Christmas Cards

Ever since we've got all the computer technology, and ever since we've become more technologically advanced, I've been getting less and less postcards. "We", in this context, are these lonely people from this lonely and amazing planet, a species that has become proud of all advancements that we have achieved.

There has been this great digital divide that has produced uber lazy humans. They want to do everything just by "clicking" once or twice, without much thinking. They hide behind their desktops, laptops, netbooks, playbooks and who knows how are all these other new devices called.

We've become amused to death again, 26 years after Neil Postman said that in his book, this time we've become stupefied to death.

Where are the interesting questions? They are gone too - beside postcards and Christmas cards extinction, questions became extinct too - nobody is asking interesting questions anymore. That means there are no interesting answers. Or better to say there are no answers at all. Everybody asks questions that they can "google", and after they click once in their browser they'll get their answers. That's why I challenge everyone to ask me a question I cannot google, or to be more precise, to ask me an interesting question that Google won't answer well. When I ask humans this question about asking this interesting question, I usually get a smile, and a bit of confusion, and than a question:"How am I going to ask you that??"

Uber lazy humans stopped thinking and all what is left are mediocre questions. OK, to be fair, in many instances I am one of these uber lazy humans, as I use google algorithms to get what I need. This is about being effective and efficient.

Still, I send my postcards and my Christmas cards. Every time when I am travelling I look for postcards, I buy them, I write couple of sentences there and send them to humans that matter to me. I love them deeply because if they were not there, I wouldn't have anyone to send those postcards.

And then, sometime in every November, I go and buy Christmas cards. I choose them carefully, some of them only have 'holiday' greeting, as some of people I love don't celebrate Christmas. I buy the cards, and I feel them in my hands - they are tangible, they have their weight, texture, scent...They are alive, they are more than sets of zeros and ones. Later at home, I write to people I love. I write couple of sentences to each one of them - I always want them to know that I think about them and that I am thankful that I can write to them.

Since I started doing this, and that was a long time ago, the number of Christmas cards I write to people I love every year is smaller. Some of people I loved left this lonely and amazing world, and their addresses were not reachable anymore. Certainly there were other new people who I started loving in the meantime. I hope there will be more new people I love than people who leave.

All of their addresses are written in my brain. I remember them all. When I write the addresses on the postcards, it feels as I am there, at their far destinations. I see their faces too, people that I love, and I always imagine how their faces will look like when they get my postcards and my Christmas cards. It will be something different, not that advanced, I know, and perhaps they'll have to abandon their digital gadgets for a little bit to read couple of sentences written by a real pen, with a real hand, that come from a real heart.

People ask me why I write my postcards and my Christmas cards. I say:"If you could take my youth and hold it in your hand...you would understand".

(At the end I want to pay a tribute to humans who are not lazy and who are aware. You know who these people are).

Kristallnacht in America

I came naive to North America. I was certainly green and I didn't posses knowledge of this foreign world. I certainly didn't know what was real and what was fabricated. I knew what I saw in their films and what I read in their books.

Much of that was brilliant. It took me some time to realize that this art that opened my eyes was created by people who didn't belong to so called "mainstream" movement. They were real artists, their creations were not measurable, they resisted to become drones.

In order to really assess what North America was, I had to see and experience it with my own eyes. I had to live a life in North America to paint a real picture. This real picture, it turned out was not pretty. It was quite opposite to what was presented by the drones who were supported and created by North American regimes.

My brilliant friends have been opposing North American regimes. They have been very lonely in their quest. At the same time they have been very resilient. They've taught me that I should never want to belong to the majority, because by definition, there were already too many people there. On the other hand, minority was the right spot for me.

Through the years, I have been tempted to question everything I've learned before I came to North America. I've been also tempted to question everything I've learned from brilliant North Americans.

The regime wanted me to believe that "greed was good', that there were enemies in every part of the world, and that every other part of the world was inhabited by terrorists. This regime also wanted me to betray real skills that I inherited from my parents and my family - they've never liked my honesty, genuineness and my maturity. They wanted me to lie, to be fake and arrogant, and naive. They wanted me to be unattached.

They wanted me to blindly believe in their freedom and their democracy, in their buzz words and their creations.

They wanted me to see Iranian, Cuban, Russian, Chinese, North Korean, Bolivian, Belarus, Palestinian people as enemies. They've spread lies about these people, and they wanted me to hate them.

I learned what was 'right', what was 'left', and I learned why they have been talking so much about 'freedom' and 'democracy'.

The more they pushed with their propaganda, the more I questioned their motives. I started learning on my own. I started learning who real enemies actually were. I resisted this "amusement to death". I stopped watching their media, only using it for entertainment and to collect proofs about North American regimes crimes.

Real artists that I've learned from continued to deliver their astonishing work, and I was pretty lucky to befriend some of them. However, there were less and less of them - they've got replaced by the regime 'artists'. I knew that the regime has become nervous.

In the meantime, something happened in the land of freedom and democracy. Their own people started getting real motives of their regime masters. These people have been asleep for many years, but now, it seemed, they started waking up.

They've finally got it. They started their revolution to overthrow the regime.

The regime got confused and didn't understand what was going on. I expected that, as drones cannot understand artists.

I was raised to believe that there was justice, equality, and freedom. I lived through that before I came to North America. I was pure and I was not poisoned. The regime tried to pollute me, and tried to enslave me.

They wanted me to be like their drones.

However, I was lucky and smart to recognize regimes intentions. I was lucky to meet all those artists who helped me resist the regime.

Last night we've seen Kristallnacht again, and we've seen some of regime's soldiers. That was one of the first tipping points that will trigger more tipping points. That was start of the end of this North American regime.

Force, called people with hearts and brains started their historic mission. There is no way back. Point of no return has been crossed. The regime still doesn't get it, and when it finally gets it, it will be late. Their heads will roll.

Idea which time has come is here, and it will stay here. No force will be able to stop it. Not even all mighty power that is in regime's hands will be sufficient to stop the outcome of this idea.

It is now clear to me why I came here at first place. I am here to help overthrow the regime. Good thing is that I know how. I know that all artists will join in this fight.

That's what this life expected from me.

The Speech

I haven't written anything for a long time. Not that I was lacking good topics - I just didn't feel I wanted to write anything. However, I got that urge to share something that struck me deeply. It does not need much introduction - you only need to listen to it, to read it....

I didn't write it- someone else did. Charlie Chaplin did it 1940, for his great movie, "The Great Dictator". Also, someone else created a video based on this speech that I borrowed as well.

Sorry for lack of creativity in this case.

The Speech:

I'm sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor, that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate;
has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in:
machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical,
our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little:
More than machinery we need humanity;

More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.

Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say "Do not despair".

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish. . .

Soldiers: don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.

Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers: don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.

In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written:
"The kingdom of God is within man"
Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men; in you, the people.

You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let's use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.

Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!...

Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting, the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality.

The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow, into the light of hope, into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up.