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Dear George,

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It is amusing to learn that we nearly crossed paths a short lifetime ago. The web corrected that.

Perhaps we could say some things were meant to be.

I imagine that if you were "found out" as being “burdened by religion” it was not because the STB or Czech peoples' militia or whoever, was able to read in your thoughts but because there was some visible or audible expression of your "heavy load".

As a risk management consultant and insurance broker I have inspected a very large number of paper mills in France and find them quite interesting. I am sure you did not lose your time there.

In fact, as an ordinary labourer without any responsibilities, perhaps it allowed you greater disponibilty for your own studies than if you had continued your university tutorial work.

Unfortunately, I am unable to judge to what extent the fact of not having a supervisor for your maths thesis was a handicap. If I judge by the experience of my elder daughter in the field of linguistics who had two supervisors for her doctorate, their main (if not only) role seems to have been to promote the acceptance of her thesis after she had completed it without any prior help or guidance from either of them.

Happily, your professional reorientation was sufficient to "lighten" your "burden" and permit your later "rehabilitation". After all, yours was a mathematical vocation not a religious one.

No doubt the consequences would have been far more tragic had you been a member of the clergy.

All that is history now but I can understand that you do not need much prodding for it to resurface in a flash. Whether you were ever "burdened by religion" or not is a question of opinion but of one thing I am sure: unlike the proverbial lion, you did not starve to death when you were set free.

You are obviously accustomed to looking for food on your own.

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Banjo to George:
<In fact, as an ordinary labourer without any responsibilities, perhaps it allowed you greater disponibilty for your own studies than if you had continued your university tutorial work>

This has also been my experience, and of great benefit I believe. My formal education came to nothing and I abandoned it at 14 to pursue edification where I might find it. Coming to university studies nearly 30 years later, I found myself advantageously disponible (thanks for the new word, Banjo) to my re-immersion in institutionalised learning. I felt a bit like Huckleberry Finn learning to wear shoes (it was perfectly acceptable to go bare-foot at the primary school I attended when we arrived in OZ: Inala State School), and I still relate to Mark Twain's maverick, even misanthropic, humanism. I continue to marvel too at the way ideology speaks through most people, even the highly educated, who in their conceited mithering and parroting, think they're thinking. Mark Twain dared to think for himself.

One day I want to write about some of the great characters I worked with, and about blue collar work in general (almost a bygone era). I recall particularly that human capacity to make the best of a bad lot and to take pride even in the most menial and instrumentalised labour. I've had practical insight into Marx's almost mystical notion of praxis, pathetically evident, albeit withered, in the loving care devoted to even repetitive task labour. Human beings are extraordinarily disponible, and given to devotion, which is why they're so easily exploited.
Curiously enough, I too worked in the paper industry!

Dear Banjo,

Thanks again for your words. What I wrote was very sketchy but since you commented on it, let me clarify something.

>>I imagine that if you were "found out" as being “burdened by religion” it was not because the STB or Czech peoples' militia or whoever, was able to read in your thoughts but because there was some visible or audible expression of your "heavy load".<<

Czechoslovakia consisted of Slovakia - one of the most Catholic nations in Europe, like Poland and Ireland - and Bohemia (Czechia) with Czechs traditionally among the most anti-clerical and atheist nations. So the anti-religious policies were more widely applied and felt in Slovakia, where I grew up, than in Prague.

In Prague I had my first, in fact, encounters with atheists who were as opposed to Communist ideology (of course, only secretly) as the Catholic (and other Christian) intellectuals in Bratislava I grew up among. There I also learned that Christians as well as atheists can be more open-minded and tolerant towards each others world-views when facing an intolerant and oppressive ideology, than when they think there is nothing to prevent them from indulging in their own intolerance towards the other.

My religious background, in Bratislava as in Prague, was manifested to the outside world SOLELY through regular church attendance. That was the only way we could make our presence felt to the authorities. In Bratislava the churches were often packed full, and people stood outside the church, so the police had no chance of registering everybody who attended. The same in Prague regarding "visible or audible expressions" of my religious world-view. Only that in Prague church attendance was not nearly as common, so the Comrades did not pay much attention to whether a particular student attended.

I was "found out", as I wrote, because my father refused to cooperate with the Secret police (he knew personally a politically active emigré, and they wanted him to help them to kidnap him, or something like that). So they punished him though his three sons.
(ctd)

(ctd)
My "rehabilitation" occurred because the agent who was behind the pressure on my father fell out of grace with the Central Committee of the Party for unrelated reasons.

>>the consequences would have been far more tragic had you been a member of the clergy<<
Probably yes, although we do not use the term "tragic" to describe these experiences. For a priests and religious (especially nuns) the ordeals were firsts of all different: some where jailed and tortured. My own experience in the 1960s was negligible compared to what I had to hear as a teenager about the torture of priests by specially trained "ladies", and nuns by untrained ….

Of course, not all priests were tortured or jailed. There was no separation of church and state so the Comrades decided who was allowed into pastoral duty, and who not. Known is the case of a Slovak bishop who after being released from jail earned his living as an elevator repairman.

[Since you live in Paris, let me add an anecdote: In 1968, during the Prague Spring thaw, I was allowed to accept a scholarship from CNRS and spent about a month in Paris. An old colleague in Bratislava had asked me to bring him something about a French Catholic author he somehow came to hear about. So I went to a shop on Place St Sulpice, where they had a cluster of Catholic bookshops (do they still?). With my poor French I asked the lady whether they had something from this author, and showed her a piece of paper where I had jotted down his name. She stared at me as if I had fallen from the moon, then pointed to a whole room full of books devoted just to him. The name I had jotted on that paper was Teilhard de Chardin. Just an illustration of how isolated from the rest of the world we were there even in 1968, not to mention the fifties.]

Now I see I have written more than was necessary, I just thought I owed you some clarification

Thanks for sharing that fascinating story, George. One of the great things about OLO is reading the experiences (occasional snippets) of our elders, such is the only tangible way that history exists. Though we disagree somewhat, in some things, I have the greatest respect for yourself, DavidF and other long-lived and canny contributors. I hope you're writing your memoirs!

Sorry George. Again I really want to leave well enough alone, but you’ve asked yet another good question that I think deserves an answer and besides, I simply can’t ignore points that need correcting.

<<I certainly never said that [theism and atheism are equally opposing aspects of world-views]...>>

Of course you didn’t. I never said you did. But you still equate the two as though this were the case.

<<...anyhow, this is a good illustration of how we speak past each other:>>

I don’t think we talk past each other at all. I understand everything you say, and I think I demonstrate that quite well too. I believe you understand everything I say too. But in some instances (such as the issue here about what Dawkins said or didn’t say) you fiercely resist understanding what I’m telling you because reality is conflicting with what you want to believe. I guess it’s kind of like a microcosm of religious belief on the whole when you think about it - the same mechanism is employed.

<<...My sentence you apply this comment to had nothing to do with theism or atheism, but with psychology:>>

Yes, “psychology” - the psychology of theists and atheists - erroneously spoken about comparatively as though they could be compared fairly. It’s misleading in the same way that it’s misleading to use the term “world-view” when you actually mean “religious beliefs”, or the lack thereof.

<<You would nor expect me to regard Jesus and Dawkins as comparable; only the states of minds of certain sympathizers or devotees, respectively, might be comparable.>>

But they’re not, and that the whole point here.

The state-of-mind of a sympathizer/devotee of Dawkins would be one of respect and maybe even admiration, while the state-of-mind of a believer in Jesus is more along the lines of exaltation and even chronic blinding delirium in the vast majority of cases too.

Continued...