[Note: A reply to the comment at PDI-Disqus thread, in the article of Patricia Evangelista, "Once upon a time." It's raw and I don't have the plan to modify it. ;) -- jsalvador]
-oOo-
Me, too, that's why I find the blog easier to read and I
managed to add pictures to my blog to break away from the monotony of texts.
Hehehe... I think I tend over do it, lols!
I used to read books but learned only a little :(
Imagine reading a book, or even a chapter of it, to be discussed in the next
class day. One thing that I can't forget is the book 5, chapter 4 of The
Brothers Karamazov by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky dealing with story
of three brothers, Dmitri, Ivan, and Alyosha.
What interest me most is that I tend to see myself in
the person of Ivan, an atheist who believes in God, and Aloysha a religious who
believes that there is a world beyond the reach and grasp of the rational and
scientific mind.
Ivan Karamazov has provided a very strong argument
against God that the suffering of innocent children can never be justified by
any consolation of earthly happiness or heavenly bliss after
death.
The Russian writers (or story makers/idea workers) are
realists. Dostoyevsky used real stories to confront Aloysha. No, he did not
retell the story, he re-worked it to evoke a reaction from his younger brother
Aloysha for him to do something, to act.
Imagine a little girl who wet her bed and her mother
punished the girl to stay outside naked in the freezing night of snow. Ivan
asked Aloysha if there's any justification for the tears of this little girl as
she banged her little fist on the door, weeping tears of despair to "her
dear kind God."
Recall, a little peasant boy throwing stone and
accidentally injured the favorite dog of the general. Upon inquiry who hurt his
dog, he asked the mother to bring the boy to his mansion. He imprisoned him the
whole night and early in the morning he asked his servants to strip the boy and
let him run across the fields to be chased by the general's pack of hounds. In
front of his mother, the boy was tore up into pieces by the dogs. Ivan asked
Aloysha what should be done to the general to satisfy our moral feelings. To
which, Aloysha said that the general deserved to be shot.
Remember the Turk soldiers when they invaded Bulgaria,
they took pleasure in murdering children. They tossed the babies up in the air
and caught them in the points of their bayonets in front of
their mothers. They made them laugh and waved their gun barrels in front of
their faces. As soon as the babies reached up their little hands to grasp the
barrels and laughed -- whereupon the soldiers pulled the triggers of their guns
and blew the brains of the babies in front of their mothers' eyes.
The stories about the suffering of the innocents were
not simply told by Ivan. He carefully selected them make his case against God.
Ivan did not reject the existence of God. In fact, he accepted that God exists
but he refused to accept God's world; he returned his ticket, he revolt against
the plan of God. For him, no earthly pleasure or heavenly that can justify the
sufferings of the innocents. Ivan did not tell stories of the suffering of
adults, who have eaten the apple.
Between these two brothers, there was Dmtri who In my younger years, early twenties, twenty
years ago, I only saw the interplay of Aloysha and Ivan in me. But now I
realized that I am more of s Dmitri.
Keep well. Do not simply tell your story... of course,
each of us has story to share.
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