Anoushik Posted October 12, 2004 Report Share Posted October 12, 2004 I loved Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 before I fell in love with his Second Concerto. Rachmaninoff doesn't appeal to me as much anymore. I guess it has to do with taste And from Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini I just like the 18th varitation. But then again, who doesn't? It's beautiful music. That's good, Edward. Do you listen to Classical music often? (It's so rare to find people who are listening to Classical music and yet are not musicians. I know Armat also listens to Classical music.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nairi Posted October 12, 2004 Report Share Posted October 12, 2004 (edited) I like Franz Liszt, as a lay person I really enjoy pratically everything I've heard of him so far. As for Khachaturian, he has loads of piano pieces, as far as I know, and I love almost all of them. In fact, I'm listening to one of his sonatas right now. But I'm looking for another piece by him (also piano) that I can't find. I thought it was a toccata, but the one toccata that I found by him, doesn't sound anything like what I remember it to be... It's really frustrating. Edited October 12, 2004 by nairi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ara baliozian Posted October 12, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 12, 2004 Tuesday, October 12, 2004 ************************************ We all swim in a sea of uncertainty, doubt, and anxiety. We hunger for certainties, and when we can’t find them, we invent them; and having invented them, we defend them – sometimes unto death. * Since the beginning of time men have sensed the presence of an invisible and incomprehensible power which they have called god. And in their efforts to make the invisible visible, and the incomprehensible accessible, they have invented an astonishing number of stories, myths, fables, legends, dogmas, rituals, and belief systems which they have called religions. But because they have failed repeatedly to explain the mystery, or, if you wish, to lower god to their own level, they have reached contradictory conclusions. The result has been a long series of disagreements, conflicts, and sometimes even wars and massacres. * It has been said that, man cannot create a single worm, yet, he has created ten thousand gods. * Where people can think for themselves, there will be disagreement. There will be disagreement even where people cannot think for themselves because they have been conditioned not to think but to parrot someone else’s thoughts. * Disagreement in itself is not a problem. The real problem is how we deal with it. Do we see it as a symptom of heresy, blasphemy, or evil, or do we see it as the beginning of a dialogue that may lead to compromise and consensus, which does not mean agreement but working together -- as opposed to working at cross purposes and against one another. So far, religions have failed to follow the path of dialogue and consensus by asserting a monopoly on truth and by legitimizing intolerance. # Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ara baliozian Posted October 12, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 12, 2004 Anoushik: I love Chopin! If you have any doubts, please try the slow movements of his two piano concertos. They are heavenly! the very best! Unique. Lovely! Seductive. Irresistible. and i could go on and on..../ara Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Armen Posted October 12, 2004 Report Share Posted October 12, 2004 Tuesday, October 12, 2004 Since the beginning of time men have sensed the presence of an invisible and incomprehensible power which they have called god. And in their efforts to make the invisible visible, and the incomprehensible accessible, they have invented an astonishing number of stories, myths, fables, legends, dogmas, rituals, and belief systems which they have called religions. But because they have failed repeatedly to explain the mystery, or, if you wish, to lower god to their own level, they have reached contradictory conclusions. The result has been a long series of disagreements, conflicts, and sometimes even wars and massacres. style_images/master/snapback.png Militarist atheism - next religion and beliefe system that creates wars at present. Its wars are going to be the most deadly ones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ara baliozian Posted October 12, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 12, 2004 Anoushik: If you love Bach, i urge you to study the organ too. Some of his most intimate as well as powerful music was composed for that instruments. In case you are not familiar with his organ works, i suggest you start with his Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, and his Fantasia and Fugue in G minor ('the Great")...Enjoy!!!!!!!!/ara Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ara baliozian Posted October 12, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 12, 2004 Militarist atheism - next religion and beliefe system that creates wars at present. Its wars are going to be the most deadly ones. style_images/master/snapback.png i can't imagine anything more sadistic and nasty than religious wars! / ara Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Armen Posted October 12, 2004 Report Share Posted October 12, 2004 i can't imagine anything more sadistic and nasty than religious wars! / ara style_images/master/snapback.png Wars have always been for power, money and greed. At least for those who started them. People may be fooled by religion. But those who started them did it for power and money. At least religious wars had some charm in them, like the cusades or the Arab invasion. Now, the atheist war, lacks even that. Just plain simple killing for money...Is is more disgusting than any war of the past. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sasun Posted October 12, 2004 Report Share Posted October 12, 2004 Wars have always been for power, money and greed. At least for those who started them. People may be fooled by religion. But those who started them did it for power and money. At least religious wars had some charm in them, like the cusades or the Arab invasion. Now, the atheist war, lacks even that. Just plain simple killing for money...Is is more disgusting than any war of the past. style_images/master/snapback.png Interesting observation Armen. But religious wars would be charming only from the winners point of view. The loosing side would be very much humiliated on top of being killed. Imagine you are killed because of your beliefs, in other words because of who you are. And compare that if you were killed for money or land and you were left to believe whatever you wanted. The latter seems less harsh though the motives are more disgusting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Armen Posted October 12, 2004 Report Share Posted October 12, 2004 Interesting observation Armen. But religious wars would be charming only from the winners point of view. The loosing side would be very much humiliated on top of being killed. Imagine you are killed because of your beliefs, in other words because of who you are. And compare that if you were killed for money or land and you were left to believe whatever you wanted. The latter seems less harsh though the motives are more disgusting. style_images/master/snapback.png Sasun, there have never been real wars because of faith. Faith is all about convincing by words, understanding, self-restriction, dialougue. That's the war in terms of faith. If you kill someone because of faith, he is the winner because you were mentally and spiritually weak to argue with him. When faith is used to achieve power over masses that's when it becomes religion. In this sense it is truly disgusting. But I don't see Ara making that clear. Sasun, we are criticising the evils of the past. Religious war is behind us. There are no religious wars at present. Not Ben Laden, not even the Chechens. There leaders fool them but the roots of these wars are not religious. Sasun, when they kill you for money, they kill you because you are a human being. They corrupt the ultimate understanding of human being. Nothing can beat that in terms of being unacceptable for humanity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anoushik Posted October 13, 2004 Report Share Posted October 13, 2004 Anoushik: I love Chopin! If you have any doubts, please try the slow movements of his two piano concertos. They are heavenly! the very best! Unique. Lovely! Seductive. Irresistible. and i could go on and on..../ara style_images/master/snapback.png Yeah, I know, Chopin should be irresistible. I guess it's just a phase I'm going through, which I'm sure won't last that long. But there are some pieces of his that are out-of-this-world experience for me every time I listen to them. One of them is the first etude in F minor from "Trois Nouvelles Etudes". Listen to this, but only with Rubinstein's performance. Ah... it's heaven. Anoushik: If you love Bach, i urge you to study the organ too. Some of his most intimate as well as powerful music was composed for that instruments. In case you are not familiar with his organ works, i suggest you start with his Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, and his Fantasia and Fugue in G minor ('the Great")...Enjoy!!!!!!!!/ara Thanks, this is great advice. Unfortunately I don't have an access to an organ and my time is very limited. (Actually, it should be limited but I can't help myself from staying away from this forum, when ideally I should be spending all my time practicing piano.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anoushik Posted October 13, 2004 Report Share Posted October 13, 2004 (edited) I like Franz Liszt, as a lay person I really enjoy pratically everything I've heard of him so far. As for Khachaturian, he has loads of piano pieces, as far as I know, and I love almost all of them. In fact, I'm listening to one of his sonatas right now. But I'm looking for another piece by him (also piano) that I can't find. I thought it was a toccata, but the one toccata that I found by him, doesn't sound anything like what I remember it to be... It's really frustrating. style_images/master/snapback.png I'm ashamed to say that I haven't heard much Liszt, but everything that I've heard of his are beautiful. As for Khachaturian, I think he only has one Toccata, his most famous piano work (which is actually performed quite often by students at the university level, and no, I haven't played that). Edit: Capitalized Toccata Edited October 13, 2004 by anoushik Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Armen Posted October 13, 2004 Report Share Posted October 13, 2004 Edit: Capitalized Toccata style_images/master/snapback.png How cute Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anoushik Posted October 13, 2004 Report Share Posted October 13, 2004 How cute style_images/master/snapback.png What? Why? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ara baliozian Posted October 13, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 13, 2004 Wednesday, October 13, 2004 ************************************ When we use the word culture we think of art, literature, and music. We forget that culture springs from an invisible source within us. It is above all an expression of how we feel and think. Ignorance, intolerance and envy are not culture but barbarism. * There is ignorance, intolerance and envy everywhere, of course, but they don't set the tone and they don't animate institutions and their policies. Only cultures or societies that are on a downward path do that. * In a letter to the editor in this morning's paper I read: "God is love, yes, certainly! But God is also justice." The question is: What kind of justice are we talking about here? An-eye-for-an-eye justice, or love-your-enemy justice? * Sermonizers can't be contradicted because they speak on the authority of Scriptures that are full of contradictions. * There will come a time when theology and religions in general will be branches of study under psychopathology, like paranoia, schizophrenia, and mass hysteria. And churches will become museums as in Moscow, or movie theaters as in Venice. * I share my understanding with those who are in need for it. As for the others, they shouldn't even waste their valuable time reading me, because I have nothing to say to people who know and understand everything. And they have nothing to say to me either for the very simple reason that once upon a time I too knew and understood everything. # Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ara baliozian Posted October 13, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 13, 2004 about wars: whether there are for money (Marx) or faith (crusades) , there is always a constant in them: men at the top who declare wars and the dupes beneath them who fight and end up as esh nahadags (jackass martyrs). which is why Shaw once declares: we will have peace only when soldiers kill their own generals. / ara Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Armen Posted October 14, 2004 Report Share Posted October 14, 2004 There will come a time when theology and religions in general will be branches of study under psychopathology, like paranoia, schizophrenia, and mass hysteria. And churches will become museums as in Moscow, or movie theaters as in Venice. style_images/master/snapback.png I wanted to reply to this but ... what can one reply to this...? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DominO123 Posted October 14, 2004 Report Share Posted October 14, 2004 (edited) Wednesday, October 13, 2004 There will come a time when theology and religions in general will be branches of study under psychopathology, like paranoia, schizophrenia, and mass hysteria. And churches will become museums as in Moscow, or movie theaters as in Venice. style_images/master/snapback.png It will defeat the purpouses of qualifying what is a pathology and what is not. Considering that a good portion of the population adhere to a religion. A pathology is considered to be something "ub"-normal... religion is shared by an important portion of the world population. Paranoia, maybe, hysteria, maybe... schizophrenia? No! Edited October 14, 2004 by Fadix Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sasun Posted October 14, 2004 Report Share Posted October 14, 2004 There will come a time when theology and religions in general will be branches of study under psychopathology, like paranoia, schizophrenia, and mass hysteria. And churches will become museums as in Moscow, or movie theaters as in Venice. style_images/master/snapback.png How do you know that? Are you a prophet? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sasun Posted October 14, 2004 Report Share Posted October 14, 2004 I wanted to reply to this but ... what can one reply to this...? style_images/master/snapback.png That is Ara's way of parading ignorance. Replies would not matter anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ara baliozian Posted October 14, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 14, 2004 Thursday, October 14, 2004 ************************************ A prominent French philosophy (Gilles Deleuze) once said, what mankind needs more urgently than anything else is an objective and thorough analysis of human stupidity, “against which even the gods cannot compete” (Goethe). * When he runs for a second term, an American presidential candidate may have to defend or misrepresent or cover up four years of mismanagement and blunders. Imagine, if you can, a bishop or an imam defending centuries of intolerance, not to say, lies, sometimes even wars and massacres that have claimed millions of innocent lives. * We cannot explain the incomprehensible, neither can we describe the invisible, and god is both. * Truth is an endless search. He who claims he has found it, lies. * Truth, like god, is beyond our reach. The best we can do is move closer, and the only way we can do that is by exposing and discarding lies, especially the ones that say, god or truth is within our grasp. * A wise man once said: “I am willing to worship a man who says he is searching for the truth; but I will be glad to kill him if he says he found it.” * When presidential candidates debate, they come very close to calling each other hypocrite and liar. I dread to think what bishops and imams will call one another if they ever debate. * Religion is something between you and your god. You don’t need a mosque or cathedral in which to pray. Neither do you need a bishop or an imam who tells you he knows better because he speaks in the name of god. * He who says he understands the incomprehensible, lies. And he who says he can describe the invisible, is a fraud. # Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sasun Posted October 14, 2004 Report Share Posted October 14, 2004 Truth is an endless search. He who claims he has found it, lies. How do you know that? Truth, like god, is beyond our reach. Perhaps beyond your reach, but how do you know it is beyond everyone else's reach? You don’t need a mosque or cathedral in which to pray. Says who? By what authority do you say that? I know many people who do need a cathedral to pray. He who says he understands the incomprehensible, lies. And he who says he can describe the invisible, is a fraud. style_images/master/snapback.png How do you know that? You have a rigid habit of measuring everyone by your own standards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sasun Posted October 14, 2004 Report Share Posted October 14, 2004 Sasun, there have never been real wars because of faith. Faith is all about convincing by words, understanding, self-restriction, dialougue. That's the war in terms of faith. If you kill someone because of faith, he is the winner because you were mentally and spiritually weak to argue with him. When faith is used to achieve power over masses that's when it becomes religion. In this sense it is truly disgusting. But I don't see Ara making that clear. I understand and agree to all that you said about faith. Sasun, we are criticising the evils of the past. Religious war is behind us. There are no religious wars at present. Not Ben Laden, not even the Chechens. There leaders fool them but the roots of these wars are not religious. I was talking about religious wars in general, did not mean to say that at present there are religious wars. And if you go back in history you won't find many wars that had a religious agenda (unless you are Ara Baliozian). But Mohammed's campaigns were pretty much a religious war, there was no alternative - change your faith or die. That is not nice. Sasun, when they kill you for money, they kill you because you are a human being. They corrupt the ultimate understanding of human being. Nothing can beat that in terms of being unacceptable for humanity. style_images/master/snapback.png Well, if you surrender your money they will not kill you. But you would be left to keep your faith. Sure, killing for money is also very degrading to the human nature of the killer. However, the same killer does not care about your faith, and does not try to force you to change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ara baliozian Posted October 15, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 15, 2004 Friday, October 15, 2004 ****************************** Imagine the following scenario: a clergyman in an isolated hicktown somewhere in America (remember DELIVERANCE) is caught torturing and burning at the stake those he views as heretics. Accused of serial killing, he is arrested and tried in a court of law. His lawyer pleads insanity even though the clergyman did what he did because he was following the dictates of his faith just as his medieval predecessors had done. Will the jury’s verdict be guilty or not guilty? * As far as I know, no serious historian has ever ascribed the Inquisition to insanity. Which may suggest that there is no such thing as a clear and universal definition of insanity, insanity is relative, and insanity is in the eye of the beholder or an extension of the zeitgeist (spirit of the time). * I disagree. We can’t adapt definitions to suit our prejudices even if these prejudices are ascribed to religious faith – especially to religious faith. I maintain there is rational conduct and irrational conduct, and the irrational becomes criminal when it claims innocent victims. * One reason I view religious insanity much more dangerous than individual insanity is that, individual insanity may lead to murder, but collective insanity may lead to war and massacre – remember Voltaire’s dictum: “Since it was a religious war, there were no survivors.” * Throughout history man (who is “wolf to other men”) has always found a way to legitimize murder (or the crocodilian fraction of his brain) in the name of this or that higher principle. * Which is why to this day the Turks find it difficult to plead guilty to the charge of genocide. They did what they did because they were following their faith, they believed in the authority of their sultan (who spoke in the name of Allah) and his successors. The Sultan was to them what the Pope is to Catholics, and what English monarchs (“defenders of the faith”) are to Brits. * If we justify religious insanity, or the crimes committed in the name of faith, then we must also agree with the Turks that our so-called genocide is a figment of our collective imagination. Or, the murder of innocent victims is not murder if it is committed in the name of God. * To those who say, we are not Asiatic barbarians and we no longer live in the Middle Ages, I say, in the eyes of jihadist Muslims, we are worse than that: we are degenerate giaours and riffraff who deserve to be exterminated. # Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ara baliozian Posted October 15, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 15, 2004 How do you know that? Perhaps beyond your reach, but how do you know it is beyond everyone else's reach? Says who? By what authority do you say that? I know many people who do need a cathedral to pray. How do you know that? You have a rigid habit of measuring everyone by your own standards. style_images/master/snapback.png Sasun: you ask some very "innocent" questions. but i shall answer them one by one, if i have not already answered them. the incomprehensible is, by definition, incomprehensible. which is why it cannot be understood. the same applies to the invisible. when we try to describe the invisible, we try to make it visible. which is why "man cannot create a single worm but he has created 10,000 gods." because the invisible can assume as many shapes as there are men. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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