God Delusion

Tags

book, faith, God Delusion, religion, Richard Dawkins, summary

Just finished a book with that title by Mr. Richard Dawkins and I have to say that it’s been some time since some book made me think so much. I was born in Christian family and so I have been raised Christian, but throughout life my faith was less and less what Church would it like it to be, I suppose. I still believe in God, but my faith is different. This book made it different even more.

Mr. Dawkins says that most of the bad things happening in the world are to be blamed on religion, one or the other or all of them. I disagree, not because I particularly care for religion, but because I think people are to be blamed for all that is happening in the world. Religion is just one of universal – and powerful – excuses for doing bad things. Or all things. Faith is for people who cannot think for themselves or are too weak-minded to be able to. Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument writes Mr. Dawkins and I agree. If children were taught to question and think through their beliefs, instead of being taught the superior virtue of faith without question, it is a good bet there would be no suicide bombers – and here I only partially agree. Ability to think critically and question everything is something that every one of us should be taught, but by whom? Not all parents or teachers can, simply because average mind cannot tackle such things and maybe this is the reason why it runs towards faith. And if not faith, then something else – greed, lack of perspectives, some other delusion, or simply depression – would supply us with suicide bombers.

Belief may be something providing mental stability to mind occupied with whatever surrounds it. Maybe faith is a fail-safe, giving us sort of ready-made explanation for all things we cannot explain ourselves, maybe this is also why there is so many people but relatively small number of recognized mass religions… we like to sign-up to ready-made recipes of the world, however questionable those may be, simply because we just are too insecure to question endlessly without finding answers. I may be following here old adage that religion is for the masses. But it really is, isn’t it?

Mr. Dawkins says something else that is very interesting: not a single atom that is in your body today was there when [past] event took place… Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made.

If that is really so, if all atoms of our bodies are in constant movement and are being replaced with new or other ones, then where our memories are coming from? How come those are stored for many years? I am sure that either Mr. Dawkins simplifies, or I have found another one of those riddles where the easiest solution to it lies in faith: the easiest answer is, our soul remembers all those things, not our bodies… not atoms, not matter.

Read this book. Regardless if you have faith or not.

 

Book of All Years

Tags

book, Cultures and Organizations, Hofstede, Merkel, Minkov

Just finished what I consider the best book for current times, a book which everyone – especially people living in Europe in times of refugees – should read. Ms. Merkel especially. She should actually be required to read it five times. Aloud.

It is a book where I wish I could memorize more and if I will ever read any book again, this should be the one. Will be the one.

The book is called “Cultures and Organizations” by Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede and Michael Minkov. It is so famous that I will not bore you with my unprofessional analysis of its content (a summary of one of the previous editions can be found here). Believe me though when I tell you that it does explain why a lot of policies considering immigrants fail. Not only that – it gives you very good reason to expect that current refugee crisis in Europe and political program related to it will fail too. And may even end up in violence. Reading that book maybe will not help you to avoid that, but it will help you understand and in some cases, it may stop some nonsense. Hope springs eternal.

What I Read – “A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative” by Roger von Oech

Tags

A whack on the side of the head, book, creativity, experience, innovation, Roger von Oech

I’ve finished that book some time ago already (four years, to be exact) and here is what I noted:

Knowledge is the stuff from which new ideas are made. Nonetheless, knowledge alone won’t make a person creative.

The real key to being creative lies in what we do with our knowledge.

We have a situation where people know more and more about less and less.

Innovation is usually the result of connections of past experience. But if you have the same experiences as everybody else, you’re unlikely to look in a different direction.

The truth contained in those short four sentences above is already widely known, but worth repeating over and over again. It is highly unlikely, especially now, that one person alone will make a groundbreaking innovation. At any rate, it is very difficult. Easier is to build on each other’s ideas. For that, you need to keep an open mind and respect experience of others. This, in part, is also what the below quote says:

Luciano de Crescenzo: “We are all angels with just one wing – we can only fly while embracing one another.”

 

Drawing

Tags

art course, Betty Edwards, book, drawing, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, self-portrait

I started reading a book by Betty Edwards titled “The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain – A course in enhancing creativity and artistic confidence” (Tarcher Penguin, 1999). The book is aimed at people who wanted to learn how to draw, but never had the time to join some sort of art course. Well, I wanted to learn to draw better – I can draw, but I am not satisfied with the results. Since I want to give it more time, I decided to give this book a try. The book starts from some background behind the particular teaching method used in it and it moves quickly to some exercises. The first three are: Self-Portrait, A Person Drawn From Memory and My Hand.

Below you can find a copy of the first exercise: Self-Portrait. I propped a mirror on a chair in front of me, sat down and drew. The face below is supposed to be me – I think that at least I managed to show my concentration… 🙂

 

Whisper to Forget

Tags

book, collection, Lulu, poems, poetry, Roman Czubak, Whisper to Forget

Finally, after months of working on it, my poetry collection is there, available for all to be bought and read at will… (you can buy it here, if you wish).

My first attempt at fame in poetry was a book called “Simple Words”, which I published with Minerva Press publishing house, in the UK. Here is the link to Amazon site, which was selling my book, and here is the link to some information about Minerva, if you are interested. This “publishing house” got my money (they have apparently ripped off many more authors like me) and did not much more, so I got discouraged for quite a while.

I knew that my poems were not necessarily a Nobel prize material, but I thought that maybe some of my friends would still like to own a book I wrote, so sometime this year I came up with an idea to publish it myself, through a web site called Lulu. They are upfront about their costs, web site is done very well and the effect… Well, here is the story:

This was the first version of the new book, and when I got it, I quickly realised that the format was not right for the poetry book. The thing was too big, had soft cover, and I was not happy with it. I also decided to change the title, since I could not use the old title anymore. Inside, pages had a lot of white space, too much for my liking, so back to drawing board I went…

I changed the title to what it is now and I changed the format of the book. It became a hard cover book, with a paper jacket cover. I liked some things about it, but some were still wrong. Look at the top image – the jacket was getting damaged already, the title was in a wrong place and in wrong colours, my name was almost invisible… I also found some typos. Well, back to Lulu I went for the next version:

Now this was my second attempt at the title, which I didn’t like any more than I did in the previous version. It was in the wrong place, somehow this alignment to the right didn’t work like I wanted it to. See also bottom image of the back cover – there is a typo in a date (says 27.0 August), which was obviously wrong. But I liked colour combination, format and feel of the hard cover. Pages were also nicely done, print was good, so I kept on improving the design. Here I need to give credit where it is due – my friend M. helped me a lot, especially looking for those typos… Finally, here is the last version, this is what you will get if you will buy the book:

Here it is… It’s still not perfect (M. found already one more typo), but I will leave it like that. I am happy that I have finished this project and that it took shape. I hope that you will enjoy it when you will buy it… and thank you for any comments you may have after you have read it.