As a little boy in school, my priest-confessor often told me that I am not a
perfect being. I should therefore always kneel down and ask God for the
forgiveness of my defects. Indeed, that eventual obliteration will be a
better way to achieve my salvation than my need to seek reconstruction.
Bertrand Russell arrived into my life after I was lucky enough to have
been expelled out of La Salle high school. He said: “No one is perfect
and we should never be bothered by the fact that we are not perfect.”
Russell also taught me to question everything including his own ideas
and values. He wrote: "It is preoccupation with possessions, more than
anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly." These
words have not ceased to stir my mind and heart to this day.
If there were ever a thinker I have learned to love and respect – such a
thinker was Bertrand Russell. Indeed, Russell saved not my silly soul;
he saved, instead, something far more precious - my intelligent and lively mind.
Much to my joys and pleasures and happiness in life, it was
Bertrand Russell who introduced me to love and respect as well our own
great thinker - Jose Rizal. None of my teachers in school taught me to
see just how great a Filipino humanist/scientists was our own Dr. Jose Rizal.
Oh, Bertrand Russell, whenever you are - thank you for teaching me
intellectual courage to face the horrors in nature. And thank you as
well for making me realize that
our world is infested with religious
insanity as always in cahoots with political stupidity; and that life is not worth living
unless we struggle to wage war to defeat such horrors - horrors
that's keeping our world misguided spiritually, misdirected morally, and sick
economically. - Poch Suzara
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