burnt alive, that terror has gone deep in psyche of most simple people and their descendents, and opening your eyes and mind to look at things as they are is terrifying, while those that tell you not to worry about it, there is no proof, are comforting - few people wish to risk death for sake of standing up for a fact much less ultimate truth, and it is far more convenient and expedient to go with the wave, the authority, the general fashion. Don't worry. Most people should be safe, so humanity can go on. The few that are equipped to be heroes do that.
of course it's okay to say that i don't mind i admir peoples own opinions.
thank you people say i look like light from death note what do you think?
Right, I suppose some people's opinion had Galileo persecuted, and a lot of dissenters burned alive, for a few hundred years - until the dissenters and those who would tell truth went underground for the next few cenruries. I wonder how stupid those who persecuted Galileo look to those that belive in their power inheritors, or perhaps the believers still think it is all a matter of opinion, Galileo or the persecutors alike, and I wonder who they think paid him to say Jupiter had moons or Earth was not the center of our local part but the Sun was, I suppose your opinion is valid for you on that.
lord m