Theos-Talk Archives (June 1998 Message tt00120)

kymsmith@micron.net writes
>Bart wrote:
>
>>      Of course, most of us are not gifted with the ability to perceive
>>karma. So what we have to do is TRY. Try to, as dispassionately as
>>possible, determine which action or inaction would further the evolution
>>of the human race the most, based on your
>>interpretation/belief/disbelief of the primary literature and those that
>>have come before and afterwards, and act accordingly.
>
>Bart, I am touched you responded to my query; but, if we did what you
>suggested the person who was threatening to jump would already be shark food
>by the time we figured out how to "act accordingly."

Dear both,

Many years ago I met an old woman who had been in St. Petersburg
(later Leningrad) during the 1917 revolution which led to the creation of
the USSR.  She told me that when the uprising began in her part of the
town, she was with two senior "comrades" who were playing chess and
discussing communist ideologies etc.  They both had a rifle leaning
against the wall beside the window.

"Aren't you going to join in the fighting?" she asked them.

"We are intellectuals, and it is necessary to preserve the intellectuals,
because it is they who will have the task of shaping the future of the
Revolution" one of them replied.

She told me that she looked at them both in disgust, took the two rifles,
and went out into the street herself.

She lived in exile in London as a bag lady.

(The conversations are necessarily paraphrased, but the essence of the
tale is clear enough - I am talking 45 years ago!)

Alan
-------------------
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