Zawoyo
New member
At first I want to meantion, we just live in freedom only if we have an own state. As long as we don´t haven one we will always be slaves of others.
In the last days I watched a documentation about Chinas authors. One of them was Jiang Rong and he told something about his famous book "Wolf Totem."
In the describtion of his book I saw a very similar condition of the awareness of the Chineses and the Assyrians.
The author told: Most Chineses don´t want freedom, they don´t want to be free. Even the intellectuals are more interested in improving their own life and earning more money than in full freedom, although the intellectuals are these who are able to work for the freedom of the people.
That is because of all the oppression of their government.
We Assyrians are in a similar condition:
There are many of us who don´t want to be free. My opinion is, it´s because of the ill mentality by all the oppressions during the last centuries (more about our ill meantality here: http://www.assyrianvoice.net/forum/index.php?topic=36659.0 )
Many of us in the homeland are too afraid to try to be free and the others in the diaspora are absolutely satisfy with the 'more freedom than in the homeland' and there are even some who think they would be absolutely free in the western diaspora.
The mentality of many of us is so much coined by this centurities old opproession that they accept the world like it is, they don´t have the will to designing the world, at least the designing for our people.
Once a user asked the people something about their nationality. I wrote I am Assyrian by nationality than an other user attacked me by writing this:
This user didn´t want to understand that there is a difference between citizenship of a state and nationality. He rather want that the world tells him something about himself and he negatives to read somthing about how to define nationality and his right to determinate his nationality.
I want to make a conclusion here by quoting a great Assyrian artist:
At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfilment.
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their own pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
Verily all things move wrthin your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
Kahlil Gibran on Freedom
shlome lebonoye
In the last days I watched a documentation about Chinas authors. One of them was Jiang Rong and he told something about his famous book "Wolf Totem."
In the describtion of his book I saw a very similar condition of the awareness of the Chineses and the Assyrians.
The author told: Most Chineses don´t want freedom, they don´t want to be free. Even the intellectuals are more interested in improving their own life and earning more money than in full freedom, although the intellectuals are these who are able to work for the freedom of the people.
That is because of all the oppression of their government.
We Assyrians are in a similar condition:
There are many of us who don´t want to be free. My opinion is, it´s because of the ill mentality by all the oppressions during the last centuries (more about our ill meantality here: http://www.assyrianvoice.net/forum/index.php?topic=36659.0 )
Many of us in the homeland are too afraid to try to be free and the others in the diaspora are absolutely satisfy with the 'more freedom than in the homeland' and there are even some who think they would be absolutely free in the western diaspora.
The mentality of many of us is so much coined by this centurities old opproession that they accept the world like it is, they don´t have the will to designing the world, at least the designing for our people.
Once a user asked the people something about their nationality. I wrote I am Assyrian by nationality than an other user attacked me by writing this:
This user didn´t want to understand that there is a difference between citizenship of a state and nationality. He rather want that the world tells him something about himself and he negatives to read somthing about how to define nationality and his right to determinate his nationality.
I want to make a conclusion here by quoting a great Assyrian artist:
At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfilment.
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their own pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
Verily all things move wrthin your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
Kahlil Gibran on Freedom
shlome lebonoye
