Beelzebubs-Tales-to-His-Grandson-by-G-I-Gurdjieff

"And ever since the beings of this contemporary community startedinventing these practical objects, the ordinary existence of three-brainedbeings of your planet has become, as our dear Mullah Nasr Eddin describes it,'not life but free jam.'"The beings of this community are now the benefactors of the other beingsof your planet, offering them, as they say, 'philanthropic aid,' especially asregards their first 'being-duty,' namely, that of carrying out from time to timethe process of 'reciprocal destruction.'"Thanks to them, the discharge of that 'being-duty' has gradually become,for your contemporary favorites, the 'merest trifle.'"Before those inventions existed it used to be exceedingly arduous for yourpoor favorites to fulfill that 'being-duty,' for they had to spend a good deal oftoil and sweat on it."But nowadays, thanks to the contraptions invented by these Englishbeings, it has become, again in the words of our esteemed Mullah Nasr Eddin,just roses, roses."The contemporary beings scarcely need to make any effort whatsoever inorder to destroy completely the existence of beings like themselves"Sitting quietly in what they call their 'smoking rooms' they can destroy,just to pass the time, as it were, dozens and sometimes even hundreds ofothers like themselves."Now, I might as well also tell you a little about the direct descendants of thebeings of the Greco-Roman civilization.."The descendants of the beings of the once 'great' and 'powerful'community of Greece still exist today and also have their own independentcommunity, but they now have scarcely any significance whatever for theother independent communities there."They no longer do what their ancestors did, who were consummatespecialists in 'cooking up' all kinds of fantastic