Birds Flock Together Quotes

Birds of a feather flock together

Birds of the same feathers flock together, and when they flock together they fly so high.

flamingoes and mustard both bite. And the moral of that is--"Birds of a feather flock together.

Birds of a feather flock together.

It’s a phenomenon (and now technique) that follows a very basic but profound biological principle: We fear what’s different and are drawn to what’s similar. As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. Mirroring, then, when practiced consciously, is the art of insinuating similarity. “Trust me,” a mirror signals to another’s unconscious, “You and I—we’re alike.” Once

I have never known birds of different species to flock together. The very concept is unimaginable. Why, if that happened, we wouldn't stand a chance! How could we possibly hope to fight them?

How do you know this? Because I'm always watching people. When I watch people I too look through them. I learned that from my mother. To glance is not enough; eyes and brains together, acting like a flock of ravenous birds, flapping, tearing, poking... I know everything about people when I look at them for only a moment. I can tell from their clothes, their walks, their hair and hands, I know all the bad things that they've done. I know how they've failed and how they will fail and how miserable they are.

Before such people can act together, a kind of telepathic feeling has to flow through them and ripen to the point when they all know that they are ready to begin. Anyone who has seen the martins and swallows in September, assembling on the telephone wires, twittering, making short flights singly and in groups over the open, stubbly fields, returning to form longer and even longer lines above the yellowing verges of the lanes-the hundreds of individual birds merging and blending, in a mounting excitement, into swarms, and these swarms coming loosely and untidily together to create a great, unorganized flock, thick at the centre and ragged at the edges, which breaks and re-forms continually like clouds or waves-until that moment when the greater part (but not all) of them know that the time has come: they are off, and have begun once more that great southward flight which many will not survive; anyone seeing this has seen at the work the current that flows (among creatures who think of themselves primarily as part of a group and only secondarily, if at all, as individuals) to fuse them together and impel them into action without conscious thought or will: has seen at work the angel which drove the First Crusade into Antioch and drives the lemmings into the sea.

Why do I dislike nationalism? First it starts with 'birds of a feather flock together' and it gradually becomes more a case of 'my dog is better than your dog' - with knives in it...

Out of the clouds I hear a faint bark, as of a faraway dog. It is strange how the world cocks its ear to that sound, wondering. Soon it is louder: the honk of geese, invisible, but coming on. The flock emerges from the low clouds, a tattered banner of birds, dipping and rising, blown up and blown down, blown together and blown apart, but advancing, the wind wrestling lovingly with each winnowing wing. When the flock is a blur in the far sky I hear the last honk, sounding taps for summer. It is warm behind the driftwood now, for the wind has gone with the geese. So would I--if I were the wind.

On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze. A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that? Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind. In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday. Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us. It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: "nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral. All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being.

Birds of a feather flock together?

This is true for many species. For example, birds of species that flock together have comparatively larger brains to individuals of those species who live more isolated lives.

I respected people who had it all together. But the people who stumbled into school looking like they’d gotten attacked by an angry flock of birds? Those were my people.

Birds of a feather flock together ...only in good weather!

To be a bird, or a flock of birds doing something together, one or many, starling or murmuration. To be a man on a hill, or all the men on all the hills, or half a man shivering in the flock of himself.

We all know what birds of a feather do. And it may be safely surmised that if a bird of any particular feather has been for a long while unable to see other birds of its kind, it will flock with them all the more assiduously when they happen to alight in its vicinity.

When I'm sailing, sometimes I'll spend hours watching flocks of birds. They have something special going on there," Gordon continued. "They are all separate entities, those birds, but they share a single thought. Watch them fly in formation and suddenly veer around some invisible obstacle. Watch them flutter in swirling confusion and then, abruptly, move together in perfect formation again, each knowing its part in the whole. That what I mean by group minds." Gordon seemed to weigh his remarks, as though each word had significance. "A flock," she said, testing the term. "I guess my group of personalities is like a flock." She smiled ruefully. I only wish I could be lead bird sometime. (155)

Men of my age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says;

Birds of a feather flock together

All birds of feather flock together,” said to himself Canada Goose … that carving figure Hun - a swallow in his chat room barn - was fun.

interpreted literally (“‘Birds of a feather flock together’ means that similar birds form flocks”). Formal operational stage (adolescence onward). Approaching adult levels of abstraction, reasoning, and metacognition

Oh, Haifa. City of glistering grime, smog hovering over foamy sea. Of blocky apartment buildings facing the coast, topped with white water tanks crowded together like flocks of squat storks. Of palm trees and pine trees and electric wires, twisting green and black toward the chalky beachfront and rows of factory smokestacks. The way you put it once, Laith, your voice warped to mimic a radio announcer: 'Welcome to Haifa: you may die an early and also agonizing carcinogenic death, but at least you'll have a killer view from your hospital room.

In truth, I believe the Wit is as natural a magic as a man can claim. It is the Wit that lets a flock of birds in flight suddenly wheel as one, or a school of fingerlings hold place together in a swiftly flowing stream. It is also the Wit that sends a mother to her child’s bedside just as the babe is awakening. I believe it is at the heart of all wordless communication, and that all humans possess some small aptitude for it, recognized or not.

All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet. The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in colour, were asleep too in the light; and underneath her window, at the bottom of the flower-starred grass slope from which the wall of the castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and violets and rose-colours of the mountains and the sea like a great black sword. She stared. Such beauty; and she there to see it. Such beauty; and she alive to feel it. Her face was bathed in light. Lovely scents came up to the window and caressed her. A tiny breeze gently lifted her hair. Far out in the bay a cluster of almost motionless fishing boats hovered like a flock of white birds on the tranquil sea. How beautiful, how beautiful. Not to have died before this . . . to have been allowed to see, breathe, feel this . 

Since anything that accords with one’s nature is pleasant and being of the same kind is a natural relationship, then things that are of the same kind and resemble one another also usually please one another. So a human being pleases another human being, a horse a horse, a young man a young man. Hence the proverbs: ‘Youth delights in youth’, ‘Ever like to like’, ‘Beast knows beast’, ‘Birds of a feather flock together’, and so on. Since things that resemble oneself and are of the same kind as oneself are bound to afford one pleasure, and since every individual experiences these things above all in relation to himself, then we are all inevitably to a greater or lesser degree lovers of ourselves, seeing that we stand in these relationships primarily to ourselves. Since we are all lovers of ourselves, we are all bound to find pleasure in things that are our own — our own achievements and words, for instance. That is also why we are usually fond of flatterers, lovers, honour, and our children (who are our own achievements). And it is also pleasant to complete something unfinished, since then it immediately becomes one’s own achievement.

Boney freckled knees pressed into bits of bark and stone, refusing to feel any more pain. Her faded t-shirt hugged her protruding ribs as she held on, hunched in silence. A lone tear followed the lumpy tracks down her cheek, jumped from her quivering jaw onto a thirsty browned leaf with a thunderous plop. Then the screen door squeaked open and she took flight. Crispy twigs snapped beneath her bare feet as she ran deeper and deeper into the woods behind the house. She heard him rumbling and calling her name, his voice fueling her tired muscles to go faster, to survive. He knew her path by now. He was ready for the hunt. The clanging unbuckled belt boomed in her ears as he gained on her. The woods were thin this time of year, not much to hide behind. If she couldn’t outrun him, up she would go. Young trees teased her in this direction, so she moved east towards the evergreens. Hunger and hurt left her no choice, she had to stop running soon. She grabbed the first tree with a branch low enough to reach, and up she went. The pine trees were taller here, older, but the branches were too far apart for her to reach. She chose the wrong tree. His footsteps pounded close by. She stood as tall as her little legs could, her bloodied fingers reaching, stretching, to no avail. A cry of defeat slipped from her lips, a knowing laugh barked from his. She would pay for this dearly. She didn’t know whether the price was more than she could bear. Her eyes closed, her next breath came out as Please, and an inky hand reached down from the lush needles above, wound its many fingers around hers, and pulled her up. Another hand, then another, grabbing her arms, her legs, firmly but gently, pulling her up, up, up. The rush of green pine needles and black limbs blurred together, then a flash of cobalt blue fluttered by, heading down. She looked beyond her dangling bare feet to see a flock of peculiar birds settle on the branches below her, their glossy feathers flickered at once and changed to the same greens and grays of the tree they perched upon, camouflaging her ascension. Her father’s footsteps below came to a stomping end, and she knew he was listening for her. Tracking her, trapping her, like he did the other beasts of the forest. He called her name once, twice. The third time’s tone not quite as friendly. The familiar slide–click sound of him readying his gun made her flinch before he had his chance to shoot at the sky. A warning. He wasn’t done with her. His feet crunched in circles around the tree, eventually heading back home. Finally, she exhaled and looked up. Dozens of golden-eyed creatures surrounded her from above. Covered in indigo pelts, with long limbs tipped with mint-colored claws, they seemed to move as one, like a heartbeat. As if they shared a pulse, a train of thought, a common sense. “Thank you,” she whispered, and the beasts moved in a wave to carefully place her on a thick branch.

The Language of the Birds" 1 A man saw a bird and found him beautiful. The bird had a song inside him, and feathers. Sometimes the man felt like the bird and sometimes the man felt like a stone—solid, inevitable—but mostly he felt like a bird, or that there was a bird inside him, or that something inside him was like a bird fluttering. This went on for a long time. 2 A man saw a bird and wanted to paint it. The problem, if there was one, was simply a problem with the question. Why paint a bird? Why do anything at all? Not how, because hows are easy—series or sequence, one foot after the other—but existentially why bother, what does it solve? And just because you want to paint a bird, do actually paint a bird, it doesn’t mean you’ve accomplished anything. Who gets to measure the distance between experience and its representation? Who controls the lines of inquiry? We do. Anyone can. Blackbird, he says. So be it, indexed and normative. But it isn’t a bird, it’s a man in a bird suit, blue shoulders instead of feathers, because he isn’t looking at a bird, real bird, as he paints, he is looking at his heart, which is impossible. Unless his heart is a metaphor for his heart, as everything is a metaphor for itself, so that looking at the paint is like looking at a bird that isn’t there, with a song in its throat that you don’t want to hear but you paint anyway. The hand is a voice that can sing what the voice will not, and the hand wants to do something useful. Sometimes, at night, in bed, before I fall asleep, I think about a poem I might write, someday, about my heart, says the heart. 3 They looked at the animals. They looked at the walls of the cave. This is earlier, these are different men. They painted in torchlight: red mostly, sometimes black—mammoth, lion, horse, bear—things on a wall, in profile or superimposed, dynamic and alert. They weren’t animals but they looked like animals, enough like animals to make it confusing, meant something but the meaning was slippery: it wasn’t there but it remained, looked like the thing but wasn’t the thing—was a second thing, following a second set of rules—and it was too late: their power over it was no longer absolute. What is alive and what isn’t and what should we do about it? Theories: about the nature of the thing. And of the soul. Because people die. The fear: that nothing survives. The greater fear: that something does. The night sky is vast and wide. They huddled closer, shoulder to shoulder, painted themselves in herds, all together and apart from the rest. They looked at the sky, and at the mud, and at their hands in the mud, and their dead friends in the mud. This went on for a long time. 4 To be a bird, or a flock of birds doing something together, one or many, starling or murmuration. To be a man on a hill, or all the men on all the hills, or half a man shivering in the flock of himself. These are some choices. The night sky is vast and wide. A man had two birds in his head—not in his throat, not in his chest—and the birds would sing all day never stopping. The man thought to himself, One of these birds is not my bird. The birds agreed.

have heard is that matter is the densest form of spirit and that spirit is the lightest form of matter. We can view our bodies as manifestations of spiritual energy. Our mind and daily thoughts are part of this energy, and they have a well-documented effect on matter and our bodies. Our daily thoughts and emotions, which are accompanied by a multitude of biochemical changes in our bodies, set up an electromagnetic field around us (and around every cell in our bodies) that attracts to us our vibratory equivalent. This tendency is known as the law of attraction and is the most fundamental law that governs the universe. Like is attracted to like. As we vibrate, so we attract. Or to state it more simply, birds of a feather flock together.

One of the earliest and most pleasing demonstrations of complex behaviors emerging from agents following local rules was Craig Reynolds’s simulation of the motions of flocks of birds as they fly around in the evening sky feeding on insects. The fluid and flowing motions of these flocks wheeling around the sky, sometimes separating and then coming back together, avoiding collisions with each other, looks to be a supreme act of purposeful cooperation on the wing. But Reynolds achieved a surprisingly realistic simulation by assigning the individual birds just three simple rules: one is to stay near to and steer in the same direction as your nearest neighbor; the second is to follow the main heading of the group; and the third is to avoid crowding. Add to these rules a small amount of randomness to individuals’ behaviors, and flocks of “boids,” as Reynolds called them, elegantly and sublimely fly around computer screens. No one bird is directing the flock and the birds are not actively cooperating to produce it. It emerges from the simple rules.

How fond she is of finding morals in things!” Alice thought to herself. “I dare say you’re wondering why I don’t put my arm round your waist,” the Duchess said, after a pause: “the reason is, that I’m doubtful about the temper of your flamingo. Shall I try the experiment?” “He might bite,” Alice cautiously replied, not feeling at all anxious to have the experiment tried. “Very true,” said the Duchess: “flamingoes and mustard both bite. And the moral of that is—‘Birds of a feather flock together.’” “Only mustard isn’t a bird,” Alice remarked. “Right, as usual,” said the Duchess: “what a clear way you have of putting things!” “It’s a mineral, I think,” said Alice. “Of course it is,” said the Duchess, who seemed ready to agree to everything that Alice said: “there’s a large mustard-mine near here. And the moral of that is—‘The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours.’” “Oh, I know!” exclaimed Alice, who had not attended to this last remark. “It’s a vegetable. It doesn’t look like one, but it is.” “I quite agree with you,” said the Duchess; “and the moral of that is—‘Be what you would seem to be’—or, if you’d like it put more simply—‘Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.’” “I think I should understand that better,” Alice said very politely, “if I had it written down: but I can’t quite follow it as you say it.

According to the [evolutionist explanation of the instinct of animals], instinct is the expression of the heredity of a species, of an accumulation of analogous experiences down the ages. This is how they explain, for example, the fact that a flock of sheep hastily gathers together around the lambs the moment it perceives the shadow of a bird of prey, or that a kitten while playing already employs all the tricks of a hunter, or that birds know how to build their nests. In fact, it is enough to watch animals to see that their instinct has nothing of an automatism about it. The formation of such a mechanism by a purely cumulative . . . process is highly improbable, to say the least. Instinct is a nonreflective modality of the intelligence; it is determined, not by a series of automatic reflexes, but by the “form”—the qualitative determination—of the species. This form is like a filter through which the universal intelligence is manifested. . . The same is also true for man: his intelligence too is determined by the subtle form of his species. This form, however, includes the reflective faculty, which allows of a singularization of the individual such as does not exist among the animals. Man alone is able to objectivize himself. He can say: “I am this or that.” He alone possesses this two-edged faculty. Man, by virtue of his own central position in the cosmos, is able to transcend his specific norm; he can also betray it, and sink lower; "The corruption of the best is corruption at its worst." A normal animal remains true to the form and genius of its species; if its intelligence is not reflective and objectifying, but in some sort existential, it is nonetheless spontaneous; it is assuredly a form of the universal intelligence even if it is not recognized as such by men who, from prejudice or ignorance, identify intelligence with discursive thought exclusively.

Okay.” The leader stood on the bed of his truck and clapped his hands over his head. “Listen up, everyone.” No one was really listening, though they had dressed right. Everyone was all in black. A few guys wore ski masks, and others had black marks on their cheeks like football players. Personally, I didn’t understand the need for the black camouflage. Caden had explained that the cops had already been looped in on the operation. A few of the lawns getting flocked tonight actually belonged to cops, and anyway the whole blending-with-the-night effect didn’t work when you were carrying a bright neon-pink flamingo. Still, I couldn’t deny the little spark of excitement building in my stomach. We were all standing in some guy’s driveway, and as I looked around, I seemed to be the only girl. These guys meant business. I was in the middle of a real life Call of Duty operation. The leader began speaking, his voice booming. “This is going to happen with precision and professionalism. No lingering, loitering, acting like stupid shits, and definitely no joking around. We’re not ladies. This isn’t going to be run like a bunch of pansy-shopping, pink-nail-polish pussies. You got that?!” I frowned, tucking my nails inside my jacket. “Every vehicle’s been filled with birds. The driver should have a text with all the locations, and the number of birds for each target. Pull up, find the group of birds labeled for that house, and work together. Take one bird a trip, two if you can manage, and ram those suckers down in the grass. Hurry back to the truck and keep going until all the birds for that location are in the ground. Shotgun Sally is in charge of hanging the sign on the bird closest to the street. Once the sign is hung, get back in the truck, and move to the next target. NO TALKING! This mission is all radio silent. Communicate with signals, and if you don’t know the appropriate signals, just SHUT THE HELL UP! Okay? Now, go flock some fuckers!

This is true emergence, the wisdom of crowds—like flocking, it represents group members making choices together. The bigger message of the nomenclature evolution was exactly what I had been telling new Twitter employees. It was our job to pay attention, to look for patterns, and to be open to the idea that we didn’t have all the answers.

Birds of feather flock together

Birds of feather flock together

By then she's lost in the land of sleep and he is too, and when they go there they never go together, and she is afraid that it is also a preview of death, a place where there may be dreams but never love, never home, never a hand to hold yours when squadrons of birds flock across the burnt-orange sun at the close of the day.

Birds of a feather flock together.” If

Things get even more interesting when birds group together. In some species, many of the birds in a flock will sleep with both halves of the brain at the same time. How do they remain safe from threat? The answer is truly ingenious. The flock will first line up in a row. With the exception of the birds at each end of the line, the rest of the group will allow both halves of the brain to indulge in sleep. Those at the far left and right ends of the row aren’t so lucky. They will enter deep sleep with just one half of the brain (opposing in each), leaving the corresponding left and right eye of each bird wide open. In doing so, they provide full panoramic threat detection for the entire group, maximizing the total number of brain halves that can sleep within the flock. At some point, the two end-guards will stand up, rotate 180 degrees, and sit back down, allowing the other side of their respective brains to enter deep sleep.

1. Always be yourself Good friends are those who love you for who you are and accept you the way you are. They never mind about your flaws, and they will never try to change you into someone else. They say, “birds of the same feathers flock together” is a reflection of true and real friendship. When you reveal your true personality, you will only attract those who are fascinated with such character and personality. Never be shy to express your fantasies and exploring your hobbies. When you are around people, talk about the things that you love, and this way, you will only attract those who have the same interest.

THANK GOD WE ARE NOT SMALL CRANIUM BIRDS THAT FLOCK TOGETHER BECAUSE THEY CANNOT SEE BEYOND THE TOP OF THEIR FEATHER

The romantic notion of "opposites attract" works well in fairy tales. However, science proves that "like attracts like" for healthy communication and successful relationships. Social psychologists have long relied upon the "Similarity Attraction Theory" to explain why we are more positively inclined toward people who are the most like ourselves. Similarity reduces uncertainty and gives us a comforting degree of psychological safety. It is no wonder, then, that "birds of a feather flock together." Our tribe understands our vibe.

Vanessa’s scream of terror pierced the air, while the pegasi flapped their wings and whinnied. Andy looked to the sky. A flock of giant ebony swans flew toward the clearing, visible just beyond the tall trees. Their shiny feathers shifted between black and silver in the sunlight. Their beaks were a dull bronze, their red eyes gleaming with malice. Together they let out a screech, and the trees shook. Spencer’s jaw dropped. “That’s them. The Stymphalian Birds.

And every social reality-tunnel perpetuates itself by basically the same techniques as advertising, of which the chief is repetition. This is maintained half-consciously, by group reinforcement. "Birds of a feather flock together." You do not see many Roman Catholics in Methodist churches, nor do a large number of Marxists sit in the cabinets of Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Reagan. The signals (speech units) that maintain the group-reality are repeated endlessly and quite cheerfully, while others are edited out by selection of who gets in. As Dr. Timothy Leary once remarked, most domesticated primate conversation consists of variations on “I’m still here. Are you still there?" and "Business as usual. Nothing has changed.

ornithological specimens of the same or similar plumage tend to habitually congregate in the closest possible proximity.” Or being translated, “birds of a feather flock together.

Karmic groupings are never by accident. People congregate together, flying in like a flock of birds and eventually out again. There may be some years difference in timing, but years are neither here nor there in the timeless eternal.

Green apple, yellow apple Red apple, pink apple An apple is an apple Blue berry, black berry Red berry, yellow berry A berry is a berry Birds of the same feather Flock together People of the same mindset Plot together

Birds of a feather flock together," he was fond of saying. He said it at the breakfast table; he said it on the way to the pool; he said it while covering the faces of brown children in our storybooks with our mom's nail polish. Sometimes he closed the pages before the paint dried so that they stuck together forever, leaving nursery rhymes unrhyming and stories filled with gaps.

I got shot in the face by a bunch of birds.” A sincere, contemplative look fell over Ivan’s face. “Do you mean you were hit by a large amount of birds, or a flock of them banded together to actually shoot some sort of tiny guns at you?

A tremor of recognition passes through me. It’s the same feeling I had when I looked at his portraits. The animal sense of awareness of one’s own tribe. Birds of a feather flock together. Though we’re still not much more than strangers, I know intuitively that he and I are alike. Suffering is the great equalizer of humankind.

Birds of a feather flock together, and so do birds with broken wings.

One of the most important – and sudden – changes in politics for several decades has been the move from a world of information scarcity to one of overload. Available information is now far beyond the ability of even the most ordered brain to categorise into any organising principle, sense or hierarchy. We live in an era of fragmentation, with overwhelming information options. The basics of what this is doing to politics is now fairly well-trodden stuff: the splintering of established mainstream news and a surge of misinformation allows people to personalise their sources in ways that play to their pre-existing biases.5 Faced with infinite connection, we find the like-minded people and ideas, and huddle together. Brand new phrases have entered the lexicon to describe all this: filter bubbles, echo chambers and fake news. It’s no coincidence that ‘post-truth’ was the word of the year in 2016. At times ‘post-truth’ has become a convenient way to explain complicated events with a simple single phrase. In some circles it has become a slightly patronising new orthodoxy to say that stupid proles have been duped by misinformation on the internet into voting for things like Brexit or Trump. In fact, well-educated people are in my experience even more subject to these irrationalities because they usually have an unduly high regard for their own powers of reason and decision-making.* What’s happening to political identity as a result of the internet is far more profound than this vote or that one. It transcends political parties and is more significant than echo chambers or fake news. Digital communication is changing the very nature of how we engage with political ideas and how we understand ourselves as political actors. Just as Netflix and YouTube replaced traditional mass-audience television with an increasingly personalised choice, so total connection and information overload offers up an infinite array of possible political options. The result is a fragmentation of singular, stable identities – like membership of a political party – and its replacement by ever-smaller units of like-minded people. Online, anyone can find any type of community they wish (or invent their own), and with it, thousands of like-minded people with whom they can mobilise. Anyone who is upset can now automatically, sometimes algorithmically, find other people that are similarly upset. Sociologists call this ‘homophily’, political theorists call it ‘identity politics’ and common wisdom says ‘birds of a feather flock together’. I’m calling it re-tribalisation. There is a very natural and well-documented tendency for humans to flock together – but the key thing is that the more possible connections, the greater the opportunities to cluster with ever more refined and precise groups. Recent political tribes include Corbyn-linked Momentum, Black Lives Matter, the alt-right, the EDL, Antifa, radical veganism and #feelthebern. I am not suggesting these groups are morally equivalent, that they don’t have a point or that they are incapable of thoughtful debate – simply that they are tribal.

I am reminded of the apocryphal conversation between Confucius and Lao-tzu, when the former had been prating of universal love without the element of self. “What stuff!” cried Lao-tzu. “Does not universal love contradict itself? Is not your elimination of self a positive manifestation of self? Sir, if you would cause the world not to lose its source of nourishment: there is the universe, its regularity is unceasing; there are the sun and moon, their brightness is unceasing; there are the stars, their groupings never change; there are the birds and beasts, they flock together without varying; there are trees and shrubs, they grow upward without exception. Like these, accord with the Tao—with the way of

The biggest betrayal of all when blood hands in blood. Families are supposed to stick together, birds of a feather, but I want to fly in a different flock, to a different place.

A group of ravens is called a conspiracy, the irony of that not at all lost on me. The birds band together in adolescence to form a bond as rebellious teenagers—which I’m sure is when The Ravenhood was formed—until they finally mate out. And the theory on Ravens is that they mate for life.

Those old ghostly intuitions that have tied sinew and soul together for millennia had taken over, were doing their thing, making me feel uncomfortable in bright sunlight, uneasy on the wrong side of a ridge, somehow required to walk over the back of a bleached rise of grasses to get to something on the other side: which turned out to be a pond. Small birds rose up in clouds from the pond’s edge: chaffinches, bramblings, a flock of long-tailed tits that caught in willow branches like animated cotton buds.

Birds of a feather flock together, but opposites attract. Absence indeed makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight is out of mind. Look before you leap, but he who hesitates is lost.

Birds of a feather flock together.” That saying is true in so many ways. The reality of dating is that you are attracted to people who are similar to you, similar not necessarily in appearance or personality (though that may be true) but in health. I can’t tell you the number of times I have counseled men and women who have asked me through tears, “Why am I always attracted to the unhealthy ones?” The simple answer is that what you believe about yourself is what you will get. Your beliefs and view of self are so central to determining the kind of person you will relate to. They act like lures, drawing people to your side. Your level of emotional health and self-esteem will always attract others who are in the same category. Healthy people will marry healthy people because you will always end up with the person whom you believe you deserve. It’s a simple equation, though we tend to complicate it. It’s almost as though human beings are magnetic. We attract people who are similar to us. Not only that, but studies on dating1 have shown that we even tend to date and marry people who are similar to us in appearance and style. If something as superficial as physical appearance holds that much power, how much more magnetic is the influence of our mental and emotional world?

Birds of a feather flock together.

The very mention of S & M leather bars made Ramiz’ eyes light up and he asked, "Where are the S/M bars located? I’d like to check them out." "There is one called Porto de Mar. On our way back, we will pass by the place. You will need a membership pass to enter. However, I know the manager and owners of that club. I can speak to them and get you in. They are very friendly people; since you are visiting for a few days, I’m sure they will be happy to entertain you. They speak a little English, all you’ll need to understand," explained our host. I could tell Ramiz was excited that he would soon be visiting an establishment where ‘birds of his feather flocked together.’ For the rest of the evening he had a happy grin on his face, knowing he would soon be a slave again.

Then I saw that the birds were a flock of pauw or bustards, and that they would pass within fifty yards of my head. Taking one of the repeating Winchesters, I waited till they were nearly over us, and then jumped to my feet. On seeing me the pauw bunched up together, as I expected that they would, and I fired two shots straight into the thick of them, and, as luck would have it, brought one down, a fine fellow, that weighed about twenty pounds. In half an hour we had a fire made of dry melon stalks, and he was toasting over it, and we made such a feed as we had not tasted for a week. We ate that pauw; nothing was left of him but his leg-bones and his beak, and we felt not a little the better afterwards.

We subjected the mountains to glorify with him in the evening and sunrise, and also the birds, flocking together, all of them turned to him." Then Allah combined the kingdom and speech and prophethood in Da'ud when He says, "We made his kingdom strong, and gave him wisdom and decisive speech." (1) Allah clearly and openly appointed Da'ud Khalif. This was Da'ud, peace be upon him. His freedom of action in the kingdom with this subjection was by a mighty command which was not completed in him alone. Allah also gave it to Sulayman who shared in it as He says, "And We gave knowledge to Da'ud and Sulayman who said, 'Praise be to Allah who has favoured us.'" (27:15) He says, "We gave Sulayman understanding of it. We gave each of them judgement and knowledge."(21:79)

As sociologists are fond of pointing out, many of these aphorisms appear to be direct contradictions of each other. Birds of a feather flock together, but opposites attract. Absence indeed makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight is out of mind. Look before you leap, but he who hesitates is lost. Of course, it is not necessarily the case that these beliefs are contradictory—because we invoke different aphorisms in different circumstances. But because we never specify the conditions under which one aphorism applies versus another, we have no way of describing what it is that we really think or why we think it. Common sense, in other words, is not so much a worldview as a grab bag of logically inconsistent, often contradictory beliefs, each of which seems right at the time but carries no guarantee of being right any other time.

Be kind! No matter how hard life gets! Come great things from small beginnings. When it rains it pours! Birds of a feather flock together.

When it rains it pours. Maybe the art of life is to convert tough times to great experiences: we can choose to hate the rain or dance in it. Be kind! No matter how hard life gets! Come great things from small beginnings. Birds of a feather flock together.

Be kind! No matter how hard life gets! - Come great things from small beginnings. - When it rains it pours! - Birds of a feather flock together. كن انت الافضل ,كن انسانا وكن بقلب وبطيبة طفل بريئ مهما صعبت عليك الحياه ومهما زادت واشتدت عليك المصائب والهموم, فلاتيأس ! - اعرف انه دايما من البدايات الصغيره تاتى الاشياء العظيمه, فلاتيأس! - اول م بتبدأ تمطر, الدنيا كلها بتغرق ولكن اشعه الشمس كفيله بانها تجفف, اول م توقع ف مشكله وبعدها تدخل ف مشاكل اكبر واكبر, تذكر ولاتيأس! - الناس والصحاب اللى ليهم نفس ميولك واهتماماتك دايما هتلاقيهم بيتجمعوا حواليك فلاتيأس !

Everyone is entitled to his or her personal opinion. A wise friend will notice the positive changes and would want to follow you, but a person who derives pleasure in their current misery would find other birds like them that they can flock with together.