nadaism: first communion

Saturday, May 30, 2009

first communion

Back to my hometown for the first holy communion of my nephew. Yesterday I went to my sisters' place to say hi, he asked me I had any present for him, I reminded him I had already sent some money which was used I was told as a contribution to buy a laptop, and he remembered, he actually knew the exact amount I had given, and showed me in. While the computer was starting up, he made a demonstration of a new karate stroke he had learned, shouting "that's the way christians defend ourselves!"

It took me quite some time to understand who was he referring to; christians of course are we. I did not answer with the retort that came to my mind, nor I tried to provoke him; he had just been to confession and he's supposed to stay clean of bad deeds until tomorrow, so that he may take the host. His mum showed me a photo album they had made, the images of the dressed-up child in such contrived postures that will surely make him blunt when he is grownup. I told my sister she could even consider using them as a blackmailing, "if you don't do as I say I will show around the pictures of your first communion!"

When I did it, myself I was not very happy. I had managed to skip the whole catechesis and only the very last day I went to the priest; he was quite upset with me but at least I was there for the rehearsal, in which we practiced how to go from the corridor to behind the altar and back, all the time forming nice queues ordered by our heights. Height ordering was very important for some reason. The day after, the big day of the performance, I made a mistake and broke the height line, and the priest was so angry. Anyway, I never saw him again.

I asked my sister; height arrangement seems to be still important nowadays. The priest of my nephew had apologized in advance, since he had started the rehearsals one month before and it could be that in the meantime some of the kids had shot up and the height order would not be respected anymore.

For the rest, there are differences as well: they've prepared quite a party after the event, like small scale wedding, including lunch for the family and the friends of the nephew, around 15; even worse, explains my sister, the nephew has been invited to around 15 communions of his friends, and has to bring up a present at each of them, besides everything happens in around one month and thus there are some he cannot assist to because of overlapping.

My mum has been this morning in the garden pickup up some rose petals, and since there were not enough rosebushes, some other flowers as well. Tomorrow first thing is to lay them at the outside of the house for my nephew so that he steps on them when he comes out to join a kind of procession which goes from the town hall to a chapel at the outskirts of the village, and then back to the big church. This is a sort of tradition at the place where my sister lives. Also, a band follows and plays grandiose music.

I don't know if I have to carry on, I hope I have made my point already.

(By the way, I'm relieved: it's been around two months from my last post and the weekly number of visits is slowly going to zero. Very slowly, though, still makes me wonder about the way Internet works.)

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the second language

The second language refers to a quite interesting proposal by Peter Sloterdijk: to try to translate more acuratelly some important words, e.g. enligtenment, in a way everybody (religious or not) could agree with.

There are new needs in the west, where everything has become so rationalistic, but there is an obvious source of misunderstanding when two people think about the same word in different ways. I'll try to find a writter or a phylosopher or a thinker that could have made a clarifying interpretation of 4 concepts: enlightenment, redemption, liberation and devotion.

differences

Is there any essential difference between a man and a woman?

Ok, there's obvious and visible differences. But let's look at it from another point of view.

If you try to live with somebody, and share most of your time, and be completely intimate, and shop furniture together, and even raise children...

do you expect it to be easy to understand and accept the human being you are sharing everything with?

are you not using the fact that your partner is a man or a women as an excuse because you don't understand anything about him/her?

These below are the differences I will accept. For the rest, I'd like to try to prove that men and women think the same way.

Body shapes. Some internal organs. Hormones. "Those days of the month". And only women get pregnant. There are some phisological differences everybody could agree with.

There's cultural differences: men and women are not educated the same way, i.e. they are repressed in different ways. For instance, men should not cry, women should always look beautiful.

There's the common vague understanding that men are somewhat more rational, (in their behaviour and decisions), while women are somehow more connected to their emotions, (i.e. women manage their emotions in a better way, and use them).

And there's the mysterious way in which women know exactly how much more they feel like eating or drinking, and in consecuense at the end of the meal they just sip your glass or cut a portion of a precise weight from your plate - it's exactly the piece they're missing.

The nadaist contract

Do you want to know if a person who passes all the time doing nothing would be able to live a normal and happy life?

The principles

- We humans continually pursue our minor objectives; when achieved, we only realise that they were not satisfactory, and then we look for a new target. A nadaist breaks the circle by not having any objective at all.

- The mind needs to be occupied, the process of thought is endless: either it may be killed (e.g. tv, music, a novel, alcohol, drugs), or given a focus (sometimes the same tv, music, a novel, also studying, investigating, playing an instrument, or other activities that require discipline). Both mechanisms are the same in essence. A perfect nadaist despises any objective, and would rather stop thinking. However thought is difficult to stop and also is sometimes useful (only sometimes; most of the time our thoughts wander aimlessly). A human nadaist is simply aware of how pointless it is either to kill or to focus thought, but uses all methods at hand when thought cannot be stopped.

- A perfect nadaist would kill thought and spend all the time alone and doing nothing. A human nadaist would amaze him/herself choicelessly with many things, would cultivate friendship, and even have a family, why not. Any nadaist knows that thought cannot kill itself by thinking, just tries to listen to his/her thinking, with no resistance.

- Nadaism requires discipline, so that there is no discipline. A nadaist is very careful with randomness, since a perfect chaos would become a pattern, which is the thing to fight against.

- A careless reader may associate nadaism with total uncertainty. But if uncertanty was to be total, then it would become a certainty. There's always room in a nadaist for a few safe places to shelter when thought is pressing up.

- The nadaist is not looking for unhappiness or misery. A nadaist just wants to live in the present, with no concerns about the past or the future, and with no patterns.

Exercises

These are practices that may help to budding nadaists, but they cannot be taken literally since they would become patterns.

- Go to bed and wake up as irregularly as possible. Go for naps at unexpected moments.

- Join courses in different subjects that you may or may not be interested in, and never finish them.

- Hire somebody to go to your home and rearrange your stuff, so that you don't know anymore where anything is.

All hobbies are allowed (reading, sports, games, whatever), but only as a pastime, carefully handled, so that there is no sense of achievement. e.g. a nadaist may go to the cinema, but will remember the least technical details, just the ones to select other movies that are not too boring, and pursuing no targets like following up a full career or a cinema current. A nadaist may also go travelling, just for the amusement. He/she will need to plan the trip to some extent, to try to get to the places that are not pointless, to avoid those in which there is not really much to do. Anyway the nadaist will for sure feel pretty much at ease wherever, will be an independent traveller, flexible, and will move around according to moods.

The contract

I'm committing to follow the nadaist principles. I will not work, I will not engage into any activity at all in the long term, not even in the medium term. I will amaze myself with methods that only try to kill or focus thought in the moment, in a short sight. In order to become a nadaist, I need YOUR MONEY for MY LIVING. If not, I would not be able to follow the principles.

- I will use the money strictly for living and for selfish purposes.

- I will carefully track all the money of each of the contributors.

- If I ever refute nadaism, I will pay 50% of any future income to the nadaist fund, which will give the money back to the contributors proportionally, adding a 100% interest plus inflation. When the total amount has been repayed, I, the failed nadaist, will go back to live a normal life.

- In case of death, my belongings will go 100% to the nadaist fund.

- I will log my daily activity, and if anything is considered to be against the principles, any contributor may issue a complaint. I'll have the right to defend myself, to prove that I was pursuing no objectives. At the end there will be a weighted votation for all the contributors. If I'm declared a failed nadaist, I will give 50% of any future income to the nadaist fund, which will return the money to the contributors, adding 10% interest plus inflation.

- The contributors decide when and what amounts, when to stop paying, but they cannot disengage. They can only expect their money back, with interest, in the cases above.

nadaism

Nadaism is not dead