[HN Gopher] Gratitude despite the odds
___________________________________________________________________
Gratitude despite the odds
Author : nsoonhui
Score : 90 points
Date : 2024-11-30 08:16 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (mariakonnikova.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mariakonnikova.substack.com)
| Mistletoe wrote:
| >Yet until brown clay has been rammed down my larynx,
|
| >only gratitude will be gushing from it.
|
| Bookmarking this one for sure, to return to often.
| djaouen wrote:
| This is exactly how I feel about my programming work in this
| credentialist United States. I will keep programming, in spite of
| the haters -- who will stop me?
| pfortuny wrote:
| Let me suggest everyone here reading Nadhezda Mandelstam's
| memoirs, "Hope against hope", and "Hope abandoned". A lot to
| learn about people who "only wanted to make everybody happy" (she
| includes herself in that group). Amazing.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Oh, I didn't realize that was Maria Konnikova. That makes it hit
| differently, now.
|
| Gratitude is, indeed, difficult to keep in one's mind and heart
| as the loveless bastards of this world further their schemes that
| abuse the Earth and all her peoples. As the willfully ignorant
| fools denigrate the wise and extoll the life they lead sans
| compassion. Mining fakeass algorithmic coins as the poor can't
| pay for heat, as food is hard to come by, and as we cook the
| world's oceans.
|
| But I know which side I am on. The side of justice has few to
| defend it as we creep towards this reckoning, this chaos, this
| utter misery, born of turning away from our best, our virtue,
| while revelling in the idiocy of our worst vices. On tv, in the
| movies, in the net's forums, in public and in private, and in the
| people we elect.
|
| This Garden smells of eggfarts and petro-exhaust, of misery and
| deprivation, of for-profit prisons and low-income housing,
| ketamine-jacked apartheiders, sans loving family, not loving
| their family, but with enough money to help a million people, but
| instead supports the living devils, the cruel, lying liars, those
| who refuse the sweet nectar of compassion.
|
| I'm grateful I'll not die like that, without even trying,
| settling into their last breath with the universe's _knowing_
| that they 're only settling further down as time marches on,
| without a saving grace, with a bloated, stinking, albatross of
| their life's own choices, bearing down upon their soul.
|
| I damn them, too, for having forsaken love, belittling and
| obscuring the Way, for lying about the truth, for taking what
| could be stolen, hating those that love, and for perverting
| justice. I damn them, too, for that is True Justice.
|
| For selfishness, for money, for fucking money, for kicking the
| poor while we're down. All this while, they ignore the fact that
| the universe remembers _everything_ , and it is not unjust,
| unloving, or uncaring.
|
| No, motherfucker, Time Will Tell, I'm gonna take the Mister from
| out in front of your name, it's high time to take the power back,
| for the people of the sun, for the hopeless, for the poets, for
| the innocents jailed, for innocence violated, for the good men
| stomped out by the cruelty of unfettered capitalism.
|
| No, Joseph Stalin died in his sleep, in his palace, having
| created an unjust system that beat down _poets_ who wrote about
| love and gratitude and the truths of life, good and bad,
| beautiful and ugly. No, Joseph Stalin will meet his Maker, and he
| shall reap what he has sown, for the universe is just and
| compassionate and kind, in how it brutalizes the brutalizers,
| tortures the torturers, but not usually upon this Earth.
|
| It is just, but not always while we live, unless one counts being
| deprived of peace. No, while we live, we all get to be as shitty
| as we like, with no karmic lightning bolt magically striking the
| evil down. No, we must wait, clinging to compassion and kindness
| and service and the poetry of a life lived for the goodness of
| the 19 virtues.
|
| No, we must wait and work and hope and pray, and remain grateful
| for the little frogs, every single bee, the breeze in the bush,
| every laugh, every nacho and sip of coffee. And every kiss, while
| we await the terrible changeover at the end of this brutal set.
|
| Thank you Maria, for Brodsky, for your gratitude.
|
| I'm a crap poet, but my poetry is the poetry of the blunt truth,
| spoken to fools and wise alike, out of love for all.
|
| Who has eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to understand?
| topherclay wrote:
| Wow, shots fired at low income housing.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| The vultures just bought these apartments, kicked us out of
| our apartment for two months this summer to renovate it, so
| they can raise our rent from $1040 to $1500 a month, with
| formaldehyde likely in our new wood flooring. They refused my
| request for the MSDSs. There is no law against this travesty,
| but I'm grateful, because my family stands firm, against the
| lying motherfucker who stood before us a earlier this year
| and lied to our faces and said that our rent wouldn't rise.
| No, they're not going to defeat my compassion; no, they are
| defeating themselves with cruel profit without concern for
| the human costs.
|
| And, so, a white guy in the projects dances to "Squabble Up",
| while my Trump-loving parents live within seven miles of us,
| full of COVID and bullshit, going to church but caring not
| for Jesus' teachings, dipshits that they are. They don't even
| know their grandkids, blessed, loving, kind teens of a rare
| ilk in these dark days.
|
| I now know why Jesus said, "I came not to bring peace, but a
| sword." That sword is the Light of Truth, the light of love
| and honesty and goodness.
|
| No evil can bear the light of truth, those that jail poets
| and lie about the truth, and contain no love but for their
| own; they hide from the truth, but there is only truth in
| this universe, and what was hidden shall be brought into the
| light.
|
| "There's God's side and the other side." --Katt Williams
|
| "Who the fuck are you?" --The Who
|
| Get yourselves ready, because I see lightning in the
| distance.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > while my Trump-loving parents live within seven miles of
| us, full of COVID and bullshit, going to church but caring
| not for Jesus' teachings...
|
| OK.
|
| > dipshits that they are.
|
| Um... that doesn't sound like Jesus' teachings either.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| You don't know the verse I'm talking about. He speaks of
| turning children against their parents, my friend. Why
| would a teacher of love tell us that? Well, when those
| parents live their lives in complete opposition to what
| that man gave his life to teach and exemplify. That's
| when.
|
| My mother believes that Trump never cheated on his wives.
| That's a f_cking dipshit, dude.
|
| Stupidity is the result of willful ignorance of the
| truth. I don't hate anyone or think people should be
| stoned for adultery or whatever, but the truth is the
| truth, and we must seek it, find it, and believe it.
|
| She claimed that she loves the Ten Commandments, then
| votes for the two candidates that purposefully lied about
| legal-immigrant Ohio-residing Haitians eating people's
| pets. The 8th or 9th Commandment is "Thou shall not bear
| false witness against thy neighbor." Why? Because it's
| evil to sow mischief and lies in order to "rile up your
| base". You know who else did that shit in the late 1930s?
| Yup.
|
| She has left the path of Wisdom and been fooled by
| selfish, corrupt liars. And it's my father's decades of
| FoxNews, OANN, and that other one, that has brought them
| down.
|
| 2 Timothy 3 speaks very clearly about whom to have
| nothing to do with in this world. It's sound advice, even
| for a non-religious person, but especially -- especially
| -- when choosing the leaders of the most powerful country
| on Earth.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I know the verse you're talking about. Jesus is talking
| about the result of his teachings, about what happens
| when people follow him. Other people will turn away, hate
| them, and fight them.
|
| But he also said to love your enemies. Those people who
| turn away and are at enmity with you? Love them anyway.
|
| And it doesn't sound like you do.
|
| (2 Timothy 3 is talking about people in the church. Jesus
| is talking about people outside. If you want to say that
| your parents don't belong in church, fine. If discernment
| tells you to treat them like unbelievers, fine. But the
| contempt and bitterness doesn't sound right coming from
| someone quoting Jesus.)
| MrMcCall wrote:
| I do love my enemies, but they have to want to hear the
| truth. It is their human right to be ignorant and ignore
| God's Wisdom. And I treat them well, though they so loath
| the truth that they don't call anymore. They are
| supporting people who actively work against everything
| Jesus lived for, and those people are making the world
| much worse for my children, their effing grandchildren!
|
| And you are not reading 2 Timothy 3 correctly. The first
| five verses are a set of qualities that the loathsome
| choose to manifest, and it ends with a Command, "Have
| nothing to do with such people."
|
| That verse is about people, whether in a church or not.
| It's about people in "terrible times". And the Command is
| _clear_. It also includes -- for those whose minds have
| been clarified by loving God -- the implicit Command to
| not support their being a leader.
|
| Was Jesus loving his enemies when he threw the
| moneychangers out of the Temple? He sure was, my friend.
| My father called it "tough love", and my love for him
| will save him from the fate of all cruelly ignorant
| hypocrites, if only he'd listen to the effing truth.
|
| The fact is that my prayers for them carry no weight in
| the presense of their willful ignorance. Their free will
| is respected by God just as much as mine, but I don't
| believe Jesus will save my sins on the Judgement Day; I
| choose to repent now and become a better person while I
| live so that I might bring God's light of loving service
| to all the people I can reach.
|
| Jesus even says, "That which you do to the least of my
| brothers, that you do unto me." The fakeass Christians
| will learn the meaning of those verses on that Day of
| Days, but, by then, it will be too late. We are judged
| for what we _do_ here on Earth, while we live.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > The fakeass Christians will learn the meaning of those
| verses on that Day of Days, but, by then, it will be too
| late.
|
| Yup.
|
| > We are judged for what we _do_ here on Earth, while we
| live.
|
| Be _very_ careful with that.
|
| "But we did all this stuff!"
|
| "Depart from me, for I never knew you."
|
| Any real "knowing Him" _will_ change us, and thereby
| change our actions. But be very careful of depending on
| the actions.
|
| Yes, there will be a judgment for what we do, but that
| will be for reward, not for "in or out".
| MrMcCall wrote:
| Judgement is heaven or hell, reward or punishment. What
| other outcome can there be?
|
| Knowing Him is to follow God's commands and to love God
| with all your being and then love your neighbor as
| yourself. And to seek and find the meaning of "Hallowed
| be Thy Name", and other mysteries.
|
| Intention is the multiplier for our actions, and that
| product is what we are judged upon. It's how the well-
| intentioned act of charity is weighed differently from
| giving charity in order to tell people, or merely for tax
| breaks.
|
| Our change comes in degrees, over time with honest self-
| evaluation and effort, failures with apologies and,
| eventually, successes, until we see Its Face, and
| thereafter be "pure in heart", another "servant of all"
| taking their place as "the greatest among us".
|
| It starts with begging God to take Its Spirit (our
| Conscience) back into Itself while we live, so that our
| soul may be cleansed and purified of its vices. That is
| the meaning of the 1st Beatitude, "Blessed are the poor
| in Spirit, for theirs shall be the Kingdom of God."
|
| Then we have to slog through and overcome our
| selfishnesses, to the end, as described by the 5th (IIRC)
| Beatitude, by learning how to choose selfless service to
| others over selfishness.
|
| Most people believe Jesus will forgive them on the JD,
| just because they say some words; many Muslims believe
| the same but with different words, and many Buddhists
| believe we just keep getting more chances. No. Those are
| lies of the deceiver of man, who works on our minds and
| hearts.
|
| We get one chance on this Earth, for good or ill, and
| everything about our choices is knowable as to whether it
| harmonizes with God's teachings. It is up to us to seek
| that truth, humbly and honestly, and without the
| misguided corruptions brought by generations of
| telephone, whereby human beings have been led away from
| the Truth of Love.
|
| Peace be with you. We love you. I am at your service.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > It starts with begging God to take Its Spirit back into
| Itself while we live, so that our soul may be cleansed
| and purified of its vices. That is the meaning of the 1st
| Beatitude, "Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs
| shall be the Kingdom of God."
|
| That sounds like you took the Bible and some flavor of
| New Age stuff, threw them in a blender, and drank
| whatever came out. That's something weird, but it's not
| Biblical theology.
|
| > Then we have to slog through and overcome our
| selfishnesses, to the end, as described by the 5th (IIRC)
| Beatitude, by learning how to choose selfless service to
| others over selfishness.
|
| If _you 're_ trying to slog through that, on your effort
| and self-discipline, you're never going to get there.
| Neither am I. I am more broken than that; sin runs deeper
| in me than that. And in you.
|
| I wish you truth, but in love I have to say that I don't
| think you really have it.
|
| I leave you the last word if you want it.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| > That's something weird, but it's not Biblical theology.
|
| It's called Hidayat, and it comes from Sufism.
|
| When Jesus says, in John 16:12-13, that:
|
| "I have much more to say to you, more than you can now
| bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will
| guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his
| own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell
| you what is yet to come."
|
| That is Jesus pointing the way, because God knew that
| Jesus' book would be perverted by the liars and ignorant
| and haughty, in the same way that many translators and
| "explainers" of the Quran have distorted key concepts,
| such as Hidayat, which is the Spirit's journey back to
| its Creator (1st Beatitude), thus allowing our soul to be
| cleansed and purified of its vices ("to love God with all
| your soul").
|
| The only purpose of religion is to maximize our selfless
| loving kindness to those around us so that we all can
| live in peace and happiness and prosperity on this
| Garden.
|
| The Catholic Church left that path a long time ago, which
| is why they persecuted a true lover of God, St. Francis
| of Assisi, and also why they (and many other "faiths")
| sexually abuse so many children, and are now declaring
| bankruptcy instead of paying the settlements meant to
| help those whose lives they severely damaged. But their
| love of money (gotta keep those coffers full!) is more
| important than children to them, and we know what Jesus
| says about that, right? I mean, that's why they kept it
| under wraps, kept shuffling the abusers around, and have
| now paid over $4B to attorneys (I don't believe that even
| counts the settlements, but I could be wrong about that).
|
| As to Biblical theology, I take it with the same grain of
| salt as mainsteam Islamic teaching. They have been
| confused by the enemy of man, and woe is the result for
| them, their followers, and the people they harm through
| their selfish ignorance. That doesn't mean individuals of
| those faiths can't connect with God and rise above their
| leaders' or teachings' hypcocrisy, ignorance, oppression,
| pride and all the other vices that go with it.
|
| [Side note: The first judoka who has ever won the
| European Championships, Worlds, and Olympics in the same
| year (2024) is an Azeri named "Hidayat Heyderov" -- check
| out his smile. His ascension was not anything like a sure
| bet, but his name and smile are just part of God's
| Mysterious Ways. But so is my name, for that matter,
| though not as important has Hidayat's.]
|
| > If you're trying to slog through that, on your effort
| and self-discipline ...
|
| Yes, we do have to exert an enormous effort to defeat our
| selfish weaknesses, but you are right: we cannot do this
| on our own, though our inital efforts are important as
| spoken of in Matthew 7:7:
|
| "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find;
| knock, and it shall be opened unto you"
|
| Ridding ourselves of our selfish vices of the soul is
| only accomplished with the help of our Creator, and
| utilizes the meaning of "Hallowed be Thy Name", which for
| Jesus and his followers would be Yah-weh. In Arabic, it's
| Al-lah, in other languages: Di-os, De-us, Brah-man, Nn-
| guy, etc. Each language having their own two-syllable
| Name of God, to sync with our heartbeat.
|
| You can recognize the person who has made a bit of
| progress along the Way because they have been humbled by
| our needing so much grace to get anywhere against this
| terrible enemy, that is both an external force of
| temptation and an internal susceptibility (our soul's
| vices). Along the way, we develop our compassion,
| gratitude, mercy, kindness, generosity, gentleness, and
| truthfulness, to name but a few of the 19 virtues of the
| soul that each have a corresponding vice, everything in
| the universe having been created in pairs. The role of
| Wishing to Reach Yahweh with One's Spirit (Conscience)
| and the practice of Zikr (described below) are to
| literally "enlighten" our soul's heart with Glories to
| reduce and ultimately completely remove the conduit
| within our souls that facilitates the communication of
| selfish impulses from our enemy. This is the literal,
| physical (in our soul's parallel dimension) definition of
| "transmutation of the soul".
|
| We are to repeat our chosen Name of God throughout the
| day, as much as possible, until we "Love God with all our
| [being]". That is what helps us to be able to "love our
| neighbors as ourself", in degrees as we progress over
| time. It is called Zikr in the Quran. It is not counted
| as a requirement (farz) by mainstream Islam, but is
| commanded three separate times, with differing amounts
| per day: some, a lot (over half the day), and
| continuously (that coincides with fully submitting our
| soul to the Divine Will, "with all your soul"). That
| Grace of soul purification happens a short-ish time
| before we actually see "God's Face". That person then
| becomes an Annointed Teacher (Murshid), is then "pure of
| heart", having thus submitted not only their soul, but
| their free will, too. I've met two such Muslim Sufi men
| and the student of a Christian man whose teacher was also
| such a one.
|
| Such men are a sublime combination of the innocence of a
| child and the deepest Wisdom, which is actually the case,
| in both dimensions.
|
| > I wish you truth, but in love I have to say that I
| don't think you really have it.
|
| I already knew that, my friend, both that that's what you
| believed and that you are not evil-minded or -hearted,
| and that this is your compassionately honest initial
| reaction to this new information after your lifetime of
| really, really trying. That is why _we_ are having this
| conversaion.
|
| But you can find no fault with what I say (though likely
| in how I say it, for I am not a fully submitted person,
| so another vice of the soul, pride, is still at work in
| me, to some extent; I apologize for my coarseness) for
| the logic is unassailable, as it is the absolute Truth.
|
| You have no reason to doubt my being the person
| presenting the logic I present here, for I ask for
| nothing for myself, and only wish you and the entire
| world to be happy. We would never ask you to accept Islam
| (or any other religion, for that matter); we only suggest
| that you go within yourself and ask God to point your way
| forward, perhaps even asking God if what I have shared
| with everyone today is, indeed, the Truth. That is all
| any of us is required to do in order to begin becoming a
| better human manifestation of God's Loving Wisdom. This
| why Rumi (a fully submitted person and a rather vulgar
| poet at times) said, "The Way goes in."
|
| The only argument you will find will appear in your mind
| and heart from the enemy of mankind, the enemy of
| happiness, who ever seeks to derail us from the happiness
| we are capable of when we submit our beings to the Divine
| Will. It defends the ignorance it convinces us to choose
| with its deceits, because its very destructively active
| existence in our being and in our cultures depends on our
| willful ignorance (another vice of the soul). That
| negative entity only manifests itself in our Earthly
| plane within our hearts and minds and, physically, via
| willfully ignorant human beings acting on its behalf, by
| their misguided use of their free will.
|
| If you ever have questions, you can find me. Peace be
| with you. We love you. Thank you very much for inspiring
| me this day. And thank you, dang et al, for allowing this
| "Sufi Science of the Soul's Perfection" to be
| communicated here. You are receiving blessings for
| allowing your boxen to facilitate me speaking of our
| humanity's highest potential: the journey to and personal
| arrival at selfless loving kindness in service to all
| mankind, and the Earth herself, where all human beings
| are respected, even if their actions deserve righteous
| criticism for the benefit of the whole.
|
| [And, Mr. Muppet, please feel free to ask more questions,
| going back on a questionable promise is the best course
| of action. The amount of joy I feel today is even better
| than the day I missed my exit to our house-based masjid,
| but then offered a ride to a woman walking home in the
| rain, whereby she showed me the bottle of Extra Strength
| Tylenol she had just bought and swallowed half of. I
| asked her if she would let me take her to the fire
| station, and she let me, Praise be to God! We spent some
| hours at the hospital together; she was an extraordinary
| person in a difficult situation.
|
| The enemy of man tries to convince _every_ single human
| being to commit suicide; it 's just one way that evil
| bastard works on us all. Thank God I resisted his reasons
| those many years ago when he put me to his screws, but my
| resistance and being saved was solely through the Grace
| of God!]
|
| Everything I say on HN (from this to tech commentary to
| history to jokes) is truthfully communicated knowing that
| I shall face my words' veracity on the JD. I love you
| all! And thank you very much.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Why would you think you have a monopoly on understanding of
| Jesus' teachings?
|
| There are thousands of varieties of christianity or Christ-
| followers, all with different understanding of Jesus'
| teachings. Many of which are mutually incompatible.
| ajuc wrote:
| Gratitude is nice but the poems that do change governments and
| people's lives for the better can't only do gratitude. Anger is
| needed too. Accountability is important.
|
| Some people treat the oppressive government as weather. Something
| you don't have any control over and therefore - no responsibility
| for. Others treat it as their responsibility. And these people
| are NOT grateful, when injustice is done in their names.
|
| Compare https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48501/the-envoy-
| of-mr... let your sister Scorn not leave you
| for the informers executioners cowards--they will win
| they will go to your funeral and with relief will throw a lump of
| earth the woodborer will write your smoothed-over
| biography and do not forgive truly it is not in your
| power to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn
|
| Guess which country remains totalitarian.
| eyeundersand wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed both poems but remain partial to
| Brodsky's- probably a matter of taste and preference.
|
| However, your conclusion (or at least the way I interpreted it)
| that the essence that drove the writing of Herbert's poem was
| also responsible for Polish political outcomes and Russia's
| current state seems a bit far-fetched and reductionist. And
| Brodsky's poem and quotes in the article do not imply a lack of
| courage/defiance to me. On the contrary, I read his poem to
| mean that despite being steadfast in your views, have room for
| gratitude.
| ajuc wrote:
| It's a simplification, obviously. But I do think there's a
| cultural factor in how society approaches the government and
| suffering in general that strongly influences what kind of
| government keeps developing in that society.
|
| When you talk about politics with Russians - they always talk
| about it like it's a force of nature. Like the only choice is
| fatalistic acceptance.
| eyeundersand wrote:
| I agree with you on that point. This fatalistic attitude is
| also often mentioned when discussing how the Indian
| subcontinent remained colonized for so long. I do not know
| enough about Polish history to be able to compare their
| cultural stock to that of the 'East'.
| cassepipe wrote:
| In the first poem, I read Broken eggs make me
| grieve; the omelet, though, makes me vomit
|
| One of my favourite quotes about the Soviet Union is when Panahit
| Istrati after visiting Stalin's russia replied to the "You don't
| make omelet without breaking a few eggs" with :
| All right, I can see the broken eggs. Now where's this omelette
| of yours?
|
| I wonder if it's a reference to this quote
| regnull wrote:
| I'm sure Brodsky is a great poet, but there is also this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Independence_of_Ukraine
| ajuc wrote:
| "In Russia even anarchists are imperialists"
|
| Jozef Pilsudski (which also wasn't a great guy, but about
| Russia he was right)
| Nilofersyed wrote:
| Thats beautiful..
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