Bøger af Jack Haberek

Author maint a warning: to the little, average people to wake up from the general apathy, as well as to the ones at the helm to stop or seriously modify what they've been doing so far. The chain of events in the book is based on author's personal experiences, his travels - his time spent in Africa, then Spain, and then, in the end his moving to the US. As F.Durkheim once said: If you're on a journey and the goal of that journey moves farther and farther away, you realize at some point that the goal is the journey... Author adds that the journey might be a comfortable, logical means to bring about humanity (as in M. Eliade - divinity then) in a person, or, just as well, might also be a killer, a senseless machine gone berserk, cutting you to pieces, all of which depends on our own doings - our own organization or lack of it. What is this world of ours? What would be life of a Saint in today's US? Loosely treated life of S. Jerome - here analogous to one of the main characters, Owly - ilustrates that question.

History, ancient, from thousand years ago versus today - comparisons, analogies; they may be shocking at times. The question what would be the life of Jean Paul Sartre and Simmon de Beauvoir (author chooses the two for his exemplification because of who they were and how they lived in France of their own time). Reporting and comparing is Columbia University professor, Jim, who also plays the role of the Lithmus Paper in this literary lab: how he changes ilustrates the changes in the world around him; all of which is supported and contrasts brought about all the way to the bottom by other characters - by no means lesser ones. The book shows that the question, seemingly trivial at first, then, later into the journey, might suddenly get us to Guantanamo Bay Gulag...

Through the lives of four artists author shows the world of culture run into the ground - cheap commercialism replacing what once used to be 'excursion back to the source.' Art understood as re-linking the present human predicament to its origin known to us only as intuitions, dreams and forebodings - well, art then, this type of spiritual endeavor now belonging for good to the past, leaving the people like our four in here, stranded, with the deep feeling of being cheated by the destiny, only to be completely abandoned in the end, all of which means not only senseless outcome of individual human life, but also the destruction of the world in general as we still know it today. Could that be a deliberate, organized effort? Or just greed and stupidity? Is there an escaping from that? Or are we just rats in a maze? Tin soldiers played with by spoiled brat who keeps getting away with it?

She loved God. But she also loved one of the greatest philosophers of that time, Johannes Eckhart, the only regent of the Paris University twice during his life. Did this incredible encounter really happen? The documents available from the time are silent, leaving room for imagining. But was it really like that or not? It wasn''t the love for man which got her to the pyre; it was her love of God-the way she understood it and described that understanding in her "mirror of the simple soul," publicly burned on the main plaza. That was the warning, which she did not obey. The consequence? Her own burning in Paris''s Place de Greve. Imagining shows us that strangely important time of mankind''s history, through the lives of people we get to know on their ways between outremer and France''s mainland. This was the time in which religious freedom became a thing of the past. The Knights Templar and their horrifying end are detailed here, and there is also a mention of Albigenses, Cathars, Beguins, and Beggars, and what happened to them.Imagining by Jack Haberek