Heidegger

18/11/2008 _Zgmet at yahoo.com_ (mailto:Zgmet@yahoo.com) writes:

Hi Jud,
You seemed to take me seriously when, in a recent post, I talked about my
anti-semitism. It was, of course a sort of jiddischer Witz. It’s common to hear
in Israel - living among all those Jews is enough to make you anti-semite.

Jud:
Hi Georges, I knew it was what we call *tongue in cheek* stuff, and It is
natural in a country like Israel, amongst a predominantly immigrant population
with such a wide cultural background that one would encounter attitudes that
seemed foreign - some cute and some annoying. I am aware too of the tension
betwixt the orthodox and the liberal elements in Israeli society.

Georges:
Anybody may have some sense of humor, but as a national quality I see it
only in English and Jews.

Jud:
I really love Jewish humour for that dark element. It contains a witty
perception and profound understanding of human nature born of suffering.
Western humour which more knockabout mainly revolves around the comic
humiliation of pomposity (although there are other genres based on the
male-female situation. American humour would amount to nothing without the injection of
intellectual pathos, angst and profundity that the many Jewish-American
comedians bring to it. (Woody Allen and others.) As Jews excel in everything
else they do - so too the excel in humour.

For me British humour is quite different in its nature, quality, form or
degree from any other. I think its has its origins in our (historical)
over-politeness and the vagaries of our notorious class-system. I refer to the well
known twin aspects of irony and understatement, (with a dash of cynicism)
which even Americans do not understand., although they have a wonderful command
of English that being (generally speaking) their native tongue. It is very
strange, for even speakers of other Germanic languages do not spot the
subtleties of English humour, which always contain statements that are restrained in
ironic contrast to what might have been said. There is another side to
British humour, which is the humour of the groundlings (so called from the area of
hard earth without seating, where the less wealthy, uneducated section of
Elizabethan (Shakespearean) audience used to stand in front of the apron stage.
Shakespeare and the playwrights of the day always included some cruder,
boisterous humour amongst the witty repartee to satisfy their more earthy tastes.

Georges: The real humor, laughing at self expense. But the Jewish is deeper,
its roots, like that of the blues stem from the hopeless, like blues it’s
dark and black. Jud: Yes. That is what gives that special flavour to jazz and
the blues - its origins are in the suffering. The feelings of togetherness,
the shared pain, and the consolation, comfort and bonds provide a bond, whether
it be in our music, our folk tales, the way we talk, or in our defensive
humorous responses to adversity. It is this shared background that gives
minorities that special something.

Georges:
An example. Visiting Vienna, after having bought the Sacher Torte you may
find 100 m further the equally famous Delikatessen shop Meindl. When Austria
annexed Germany, Meindl got the monopole to sell Delikatessen in Luxusladen nur
fuer Deutsche all over the occupied Europe. In 1943 they started selling the
finest ever soap stamped RJF for rein juedisches Fett (pure Jewish fat). And
instead of “good bye” we started saying “see you at Meindl’s”.

Jud:
I see the bitter-sweet humour (basically self-protective, in that one could
go mad if one did not laugh at the German beasts) Georges, but it also
contains a biting comment upon the most evil society that has ever arisen in
history and brought shame on the human species. Don’t listen to the lies that the
majority of the German population were unaware of what was going on -
EVERYBODY knew.

Most of the transcendentalist pseudo-philosophical, degrading to the
intellect, reificational crap has German origins. Only a nation like the Germans
and ontological retards from other lands could take an idiotic country-bumkin
like Heidegger seriously. Personally I have no time for them as a people.
That is not to say I want to harm them, or shove them into gas-chambers like
they did to others. I just want them to keep well away from me. Even the
sound of their language makes my flesh creep - I guess it is a generational thing
in people of my age. Though the events that I lived through during the war
are so long ago, it is now termed *history.* I realise I am silly to still
feel this way and that the majority of the current German population were not
even born during that period, but forgiveness is beyond me and I have
lingering doubts that such evil could be expunged from such a society in just one or
even two generations. I have a visceral, gut reaction which I cannot
overcome (even if I wanted to.) Give me a stimulating Jew over a German any day!

Race and Religion is a reification anyway.

Cheers,

Jud

Posted on Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 at 7:00 am
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