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

"At any rate, I personally pity the ordinary beings of this community withall my essence, now that their capital, even though only a certain part of it, hascome to be considered the 'center of culture' of the whole planet."It is even astonishing that most of the beings of the community of France,in spite of the quite abnormal conditions of ordinary being-existence, due totheir capital having unfortunately become the chief 'center of culture' for thewhole of that ill-fated planet, were able to preserve in their presences,however unconsciously, those data for the two being-impulses on which,above all, objective morality is based, and which are called 'patriarchality' or'love of family,' and 'organic shame.'"Since this contemporary 'center of culture' has long been the gatheringplace for beings from all over the planet who have completely giventhemselves up to the 'evil god' holding absolute dominion in each of them,namely, to the 'evil god' that has become their ideal and is very well describedin the words—'to attain a complete absence of the need for being-effort andfor any essence-anxiety about anything whatever'—these beings must ofcourse, consciously or unconsciously, have a harmful influence on the beingsof the whole community of France."You will understand very well, my boy, what a misfortune it is for theordinary beings of France that the present-day center of culture lies withintheir community if I tell you about one of the consequences of this I learnedabout it from information communicated to me in one of the latestetherograms concerning the three-centered beings of your planet."I must tell you that when these beings, who have completely giventhemselves up to their 'inner evil god,' flock to one of these 'centers of culture,'they occupy themselves—among their other harmful actions, simply out ofidleness and to satisfy their whims—with devising new