Essays and Articles

Pierwsze 50%

Here I present the collection of some things I wrote during my studies. You’ll find here short and long(er) essays, and some articles written for our magazine, SWOT, which I founded few years ago. If you bump into any of these texts and find it useful for, let’s say, your classes or lessons, you are allowed to use them, providing that you won’t forget my name and the source of the chosen text (you know, a link!) There shouldn’t be any mistakes as the texts have been thoroughly checked by lecturers from the United States and England. If you find any, let me know (Microsoft Word sometimes plays tricks). Updated on the 22nd of July, 2010.

PS: Remember that opinions expressed in following essays may not necesserily be personal beliefs of the author ;=) ----

SHORT ESSAYS:

Fizzy drinks, junk food and sugar-laden snacks should not be available at school. This, plus regular physical exercise would benefit children’s ability to learn.

Children, kids, pupils – these words very often conjures the images of fragile and tiny sweet creatures running deftly around and innocently romping all the time. In fact, it is enough to walk through a school corridor in order to see plumpy, abdominous creatures rolling clumsily to and fro and swaying queerly from side to side on their shockingly short and fantastically fat limbs. Grotesque, gargoyle-like faces do not resemble the features of stereotypical schoolchildren, who, in fact, with their swine’s eyes deeply hidden behind thick layers of pendulous fat, seem to be deformed monsters from a class b horror. Of course, we know the culprits! Fizzy drinks, junk food and sugar-laden snacks available at Mrs Krysia’s or other (pan)demonic forces agent’s chamber placed on the ground floor (undoubtedly because it is closer to hell than the first, or the second, floor is). This usually tiny and inconspicuously inconspicuous room is de facto a pit full of satanic bubbles, diabolically sneaky sausages, harmlessly crunchy devilish crisps and other infernal evil doers! It is high time we said no! It is high time we eventually outlawed those textus adiposus-friendly killers of our poor, with every year more and more miserably misshapen, choking-on-chips children! One idea that should be instantly put into practice is to dismiss Mrs Krysia and hire a professional dietetician who would provide our children with fresh refreshing celestial milk or divine cold cod-liver oil instead of corruptive, corrosive Coke (as everyone knows, children love milk and probably they like cod-liver oil even more!), spinach instead of corpulent casseroles (spinach a day keeps a doctor away!), and slender slices of turgid turnip instead of sugar-laden so-sweet snacks (since a human body does not need sugar at all!). Another idea is to remove all desks and chairs from classrooms and corridors. Sitting is the best ally of fat – it is not a secret that the more one sits, the fatter one is. It would also benefit children’s ability to learn as one cannot sleep while standing (which happens very often since – as a saying goes – a postern desk make a consciousness-thief). Before buying healthy delicacies in a school-shop a child would have to do some press-ups, bending exercises, or jump few times on one leg (it would be included in a price, e.g. 2 PLN plus 10 jumps). Instead of giving books to the best learners they should be given some heavy toys (like skipping ropes made of anchor chains), medicine balls, kits of young Hephaestus (which child would not like to get a new hammer and shining anvil? – and how useful for muscles and air circulation in one’s brain it is!), DVDs with Cindy Crawford aerobic exercises, and – for those really smart – a subscription to the “Lancet” journal. Does it sound strange? For somebody brought up on candies and other teeth- and shape-destroyers indeed, these may be the insane ideas of a loony lunatic, but for a teacher bumping into bulging bellies of a boisterous bunch of blunt-brained butter-balls such concepts are the soundest solutions that may be suggested and should be immediately introduced. 2010 -------------- Plastic surgery – the way to achieve eternal youth?

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him. How imperfect his image must be if the clinics performing plastic surgery are constantly beleaguered by swarms of poor women with protruding ears, Chopin noses, tiny breasts, folds of fat, too thin mouths, complex webs of wrinkles, merciless cellulite, and other inconceivable monstrosities which turn their lives into unspoken hell. One, who is able to realise the amount of shed blood and litres of Botox injected to bolster physical faults, may easily question God’s competence as a creator of the human race. How could such a perfect being like God create something such imperfect like (wo)man? Who the heck gave him this job?! Heads should roll! It isn’t a secret that it is mostly females who are tantalised by the promises of physical rejuvenation. They try to do everything in order to cheat their arch enemy, time, they let themselves to be cut like slices of raw meat at slaughter just to please their boundless vanity. Every, even the ugliest creature who cannot be changed through endless plastic surgery, wants to be the embodyment of the mythical Helen of Troy. It may be understood and in a way justified in the case of young women who would still like to offer something to their men (yes, the author is a chauvinist), but it is ludicrous in the case of women whose heyday have passed long long ago. The neurotoxic proteins contained in the chemical solutions are notoriously confused with the water from the legendary Fountain of Youth and every quack with a lancet is mistaken for Hebe possessing an infinitude of divine nectar. Some people still think they can elude the time. Some people still think they can live forever. But the truth is that all people pass away, all cells decay, all tissues eventually are transformed into a malodorous slime full of writhing maggots. Even faces after a myriad of plastic surgery look odious when they are twisted with pain caused by senile diseases. A human body has its own rhythm and cycles; in a particular time no botox, no juxtaposition of the finest chemical elements can keep its artificial youth. Skin becomes misshaped, and corrected body parts start to look curious. Plastic surgery turns out to be a collosus on clay legs which miserably falls over, being pressed down by the weight of time. The flatten giant, once robust, fit, and (quasi)young, sooner or later will look like a pathetic reminiscence of futile attempts to regain one’s youth. Sooner or later everybody will notice that the King is naked! Sooner or later every Dorian Gray will die old and hideous. There is nothing beautiful in desperate keeping of outer youth. The real, praiseworthy challenge is to keep the youth inside. Real beauty may be found in accepting the unchangeable and perennial verity of passing away. One should get old with dignity and a smile, one should face predestination like a warrior who can be neither broken nor defeated. It IS possible to die young even while being a wrinkled, hunched octogenarian, as it is the Soul and the Spirit that determine our age, not the body which, alas!, for dust art, unto dust shalt return. 2010 ----------

Traditionally men were the breadwinners and women the homemakers. Today, the changes to this situation are the cause of family breakdowns and dissatisfaction.

A man, exhausted but exhilarated, stood on the cavestep. The flock of his cheerful children – grinning broadly - ran towards him. His wife, sitting somewhere in the depth of the cave, looked with pride and gaiety at his shape emerging from the bright circle of daylight. „This is my man!” – she thought with admiration, watching him dropping the massive mammoth from his muscular back. „This is my woman!” – he thought gazing at fur clothes she had made of wolves he had brought home few days earlier. Unfortunately, the mammoths have gone and those beautiful times have passed away. Caves have been replaced by houses, mammoths by banknotes, and the word „woman” has changed into „wombed-man”. A subversive moral revolution led by a band of histrionicaly hysteric hydras has turned the world upside-down, which has led to revaluing of all previous values and caused immense chaos in the perception of the roles within a family. As a result one can observe the increasing rate of divorces and family breakdowns, which stems from the mutual dissatisfaction of both spouses. Contrary to the opinions presented by eulogists of the superiority of humans and their exceptional character, people are mammals, and mammals – surprised? - are animals. We belong to the animal kingdom in which it is the male who hunts and it is the female who is preordained to give birth and bring up the brood. We are the part of a mechanism in which it is the man who is programmed by Nature to feed the family, and it is the woman who is predestined to look after the home and children. Instead, we have working couples, neglected offspring, and neverending clacker-chack-chats (how long one is able to talk about work, and work, and work?) resulting in quarrels or unendurable silence. What a fiddle-faddle seems to be the mumbling of those who apotheosize so-called „partnership”! How ridiculous is the stammering of those who extol the division of the roles! „We should cooperate” , they fervently rave, being infected by feministic germs and seized by a mutated bacteria responsible for the plague of - pompously called - „equal rights”. They have probably forgotten that the model of a family characteristic of all ages before the 20th century had also included a division of roles. Women were busy with the children, men were engaged in earning money, indispensable to achieve the aim which was to let human kind to survive. Should a division of roles be based on doing everything together? Is doing different things seperatedly an unfair division? If it was possible, feminists undoubtedly would like men to menstruate and give birth. Luckily, Nature is wiser than those bellicose and belligerent wom(bed-m)en and, fortunately, there are things that cannot be desecrated by the perilous jaws of black widows… The changes to traditional marriage take its bloody toll. Depression (men, not being heads of their families, cannot fulfill themselves), divorces (exhausted and always busy spouses do not talk to each other too often), young criminals (parents are always at work so there is nobody to teach children moral values), and the perennial calling for more and more freedom for the weaker(?!) sex.

March, 2010 -------

Single parent families are not the ideal environment in which to raise a child – there should always be a father and mother.

Let’s call him Mike. He is in his middle thirties, some women could even say he is quite a good looking man. His primitive tattoos are covered by the orange sleeves of his uniform and his past is hidden behind everyday problems. But when the night comes, the ghosts of bygone times come back and torment poor Mike. Shouts of his (thank God!) dead mother still seem to be as loud as they used to be, his rotten (praise the Lord!) father’s hand clutching his throat is still as heavy as in the vague, shattered remnants of his traumatised memory.. Although Mike is a big man, in a small cell, together with other prisoners, and thousands of Mikes like him in the whole country, he is just a little child who only looks as an adult. He was brought up a in a normal family. He had a mother, he had a father, oh!, how fantastic – despite the bruises, insults, hunger, and tears - his childhood must have been! Hitler also had both parents, as did Timothy McVeigh, Unabomber Kaczynski [sic], Kim Jong-il and other tyrants, murderers, and mental derelicts. Does it give me the right to claim that nuclear families are the wrong environment for raising children? Those who preach that a single parent family (whatever the reasons for not having one of the parents may be) is not the ideal environment to raise a child should think about such names as Clinton (whose father died in a car accident when William was a babbling infant), Armstrong (the one who played the trumpet and who never had an opportunity to meet his father) and many other eminent and famous people like Lennon, Rousseau, Piaf, Tolstoy, Bach, Mandela, Phelps, Cosby, Cruise, Jolie, even Aristotle and Obama! Does it really matter if a child has got one or two parents? Is not it sometimes better to have one, loving and caring parent instead of two complete strangers who perorate with money or, what is worse, their always-too-fast and always-too-weighty fists? Those omniscient guards of dogmatically the rightest morality and self-proclaimed legislators of the one and the only one social(istic) order, those infallible individuals who ardently claim that this should be like that and that should look like this, need to take a course in history in order to realise that a single-parent family has always been, in fact, something really natural throughout the turbulent fate of human existence - every conflict, since time immemorial, has resulted in thousands and even millions (WW II) of bereaved children; every pestilence, catastrophe, and disaster has left behind a myriad of terror-struck orphans, and (is not it strange?) the Earth is still circling in its orbit and our species – hurray! hurray! – have not died out yet (and anticipating accusations from those who adamantly advocate the only right and legitimate model of family, although ice caps have been melting for years, volcanic ashes are floating above Europe, and floods inundate some countries, probably, as reasearches indicate, it is not the fault of broken families).

May, 2010 ------------

The media today cannot in a way be considered unbiased. It’s first priority is profit.

Newspapers, magazines, TV and radio channels unanimously claim they are a fresh breeze of the long-awaited freedom and their mission is to provide us with dry facts, real information, and unbiased sensation. They purport to be disinterested trumpets of democracy which will crumble the walls of tyrannized Jericho, they claim to be the blast which will turn depraved Sodom and Gomorrah into flambering pile of sinful ashes. All of this in the name of freedom, for the people’s sake, selflessly, due to sense of decency, duty, legality, responsibility, justice, equity and other (nonsensical) senses. Fiddle-de-de, nothing of the kind! In fact, the only sense that the media possess is a sense of humour. Rightheousness, mission, messianism, martyrdom – is there anyone who, while listening to it, does not want to burst into laughter? Is anybody, seeing the formidable edifices of the media, arranged with byzantine pomp, able to believe in such stale platitudes? Do you remember one of the newcasters who was sobbing like a child in front of cameras when Wojtyła died? Seeing him in the newest model of his hip top-notch BMW, would anyone still consider him to be a good Christian? Was not it Jesus who once spake: „go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor (…) and come and follow me”? Why was this presenter blabbering? Did he, as well as the national TV, believe in Christian values? Of course not! He was whimpering since the viewers wanted him to be the reflection of their own pathetic beings, to be one of them, to be – like they were - immersed in overwhelming grief and hysterical mourning. They did not see that he, having wiped away his crocodile tears, got in his fancy vehicle and drove away to an expensive, posh hotel beyond the reach of average mortals who – when that pitiful melodrama was finally over, at least for one night – were, naturally, forced to watch protracted commercials. Violent emotions, in fact, are highly coveted, that is why we are showered with murders, rapes, accidents, catastrophies, wars, fights, personal disasters, crime… That is the reason why we are shown the disabled, the crippled, the bereaved, the vulnerable babies (they are so touching! – aren’t they?), and our eyeballs are attacked by a flashing, highlighted account code and telephone number (why, for gods’ sake, will TV not help those children itself; tomorrow, for those commercials broadcast during “Transformers”, one of the private stations begging people for money will chalk up £ 450,000!) The policy „squeeze their hearts first, and then squeeze their wallets” is based on emotions, tampering with moral spine, the use of spin tactics, and is the masterpiece of cynical manipulators and skilled social engineers. Is not it obvious that some people make a killing on the victims of Fortune? Psychologists, eggheads working in advertising agencies, accountants, cellular telecommunications providers, the whole gang of Pharisees salivating for the money of sensitive and compassionate dupes, must eat something and none of them would like to work for a mere „thank you”. Do they care for children from Beslan, Kosovo, and other backwoods somewhere on the edge of the civilization? Unfortunately, I venture to doubt it… The alleged help is beneficial both for the budget and image of TV channels, which seem to be caring, helping Samaritans standing up for the opressed and abandoned. Nobody wants to support fat cats, everyone wishes to see archetypical heroes who, someday, may help them in need (blessed are the poor in reason, for theirs is the kingdom of fools!) Nevertheless, once again, as always, millions will turn on millions of TV sets this evening. Millions will be inundated with political games, blood, tragedy, tears, then filled with pity and fear, later fed with bogus propaganda of phoney love, meanwhile being shown advertisements, and, in the end, asked for money. And tomorrow, once again, I will see the MSN status of my friend saying „ Wow! I was watching commercials and suddenly they showed a movie!”

April 2010 ----

It's impossible to keep the Ten commandments in today's world. They no longer have any relevance.'

Most people know the story of Moses who was given two stone tablets inscribed with commandments. Some people believe they were truly a gift from the Highest, but atheists, agnostics, and rational people consider it a fairy tale, or at least another humdrum allegory, which is nothing special if comes to the Scripture. Nevertheless, multitudinous interpretations, either preposterous or logical, will not change the fact that the ten Commandments had existed earlier , for the commandments are nothing more than a written oral moral code, a system of universal rules (partly, as scientists claim, rooted even in monkeys). Why were they created and why had they existed before Moses’ times? The answer is obvious – they were needed. Why does the Decalogue still exist in a form of codified law? Because it is still needed. But why, together with the law, along with apt punishment, „divine” rules are so indispenable? Since they’ve been permanently broken. Is it possible to keep ten commandments in today’s world? Let alone the fact that today we know only nine commandments (as the „Holy” Church removed, so popular and important among „profanum vulgus”, a commandment forbidding iconoclasm), the answer should be different – has it EVER been possible to keep God’s (?) commands? Did not people have gods before Yahweh? Have not they worshipped Mammon since time immemorial? Haven’t people knelt down before idols for ages? Are not churches full of Marys, Jesuses, gangs of saints gazing at people from paintings, sculptures, and other works of “art”? Have not crowds, either together or individually, called upon God without any reason? Do they know that the biblical Sabbath, in fact, before a wisely (and knavishly) commited act of syncretism, concerned FRIDAY, not the pagan Sunday (Sol Invictus, undoubtedly, is enormously glad)? Have all mothers and fathers always been honored? Do not we hear in the news about butchered parents? Have not similar stories taken place through the ages? Have not people murdered one another? Has not the Church, in the name of God, tortured, abused, persecuted, prosecuted, and eventually slaughtered “infidels”? Adultery? One should read “The Decameron” and get to know about the morality of people living in Bocacchio’s times, one should become immersed in all those French romances, and the biographies of kings’ (and also popes’!) Maybe stealing, miraculously and inexplicably, appeared in our times? Was not it the Church that stole the rights for Constantinople? There has always been retribution for stealing as stealing has been always, so to speak, popular (raids of barbarians and those “civilised”, petty thefts, or more veiled and legalised thefts commited by the rich exploiting the poor, etc.) Bearing false witness? Was not it the seven-headed beast who encouraged to accuse others of witchcraft? Maybe, before the twentieth century, there had never been any coveting of others’ wives and houses? (in fact, putting women with physical property in one line sounds interesting, does not it?) In fact, the ten Commandments has never had any relevance. Created for the mob to keep peace and prevent society from anarchy and dispersion, those rules have always been ignored by rulers, the rich, and even by the hierarchs of the Church(es). In fact, religion has nothing to do with the Decalogue (although the Decalogue is inextricably connected with religion) as there have been cruel saints and holy heretics, good kings and bad kings, moral and immoral gentry, and there have always been, and always will be, people who put themselves above – no matter if secular or religious – law. April 2010 -----

Socialising on the Internet is replacing more traditional meetings between people. Should we worry that more individuals are living in a virtual world, divorced from reality?

Facebook, Nasza Klasa, chats, messangers, forums, blogs... There are plenty of possibilities to express oneself, there is a plethora of virtual, perfect uber-friends who are, in their jocosity, so joyfully jolly, so (appallingly) appealing, and really so unreal that one surely must be grateful to great God for such a (.gif-giving) gift like the Internet. Should we worry about those who worship the work of panderous pundits sitting somewhere on the other side of the cable, perennialy pondering over ameliorating amazing amenities, which would compeltely cut the users of their mass masterpieces from their families and friends who live somewhere out there in the real, dark, dull and dreary world in which a mouse at home is considered as vermin and keys are not used to talk but for more practical application (e.g. to open the door)? Should we worry that there are chatty chatterboxes who can chat only on the Internet forasmuch when it comes to vis-a-vis conversation they have difficulties with formulating well-formed sounds with the exception of formless phrases devoid of any grammatical grace and consistent content? Should we worry that their bodies rot and their brains decay in front of their monitors while monitoring (how!) monotonously (often) monosyllabic, (always) monochromatic (indisputable) monstrosities in the form of crude sentences or (indubitably) absurd a66r3v1at10ns such as “CU”, “UDM”, or “MRA”? Should we… ? In fact, we shouldn’t. Verily, all those who demonise the Internet and worry about a brainless bunch of blockheads should be contended as the society of the “real” people is at least free of primitive Neanderthals, who can only (barely) utter simple sounds and do not know how to successfully socialise with others. Let them sit before the screen, urinate into jars, raise their folds of fat, live in their imaginary, insubstantial dimension. Let them talk to all those poor fellows imbued with hilarious hang-ups who, with only one click, may mutate into a magnetising, mesmeric model, and with the use of pinch of imagination (and full spoon of Google) may tranform from an intellectual chrysalis into knowledgeable, sagacious thinkers. Let them stay in their Brave New World and devour doses of digital soma. It is better to keep such people, and their alter egos, in isolation rather than let them exist on the loose. Who knows what their moonstruck minds (so prone to schizophrenia) store? The problem appears when those net-freaks, every now and then, creep out onto the streets. The irritation caused by an unability to interact with others and a lack of understanding of the basic rules characteristic for a world without keyboards and a lack of the hunky-dory hum of their computers push them to felonies; however, it is still cheaper to keep them at home instead of getting a panel of psychologists entangled in futile efforts to recover the unrecoverable.

May 2010 ----

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

Travel, trip, journey, excursion, pilgrimage, wandering, straying – there are many expressions connected with movement. Some people want to visit places, other want to meet new people or cultures, but there are people who travel just for the sake of traveling. Is such attitude wrong? Of course, it is not – why should it be? If somebody wants to impersonate the characters from Kerouac’s „On the Road”, let them. If someone wants to lead a nomadic life – it is their right to do so. People have always had a need to roam, that is why the Americas were discovered, that is why a man put his foot on the Moon, that is why people inhabit every nook of the world. As Dostoyevski once wrote, Columbus wasn’t a happy person when reaching the new land but at the moment when he was setting off his voyage. One can ponder the reasons which determine eternal nomads and propel them to neverending relocation – some may say that such people can’t socialise with a particular community; others may claim that eternal travellers are afraid of hard work and responsibilities stretching from stabilization and its implications (family, taxes); there also may be those who will say that rovers detest stagnation and the daily ho-hum routine; one can encounter opinions that wayfarers have their own, specific nature that makes them unable to settle down and lead the life of an average person. All of these opinions may contain a grain of truth but are any of these reasons indecent,inappropriate, immoral or offending? Everyone, at least once in their lifetime has wanted to leave everything behind and just go forth, far away, to the horizon, towards freedom and dreams; everyone sometimes wants to see the unseen, hear the unheard, attain the unattainable, unburden the load of life and flick off all their worries. The point is that not everyone is brave enough to do so, people are affraid of change and the unknown, and it is much easier to live like automatons, perform the same duties every day, do the same activities every month, and live in the same safe forest of concrete trees for years. One may

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