I am almost certain that I have two personalities, two very extreme personalities, and I didn't remember the existence of the party-going, rock music-loving me until last saturday. Like two sides of a coin, but one cannot exist without the other. It takes little amount of mastery to learn switching between the two and use them for different situations. But it would be even better perhaps if I could tap into the advantages of each any time I see the need.
Interesting discussion about religion over lunch. So apparently in Germany and Austria if you declared yourself as Roman Catholic or Protestant you'd have to pay a certain percentage of your income each month to the church. And if you weren't working, you'd still have to pay, if you declared your religion as such. This is obligatory, and only if you left the church would you be free from church tax. But why? Shouldn't these things be voluntary? I mean of course these funds wouldn't be channelled into just the upkeep of the church, but also other useful activities and programmes (apparently churches receive 70% of church tax). But it sounds to me like extortion in the name of religion. And shouldn't church and state be two separate entities?
"…particularly in Europe, is the tax some national governments impose on income on behalf of the state church. Austria, Germany, the Nordic countries and Switzerland all have such a church tax, though in the chart it is included only in the cases of Denmark and Switzerland. One may ask whether the church tax really is a ‘tax’ as defined by international organisations: a compulsory, unrequited payment to general government."
http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/77/The_income_taxes_people_really_pay.html
"The church tax is only paid by members of the respective church. People who are not member of a church tax-collecting denomination do not have to pay it. Members of a religious community under public law may formally declare their wish to leave the community to state (not religious) authorities. With such a declaration, the obligation to pay church taxes ends. Some communities refuse to administer marriages and burials of (former) members who had declared to leave it."
The anger is creeping in again, seeping through tissues, mingling with blood, coarsing through veins. The mind is indeed a very powerful tool – because that's where the anger comes from, it comes from within, conjured by the mind to be, at the beginning, an illusion but then silently realising its presence and then its potential. Then acquiring a character of its own and formidable as it is, it bursts through the floodgates of patience, worn thin and weary from strain, and in an instant unleashes itself unto the thoughtless victim, who is not quite the subject of the speaker but on the contrary the speaker itself – thoughtless, mindless and lost in the inner world of passion and emotion.
This anger is inconsiderate; it is selfish and abhorrs any attention bestowed upon the interests of others. It professes that it acts in the interest of the self, speaks for the rights of the self, but in actuality is concerned with establishing its presence. It feels it must be seen and heard as the self. All this while the internal struggle continues such that the outsider is faced with a series of accusations, some true some false. The mind eventually loses its ability to reason and is then convinced that this anger is justified. This is the start of a situation that walks down a one-way street to the point of no return.
