CONTEMPT
Desprecio
in Spanish
ringaktning, förakt in Swedish
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It was on a Thursday in 1994 that I, John H. QUIRINDONGO first really understood the meaning of the word CONTEMPT. Before that day, I had never used the word as a matter of course to explain behavior. I divorced my wife over ten (10) yrs prior and the word contempt was never used. But now I realize that deep in my psyche, the disorientation and bickering in Court was overdone. The whole divorce became messy and both sides lied because of the contempt that had grown between us where once we had love. I still don’t know if contempt is a feeling that strikes you suddenly or builds up gradually until the only solution is to change the all-consuming suffocating environment. My wife had been a good sex partner, a good cook, a very clean housekeeper, above all, a good mother and an all around good person. She was the love of my life. In our youth we devoted each other to the family and the marriage. Our mutual commitment to each other was total. Then why did we decide to divorce after 25 years? The answer was the feeling of contempt that had quietly crept into our marriage inflicting a mortal wound after most of our six (6) children had grown up. Life would never be the same again.
It was on a Tuesday...I
remember in my youth in 1950 going as a courier for the Marine Corps to Puerto
Rico escorting a group of draftees to Parris Island. I was 17 years old and it
was on a Tuesday long ago. Sometimes I believe it was a dream and it didn't
happen. The sun shone bright and strong. The weather was hot and the year was
new. As we went to board the plane, a sergeant came over with the roster and
started the boarding roll call. As each recruit passed by the sergeant kicked
the recruit in the buttocks as they passed by as a sign they had been check
off. I said nothing as I was a sergeant myself and didn’t want to convey
disorder. But I do remember the hateful sneer, disain and scorn in the curved
lips when the sergeant went through the outrageous antics. Was this a cruel
method of control? The sneer disappeared when the redneck sergeant handed the
roster to me to finish and smiled to “officially” turn the group over to me for
the plane trip. The bizarre scene reminded me of the movie THE
PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY when Dorian committed his first act of mental
cruelty corrupting the innocent love the beautiful and virginal Sybil VANE had
for Dorian her “Prince Charming.” Dorian decided after Sybil had committed
suicide to hide the picture of his “soul”
because “Dorian saw a change in the appearance of the picture...a barely
visible change in the lips...the slight look of a frown … a scowl ...the look
of a beginning of a sneer...the look of almost a grimace...but nevertheless, it
was there in the lips...an almost imperceptible look of CONTEMPT.” Dorian then
hid the picture in his childhood nursery room for no one to see… because the
sin of contempt was ugly and the picture would show Dorian’s “soul” to everyone
in all of Dorian’s hideous sinful splendor.
I NEVER WENT TO fight in the Korea “police-action” but many veterans of the war came back in 1951-2 with horrible stories of atrocities by both sides. I remember vividly one day at the Camp Lejeune SC base tavern that a war-veteran approached the table looking for a mutual friend and began drinking. He related atrocities committed by the US Marines. He said that at a checkpoint in Korea his buddy, the one he was looking for, pulled a young Korean girl out of a lineup and took her behind some bushes and raped her. She said nothing and didn’t resist as all the soldiers had guns and she feared for her life.
“It was so easy so I did it too.”
“The same girl?” I asked.
“Sure!” he answered. His hands trembled as he spoke and his eyes glazed as though he was reliving the experience. We were all about seventeen (17) yrs old.
In 1987 some time after I was divorced, I met a veteran of Vietnam at a Parents without Partners meeting. He calmly told me that the Vietnamese were not people and he had no problem killing them.
“You mean the Vietcong?” I asked.
“No, all of them. I hate them all. All the Vietnamese.” He said unemotionally.
I believed he was kidding but a while after we parted I realized he was serious and not jesting and that he may have committed atrocities. After that I avoided him.
It was on a Wednesday, the year was 1990, and I remember visiting the county jail in California with a lawyer friend to interview an old woman indicted for sexual offenses against children by hysterical parents. The story was incredible and ridiculous with rumors of a day center with underground tunnels and dungeons that could not be found. It was a crazed mob mentality appeased by a political machine dependant on the electorate.
I said, “Hello” to her and sat down
She said to us, “Do you know the Mexicans are beaten here regularly?”
I asked if she were beaten. She said, “No, but I am a high profile person and not Mexican. They are poor and defenseless. Who can help them? I will.” She vowed.
“Nobody can help.” I said, “People don’t like sticking their necks out for the downtrodden.”
“I will,” She vowed a second time. “When I get out. I see a sardonic smile and I think they get sadistic pleasure when they inflict the punishment.”
She was later released for lack of evidence. She never did do anything about the jailhouse beatings but then again neither did I. All was forgotten after a few months. The whole trial lasted years but all indicted were acquitted. The parents revolted and some dug up the school grounds and found nothing. The parents petitioned for another trial in vain and other day care schools throughout the country suffered the same witch-hunt fruitlessly.
It was on a Thursday, when I saw the beating of Rodney King on TV. I was shocked as was the whole world. “Can we be a civilized nation?” I asked myself. I know life is not fair but do we need to have an innate contempt for our fellow man? Does the public have contempt for no good logical reason? Can we rationalize cruelty? Can we be happy with 8% innocent people in jail? If there are 2 million people in jail then there are 320 thousand innocent people in jail in our country. How can we condone innocent people living a horrible nightmare because of ambitious prosecutors… and police that lie and alter evidence because of their immunity if caught? It is a tacit contempt for the law. Do we have a social, political and a justice system that exacerbates and condones the conviction of the innocent because prosecutors want guilty verdicts at all costs? Do careers of lawyers, policemen, and judges advance with the conviction of the innocent? It seems so. And worst of all, do our civil “servants” have contempt for the unfortunate who may be innocently accused and contempt for a public that says, ”We need more jails; we need more cops; we need more convictions.” In NYC, in a Police hearing a suspect Policeman was asked, "Weren't you afraid of breaking the law?" He said, "No! Who are they going to complain to? We are the Police." Later I saw a pregnant illegal immigrant Mexican woman beaten unmercifully on TV and later crying in the hospital. I said, “Oh, well, here is the same injustice all over again.”
Compensation for Rodney King, a drug-infested, alcoholic criminal who did not ever want to work was 3 million dollars -- for the pregnant Mexican non-criminal who came to work, 300 thousand; 10% of Rodney King's compensation. There was enough contempt for everyone and everything including the compensation.
It was also on a Thursday that I came upon my divorce papers and thought about my long ago expressions of contempt for my wife, a genuinely good person who I once loved, and her contempt for me. I was sad. I knew that we had both failed. A tear rolled down my face and fell on my divorce papers. In spite of flowery words like anger and rage, we are all in the final analysis guilty of contempt. The lawyer for his client, the doctor for his patient, the businessman for his customers, the politician for his electorate, the priest for his flock and at that point it is all over. The lawyer, the doctor, the businessman, the politician, the priest or civil servant reaches the point where we will never recover…the point of incompetence by reason of contempt…of arrogance…of false pride…of abandoning the reason and meaning of life itself. The only logical answer is to divorce ourselves from the situation. There is no oversight, no doing it over, no going home again. We can only look back in anger at a time passed, at a time that will never return, like a gentle breeze of long ago on a stifling hot day that refreshed us at the time but now is gone with the wind. We can only feel an inner rage knowing full well that if we lived life all over again from the beginning, we would make the same stupid mistakes again once more. We can only blame ourselves not our environment, genes or our parents. Many celebrated successful people have come from the humblest of beginnings.
In order to have good we must have evil. In order to have life we must have death. In order to have black we must have white. In order to have right we must have left. In order to have justice we must have crime. In order to have hate we must have resentment. In order to have love we must have indifference. In order to care we must have contempt. We live in a parallel universe of male and female, weak and strong, rich and poor, clean and dirty, right and wrong and all the while vast unfairness.
We all assume positions of man-made authority for the bottom-line…money. Money becomes an incentive; an incentive to make life easier; easier to satisfy a fulfillment of our basic desires. Desires that flatter our egos and bring praise from all quarters. The measure of success in marriage is mainly based on how the money situation is. Iacocca was willing to work for a dollar a year to get his leadership job at Chrysler. He then milked it for mega-millions when he was securely and arrogantly in place superciliously marrying a very young woman although his company floundered in debt. He made Chrysler a profitable company and now is merged as … Daimler-Chrysler.
What RAGE drove OJ Simpson to murder his wife and her friend? There must have been love in the beginning that produced a marriage and two children. When did he develop CONTEMPT for his wife and for life itself? The lives of two innocent people? And why did his wife, Nicole, stay so close and accessible? She had been battered and feared for her life on many occasions. Was it the money he doled to her for the children? In any case, Nicole predicted that OJ would eventually kill her and "OJ (dance) his way out of it." She proved to be right but she didn't foresee a Black Jury being the catalyst for his acquittal. A White Jury later convicted him of a lesser charge of liability for her death with the ONLY alternate Black woman juror disagreeing with the verdict.
In Brazil, India and most Muslim countries a husband who kills his wife (or ex-wife) in a fit of rage with the introduction of a doctor’s insanity certification is temporarily insane and set free. OJ would have never stood trial in these countries. Women are maimed and the husbands stand free from legal action with a similar doctor’s certification. We tend to forget that only in 1920 did women get the right to vote in the USA and that women rode the Black revolution for equality under the law less than fifty years ago. Both women and Blacks have not attained full equal opportunity yet altho’ women have become more qualified and exceed their male counterparts in college degrees and White-Collar jobs.
It is difficult to march in the religious parade when it is so obviously flawed in doctrine and practice with juvenile immature parables, myth and logic. When the religious person’s best argument is brought down they angrily say “and you’re going to HELL!” …. “It’s my way or the highway.” The Bush Republican Right’s mantra…. “Either you’re with me (and god) or against me (and god).” …. “You’re a traitor (to god and motherland) and should leave the country.” “God is with me not you.” “You have no reason to live; you might as well kill yourself!” (As though your suicide were a viable solution for dismissing their “powerful” godly idea.) …. No productive affirmative pro-active method or attitude is shown. All religious arguments are re-active. Finally the last resort becomes “You must have FAITH.” …. “God works in mysterious ways.” and “God is unknowable and god has a “plan.” How do they, the religious icons who regularly fall prey to “sin” “false pride” and homosexuality amid their loud and ostentatious religious ranting and pomp and ceremony know this? Why do so many look for a “resurrected” Messiah…an invisible god…a heavenly life after death from these people who regularly are found to lie outrageously, fornicate unabashedly and steal money locally and internationally from their congregation’s donations to live a rich and affluent life?
Is it fear of death and the unknown that drives their thinking? Or are most Religious people on the lower end of the BELL CURVE? It is certain that President George W.Bush is not the brightest person in the world. LIONEL the talk show lawyer and Bill Maher among others says orthodox religion is related in some way to mental illness! Oscar Wilde says, “Religion is the fashionable substitute for beliefs” and “The only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a past while every sinner has a future.”
When did Jimmy Swaggert and his cadre of televangelists develop contempt for their flock? More important, why does it continue? All this amid scandal after scandal that has even engulfed the Catholic Church in its most vulnerable area, pedophilia and homosexuality. It has also touched the leadership of many other Protestant Christian churches. The religious community has contempt for atheists, other religions as well as each other. Bitter wars have been fought in the name of religion from the beginning of time if we are to believe recorded history and the Bible. But we must realize that religion cannot exist without its opposite atheism. And we ALL die alone. We come from a blank memory, a nothingness and it is there to that nothingness, a dreamless sleep, and a blank memory that we finally return. "Life is but a walking shadow, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." William Shakespeare
FAITH is a fine invention For gentlemen who “see”;
REALITY (My title and other insertions)
THE FARTHEST thunder (reality) that I heard Was nearer than
(religion) the sky,
And rumbles still, though torrid noons Have lain their (religious)
missiles by.
The lightning (knowledge) that preceded it Struck no one but myself,
But I would not exchange the (enlightning) bolt For all the rest of
life. Emily Dickenson
Mark Twain said “It is full of interest. ... obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies in the Bible" but I maintain the lies are more. And the more I read the Bible and uncover the lies, the more it reinforces my atheist beliefs. I believe as Edgar Allen Poe did in THE RAVEN that when we die we are looking forward to "NEVERMORE." And no matter how many times we reason, persuade and try to convince ourselves of an everlasting afterlife to our sensibilities, the answer to DEATH is always the same, the solitary word NEVERMORE. Curiously prior to the appearance of the Raven embodiment of death a gentle rapping produces an empty dark passageway wherein Edgar Allen Poe whispers as an anticipating question from the depths of his being and hears an echo of the name of his long lost almost forgotten love who “died so young” named Lenore. (nothing more)
Love
and Death both knock at Poe’s door. Love has a “gentle rapping” while Death was
“tapping somewhat louder than before.” The suggestion of a Love and Death
association is clear. Love is our reason for living and “until death do we
part” (nothing more)
John Lennon says it differently Imagine there's no Heaven It's easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky Imagine all the people Living for today Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people Living life in peace
To make sense of “an invisible godly entity” makes no sense at all. And to believe in an everlasting life AFTER death in the hereafter makes even less sense. Adam and Eve were never threatened with everlasting damnation in hell forever. Adam, Eve, Noah, Jacob, Abraham, and Isaac were more concerned with “first-born rights” which now is outdated along with animal sacrifice and the stoning to death and other draconian penalties. They and Moses were never offered nor were they seeking heavenly bliss. They never feared everlasting damnation in Hell because they had never heard of it. HELL in the OLD TESTAMENT was never an issue.
There is no mention of a life everlasting AFTER death or a reward of heaven’s everlasting paradise in the Pentateuch (Books of Moses) or the Old Testament for anyone and even Job got his reward on earth. Gehenna in the valley of Honnom (where children were sacrificed and eaten) and Sheol are mentioned in passing in a few places (and problematically in the Apostle’s Creed) - Sheol is translated conveniently or politically correct according to religious dogma as either “the grave” “the pit” or Hell in Psalms in particular but not ever as an everlasting threat. In the whole of the Old Testament only very late within the text and in chronology in Daniel 12.2 is the “life after death” or heaven everlasting reward for a good life and/or everlasting hell damnation for sins issue mentioned parenthetically as a side issue and oddly enough only in a “Last Judgment” end times situation. (“And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awaken, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”) Life everlasting after earthly death is an ancient Egyptian concept which crept into the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions as a deity reward granted and defined by religious leaders for following “GOD’S rules” and contributing money to the deity.
Bush's assertion that "I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job" brings to mind a God (and Bush) as a dull-witted, cognitively-impaired nationalists unable to utter a simple declarative sentence who spend their time preaching "blessed are the warmongers and profit-makers."
Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism are godless Asian religions that don't believe in the Judeo-Christian type person-like embodiment of "god" nor in a Judeo-Christian-Muslim heaven or hell or the Krishna’s endless array of god-saints nor the cults of Reverend Sun Myung Moon Elizabeth Clare Prophet and other modern day prophets.
Shinto, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism are on the other hand mainstream widely followed atheistic-type religions.
All religions are deeply flawed THEORIES that rely solely on faith and cannot “hold water” in secular Court while the “theory of evolution” similar to Albert EINSTEIN’S “THEORY of RELATIVITY” is circumstantial evidence that rises to the standard of LAW relying on observable and discernible facts which can be duplicated time and time again, a most important matter scientifically and legally accepted in any secular Court in the world. FAITH in contrast cannot be duplicated nor analyzed and is not accepted in any secular Court in the world under any circumstance and never the twain shall meet.
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Pablo PICASSO the famous prolific Spanish painter spent the WW II painting without interruption in Paris occupied by the Germans. He was asked after the war “Do you as a very independent artist paint for yourself or for the public?”
He answered, “I paint what I see! The style may change but I seek to express a truth in perception. Some paintings are better than others. If the public does not embrace it, I have failed. Sometimes as in the case of Van Gogh, it takes time but the public in the final analysis is the only judge of beauty, style and perception. An artist whether a writer, singer, actor, movie director or painter cannot endeavor to express art for himself alone. Art is universal regardless of gender, culture, language, custom or Race.”
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Films as ART and their universal themes
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TRUE LOVE is the only reality that matters.
Not the love of parent for child, familial love nor for that matter the love of a dog for its master that is most important. Familial love is a natural UNCONDITIONAL love with no standards of beauty or mental prowess. Familial love seldom goes awry. But when it does, money problems are the chief culprit.
What I mean by TRUE LOVE is selfish love, the love of beauty, beauty of face and/or of form for its own sake, appreciation of talent, success, the appreciation of art, the appreciation of music, the ability to succeed, and in the final analysis the love for a sexual partner and to be loved SEXUALLY in return. We strive and search for love and money all our lives. It is a yearning, an emotion long ago awakened in our youth and we desire to experience its full intensity, the intensity of youth, over and over again and again. Even now when we ALMOST experience the full intensity, it's over before it’s begun. We can only live and relive the full intensity in memory looking back relishing it only a breath and a heartbeat away. We always need that other person to touch and be touched by to re-awaken sensuality all over again and again. A comfortable home, the ability to take exotic vacations, a good job, good health, to procreate, to watch our progeny grow into adulthood and having endless supply of money. Each in tandem, together or alone is not enough. It's always an unending struggle, an elusive passion, a yearning just beyond reach...ever changing. We can never possess it and say, "I have finally found it and touched it. I have a firm hold on it. It's mine for always, TRUE LOVE...MINE FOREVER."
How luscious lies the pea within The pod that Duty locks! Emily Dickenson
The search for true selfish, egotistical, self-centered love is driven by man's eternal hunt for perfection and ultimately the only (religious in a sense if you will) theory that is logical is...survival of the "fittest" at any cost including patriotism and religious arrogance for us and martyrdom for Muslims. This is prime among the things that makes us human and separates us from the animals...nothing more. We, not the animals clothe ourselves and learn how to read and write, how to speak, how to invent religion and the concept of a "perfect" being, a "god." We invented schooling to prepare ourselves for adulthood. We know the inevitability of aging and ultimately, we know the finality of death. We, not the animals, guide our lives within these parameters with LOVE the most important cornerstone. And until DEATH do we part.
Time...(not the "devil" nor damnation by "god")...O-N-L-Y...T-I-M-E is our sole enemy.
But it is still Thursday. Life is not fair. The weak fall. The strong survive. CRYING and music are the only things that ever reached and soothed my brain. Prayers and religion have never helped. Prayers have only brought me GRIEF and feelings of helplessness and despair. My prayers since the time of my youth have never been answered and I slowly came to the realization that there is no "god" but if I am wrong and there is a god, (which I am sure there isn't) he must have CONTEMPT for all people living or dead hiding when atrocities like the Twin Tower horror and other inexplicable crimes happen in the name of “god” and “god” being indifferent to all suffering caused in his name. “Where is love?” I ask for meaning during my whole lifetime in vain with no godly answer! I can't believe what self-ordained "holy" men just as mortal as I am say each with their own agendas. Do so many people “of the cloth” really believe the answer is in organized religion? Or are they dealing in fantasy and self-delusion for monetary gain?
People are born and die every day. The births and deaths are not dissimilar from the animals going through the exact same procedures. Some destined for fortune but the majority destined for a mundane and sometimes cruel life. What of the unwashed in India, China and Africa who die of famine and disease? God was strangely silent as always when my children and all children were brought into this world. Did he not want to see the beginnings of life? Did he not want to see babies born who would later be beggars and thieves, malformed and straight, derelicts and saints? Am I to believe that all their “souls” have “everlasting life?” I was there before my children’s beginnings when they had no “souls” but now will their “souls” have no end limit? I was there when my six (6) children were born. Where was god? I ponder and reflect but the singular answer to whether there is a god comes up forever the same… NO… no… and again no. Thank god I’m an atheist.
When CITIZEN KANE dies he said “rosebud” because he felt he was a failure. What does anyone and everyone say? “I could have done better. I made some poor choices.” Everyone I have spoken to no matter his or her high office when they speak honestly feel personal failure. Is this the true state of the human condition? Woody ALLEN said he was a “failed artist” He has been nominated or won one hundred thirty six (136) awards, more than anyone including Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton & Harold Lloyd combined. He married the young by forty-five (45) yrs or two (2) generations Soon-Yi Previn in (22 December 1997.) They have at present 2004 – two (2) children. He has another child, Satchel O'Sullivan Farrow now called Seamus, previously in 1987 with the unmarried Mia Farrow.
We are ALL “A poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” William Shakespeare MACBETH.
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During my lifetime as an American citizen born in NYC, Germany and Italy tried to export FASCISM. Russia tried to export COMMUNISM. Radical Muslims in SAUDI ARABIA use WAHABISM to fight as terrorists and die as martyrs for what they believe to be injustice. Today 2004 it is the USA who is exporting DEMOCRACY. All four political/religious ideologies are flawed and implementing the ideologies on others by force is a grave error and has been responsible for torture, misery and for hundreds of millions of needless deaths. Is this the true nature of the human condition?
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And yet...I look back on my life and now it all seems like a dream. Did this all really happen? Or is the past only a dream, a delusion, a hallucination, an illusion? Was the past still living in my memory ever the present? Are we programmed with our brains, hormones, intelligence and environment to do what we do? Or is luck, coincidence, chance and/or fate more important and interspersed in the mix? Why do so many incompetent people hold important and sensitive positions? Is the Peter Principle universally alive and thriving? Is life just a Hobson’s choice where we really have no alternative and finally and fatalistically when all's said and done at the end of the day do we always do what we do capriciously? “The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer?” and is an “Illusion the first of all pleasures?” as Oscar Wilde avers and I question?
And when my head hits the pillow tonight will the future (tomorrow) ever come?
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"Because I could
not stop for Death-- He kindly stopped for me--
The Carriage held but just Ourselves-- and Immortality.
We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground--The Roof was scarcely visible—
Since then--'Tis
Centuries--and yet Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the (Carriage) Horses Heads Were toward Eternity--"
“I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly
why I failed?
“For beauty,” I replied.
“And I for truth,— the two are one; We brethren are,” he said.
And so, as kinsmen
met a night, We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips, And covered up our names.” Emily Dickenson
And yet...Friday is still a long way off before Saturday my day of rest and when “eternity” and “immortality” become… nevermore.
THERE
is no frigate like a (blog) book To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot That bears a human soul! Emily Dickenson
The first best thing that happened to me was my first marriage at age
twenty-two (22) in May 15, 1955 to (Dorina) Doris eighteen (18) It produced six
(6) children)
The second (2nd) best was my divorce from (Dorina) Doris Segarra
altho’ it was very traumatic and I was single for twenty (20) yrs 1978-1998
And third (3rd) in chronological order but now the best
thing that ever happened to me is my marriage in 1998 at age sixty-five (65) to
Irina Smirnova nee Kuzmina of Russia at age forty-five (45)
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daily visits posted on monthly basis since Web Page inception on May 10th 2004