Pathos, not politics!

Dear Parviz

I really and truly honestly believe that the world would be a much better and more fascinating place if dualism was just gone. It has nothing to do with politics but everything to do with my pathos. This is why I prefer to deal with modern atheists who find atheism shortcoming and are looking for NEW ways of living life spiritually and creatively fulfilling than dealing once more with the old dualists trying to find excuses to act stupidly as if Nietzsche's tearing down of their pants had never happened. Let's make new and fresh and exciting things, history has only become a burden (I even envy Zarathushtra and his generation in this sense, they had no history to relate to, wonderful!). Having said this. I don't mind traditions, of course I don't, and I love our traditions within Z (spending some time in Mobed Jamshidi's white prayer room at the European Zoroastrian Center in Paris last week was wonderful!!!), but spare me the dualist rabble. Please.

Ushta
Alexander

2010/2/10 Parviz Varjavand

Dear Alex,

My post was not an old post, so why did you change its title if you are addressing the issue I brought up? I like it that you are a good politician and do not want to irritate others, I wish I could also do things as tactfully as you. But you know Alex, if you become too much of a politician, others will not wake up to notice fine points.You know what I am talking about, so why do you try not to let others develop a sensitivity to the smell, the smell of a Platonist world view gone dead, a Minoo up there basking in its perfection and a Guity down here caught in mundane imperfection struggling to get Up-There. We need to develop a sensitive nose for the smell of this dead idea, no matter how poetically and beautifully it is being expressed.

I know a lot of Masnavi by hard and I enjoy chanting it, Rumi's poetry is truly beautiful and relaxing to get drunk on. One of my friends, Parviz Sahabi, who was a student of Allameye Jafarey (a great Persian scholar of Rumi's Masnavi) conducts seminars teaching Rumi. In his class once, I just mentioned that I smell this smell and they had to kick me out of the Seminar. They could not stand the fact that all their bells and whistles was so that they would be able to keep a dead concept alive in-spite of the smell in the air.

Why do you think they chant and burn so much incense in the Churches? It is to keep the smell down. Our concepts should be boldly frank and fresh, otherwise the fumes of incense and the chanting of poetry will drown the smell and no one will notice that something is dead here, no one but a few like you and Dino.

Yours as always,
Parviz


--- On Wed, 2/10/10, Alexander Bard wrote:

From: Alexander Bard
Subject: [Ushta] Zarathushtra in the Gathas vs Zarathustra in Nietzsche's philosophy
To: Ushta@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, February 10, 2010, 2:29 AM


When Friedrich Nietzsche's Zarathushtra said that God is dead he meant that the PLATONIST IDEA was dead.
The idea that there is a perfect world superior to our imperfect world is dead. This is death of OBJECTIVITY and the realisation that all truths are by necessity subjective and this is something we have to deal with.
Nietzsche's dead God certainly does NOT include Ahura Mazda. Instead, Nietzsche would be a strong proponent of Ahura and quite likely of Mazda too. His central ethical concept of "amor fati" is as Zoroastrian as anything could possibly be. It could just as well have come from Zarathushtra's own mouth in The Gathas.
The widespread idea that Nietzsche picked Zarathushtra by chance has repeatedly been proven wrong. Nietzsche was well versed in Sanskrit and Avesta since he was a professor of PHILOLOGY rather than Philosophy and there was a tremendous scholar interest in all things Indo-Iranian in Germany in the mid 19th century.
Nietzsche also confirms this himself in his later work "Ecce Homo" where he states that he picked Zarathushtra as his lead figure since he saw Zarathushtra's deliberations as the Birth of Ethics in human history (or the birth of moral philosophy, as most translations to English would suggest). Who would then be better suited to ask the questions confronting modern man than Zarathushtra himself?
Ushta
Alexander

2010/2/10 Parviz Varjavand

I feel that there are two Zarathustras. One is the Zarathustra of the Gathas, the other is the Zarathustra of Nietzsche. When Nietzsche's Zarathustra said that "God is Dead", was he also talking about Ahoora Mazda? When so many of us talk about Ahoora Mazda, we argue very hard that He/She is not dead like the others, but why is there a slight smell of death in the air? We will not get rid of that smell if we do not make a clean break with the other Dead Paradigms. Who amongst us is doing this? We need a new Zoroastrianism that Nietsche would want to convert to, not one that fools would gravitate to in order to dull the pain of their meaningless existences.