Affect Theory Quotes

Manipulating the media is akin to poisoning a nation’s water supply – it affects all of our lives in unimaginable ways.

Perhaps that is our doom, our human curse, to never really know one another. We erect edifices in our minds about the flimsy framework of word and deed, mere totems of the true person, who, like the gods to whom the temples were built, remains hidden. We understand our own construct; we know our own theory; we love our own fabrication. Still . . . does the artifice of our affection make our love any less real?

For the egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.

We were dreamers, both of us, unpractical, reserved, full of great theories never put to test, and like all dreamers, asleep to the waking world. Disliking our fellow men, we craved affection; but shyness kept impulse dormant until the heart was touched. When that happened the heavens opened, and we felt, the pair of us, that we have the whole wealth of the universe to give. We would have both survived, had we been other men.

Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did and never can carry us beyond our own persons, and it is by the imagination only that we form any conception of what are his sensations...His agonies, when they are thus brought home to ourselves, when we have this adopted and made them our own, begin at last to affect us, and we then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels.

Blame is a Defense Against Powerlessness Betrayal trauma changes you. You have endured a life-altering shock, and are likely living with PTSD symptoms— hypervigilance, flashbacks and bewilderment—with broken trust, with the inability to cope with many situations, and with the complete shut down of parts of your mind, including your ability to focus and regulate your emotions. Nevertheless, if you are unable to recognize the higher purpose in your pain, to forgive and forget and move on, you clearly have chosen to be addicted to your pain and must enjoy playing the victim. And the worst is, we are only too ready to agree with this assessment! Trauma victims commonly blame themselves. Blaming oneself for the shame of being a victim is recognized by trauma specialists as a defense against the extreme powerlessness we feel in the wake of a traumatic event. Self-blame continues the illusion of control shock destroys, but prevents us from the necessary working through of the traumatic feelings and memories to heal and recover.

I realize now that no simple, single-factor theory of depression will ever work. Depression is partly in our genes, partly in our childhood experience, partly in our way of thinking, partly in our brains, partly in our ways of handling emotions. It affects our whole being.

However much the theory of political realism may have been misunderstood and misinterpreted, there is no gainsaying its distinctive intellectual and moral attitude to matters political. Intellectually, the political realist maintains the autonomy of the political sphere, as the economist, the lawyer, the moralist maintain theirs. He thinks in terms of interest defined as power, as the economist thinks in terms of interest defined as wealth; the lawyer, of the conformity of action with legal rules; the moralist, of the conformity of action with moral principles. The economist asks: "How does this policy affect the wealth of society, or a segment of it?" The lawyer asks: "Is this policy in accord with the rules of law?" The moralist asks: "Is this policy in accord with moral principles?" And the political realist asks: "How does this policy affect the power of the nation?

I believe that my theory is correct; for whatever be the question upon which I am arguing, whether it be religious, philosophical, political, or economical; whether it affects well-being, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, property, labor, exchange, capital, wages, taxes, population, credit, or Government; at whatever point of the scientific horizon I start from, I invariably come to the same thing—the solution of the social problem is in liberty.

You've heard of the butterfly effect, right? That if a butterfly flaps its wings at just the right time in just the right place. It can cause a hurricane thousands of miles away. It's chaos theory, but see, chaos theory isn't exactly about chaos. It's about how a tiny change in a big system can affect everything.

Thinking of her was always like this: a rush of fondness, and then a bolt of fear. Love poems never seemed to include this thread of terror. Was he uniquely ill-disposed to this sentiment, too uneasy, too anxious for the act of loving without reserve? Or was the object of his affection uniquely vulnerable?

to feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature; and can alone produce among mankind that harmony of sentiments and passions in which consists their whole grace and propriety.

The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.To explain — since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation — every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake. The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.

They say some people are born with decreased activity in the brain; a cold spot in the front central lobe. Where most people have activity, a hot area giving them feelings, emotions and enabling them to love, there are a rare few who have a cold spot, affecting their ability to feel emotions, empathy. There are theories that serial killers have this cold spot. Psychopaths. That’s why they lack the ability to connect, to care.

When we talk about an object of desire, we are really talking about a cluster of promises we want someone or something to make to us and make possible for us.

Choose to hustle now, to work hard now, to make all the sacrifice now. So that you can enjoy your tomorrow. Whatever it is that you suppose to do now. If you don't do it now, it will affect you badly for the rest of your life.

It is always as it was between Achilles and Homer: one person has the experience, the sensation, the other describes it. A real writer only gives words to the affects and experiences of others; he is an artist in divining a great deal from the little that he has felt. Artist are by no means people of great passion, but they frequently present themselves as such, unconsciously sensing that others give greater credence to the passions they portray if the artist's own life testifies to his experience in this area. We need only let ourselves go, not control ourselves, give free play to our wrath or our desire, and the whole world immediately cries: how passionate he is! But there really is something significant in a deeply gnawing passion that consumes and often swallows up an individual: whoever experiences this surely does not describe it in dramas, music, or novels. Artists are frequently unbridled individuals, insofar, that is, as they are not artists: but that is something different.

These false conspiracy theories are a problem. They hurt individuals by affecting their life choices, in terms of money, health, and social interactions. They hurt society by distracting from the very real problems of corruption and decreasing citizens’ genuine participation in democracy.

Moreover, dissonance-evoking situations have been found to evoke a general negative affect without also evoking increased self-directed negative affect (Elliot & Devine, 1994) or decreased state self-esteem (E. Harmon-Jones, 2000a).

Count Ayakura’s abstraction persisted. He believed that only a vulgar mentality was willing to acknowledge the possibility of catastrophe. He felt that taking naps was much more beneficial than confronting catastrophes. However precipitous the future might seem, he learned from the game of kemari that the ball must always come down. There was no call for consternation. Grief and rage, along with other outbursts of passion, were mistakes easily committed by a mind lacking in refinement. And the Count was certainly not a man who lacked refinement. Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura’s version of political theory.

Einstein has put an end to this isolation; it is now well established that gravitation affects not only matter, but also light.

While "caring about" conveys feelings of concern for one's state of being, "caring for" is active engagement in doing something to positively affect it.

There can be no friendship where there is cruelty, where there is disloyalty, where there is injustice. And in places where the wicked gather there is conspiracy only, not companionship: these have no affection for one another; fear alone holds them together; they are not friends, they are merely accomplices.

The critic can affect my aesthetic theories only by affecting my aesthetic experience. All systems of aesthetics must be based on personal experience--that is to say, they must be subjective.

Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own. To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, would a man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them? Human nature startles with horror at the thought, and the world, in its greatest depravity and corruption, never produced such a villain as could be capable of entertaining it. But what makes this difference? When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble? When we are always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves, than by whatever concerns other men; what is it which prompts the generous, upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others? It is not the soft power of humanity, it is not that feeble spark of benevolence which Nature has lighted up in the human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest impulses of self-love. It is a stronger power, a more forcible motive, which exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct.

You might even ask me to apply my 'theory' to myself and explain what damage I had suffered a long way back and what its consequences might be: for instance, how it might affect my reliability and truthfulness. I'm not sure I could answer this, to be honest.

The fact was that theories—Greenberg’s—about Pollock—were beginning to affect Pollock. Greenberg hadn’t created Pollock’s reputation, but he was its curator, custodian, brass polisher, and repairman, and he was terrific at it.

And hence it is, that to feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature; and can alone produce among mankind that harmony of sentiments and passions in which consists their whole grace and propriety. As to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity, so it is the great precept of nature to love ourselves only as we love our neighbour, or what comes to the same thing, as our neighbour is capable of loving us.

I find myself making excuses for this kind of bullying behavior. Not everyone has been to college, learned trans 101, studied queer theory... But this is unfair to myself and other trans people. I've come to realize that understanding me isn't a matter of being an intellectual. Likewise, one doesn't have to be a radical to respect my feelings. Decent people consider how their comments affect others.

Have you ever heard of the butterfly effect? I learned about it in Science last year… Basically, the butterfly effect is a chaos theory, attributed to a guy named Edward Lorenz. Here’s the Clffnotes version: A butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, and it sets off a tornado in Texas. It means the smallest moments of the past, even the ones that don’t have anything to do with us, affect our future, and our future selves

The subject of theory can no longer affect to stand outside the process it describes: it is integrated as an immanent machine part in an open ended experimentation that is inextricable from capital’s continuous scrambling of its own limits—which operates via the reprocessing of the actual through its virtual futures, dissolving all bulwarks that would preserve the past.

Your motivations--get that promotion, throw the best parties, run for public office--aren't impersonal abstractions but powerfully reflect who you are and what you focus on. An individual's goals figure prominently in the theories of personality first developed by the Harvard psychologist Henry Murray. According to his successor David McClelland, what Friedrich Nietzsche called "the will to power," which he considered the major driving force behind human behavior, is one of the three basic motivations, along with achievement and affiliation, that differentiate us as individuals. A simple experiment show show these broad emotional motivations can affect what you pay attention to or ignore on very basic levels. When they examine images of faces that express different kinds of emotion, power-oriented subjects are drawn to nonconfrontational visages, such as "surprise faces," rather than to those that suggest dominance, as "anger faces" do. In contrast, people spurred by affiliation gravitate toward friendly or joyful faces.

There are many differing viewpoints on nature versus nurture, and there are those who believe that bad behavior can be excused and understood if a person doesn't know better. The theory that someone who has been abused as a child will go on to abuse their own children, and so on, because they don't know differently is widely held. But children know. We all know. Learned behavior. When a child is abused, he or she knows, even as it is happening, that it is wrong. I knew. I was abused. When a child is treated unfairly in any way, he or she knows that it is wrong. I knew. I was treated unfairly. And when a child is treated with love and affection, he or she knows that it is right. I knew. I saw how other kids were treated with love and affection by their parents. I knew. My soul cried out to me and told me so. We all know. We all know right from wrong. Our souls cry out to us and tell us so. And we decide, we make our choices, and we are responsible for those choices. We, no one else but we, decide. Anger, hurt, pain, humiliation, fear, dread, confusion-all these emotions we choose. De we hold on to our anger, our pain and humiliation, and hit back, or do we strive to understand that we can do better?

We should not conclude from this that everything depends on waves of irrational psychology. On the contrary, the state of long-term expectation is often steady, and, even when it is not, the other factors exert their compensating effects. We are merely reminding ourselves that human decisions affecting the future, whether personal or political or economic, cannot depend on strict mathematical expectation, since the basis for making such calculations does not exist; and that it is our innate urge to activity which makes the wheels go round, our rational selves choosing between the alternatives as best we are able, calculating where we can, but often falling back for our motive on whim or sentiment or chance.

In the field picture there is no such thing as empty space. Fields pervade space; they are a condition or property of space; you can't have space without fields. Fields obey laws that specify how a change at one point affects the field at adjacent points, and thus how that change is propagated through space.

Since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation - every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.

The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses. To explain — since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation — every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake. The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife. Trin Tragula — for that was his name — was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake. “Have some sense of proportion!” she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day. And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex — just to show her. And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it. To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.

The difference between the Platonic theory and the morphic-resonance hypothesis can be illustrated by analogy with a television set. The pictures on the screen depend on the material components of the set and the energy that powers it, and also on the invisible transmissions it receives through the electromagnetic field. A sceptic who rejected the idea of invisible influences might try to explain everything about the pictures and sounds in terms of the components of the set – the wires, transistors, and so on – and the electrical interactions between them. Through careful research he would find that damaging or removing some of these components affected the pictures or sounds the set produced, and did so in a repeatable, predictable way. This discovery would reinforce his materialist belief. He would be unable to explain exactly how the set produced the pictures and sounds, but he would hope that a more detailed analysis of the components and more complex mathematical models of their interactions would eventually provide the answer. Some mutations in the components – for example, by a defect in some of the transistors – affect the pictures by changing their colours or distorting their shapes; while mutations of components in the tuning circuit cause the set to jump from one channel to another, leading to a completely different set of sounds and pictures. But this does not prove that the evening news report is produced by interactions among the TV set’s components. Likewise, genetic mutations may affect an animal’s form and behaviour, but this does not prove that form and behaviour are programmed in the genes. They are inherited by morphic resonance, an invisible influence on the organism coming from outside it, just as TV sets are resonantly tuned to transmissions that originate elsewhere.

Humans seem to find certain elements universally appealing, and if you emphasize those, the person looks that much better. This is a scientific thing. It’s been studied. The theory is that certain features and proportions elicit feelings of “aww, that’s adorable” in us, which prompts caregiving behaviors, affection, and an urge to move closer. In theory, we evolved this reaction in response to baby faces, so we’d feel compelled to take care of our young, but when those same features and patterns crop up in other places, on other faces, we like them there, too.

There are some people, nevertheless — and I am one of them — who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe. ... We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy's numbers, but still more important to know the enemy's philosophy. We think the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether in the long run, anything else affects them.

A distinguished writer [Siméon Denis Poisson] has thus stated the fundamental definitions of the science: 'The probability of an event is the reason we have to believe that it has taken place, or that it will take place.' 'The measure of the probability of an event is the ratio of the number of cases favourable to that event, to the total number of cases favourable or contrary, and all equally possible' (equally like to happen). From these definitions it follows that the word probability, in its mathematical acceptation, has reference to the state of our knowledge of the circumstances under which an event may happen or fail. With the degree of information which we possess concerning the circumstances of an event, the reason we have to think that it will occur, or, to use a single term, our expectation of it, will vary. Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave neither room nor demand for a theory of probabilities.

Polarization is just one of many ways group membership can change an individual. Perhaps the most striking effect of group membership is that it can modify individuals’ perceptions of themselves. Unable to separate their personal introspection from the ways they believe other people perceive them, teenagers may have what psychologists call an “imaginary audience,” meaning they believe that other people are just as attuned to their appearance and behavior as they are (cue any pimple cream commercial). These perceptions can affect various aspects of their lives. For example, psychologists found that when Asian girls were subtly reminded about their Asian identity, they performed better on math tests. When they were subtly reminded about their gender, however, they performed worse.

As the person who is principally interested in any event is pleased with our sympathy, and hurt by the want of it, so we, too, seem to be pleased when we are able to sympathize with him, and to be hurt when we are unable to do so. We run not only to congratulate the successful, but to condole with the afflicted; and the pleasure which we find in the conversation of one whom in all the passions of his heart we can entirely sympathize with, seems to do more than compensate the painfulness of that sorrow with which the view of his situation affects us. On the contrary, it is always disagreeable to feel that we cannot sympathize with him, and instead of being pleased with this exemption from sympathetic pain, it hurts us to find that we cannot share his uneasiness. If we hear a person loudly lamenting his misfortunes, which, however, upon bringing the case home to ourselves, we feel, can produce no such violent effect upon us, we are shocked at his grief; and, because we cannot enter into it, call it pusillanimity and weakness. It gives us the spleen, on the other hand, to see another too happy or too much elevated, as we call it, with any little piece of good fortune. We are disobliged even with his joy; and, because we cannot go along with it, call it levity and folly. We are even put out of humour if our companion laughs louder or longer at a joke than we think it deserves; that is, than we feel that we ourselves could laugh at it.

If you have a million fans and no talent, you’re still not a success. a million students and no lesson, you’re still not a teacher. a million sermons and no compassion, you’re still not a priest. a million children and no affection, you’re still not a father. a million anniversaries and no devotion, you’re still not a husband. If you have a million sheep and no courage, you’re still not a shepherd. a million seeds and no harvest, you’re still not a farmer. a million titles and no integrity, you’re still not a champion. a million thoughts and no insights, you’re still not a philosopher. a million predictions and no prophecy, you’re still not a prophet. If you have a million soldiers and no unity, you’re still not an army. a million monks and no camaraderie, you’re still not a monastery. a million cities and no borders, you’re still not a country. a million musicians and no harmony, you’re still not an orchestra. a million armies and no strategy, you’re still not a general. If you have a million titles, and no influence, you’re still not a leader; a million ideas and no creations, you’re still not an artist. a million theories, and no facts, you’re still not a scholar; a million books, and no wisdom, you’re still not a sage; a million virtues, and no love, you’re still not a saint.

Second, being wrong hurts us more than being right feels good. We know from Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s work on loss aversion, part of prospect theory (which won Kahneman the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002), that losses in general feel about two times as bad as wins feel good. So winning $100 at blackjack feels as good to us as losing $50 feels bad to us. Because being right feels like winning and being wrong feels like losing, that means we need two favorable results for every one unfavorable result just to break even emotionally. Why not live a smoother existence, without the swings, especially when the losses affect us more intensely than the wins?

The obstinacy of antiquated institutions in perpetuating themselves resembles the stubbornness of the rancid perfume which should claim our hair, the pretensions of the spoiled fish which should persist in being eaten, the persecution of the child's garment which should insist on clothing the man, the tenderness of corpses which should return to embrace the living. "Ingrates!" says the garment, "I protected you in inclement weather. Why will you have nothing to do with me?" "I have just come from the deep sea," says the fish. "I have been a rose," says the perfume. "I have loved you," says the corpse. "I have civilized you," says the convent. To this there is but one reply: "In former days." To dream of the indefinite prolongation of defunct things, and of the government of men by embalming, to restore dogmas in a bad condition, to regild shrines, to patch up cloisters, to rebless reliquaries, to refurnish superstitions, to revictual fanaticisms, to put new handles on holy water brushes and militarism, to reconstitute monasticism and militarism, to believe in the salvation of society by the multiplication of parasites, to force the past on the present, – this seems strange. Still, there are theorists who hold such theories. These theorists, who are in other respects people of intelligence, have a very simple process; they apply to the past a glazing which they call social order, divine right, morality, family, the respect of elders, antique authority, sacred tradition, legitimacy, religion; and they go about shouting, "Look! take this, honest people." This logic was known to the ancients. The soothsayers practise it. They rubbed a black heifer over with chalk, and said, "She is white, Bos cretatus." As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it, above all, provided that it consents to be dead. If it insists on being alive, we attack it, and we try to kill it. Superstitions, bigotries, affected devotion, prejudices, those forms all forms as they are, are tenacious of life; they have teeth and nails in their smoke, and they must be clasped close, body to body, and war must be made on them, and that without truce; for it is one of the fatalities of humanity to be condemned to eternal combat with phantoms. It is difficult to seize darkness by the throat, and to hurl it to the earth.

But here’s the thing,” says Paul. “I would bet that if someone did a study and asked, ‘Okay, your kid’s three, rank these aspects of your life in terms of enjoyment,’ and then, five years later, asked, ‘Tell me what your life was like when your kid was three,’ you’d have totally different responses.”   WITH THIS SIMPLE OBSERVATION, Paul has stumbled onto one of the biggest paradoxes in the research on human affect: we enshrine things in memory very differently from how we experience them in real time. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman has coined a couple of terms to make the distinction. He talks about the “experiencing self” versus the “remembering self.” The experiencing self is the self who moves through the world and should therefore, at least in theory, be more likely to control our daily life choices. But that’s not how it works out. Rather, it is the remembering self who plays a far more influential role in our lives, particularly when we make decisions or plan for the future, and this fact is made doubly strange when one considers that the remembering self is far more prone to error: our memories are idiosyncratic, selective, and subject to a rangy host of biases. We tend to believe that how an episode ended was how it felt as a whole (so that, alas, the entire experience of a movie, a vacation, or even a twenty-year marriage can be deformed by a bad ending, forever recalled as an awful experience rather than an enjoyable one until it turned sour). We remember milestones and significant changes more vividly than banal things we do more frequently.

If we expect translation to reproduce the totality of the semantics and affective uses of the original text, then we believe that translation must be loyal to the seminal language system, rather than letting the discourse travel and undertake the adventure of discovering - or creating - a new set of meaning according to the politics of the translation itself. Rigid loyalty to the original in the translated version was, in effect, the intentionality of the translation of the doctrines and precepts that constituted the colonial discourse.

❝Washington — perhaps as many global powers have done in the past — uses what I might call the “immaculate conception” theory of crises abroad. That is, we believe we are essentially out there, just minding our own business, trying to help make the world right, only to be endlessly faced with a series of spontaneous, nasty challenges from abroad to which we must react. There is not the slightest consideration that perhaps US policies themselves may have at least contributed to a series of unfolding events. This presents a huge paradox: how can America on the one hand pride itself on being the world’s sole global superpower, with over seven hundred military bases abroad and the Pentagon’s huge global footprint, and yet, on the other hand, be oblivious to and unacknowledging of the magnitude of its own role — for better or for worse — as the dominant force charting the course of world events? This Alice-in-Wonderland delusion affects not just policy makers, but even the glut of think tanks that abound in Washington. In what may otherwise often be intelligent analysis of a foreign situation, the focus of each study is invariably the other country, the other culture, the negative intentions of other players; the impact of US actions and perceptions are quite absent from the equation. It is hard to point to serious analysis from mainstream publications or think tanks that address the role of the United States itself in helping create current problems or crises, through policies of omission or commission. We’re not even talking about blame here; we’re addressing the logical and self-evident fact that the actions of the world’s sole global superpower have huge consequences in the unfolding of international politics. They require examination.

You chide yourself for walking too far ahead, for regressing into 80s song lyrics territory so soon. But then he says, "The supermassive black hole at the center of the milky way recently sparked 75 times brighter over the course of a 2 hour period, and twice as bright as it's ever been in the 20 years astronomers have been monitoring it." By now you're used to him talking Science, but you're not sure where he's going with this. "One theory," he continues "is that the event was caused by a star about 15 times bigger than the sun getting close to the edge of the black hole disturbing some gasses, heating things up, increasing the infrared radiation from the edge. But get this, we observed that star getting close to the black hole about a year before we observed the affects on the black hole." "That just shows how vast the universe is, how enormous the distance," you say. "Exactly! Distances, plural. The distance between the star and the edge of the black hole, and the distance between the black hole and Earth. So, I say all of this to say that sometimes wheels are set in motion long before the spark is manifest. Is that the same thing as fate? I don't know but...I do know that rare brilliant events take time.

Consider yourself and the cello. As you play the music moves out to the listener, and also enters the core of your own being, for somehow you are tuned to the cello. Well, I am persuaded that this is because you are a chord. I am a chord. Our DNA dictates our physicality-made up of billions of little notes-on a basic level. Add to that our geography, background et cetera, and you have your original score. Life is the layering of chords, but the underlying one that we are will never change. This brings us to string theory and love. Our personal chord resonates with the personal ones of others, and sometimes we encounter another person who is completely harmonious with us. It is a dominant, overwhelming attraction on the DNA level. However, such a person can appear to be our opposite-and that's where this 'opposites attract' notion comes from-because they have tuned their chord in a different way. In reality, we are attracted to the person we have chosen not to become, an alternative adjustment to a chord that is nearly the same as our own. The clashing portions of the chords sounding together advance the richness of it. So when you make love you aren't expressing emotions or showing affection, you are merging melodies. You are players in the same symphony.

[WAIT—IT WON’T LET ME REDACT THESE LITTLE SUBHEADING THINGS? THAT’S SUPER ANNOYING!] [FINE, I’LL JUST GIVE YOU MY SUMMARY.] [SO, WHOEVER WROTE THIS WAS ALL BLAH-BLAH-BLAH-STELLARLUNE-SOMETHING-SOMETHING-LEGACY. BUT SERIOUSLY, NO ONE WANTS TO READ ABOUT THE CREEPY STUFF MY MOM DID BEFORE SHE GOT PREGNANT WITH ME! (AND WE’RE ALL SUPER SICK OF HEARING ABOUT MY “LEGACY,” AMIRITE?) SO, LET’S JUST LEAVE IT AT THIS: MY MOM IS EVIL. SHE THINKS SHE’S WAY SMARTER THAN SHE IS. AND NOTHING SHE DID IS GOING TO AFFECT MY GENERAL AWESOMENESS, OKAY?] A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY: [WOW, HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH SUCH A CLEVER TITLE?!] [AND YEAH, I HAVE A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY. NOT SURE WHY ANYONE CARES. BUT IT DOES COME IN HANDY DURING MIDTERMS AND FINALS.] AHEAD OF THE GAME: [BASICALLY: I’M A GENIUS. I SKIPPED LEVEL ONE AT FOXFIRE. YES, YOU SHOULD BE IMPRESSED.] UNREASONABLY HIGH STANDARDS: [GOTTA ADMIT, I WAS TEMPTED TO LEAVE THIS ONE ALONE, SINCE WHOEVER WROTE IT ACTUALLY GOT THINGS PRETTY MUCH RIGHT. I GUESS EVEN THE COUNCIL KNOWS MY DAD’S A JERK WHO FREAKS OUT ALL THE TIME BECAUSE I’M NOT A LITTLE MINI-HIM. WHO KNEW?] A POWERFUL EMPATH: [UGH, THAT’S THE BEST YOU COULD DO FOR THIS SUBHEADING???] [HOW ABOUT “LORD OF THE FEELS”? OR “TRUST THE EMPATH”! OR “HE KNOWS WHAT YOU’RE FEELING—AND YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF”?] [OOO! I’VE GOT IT! “HE KNOWS FOSTER BETTER THAN YOU DO! BETTER THAN SHE EVEN KNOWS HERSELF!”] [THOUGH… KEEPING IT REAL? THE FOSTER OBLIVION CAN BE KINDA NOT COOL SOMETIMES.] THE HEART OF THE MATTER: [I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU GUYS NAMED A SECTION OF MY FILE AFTER MY FATHER’S SUPER-BORING BOOK—AND THEN RAMBLED ON FOR TWO PAGES ABOUT HIS SUPER-BORING THEORY!!!!!] [YOU DON’T NEED TWO PAGES ON IT. YOU DON’T EVEN NEED TWO SENTENCES. HERE’S ALLLLLL YOU NEED TO KNOW—BESIDES THE FACT THAT HE’S TOTALLY NOT THE FIRST PERSON TO COME UP WITH THIS (JUST THE ONE WHO LOVES TO TAKE CREDIT): OUR HEADS AND OUR HEARTS SOMETIMES FEEL DIFFERENT EMOTIONS, AND WHAT’S IN OUR HEARTS IS PROBABLY STRONGER.] [THAT’S IT!] [WELL… OKAY… I GUESS HE ALSO GOES ON A BIT ABOUT HOW EMPATHS PROBABLY ONLY READ THE EMOTIONS FROM THE HEAD.] [AND THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT HEART EMOTIONS BEING PURER BECAUSE NO ONE CAN CONTROL THEM.] [BUT THAT’S IT.] [AND DON’T TELL LORD BORINGPANTS I READ HIS DUMB BOOK! I MOSTLY SKIMMED.] PRANKSTER AND TROUBLEMAKER: [100 PERCENT ACCURATE. ALSO, I’M LEAVING YOUR LITTLE ATTACHED DETENTION RECORD BECAUSE IT’S THE GREATEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!!!!]

Where there is speech there was once silence. Where there is motion there was once rest. Where there is matter there was once space. Where there is order there was once chaos. Where there is energy there was once potential. Where there is reality there was once perception. Where there is belief there was once ignorance. Where there is fact there was once opinion. Where there is knowledge there was once truth. Where there is evidence there was once theory. Where there is certainty there was once speculation. Where there is intuition there was once insight. Where there is prudence there was once understanding. Where there is pleasure there was once pain. Where there is compassion there was once grief. Where there is peace there was once strife. Where there is faith there was once doubt. Where there is hope there was once apathy. Where there is caution there was once fear. Where there is judgement there was once suspicion. Where there is freedom there was once duty. Where there is good there was once evil. Where there is love there was once affection. Where there is right there was once wrong. Where there is now there was once before. Where there is tomorrow there was once today. Where there is death there was once life. Where there is existence there was once oblivion.

Since we began with a felt sense of safety this day, several neural streams are initially supporting the renewal of our connection. In our midbrain, the energies of the SEEKING system are animating the CARE system, which can both foster the good feelings between us and support offers of repair should we have a rupture (Panksepp & Biven, 2012). Once in connection, our ventral vagal parasympathetic system is affecting the prosody of our voices, our facial mobility, and the attentiveness of our listening, maintaining social engagement (Porges, 2011). Since ventral lateralizes to the right hemisphere, we more easily stay rooted in the right-centric way of attending that keeps us in connection with this moment and with each other (McGilchrist, 2009). In this intimacy, our brains are coupling in many regions, so there is an experience of social emotional engagement and embodied communication as we become a single system in two bodies (Hasson, 2010). Because we are trustworthy partners in this healing process, social baseline theory tells us that our amygdalae are calming just because we are together (Beckes & Coan, 2011). All of this is happening without doing anything, even without saying anything, in microseconds below conscious awareness because of the safe space we have cultivated over time. We can more clearly understand why Porges says, "Safety IS the treatment".

Having a TV—which gives you the ability to receive information—fails to establish any capacity for sending information in the opposite direction. And the odd one-way nature of the primary connection Americans now have to our national conversation has a profound impact on their basic attitude toward democracy itself. If you can receive but not send, what does that do to your basic feelings about the nature of your connection to American self-government? “Attachment theory” is an interesting new branch of developmental psychology that sheds light on the importance of consistent, appropriate, and responsive two-way communication—and why it is essential for an individual’s feeling empowered. First developed by John Bowlby, a British psychiatrist, in 1958, attachment theory was further developed by his protégée Mary Ainsworth and other experts studying the psychological development of infants. Although it applies to individuals, attachment theory is, in my view, a metaphor that illuminates the significance of authentic free-flowing communication in any relationship that requires trust. By using this new approach, psychologists were able to discover that every infant learns a crucial and existential lesson during the first year of life about his or her fundamental relationship to the rest of the world. An infant develops an attachment pathway based on different patterns of care and, according to this theory, learns to adopt one of three basic postures toward the universe: In the best case, the infant learns that he or she has the inherent ability to exert a powerful influence on the world and evoke consistent, appropriate responses by communicating signals of hunger or discomfort, happiness or distress. If the caregiver—more often than not the mother—responds to most signals from the infant consistently and appropriately, the infant begins to assume that he or she has inherent power to affect the world. If the primary caregiver responds inappropriately and/or inconsistently, the infant learns to assume that he or she is powerless to affect the larger world and that his or her signals have no intrinsic significance where the universe is concerned. A child who receives really erratic and inconsistent responses from a primary caregiver, even if those responses are occasionally warm and sensitive, develops “anxious resistant attachment.” This pathway creates children who feature anxiety, dependence, and easy victimization. They are easily manipulated and exploited later in life. In the worst case, infants who receive no emotional response from the person or persons responsible for them are at high risk of learning a deep existential rage that makes them prone to violence and antisocial behavior as they grow up. Chronic unresponsiveness leads to what is called “anxious avoidance attachment,” a life pattern that features unquenchable anger, frustration, and aggressive, violent behavior.

The Undivided Wholeness of All Things Most mind-boggling of all are Bohm's fully developed ideas about wholeness. Because everything in the cosmos is made out of the seamless holographic fabric of the implicate order, he believes it is as meaningless to view the universe as composed of "parts, " as it is to view the different geysers in a fountain as separate from the water out of which they flow. An electron is not an "elementary particle. " It is just a name given to a certain aspect of the holomovement. Dividing reality up into parts and then naming those parts is always arbitrary, a product of convention, because subatomic particles, and everything else in the universe, are no more separate from one another than different patterns in an ornate carpet. This is a profound suggestion. In his general theory of relativity Einstein astounded the world when he said that space and time are not separate entities, but are smoothly linked and part of a larger whole he called the space-time continuum. Bohm takes this idea a giant step further. He says that everything in the universe is part of a continuum. Despite the apparent separateness of things at the explicate level, everything is a seamless extension of everything else, and ultimately even the implicate and explicate orders blend into each other. Take a moment to consider this. Look at your hand. Now look at the light streaming from the lamp beside you. And at the dog resting at your feet. You are not merely made of the same things. You are the same thing. One thing. Unbroken. One enormous something that has extended its uncountable arms and appendages into all the apparent objects, atoms, restless oceans, and twinkling stars in the cosmos. Bohm cautions that this does not mean the universe is a giant undifferentiated mass. Things can be part of an undivided whole and still possess their own unique qualities. To illustrate what he means he points to the little eddies and whirlpools that often form in a river. At a glance such eddies appear to be separate things and possess many individual characteristics such as size, rate, and direction of rotation, et cetera. But careful scrutiny reveals that it is impossible to determine where any given whirlpool ends and the river begins. Thus, Bohm is not suggesting that the differences between "things" is meaningless. He merely wants us to be aware constantly that dividing various aspects of the holomovement into "things" is always an abstraction, a way of making those aspects stand out in our perception by our way of thinking. In attempts to correct this, instead of calling different aspects of the holomovement "things, " he prefers to call them "relatively independent subtotalities. "10 Indeed, Bohm believes that our almost universal tendency to fragment the world and ignore the dynamic interconnectedness of all things is responsible for many of our problems, not only in science but in our lives and our society as well. For instance, we believe we can extract the valuable parts of the earth without affecting the whole. We believe it is possible to treat parts of our body and not be concerned with the whole. We believe we can deal with various problems in our society, such as crime, poverty, and drug addiction, without addressing the problems in our society as a whole, and so on. In his writings Bohm argues passionately that our current way of fragmenting the world into parts not only doesn't work, but may even lead to our extinction.

When we look at the sun we wish to know [135]something about the sun itself, which is ninety-three million miles away; but what we see is dependent upon our eyes, and it is difficult to suppose that our eyes can affect what happens at a distance of ninety-three million miles. Physics tells us that certain electromagnetic waves start from the sun, and reach our eyes after about eight minutes. They there produce disturbances in the rods and cones, thence in the optic nerve, thence in the brain. At the end of this purely physical series, by some odd miracle, comes the experience which we call "seeing the sun," and it is such experiences which form the whole and sole reason for our belief in the optic nerve, the rods and cones, the ninety-three million miles, the electromagnetic waves, and the sun itself. It is this curious oppositeness of direction between the order of causation as affirmed by physics, and the order of evidence as revealed by theory of knowledge, that causes the most serious perplexities in regard to the nature of physical reality. Anything that invalidates our seeing, as a source of knowledge concerning physical reality, invalidates also the whole of physics and physiology. And yet, starting from a common-sense acceptance of our seeing, physics has been led step by step to the construction of the causal chain in which our seeing is the last link, and the immediate object which we see cannot be regarded as that initial cause which we believe to be ninety-three million miles away, and which we are inclined to regard as the "real" sun.

Ten New Rules for Parent–Adult Child Relations RULE #1: Your adult child has more power than you to set the terms of your relationship because they’re more willing to walk away. Basic game theory: she who cares less has more power. RULE # 2: Your relationship with your adult child needs to occur in an environment of creating happiness and personal growth, not an environment of obligation, emotional debt, or duty. RULE # 3: You are not the only authority on how well you performed as a parent. Your adult child gets to have their own narrative and opinions about the past. RULE #4: Use of guilt trips or criticism will never get you what you want from your adult child, especially if you’re estranged. RULE #5: Learning to communicate in a way that is egalitarian, psychological, and self-aware is essential to a good relationship with your adult child. RULE #6: You were the parent when you were raising your child and you’re the parent until they die. You brought your child into this world. That means that if your child is unable to take the high road, you still have to if reconciliation is your goal. RULE #7: A large financial and emotional investment in your child does not entitle you to more contact or affection than that which is wanted by them, however unjust that may seem. RULE #8: Criticizing your child’s spouse, romantic partner, or therapist greatly increases your risk of estrangement. RULE #9: Criticizing your child’s sexuality or gender identity greatly increases your risk of estrangement. RULE #10: Just because you had a bad childhood and did a better job than your parents doesn’t mean that your adult child has to accept all of the ways that they felt hurt by you.

You’ve said, “You can lie or distort the story of the French Revolution as long as you like and nothing will happen. Propose a false theory in chemistry and it will be refuted tomorrow.” How does your approach to the world as a scientist affect and influence the way you approach politics? Nature is tough. You can’t fiddle with Mother Nature, she’s a hard taskmistress. So you’re forced to be honest in the natural sciences. In the soft fields, you’re not forced to be honest. There are standards, of course; on the other hand, they’re very weak. If what you propose is ideologically acceptable, that is, supportive of power systems, you can get away with a huge amount. In fact, the difference between the conditions that are imposed on dissident opinion and on mainstream opinion is radically different. For example, I’ve written about terrorism, and I think you can show without much difficulty that terrorism pretty much corresponds to power. I don’t think that’s very surprising. The more powerful states are involved in more terrorism, by and large. The United States is the most powerful, so it’s involved in massive terrorism, by its own definition of terrorism. Well, if I want to establish that, I’m required to give a huge amount of evidence. I think that’s a good thing. I don’t object to that. I think anyone who makes that claim should be held to very high standards. So, I do extensive documentation, from the internal secret records and historical record and so on. And if you ever find a comma misplaced, somebody ought to criticize you for it. So I think those standards are fine. All right, now, let’s suppose that you play the mainstream game. You can say anything you want because you support power, and nobody expects you to justify anything. For example, in the unimaginable circumstance that I was on, say, Nightline, and I was asked, “Do you think Kadhafi is a terrorist?” I could say, “Yeah, Kadhafi is a terrorist.” I don’t need any evidence. Suppose I said, “George Bush is a terrorist.” Well, then I would be expected to provide evidence—“Why would you say that?” In fact, the structure of the news production system is, you can’t produce evidence. There’s even a name for it—I learned it from the producer of Nightline, Jeff Greenfield. It’s called “concision.” He was asked in an interview somewhere why they didn’t have me on Nightline. First of all, he says, “Well, he talks Turkish, and nobody understands it.” But the other answer was, “He lacks concision.” Which is correct, I agree with him. The kinds of things that I would say on Nightline, you can’t say in one sentence because they depart from standard religion. If you want to repeat the religion, you can get away with it between two commercials. If you want to say something that questions the religion, you’re expected to give evidence, and that you can’t do between two commercials. So therefore you lack concision, so therefore you can’t talk. I think that’s a terrific technique of propaganda. To impose concision is a way of virtually guaranteeing that the party line gets repeated over and over again, and that nothing else is heard.

This was a talk to an anarchist conference, and in my view the libertarian movements have been very shortsighted in pursuing doctrine in a rigid fashion without being concerned about the human consequences. So it's perfectly proper… I mean, in my view, and that of a few others, the state is an illegitimate institution. But it does not follow from that that you should not support the state. Sometimes there is a more illegitimate institution which will take over if you do not support this illegitimate institution. So, if you're concerned with the people, let's be concrete, let's take the United States. There is a state sector that does awful things, but it also happens to do some good things. As a result of centuries of extensive popular struggle there is a minimal welfare system that provides support for poor mothers and children. That's under attack in an effort to minimize the state. Well, anarchists can't seem to understand that they are to support that. So they join with the ultra-right in saying "Yes, we've got to minimize the state," meaning put more power into the hands of private tyrannies which are completely unaccountable to the public and purely totalitarian. It's kind of reminiscent of an old Communist Party slogan back in the early thirties "The worse, the better." So there was a period when the Communist Party was refusing to combat fascism on the theory that if you combat fascism, you join the social democrats and they are not good guys, so "the worse, the better." That was the slogan I remember from childhood. Well, they got the worse: Hitler. If you care about the question of whether seven-year-old children have food to eat, you'll support the state sector at this point, recognizing that in the long term it's illegitimate. I know that a lot of people find that hard to deal with and personally I'm under constant critique from the left for not being principled. Principle to them means opposing the state sector, even though opposing the state sector at this conjuncture means placing power into the hands of private totalitarian organizations who would be delighted to see children starve. I think we have to be able to keep those ideas in our heads if we want to think constructively about the problems of the future. In fact, protecting the state sector today is a step towards abolishing the state because it maintains a public arena in which people can participate, and organize, and affect policy, and so on, though in limited ways. If that's removed, we'd go back to a [...] dictatorship or say a private dictatorship, but that's hardly a step towards liberation.