Our minds on complex ideas

Tolstoy's Words on difficulty are truely timeless.

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

Leon Tolstoy – 1897

And it's true: prejudices make nearly everything impossible and this holds for intellectuals and academics as well. Too bad, that people do not even realize how blind they are at times...

Prejudice

Since I'm part of an ethnic AND religious minority, I'm fully aware of how wrong prejudices are. Often I can understand what causes such thinking and sometimes I won't even blame people thinking that way.
BUT: What on earth causes justifies me, a victim of prejudice myself, to have prejudices against others???
That's just not right, it's plain wrong.
I realized it last week. I was about to buy a second hand tablet-pc and I got in touch with one German engineer (I know that from his automatic e-mail signature) and one rather young Russian with a barely any complete sentence and a rather heavy accent on the phone. Even though the price was the same for both, both objects had some pros and some cons for them (be it accessories or the location where to pick it up), I still refused to call the Russian a second time... only for my damn prejudices!
This is just wrong. And that's why I'll call him now.

I'm not going to

I'm not going to use "Lost in Translation" as the title for this entry, since it might cause a wrong assumption, because I never saw this movie, but it's going to be about exactly this: how language, poetry or proverbs are lost in translation.

Joseph Brodsky claims that "Poetry is gained in translation", when we consider translation as a transformative act. He might be right, accounting his profession and that he was able to speak several languages fluently.
But for average person (even though none of us is average) it's a bit different. I just lack the ability to do that. It's nearly impossible to translate a simple Turkish proverb into German, let alone English. The same goes the other way round of course.

That's one thing that really annoys me (and surely others too) living in a multi-cultural place. It's challenging every single time to explain the details of my culture and religion. That does not mean that I'm tired of doing it though. I'll keep on doing it as long as others ask and as long as they want to listen.

So thanks for your attention! Did you ever experience something similar?

One major Influence

Like for many others, music takes quite some space in my life. Listening to it on any occasion, I became more and more aware of what I was listening to. I used to listen to really everything that sounded nice.
But no more! I realized how much crap there was, especially Gangsta Rap what I listened to mostly. Luckily, I found out what Hip Hop was truely about: Express themselves to reach and nurture their peers! Conscious Rap, the direct opposite of Gangsta Rap, is so much more fulfilling!
Artists like Jurassic 5, Arrested Development and Blackalicious rap about how and why they as a society they moved from "we used to tell the girls we love'em" to "now we're callin them hoes" ("End up like This" by Jurassic 5) or answering the question "the rhyme is not laced with Gangsta touch?" with "Simpy because I don't live that way" ("Shallow Day" by Blackalicious).

In the end it's not just music, it's more than that! It reflects one's view on life so we should all choose wisely!
How about you? What do you listen to? And have you always been listening to that music? I would love to know about that!